On the 15th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the devastation wrought by the storm and subsequent flood is still hard to fathom. Within a day of the storm’s landfall Aug. 29, 2005, 80 percent of New Orleans was underwater. Tens of thousands of evacuees crowded into sports arenas and convention centers there and in Baton Rouge...

As President Donald Trump makes his case for re-election and the nation confronts a school system in disarray, the results of a new poll taken in the early days of the pandemic show a majority of Americans giving him a failing grade on key education issues. While 53 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s performance...

In the months leading up to the coronavirus pandemic, 2020 was looking pretty good to Lizbeth Luevano. Before the year even began, she had received early acceptance to Stanford — a dream for the 18-year-old daughter of Mexican immigrants in California’s Coachella Valley. After striving to master English in her early years, Lizbeth had developed...

As President Donald Trump continues to demand that schools reopen and families across the country anxiously await decisions, districts are asking a critical question: Will teachers come back once the doors reopen? Early indications suggest that while many will, others fearful of COVID-19 won’t. Those absences will exacerbate a supply gap of some 110,000 teachers...

For decades, a coalition of educators, politicians and activists have fixed one goal above all others in their mission to promote equity in education: closing the racial achievement gap. Its very existence — the stubborn divergence in standardized test scores between white students and students of color — belies the progressive dream of a color-blind...

When the coronavirus shut down school in the spring, my kids’ teachers spun out many impressive lessons. Their emails included links to travel videos on YouTube, math tutorials on Khan Academy, even parent-teacher video conferences. There was, however, one conspicuous absence from my kids’ e-learning: a feedback or support platform for their writing assignments. This...

Every four years, education reformers dare to dream that a presidential election will finally hinge on the issue of school choice. And each time, their hopes are crushed as wars, recessions, and scandals bump their top priority out of the spotlight. The unique conditions of the 2020 election, in which a deadly pandemic and a...

This summer brought a long overdue national spotlight to the role racism plays in all aspects of American society, and education has not been spared — nor should it be. Around the country, schools are scaling back and even abolishing long-established systems of policing. Major districts like Minneapolis and Portland, Oregon, moved swiftly to dissociate their schools from...

When the 2019-20 school year began, no one could have imagined that schools would sit dark and empty for one-third of the instructional year. COVID-19 left unprecedented disruption in its wake, laying bare inequities that existed long before living rooms turned into classrooms. Because Black and Latino communities have been hardest hit, we’re certain to...

Their heated exchange over school busing during a Democratic presidential debate last year was one of the more dramatic moments of the primary season. But now former Vice President Joe Biden and California Sen. Kamala Harris share the ticket and could make education a more defining issue in their effort to unseat President Donald Trump....