By some measures, Sal Khan is the most influential math teacher in U.S. history. The 46-year-old entrepreneur and former financial analyst is the founder of Khan Academy, a nonprofit site offering thousands of free video lessons on a range of K-12 subjects. Since its beginnings as a YouTube channel (which itself grew out of Khan’s...

When Congress approved $190 billion to combat the educational devastation wrought by the pandemic, the Stockton, California, school system was practically the poster child for a district in need. Nearly 80% of students in the Central Valley district live in poverty. High COVID infection rates were shutting down packing plants where many of their parents work, and...

Los Angeles Unified’s most publicly contentious co-location may soon be coming to an end. Brooke Rios, the executive director of the New Los Angeles Elementary, a charter school that has shared a campus with Baldwin Hills Elementary for nearly seven years, said her school is close to securing its own building. “We’re doing everything in...

By the time LaToya Brooks began homeschooling her three daughters last fall, the Atlanta mother had to ask herself: Why didn’t I do this sooner? A former public school band teacher, Brooks said she was largely inspired by the grim pandemic realities of her kids’ schooling: Her 7-year-old, born late in the year, was stuck...

The past year has seen several prominent Black celebrities making anti-semitic remarks. Rapper Ye (formerly Kanye West) proclaimed in an interview with Alex Jones, “I like Hitler … I love Jewish people, but I also love Nazis.” Brooklyn Nets star point guard Kyrie Irving promoted on social media a film that included elements of Holocaust denial. Whoopi Goldberg stated...

Though computer scientists have been using chatbots to simulate human thinking for more than 70 years, 2023 is fast becoming the year in which educators are realizing what artificial intelligence means for their work. Over the past several weeks, they’ve been putting OpenAI’s ChatGPT through its paces on any number of professional-grade exams in law, medicine, and business, among others....

After almost a lifetime in California politics — first as a student activist, then as an elected official — Jackie Goldberg has returned to a familiar seat of power.  Last month, by unanimous vote, the 78-year-old representative of Board District 5 was elected president of the Los Angeles Unified Board of Education. She last held...

At dinner with their families, on school buses, and in their own rooms, young people nationwide have witnessed the brutal killing of Tyre Nichols, whether they meant to or not. As students enter classrooms in the days after a widely publicized funeral in Memphis, experts say educators have a responsibility to acknowledge their anger, grief and sadness...

Just before the winter holidays, the National Center for Education Statistics released new data on school staffing in the 2021-22 academic year. The data are provisional, but they represent the best look yet at how school staffing levels have changed over the course of the pandemic.  As I forecast in September, the new data show that schools have been...

As schools face rising behavioral challenges, debates rage on about restorative justice, which rejects traditional, punitive discipline in favor of relationship-based work to address underlying causes of conflict. Studies show widely disparate results — for example, on school violence and academic performance. Many advocates explain these discrepancies by noting that neutral-to-negative results come about when schools cherry-pick restorative practices —...