Over seven months after much of society shut down in reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic, there is no uniform policy guiding school districts through the return of tens of millions of students to in-person education. In most jurisdictions, officials have spent the last few months balancing risks and responsibilities, resulting in millions of American students...

A Nation at Risk, President Reagan’s 1983 Blue-Ribbon Panel’s review of American public education is frequently referenced as the benchmark and starting flag of the reform movement. Its 37-year reign as the reference point for progress is over. The pandemic has now taken the pole position; it will be the new reference point for the evolution...

In 28 districts across the U.S., students in middle and high school lost more than a year of learning due to suspensions, according to a new study released Monday. The study from the Civil Rights Project at UCLA analyzed discipline data from 2015-16 for almost every district in the nation. The most extreme losses ranged from 183...

After tracking and detailing school systems’ reopening plans for months, and identifying a range of best practices and improvements from the spring, our research at the Center on Reinventing Public Education now turns to how districts are translating their plans into action. Perhaps as to be expected, districts’ already lackluster plans for the start of school...

School districts with new projects or renovations underway are in a form of limbo. They don’t know if students will be there when the doors open or the ribbon is cut. They are reexamining designs they approved months ago, exploring whether environments will meet the requirements of a post-COVID world. We have several projects in...

A first-of-its-kind alumni network for K-12 KIPP charter school graduates launches today, drawing on its unique national alumni base of 30,000 students that’s expected to grow to 80,000 by 2025. The National KIPP Alumni Network offers both alum-to-alum support as well as outside professional guidance. The three external players in the network programs, financed by California-based Crankstart...

The last time Deyanira Hooper’s son Jeremy took California’s state assessment, he was 15 points from meeting proficiency standards. But when schools closed last spring, his live instruction from a teacher dropped to 20 minutes every three days. Even though her fifth grader is now getting three hours of class on Zoom each day from...

We are sitting at a historic crossroads as a country, and we have the opportunity to create a more just world for all Americans. The COVID-19 pandemic, the senseless murder of Black Americans by police and the resulting protests have forced a reckoning with the racism that’s embedded in our national DNA. Our systems have...

As students return to learning this fall, they are going back in a variety of ways — in person, online or in some combination. This is creating issues for collecting and using education data consistently. While this is a challenge, it also presents an immense, and overdue, opportunity to move away from data like standardized...

School districts across the country are making the tough decision between in-person versus remote learning. Regardless of the path they choose, students are returning to a public school system more underfunded than at any time in recent memory. Direct federal support to state and local budgets is needed now more than ever as local school...