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North Carolina’s public universities cut 59 positions as part of a massive DEI overhaul this summer

Harvard reports slight decline in Black students in wake of affirmative action ruling

US consumer watchdog finds that school lunch fees are taking a toll on parents

Nebraska’s top election official might try to remove a ballot measure to repeal school funding law

A suspect is in custody after a teen is critically hurt in a shooting at a Nebraska high school

The pandemic’s missing students.

These kids never returned to school after the pandemic – because of paperwork and a broken phone

More education news, court won’t allow public money to be spent on private schools in south carolina, head of state children’s cabinet named new mexico’s new public education secretary, texas school districts say upgrades to the state’s student data reporting system could hurt funding.

Most students in a Georgia district return to class nearly a week after a school shooting

Trump said fixing child care would not be very expensive. Here are price tags for other proposals

Many questions still loom over timeline of Georgia school shooting

North Carolina House Rep. Jeffrey Elmore resigning before term ends

Extra private school voucher funding gets initial OK from North Carolina Senate

A former NYC school food chief is sentenced to 2 years in a tainted chicken bribery case

Pitt fires athletic director Heather Lyke months before her contract was set to expire

On the streets of a Colorado city, pregnant migrants struggle to survive

A remote tribe is reeling from widespread illness and cancer. What role did the US government play?

Classrooms across the US are heating up. School districts need cooling beyond AC

Georgia school shooting highlights fears about classroom cellphone bans

Walz touts Democratic record of defending LGBTQ+ rights, says Harris will advance cause if elected

Rutgers orders investigation of gymnastics program following allegations of abuse by coach

Hispanic-serving colleges and universities see hope in a White House initiative

How to pick a preschool without becoming overwhelmed

21 children are now known to have died in Kenya school fire

Gaza enters its second school year without schooling. The cost could be heavy for kids’ futures

As US colleges raise the stakes for protests, activists are weighing new strategies

1 student dead after shooting in a Maryland high school dispute, police say

A dormitory fire in kenya kills 18 students and injures 27. dozens are unaccounted for.

How to talk with kids about school shootings and other traumatic events

Inside the Georgia high school where a sleepy morning was pierced by gunfire

JD Vance says he laments that school shootings are a ‘fact of life’ and calls for better security

Nba legend charles barkley promises $1m donation to new orleans school, a christian school appeals its ban on competing after it objected to a transgender player, former mississippi teacher accused of threatening students and teachers, california schools release a blizzard of data, and that’s why parents can’t make sense of it.

Iranian-born scientist who sued University of Alabama at Birmingham for harassment is awarded $3.8 million in damages

Guns in America

School shooting suspect was a 'good boy' who had troubles at home, his father told authorities last year.

Students at Georgia high school describe 'haunting moment' after suspect opened fire

2 teens and 2 teachers killed in Georgia school shooting leave behind a trail of grief

Black enrollment dips at some top colleges after Supreme Court affirmative action ruling

University of Virginia suspends tours under fire for mentioning Thomas Jefferson's slavery ties

Supreme Court refuses to revive Biden's latest student loan debt relief plan

Education videos.

Georgia school shooting highlights debate over cell phones in schools

Fewer Black students enter some top colleges after court's affirmative action ruling

Some states in U.S. move to ban cell phone use in public schools

First look at how college enrollment has changed since Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action

Some universities proposing no-loan options for financial aid packages to students

States consider banning legacy admissions at universities, sparking debate

What's the hold up with financial aid?

Louisiana gov. to parents against Ten Commandments in classrooms: ‘Tell the child not to look’

A look inside the criminal probe that targeted Texas librarians

Nashville museum sending artifacts back to Mexico

Video shows Texas constable's investigation of school librarians

School district responds as Virginia governor bans cellphones in schools

$1B donation covers tuition for most Johns Hopkins medical students

Trump could announce running mate this week, sources say

LA schools ban cellphones as experts warn of social media impact

Louisiana law requires Ten Commandments be displayed in public school classrooms

LGBTQ students speak out on North Carolina's so-called 'Don't Say Gay' law

Vermont police apologize for 'mock shooting' during high school visit

New program tackles literacy challenges in classrooms

Virginia school addresses 'segregation game' targeting Asian American student

2024 Election

In resurfaced remarks, vance bashes teachers union president for not having children.

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Education secretary promises changes after botched financial aid overhaul dents college enrollments

California school resource officer pleads no contest in 2021 fatal shooting of 18-year-old

California school district superintendent is terminated after rooftop desk prank, bullying allegations

MIT's Black student enrollment drops significantly after Supreme Court affirmative action ruling

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Supreme Court

Supreme court temporarily rejects biden administration request that would expand title ix protections.

Transgender Kids

Transgender girls sue new hampshire officials over sports ban.

