For the last 45 years, teachers unions have been the predominant political force in California, using their clout from the governor’s office down to the state’s 1,037 school districts. Except for one: the Clovis Unified School District, just north of Fresno. While there are a number of tiny districts in California without a teachers union,...

When it comes to understanding which students make it not just to, but through college, substantial past education research has identified steep differences along lines of race, gender and class. A recently released report, however, provides an alternate narrative. The study, which links middle and high school achievement to postsecondary outcomes in five New England...

As a middle schooler, early December was an agonizing time of year for civil rights activist Karen Korematsu. When the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack approached, she made excuses to avoid the school bus where students subjected her to racist bullying. “Go home.” “Go back to where you came from.” “You don’t belong here.”...

Americans assume an almost fairy-tale link between a college education and a good job. Take college freshmen. In 2019, more than 8 in 10 (83 percent) said a “very important” reason for attending college was “to be able to get a better job.” But reality is different. A 2018 study of over 800 million job...

Long before sunrise the morning after Daunte Wright, a Black motorist, was killed by a white police officer outside Minneapolis, Kara Cisco made some quick posts to Facebook. She asked if anyone knew whether the previous night’s protests would affect her commute to work. She would need to traverse the part of Minneapolis where the...

Over the past year, school districts across the country have delivered meals to families, connected them to mental health counselors and served as central hubs for information on rental assistance — operating much like “community schools” that are designed to pull together a variety of services for students under one roof. Now President Joe Biden...

Forty thousand high school students in the Los Angeles Unified School District are at risk of not graduating — including 6,000 this year — according to a new analysis that tracks the effects of school closures on students in the nation’s second largest district. In middle school, about a third of students in the district are currently...

The $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan signed by President Joe Biden on March 11 allocates $129 billion to help elementary and secondary schools rebound from the severe disruptions to school life caused by COVID-19. Additionally, the law stipulates that recipients are obliged to spend “not less than 20 percent of such funds to address learning...

Updated April 13 Nyla Joseph has felt at ease in front of a camera ever since appearing in a public service announcement six years ago. But her dreams of becoming an actor were frustrated because her South Los Angeles middle school lacks a theater program. And her mother was leery of internet scams promising to turn her...

With students stuck at home during the pandemic, disengagement from school has turned from concern to danger. But with the challenge of distance learning comes an opportunity for virtual reality to create accessibility and understanding for kids of all demographics, even in the most disadvantaged districts. Travis Feldler saw firsthand how early in their educational...