Even before the World Health Organization labeled the Omicron coronavirus strain a new “variant of concern” Friday, school closures were continuing to increase across the country. Last week, 621 schools across 58 districts announced new closures for a variety of reasons including teacher burnout, staffing shortages and virus outbreaks, according to counts from Burbio, a...

As with all aspects of our education system, the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated and widened inequities in postsecondary pathways, especially for the most underserved students. According to recent data, undergraduate college enrollment rates declined by nearly 5 percent since last year across all types of postsecondary institutions. Community colleges took the brunt of this decline, with a...

Californians could vote next year on whether students should have a constitutional right to a high-quality education, potentially opening the door to litigation from parents dissatisfied with their children’s schools. The effort to get the measure on the November 2022 ballot is just getting started, but such a statute would give parents “legal standing” before...

After the worst enrollment drop in a decade, colleges hoped COVID-19 vaccinations and in-person offerings would reel students back in. But early fall undergraduate enrollment data suggest “no signs of recovery,” with the nation’s public universities historically serving low-income students of color hit hardest, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Across 2- and 4-year public and private...

Early on, it seemed mentoring could be another casualty of the pandemic, the developmental relationships so many young people depended on for guidance and stability dissipating right when they were needed most. The COVID-19 crisis not only had the potential to disrupt learning, it threatened the ability to develop, maintain and grow networks of support...

Despite promises to focus on the growing racial and income divide among the nation’s students, new fall testing data show academic gaps have worsened, falling heaviest on some of the most vulnerable children. While education researchers have sounded the alarm for more than a year — that pandemic learning hurts low-income students and students of color most...

A story is told about a flood that rose so quickly, a man had to go to the second floor of his home, where he prayed for God to save him. Before long, a neighbor came by in a canoe and yelled to the homeowner, “Come on in. I’ll get you out of here.” The...

Last fall, seven school districts and eight tutoring providers came together in a virtual summit run by the Harvard University Center for Education Policy Research. The goal was to see if representatives of two sides of the education market could agree on a radical new contract, one in which schools would pay providers for outcomes...

It’s been more than a decade since California’s education system placed a strong emphasis on making sure educators know how to teach children to read. Reading experts and parent advocates say a lack of consistent attention to the issue since then shows. Thirty-seven percent of the state’s fourth-graders score below the basic level on federal...

Anyone who cares about kids must rejoice over their being back in school with their peers. But that should not blind us to the harsh truths we have learned about our public education system, how badly it responded to the pandemic and how, as always, it served those with loud voices and political power and...