Idaho school district now needs parental consent for Band-Aids and other basic first aid

Florida college dumps hundreds of books, many on sexuality, race and feminism

Israel-hamas war, columbia university president resigns months after israel-hamas war protests roiled campus, ucla can't allow protesters to bar jewish students from campus, judge rules.

Teacher says contract wasn't renewed because he wouldn't use trans students' preferred names

Oklahoma school leaders reject top official’s plan to track ‘burden’ of illegal immigration

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Bloomberg gives $600 million to Black medical schools’ endowments

Louisiana governor to parents against Ten Commandments in school: 'Tell your child not to look'

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Here are the average U.S. test scores in math. Each year, they fluctuate a little.

From 2019 to 2022, test scores plunged: Students lost more than half a year of learning.

Students have now recovered about a third of what they lost in math, and even less in reading.

Students Are Making a ‘Surprising’ Rebound From Pandemic Closures. But Some May Never Catch Up.

By Claire Cain Miller ,  Sarah Mervosh and Francesca Paris

Elementary and middle-school students have made up significant ground since pandemic school closings in 2020 — but they are nowhere close to being fully caught up, according to the first detailed national study of how much U.S. students are recovering.

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Overall in math, a subject where learning loss has been greatest, students have made up about a third of what they lost. In reading, they have made up a quarter, according to the new analysis of standardized test score data led by researchers at Stanford and Harvard.

The findings suggest that the United States has averted a dire outcome — stagnating at pandemic lows — but that many students are not on pace to catch up before the expiration of a $122 billion federal aid package in September. That money — the single largest federal investment in public education in the country’s history — has paid for extra help, like tutoring and summer school, at schools nationwide.

Even with the federal funds, the gains were larger than researchers expected, based on prior research on extra money for schools. Recovery was not a given , judging from past unexpected school closures, like for natural disasters or teachers’ strikes.

Still, the gap between students from rich and poor communities — already huge before the pandemic — has widened.

“One of the big and surprising findings is there actually has been a substantial recovery,” said Sean F. Reardon, a professor of poverty and inequality in education at Stanford, who conducted the new analysis with Thomas J. Kane, an economist at Harvard; Erin Fahle, executive director of the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford; and Douglas O. Staiger, an economist at Dartmouth.

“But it’s an unevenly felt recovery,” Professor Reardon said, “so the worry there is that means inequality is getting baked in.”

Some children may never catch up and could enter adulthood without the full set of skills they need to succeed in the work force and life.

The students most at risk are those in poor districts, whose test scores fell further during the pandemic. Though the new data shows that they have begun to catch up, they had much more to make up than their peers from higher-income families, who are already closer to a recovery.

The result: Students in poor communities are at a greater disadvantage today than they were five years ago.

Yet there is significant variation. Some wealthy districts have barely improved. Some poorer districts have made remarkable recoveries, offering lessons for what has worked. In places like Durham, N.C.; Birmingham, Ala.; and Delano, Calif., students are now about fully caught up.

See How Your School District Is Recovering From the Pandemic

Look up data from the first detailed national study of learning loss and academic recovery since the pandemic.

The data does not include any progress students may be making this school year, which will be measured in state tests this spring.

But the study suggests that many students will still need significant support, just as federal aid is running out.

“We seemed to have lost the urgency in this crisis,” said Karyn Lewis, who has studied pandemic learning declines for NWEA, a research and student assessment group. “It is problematic for the average kid. It is catastrophic for the kids who were hardest hit.”

Why Inequality Has Widened

The analysis looked at test score data for third- through eighth-grade students in about 30 states — representing about 60 percent of the U.S. public school population in those grades. It examined pandemic declines from 2019 to 2022 , and measured recovery as of spring 2023. It offers the first national comparison of recovery at a school district level. (It did not include high school students.)

Test scores fell most in poor districts. School closures, though not the only driver of pandemic losses , were a major factor: Schools in poor communities stayed remote for longer in the 2020-21 school year, and students suffered bigger declines when they did .

But once schools reopened, the pace of recovery was similar across districts, the analysis shows. Both the richest and poorest districts managed to teach more than in a usual school year — about 17 percent more in math, and 8 percent more in reading — as schools raced to help students recover.

Yet because poor districts had lost more ground, their progress was not nearly enough to outpace wealthier districts, widening the gulf between them. The typical rich district is about a fifth of a grade level behind where it was in 2019. The typical poor district: nearly half a grade.

Another factor is widened inequality within districts.

When looking at data available in 15 states, researchers found that in a given district — poor or rich — children across backgrounds lost similar ground, but students from richer families recovered faster.

One possible explanation: Even within districts, individual schools have become increasingly segregated by income and race in recent years, said Ann Owens, a sociologist at the University of Southern California. When this happens, she has found, achievement gaps grow , largely because students from wealthier families benefit from a concentration of resources.

