As students seek to cope with the threat of learning losses wreaked by COVID-19 and months-long school closures, some families have already hit upon a solution of sorts: hiring professional tutors. The idea — commonsensical for the well-off, but prohibitively expensive for most — has engendered a storm of controversy. If a small portion of...

New public opinion research indicates that COVID-19 and the hurried transition to remote learning presented teachers with an array of challenges that seriously damaged their sense of self-efficacy. The quality of school working conditions, including fair expectations and clear communication, was found to be critical in sustaining the educators’ perceptions of professional success. While over...

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...

As COVID-19 shut down its schools, Hamilton County, Tennessee, was ideally situated for the switch to virtual learning. At least in theory. Home to the regional tech hub of Chattanooga, Hamilton County has been celebrated for its pioneering, municipally owned fiber-optic network and the economic revival it has powered over the past decade. The area’s...

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...

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...

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...

The nation’s K-12 schools reacted to the disruption of COVID-19 in broadly similar ways regardless of whether they were district, charter or private, according to new research released Monday. In general, traditional public schools did not lag behind charters or private schools, except for a few days near the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis when...

American education observers have gotten used to receiving bad news from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. They received a little more last month, as eighth-graders posted lower scores in geography, civics, and U.S. history in the 2018 NAEP than they did four years ago. Referred to as “the nation’s report card,” NAEP is the...

An ominous reality was made clear in the Department of Labor’s new employment figures Friday morning: Unprecedented job losses hit the least educated the hardest, but even those with higher degrees weren’t protected from the downturn. And just months ago, the United States was celebrating “the longest economic recovery in history,” marked by record-low joblessness among...