Ever since the Soviet Union launched Sputnik into orbit on Oct. 4, 1957, America has been struggling to recruit and retain STEM teachers in its public middle and high schools. In the 2017-2018 school year, approximately 100,000 teacher jobs in STEM – or science, technology, engineering and mathematics – went unfilled at the high school...

From teacher to congressional candidate, Nick Melvoin has accomplished much in his years of public service. Now he is one of 18 candidates running in the March 4, 2024 primary for U.S. House of Representatives California District 30.  Melvoin started his career as an English teacher at Markham Middle School in Watts. Motivated to see...

Today, the Knowledge Matters Campaign is unveiling a new K-8 English language arts curriculum review tool to advance the understanding of truly high-quality, content-rich literacy instruction. It has felt like a necessary, even urgent, resource at this pivotal moment in time. The last year has witnessed a surge in focus on the importance of background...

Objectively speaking, it’s a weird time to be talking about layoffs in schools. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021 had the fewest layoffs in public education in the last two decades. Last year was just a bit higher, and so far 2023 is tracking about the same. There are still pockets of layoffs due to...

Parents and caregivers have been struggling for pretty much as long as I’ve been in the game. Ten years ago, I had a playground chat with a mother of a toddler who felt like she was failing on all these complicated goals she had for her kid. This deeply unhappy stranger helped me realize something:...

From the outside, the headquarters of Alcove Learning looks like any small home in the largely Latino Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles. Flanked by similar houses and located among varied storefronts and restaurants, this self-directed learning center for teens and tweens offers young people the freedom to direct their own education. It is part...

The world is dependent on innovations, systems and equipment that are designed and sustained using science, engineering, technology and mathematics. This means the nurturing of STEM talent cannot be reserved for a slice of our student population but, instead, an essential component of every student’s educational journey. It turns out, industry agrees. Our colleagues in...

Grand Rapids college placement advisor Sarah Zwyghuizen normally starts cajoling high school seniors in October to fill out the federal financial aid forms that are key to unlocking their chances of going to college. Not this year. A U.S. Department of Education delay in revising the forms known as the Free Application for Federal Student...

After California invested billions to help students rebound from the pandemic, K-12 math and English language arts scores remained mostly stagnant last year and still well below pre-COVID levels. The annual Smarter Balanced scores, released today, showed that English language arts scores dropped slightly and math scores inched upwards a bit from 2022, although both scores...

Post-pandemic staffing challenges have eased up slightly this fall, but many school leaders report that they still have crucial vacancies to fill. The latest federal data on the public education workforce, released Tuesday, shows 45% of leaders said they were understaffed as the new school year began. That’s down from just over half last year....