To learn the geometric concept of transformations this year, Crystal Watson’s eighth-graders drew up blueprints of apartments. As they worked, she asked them to imagine designing affordable housing for Black and Hispanic families like theirs in Cincinnati who have been priced out of their neighborhoods. But when she had them add a hallway down the...

“If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.” —Aboriginal rights leaders A McKinsey & Co. study on the impact of COVID-19 has told the nation that “the pandemic has set back learning for all students,...

When I was in high school I worked part time at a dry cleaners. One day, a regular customer came in and asked to speak with me privately. He was, he told me, about to undergo a process to change his gender that involved some physical changes and was concerned that because the legalities would...

A version of this essay first appeared on The Kresge Foundation. Making community college tuition-free should be a national priority. It would help counter recent enrollment declines at our nation’s community colleges. It would help produce the trained employees businesses say they are lacking. Most importantly, it would bring low-income students and students of color into higher education,...

After more than a year in which the majority of students attended school fully or partially remotely, districts nationwide are contemplating how to meet children’s present academic and social needs and prepare them for the 2021-22 academic year. A slew of policies and practices are on the table for the summer and coming year, bolstered...

Restaurants and airports may be filling up again as the pandemic eases, but not college campuses. The continued steep drops in college enrollment, especially at community colleges which attract disproportionate numbers of low-income and minority students, are both surprising and worrisome. This spring, overall college enrollment fell by 603,000 students, from 17.5 million to 16.9...

As young people continue to line up for coronavirus shots, the gender breakdown appears, well, surprisingly even. Compared to a persistent gap between adult men and women in vaccination rates, with women rolling up their sleeves considerably more than men nationwide, early data indicate that the split has been far less pronounced among youth. In...

When former President Donald Trump secured the White House, a top priority was clear from the onset: Erase the legacy of foe and predecessor Barack Obama. A newly sidelined Catherine Lhamon, who led the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights during the Obama administration, refused to watch quietly. Just months into Trump’s term, a ProPublica...

Can we get a do-over? The general consensus among parents, educators, and students is that distance learning has not worked and students continue falling behind while this pandemic continues to disrupt every aspect of our lives. A recent Stanford study confirms earlier studies: students across the U.S. have lost from one third to a full year of...

During the early days of the pandemic, with students around the world shut out of school buildings and many struggling to succeed in virtual classrooms, academics and philanthropies in several countries embraced a novel solution: online tutoring. In recent months, the first research studies on those initial efforts — one based in the United Kingdom,...