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Commentary: Black community college enrollment is plummeting. How to get those students back

Community colleges are uniquely positioned to support their local communities with pathways to economic and social mobility. But a recent report draws attention to a decline in Black college students, particularly at community colleges, which enroll over one-third (36%) of Black students entering postsecondary education. From 2011 to 2019, Black enrollment declined at twice the rate (26%) of the...
By Karen A. Stout and Francesca I. Carpenter | May 31, 2023
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COVID’s ‘complicated picture’: Mental health worse, staffing tight, enrollment frozen at nation’s schools

More than two-thirds of public schools saw higher percentages of their students seeking mental health services in 2022 than before the pandemic — but only a slim majority believed they were able to meet children’s heightened psychological needs, according to a federal report released Wednesday. The revelation comes from The Condition of Education 2023, the latest...
By Kevin Mahnken | May 30, 2023
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Carnegie, ETS team up to develop competency-based assessments

Two major players in K–12 education launched a joint effort last month to develop new assessments that could help shift schools’ focus away from traditional “seat time” requirements and toward more accurate measures of mastery over academic content. The new tests, to be created by the Educational Testing Service and the Carnegie Foundation for the...
By Kevin Mahnken | May 25, 2023
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Opinion: Better pay, better materials, training, respect — what survey says teachers want

Teacher Appreciation Month is a time when educators are recognized for their many contributions to students, families and communities. It’s also a time to ask: “Are the teachers all right?” With the recent release of Educators for Excellence’s annual Voices from the Classroom national teacher survey, it’s clear the answer is “not really.” This survey is made for...
By Sydney Morris | May 24, 2023
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LAUSD considers expanding popular math program without clear evidence of effectiveness

Twenty kindergartners at Los Angeles Unified’s Coeur d’Alene Avenue School sit on a multi-colored carpet, listening to their teacher present the day’s math lesson. Projected on the whiteboard are clip art images of a gold coin and a pot of gold against a rainbow background. St. Patrick’s Day is just around the corner, and the...
By Will Callan | May 23, 2023
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Pre-K enrollment nearly bounces back from pandemic amid push for universal access

The nation’s public pre-K programs saw a rebound last year as enrollment nearly reached pre-pandemic levels, new data shows. Thirty-two percent of 4-year-olds attended a state-funded program in the 2021-22 school year — up from 28% the year before, when the National Institute for Early Education Research, which publishes the annual “yearbook,” reported that COVID had “erased”...
By Linda Jacobson | May 22, 2023
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Commentary: The pandemic’s virtual learning is now a permanent fixture of America’s schools

The rocket’s engine roars to life, and moments later, it slides up, up and up and away from the launchpad. An embedded video of the flight deck shows a worried, bug-eyed face behind the helmet visor — the astronaut’s pulling some G’s. He’s gone positively green. But wait — because this is a launch in Kerbal Space...
By Conor Williams | May 18, 2023
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Choice supporters to Oklahoma backers of Catholic charter schools: ‘Proceed with caution’

Catholic Church leaders in Oklahoma could within weeks get the go-ahead to create the nation’s first explicitly religious, taxpayer-supported charter school. And while a few charter and school choice leaders are quietly supporting the proposed St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, seeing it as a watershed moment for religious freedom, others are saying, in...
By Greg Toppo | May 17, 2023
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LAUSD by the numbers: Crunching the data on crime, overdoses and accidents at area schools

Los Angeles has been shaken recently by a series of crimes and other dangerous or deadly incidents at local schools. The situation is drawing high-level attention. “In the past two weeks, we’ve seen near-death overdoses at an LAUSD middle school, the death of a mother and critical injury of her child as they walked to school, and...
By Jon Regardie | May 16, 2023
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Commentary: ‘This changes everything’ — AI is about to upend teaching and learning

In April 2022, I attended the ASU-GSV Summit, an ed tech conference in San Diego. I’d recently become an official Arizona State University employee, and as I was grabbing coffee, I saw my new boss, university President Michael Crow, speaking on a panel being broadcast on a big screen. At the end of the discussion,...
By Robin Lake | May 15, 2023