Enrollment in state pre-K programs fell for the first time in two decades after a period of steady growth, according to a new report focusing on the 2020-21 school year. Before the pandemic, states were serving 44% of 4-year-olds. Now they might not reach 40% over the next 10 years, the report found. “The pandemic...

Harleigh Walker, an Alabama ninth grader, was among the guests at the White House last month when the Biden administration recognized Transgender Day of Visibility. But officials at Auburn Junior High School didn’t think meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris was a valid reason to miss school. “They wanted more evidence that she had gone,”...

Sign up here for LA School Report’s newsletter Across the country, communities are sounding the alarm: When it comes to mental wellness, the kids are not okay. A declaration of emergency for children’s mental health came from the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and Children’s Hospital Association. The U.S....

This article is part of a collaboration between The 74 and the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. Sign up here for LA School Report’s newsletter. From their dislike of local teachers’ unions to a lack of confidence in school administrators, California voters are more disillusioned with the state of education than voters nationally, a...

Sign up here for LA School Report’s newsletter Kurt Russell, a Black history teacher and high school basketball coach from Oberlin High School in Ohio, has been known to give up his planning periods to sit with one of his players in class — just to make sure the student is meeting academic expectations. A...

This story is part of a series produced in partnership with The Guardian exploring the increasing role of artificial intelligence and surveillance in our everyday lives during the pandemic, including in schools. Fifteen-year-old Jordyne Lewis was stressed out. The high school sophomore from Harrisburg, North Carolina, was overwhelmed with schoolwork, never mind the uncertainty of living in a pandemic...

Sign up here for LA School Report’s newsletter For the past two years, schools, families and students have grappled with a COVID-induced crisis. Not just of health, but of continuous disruptions, school closures, remote schooling and extraordinary stresses, interruptions and obstacles to children’s education and well-being. Relationships fractured as students were torn from the normalcy...

Sign up here for LA School Report’s newsletter Almost 600,000 U.S. fourth- and eighth-graders are currently taking national reading and math tests for the first time since the pandemic began. The prospect makes the federal official in charge of measuring student progress a bit anxious. “The likelihood that the scores would be anything but down...

April 19 Update: The Council of Chief State School Officers named Kurt Russell the 2022 National Teacher of the Year. About 40 students at Oberlin Senior High School won’t be taking courses on Black history, race and gender oppression this fall — not because they’ve been canceled due to conservative opposition, but because Kurt Russell...

Sign up here for LA School Report’s newsletter At his Kumon Math and Reading Center Franchise in San Antonio, Sarit Kapur is used to working with kids who are at risk of falling behind. Now, said the tutor, after the effects of the pandemic, not only is the risk a reality, but the gap is...