In developing its public school system, the United States deliberately departed from the traditional European model of channeling students from wealthy backgrounds into rigorous academic tracks and those from the working class into vocational ones. Instead, as Harvard economists Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz note in their book The Race Between Education and Technology, the aim was...

Over the next several weeks, The 74 will be publishing stories reported and written before the coronavirus pandemic. Their publication was sidelined when schools across the country abruptly closed, but we are sharing them now because the information and innovations they highlight remain relevant to our understanding of education. Riverhead, New York  Under oath in...

In September 1977, I was born in San Diego into a lifelong battle. I didn’t choose this fight. Many people get to choose lifelong outcomes, but that’s not an option for people like me. The fact that I was born with dark skin meant that I had no choice but to engage in a lifelong...

Singer Alicia Keys had a heartfelt book recommendation for the nearly 700,000 students of the Los Angeles Unified School District. So she shared it on Snapchat for any L.A. student to download for free, marking the launch of the A-List Book Club. She’s only one of the celebrity participants in a virtual effort led by...

While all students have experienced disruption to their daily lives this spring, COVID-19, the economic disaster that followed and the continued violence against African Americans are disproportionately affecting communities of color, particularly black students. Educators need to step up and help students regain their footing, heal and flourish. The country’s education system’s typical, standardized response...

In 2019, The Sidewalk School opened in a cramped tent city on the U.S.-Mexico border. Now its students, craving educational opportunities in the States, face their latest challenge: learning during a pandemic The Sidewalk School in Matamoros, Mexico, founded last summer by two American volunteers, defied convention from the start. Located just three miles from...

A new research effort underway at Tulane University aims to track how every K-12 school in the United States — district, charter and private — responded to the coronavirus pandemic and the abrupt shift to remote learning that came with it. Led by economist and education researcher Douglas Harris, the project is part of REACH, the National...

Amber Bennett was 11 when she took her first class at Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland, Ohio. As a seventh-grader, she was eligible for College Credit Plus, a statewide dual enrollment program designed to increase access for low-income students, students who were the first in their families to attend college and children of color. “It...

This essay originally appeared on the FutureEd blog. When schools were shuttered around the country three months ago, the pandemic did what nearly a decade of activist parents and testing skeptics could not do — put a systemwide pause on statewide standardized testing. It wasn’t because the tests were too long or poorly aligned to classroom...

Over the next several weeks, LA School Report will be publishing stories reported and written before the coronavirus pandemic. Their publication was sidelined when schools across the country abruptly closed, but we are sharing them now because the information and innovations they highlight remain relevant to our understanding of education. This interview is one in...