New research from California shows a sizable decline in applications for university financial aid during the first phases of the COVID-19 pandemic. The trend among first-year college students has not reversed itself, the data show, and declines are particularly acute in low-income neighborhoods and those with higher minority populations. Financial aid applications are a useful...

How are school district budgets faring this year? That depends. Many districts are struggling financially. They have spent large sums of money dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic — buying technology, purchasing cleaning supplies, hiring more substitute teachers and attempting to address student learning loss and disengagement. This story, of districts in distress, is an easy...

An Arkansas school district has one teacher leading instruction for several classes while others support children in small groups. A suburban Cleveland elementary school teamed up teachers and restructured its school day to expand staff planning time. A St. Louis charter school is making sure every educator also serves as an education navigator or coach...

A year after mayors and governors announced the first school closures related to COVID-19, many have turned to personalized tutoring to cope with disruptions to learning. Families that could afford to hire private instructors began doing so even before the 2020-21 school year began, while governments in Europe launched full-fledged programs to work with thousands...

The House is soon expected to pass what President Joe Biden calls an “urgently needed” funding package that sends $126 billion to K-12 schools — almost twice as much provided in COVID-19 relief last year and significantly more than they received to recover from the Great Recession. The vote, expected by Wednesday, sets the stage for Biden...

Twenty percent fewer kindergartners are on track to learn how to read than their peers were at this time last year, and most haven’t made much progress since the fall, according to new assessment data released in February. Thirty-seven percent of this year’s kindergartners are on-track in early reading skills, compared to 55 percent during the 2019-20...

On any given school day, just one or two students show up in-person for Houston teacher Trevor Toteve’s lectures. With the bulk of his class opting to learn remotely during the pandemic, several beam themselves into the classroom via webcam. But most students appear as static, black boxes. Toteve urges the high schoolers in his...

After nearly a year of disastrous COVID news, it emerged in mid-February like a light at the end of the tunnel. Infections began dramatically falling and “herd immunity,” some experts began to say, could spell the end of the pandemic in the not-so-distant future. At some point this year — estimates range from mid-summer to...

2020 was the year that U.S. history, and clashing perspectives on it from left and right, became a campaign issue. First, President Trump and his fellow Republicans attacked the New York Times’s controversial 1619 Project, accusing its authors of dishonestly tearing down American ideals in a history curriculum that has been adopted in thousands of...

Thousands of English language learners could be headed for American public schools in the coming months due to recent changes in U.S. immigration policy and devastating natural disasters in Central and South America. Their arrival could pose a challenge for local school systems, particularly poor districts that might not have enough teachers or space to...