Wendy Graham’s two kids first encountered Amira, a popular artificial intelligence tutoring platform, in 2025, during a summer reading program in New Mexico. She also used it at home with her daughter, now a fourth grader. But she found that the purple-haired avatar with the big, round glasses didn’t seem to understand where her...

Several years into California’s robust expansion of public transitional kindergarten, private preschool providers are facing challenges that could ultimately upend care for young children of all ages.  The program, which comes at no cost to families, added a new, pre-kindergarten grade level to public school districts throughout the state. The 2026-27 school year marks the...

This story was originally published by EdSource. Sign up for their daily newsletter. In a step toward giving math the attention early literacy has gotten, the Legislature on Monday approved a bill that would require schools to assess the math capabilities of all students in kindergarten through second grade each year, beginning in 2028-29.  The...

In late July, soon-to-be kindergarteners spent the morning getting their wiggles out at a summer learning program at Robert Bailey Elementary School in Providence. At first, they shyly raised their hands or whispered “that’s me” when their teacher sang an attendance song, but then they jumped up and spent the next hour stretching, dancing and...

As superintendent of Desert Sands Unified in California’s Coachella Valley, Kelly May-Vollmer has a hard time naming a system that’s not somehow connected to the district’s broadband network. Parents can check a school bus tracking app to make sure their child arrived on time. Cafeteria staff don’t use cash registers; kids’ meal accounts are linked...

This March, Mary Ellen Lykins, a director of 10 Head Start centers serving around 200 kids in northwest Washington, submitted a seemingly simple application to the federal government: She wanted to convert one of her partial-day preschool classrooms into a full-day program, extending the hours to better support the families she serves. Under the existing...

This summer, one of the biggest movies for kids features a villain that isn’t a person at all — it’s a sleek smart tablet designed to replace the things that matter. Toy Story 5 struck a nerve with parents for a reason. But like most good metaphors, it breaks down if you push it too...

Students from Taft Oil Technology Academy came to Sacramento to meet with state representatives and share their perspectives on the petroleum industry. The high schoolers came from an oil community in the Central Valley, where state policy is not an abstraction. It is a paycheck, a family business, a tax base, a way of life....

In school lunchrooms around Lake Tahoe, students line up for a red, hairy fruit called a rambutan. On pozole day, they shout, “We want more!” And when the salad bar runs dry, they ask the staff to refill it – over and over. This brings joy to the cafeteria crew, but Gage Gautheier recently bestowed...

On the brink of looming insolvency, Los Angeles Unified could have prevented its financial crisis by leaving vacated positions empty, making thousands of district employee layoffs unavoidable to address a $3.6 billion deficit, a top state fiscal watchdog said.  “They’re overstaffed significantly,” said Michel Fine, CEO of California’s Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team of...