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....

Los Angeles Unified school superintendent Alberto Carvalho and a team of officials visited the homes of chronically absent students last month for the district’s fifth iAttend Student Outreach Day, an initiative to promote daily attendance. The program was introduced after LAUSD’s chronic absenteeism rate skyrocketed to 40% for the 2021-22 school year after students returned...

When I was young, I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about what I wanted to be when I grew up. I came to the United States from El Salvador when I was five years old, and while my mom and I liked to dream, we were more focused on meeting our day-to-day needs...

In 2019, Westcliffe Elementary in Greenville, South Carolina, got troubling news: It was one of 265 schools in the state where more than a third of third graders failed to meet literacy standards. Then the pandemic hit and “there were bigger fish to fry,” said Principal Beth Farmer. But the state had a plan. Teachers...

COVID-19 impacted every aspect of life, and schools are still dealing with its residual effects. Many teachers blame the pandemic for low achievement and isolation from peers as the root cause of student conflicts in schools. But are there more positive narratives to tell? In doing research for my Ph.D. program, I sought out the...

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. Jesika Gonzalez will tell you that she wasn’t the biggest fan of Porterville, California, while she was growing up. “When I was younger, I was very, like, angsty,” the 18-year-old said as she flicked her purple hair over her shoulder. “Whatever,...

It’s well established that chronic absenteeism has skyrocketed since the pandemic. But a new analysis of federal data shows the problem may be worse than previously understood. Two out of three students were enrolled in schools with high or extreme rates of chronic absenteeism during the 2021-22 school year — more than double the rate in 2017-18,...