Schools made up mostly of high-income families attract more experienced teachers. High-earning parents are more likely to invest in tutors or enrichment outside of school.

Even when schools offered interventions to help students catch up, lower-income families might have been less able to rearrange schedules or transportation to ensure their children attended. (This is one reason experts advise scheduling tutoring during the school day, not after.)

Racial gaps in student scores have also grown, with white students pulling further ahead.

Black students, on average, are now recovering at a faster pace than white or Hispanic students, the analysis suggests — but because they lost more ground than white students, they remain further behind. The gap between white and Hispanic students has also grown, and Hispanic students appear to have had a relatively weak recovery overall. The analysis did not include Asian students, who represent 5 percent of public school students.

Where Students Are and Are Not Recovering

Another factor in recovery: where students live.

Take Massachusetts, which has some of the nation’s best math and reading scores , but wide inequality. The recovery there was led by wealthier districts. Test scores for students in poor districts have shown little improvement, and in some cases, kept falling, leaving Massachusetts with one of the largest increases in the achievement gap. (Officials in Massachusetts hope that an increase in state funding for K-12 schools last year, as part of a plan to direct more money to poor districts, will help close gaps.)

In states like Kentucky and Tennessee that have traditionally had more middling test scores, but with less inequality, poor students have recovered remarkably well.

In Oregon, test scores appeared not to recover. State officials pointed to investments they hope will show results in the future, including permanent funding for early literacy . “We are definitely not satisfied with where we are,” said Charlene Williams, director of the Oregon Department of Education. She added, “We need every minute of instruction we can get.”

Math scores in 2019,

2022 and 2023

Some states, including Mississippi , had strong recoveries.

Some states are excluded because of lower test participation rates, lack of sufficiently detailed public data or changes to their tests between 2022 and 2023. Source: Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford

Across the country, richer districts overall saw gains. But some have made little to no recovery, including Forsyth County on the outskirts of Atlanta, and Rochester, Mich., in suburban Detroit; and Lake Oswego, Ore., near Portland.

And some poorer districts did better than expected, including large urban districts like Chicago, Nashville and Philadelphia, which saw big drops during the pandemic, but have had above-average recoveries.

In the years before the pandemic, big-city school districts often outpaced the nation in learning gains , even as they served larger shares of poor students and more students learning English as a second language.

“We have had to be more innovative,” said Raymond Hart, executive director for the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents 78 large urban school districts.

Bright Spots: What Has Worked?

Birmingham, Ala., prioritized extra time for learning over school breaks. Mark Sullivan, the superintendent, said some parents initially balked, but have come to love the program.

Bob Miller for The New York Times

When it comes to success, no one strategy appeared to lead the way.

In interviews in a sample of districts with outsize recovery, educators described multiple approaches. Some focused on spending more federal dollars on academics — and less, for instance, on renovating school buildings . Some prioritized adding instruction time — via intensive tutoring , summer school or other sessions — which research shows can produce significant gains . Many experimented, coming up with new strategies to help students, including their mental health.

“I stopped looking for these silver bullets,” said Alberto M. Carvalho, the superintendent in Los Angeles, which has seen above-average recovery compared with the rest of California, including strong recoveries for Black and Hispanic children. “More often than not, it is the compound effect of good strategies.”

The $122 billion federal aid package has helped fund this effort, especially in poor communities. The poorest districts received about $6,200 per student in aid , compared with $1,350 for the most affluent districts.

But the law required only 20 percent of the money be spent on learning loss, with no mandate to invest in the most effective strategies and little national accounting of how the money was spent. That has made it hard to evaluate the impact of federal dollars nationally.

One strategy some districts used was spending much more than 20 percent of their funds on academic recovery.

For example, Weakley County, Tenn., a lower-income and mostly white rural district, allocated more than three-fourths. ( Tennessee gave districts incentives to spend at least half of their federal dollars on academics.) Today, Weakley County’s math and reading scores are fully recovered.

Its main focus was a tutoring program — students who are behind meet with experienced tutors in groups of three, twice a week. The district also hired instructional coaches, social workers and educational assistants who teach small groups in classrooms. “If you ask a teacher and say, ‘In a perfect world, if I have $30,000, what would you like me to buy?’ every teacher would say, ‘Another person in this classroom to help,’” said Betsi Foster, assistant director of schools.

Other districts focused on adding more hours of school, including Birmingham, Ala., a majority Black district where most students qualify for free or reduced price lunch.

The superintendent, Mark Sullivan, said he first wanted to make school year-round, a dramatic solution that found little support among families and teachers. So he offered a compromise: The district would hold extra instructional sessions available to all students during fall, winter and spring breaks, in addition to summer school.

Mr. Sullivan said some parents initially balked, but have come to love the program, in part because it provides child care during school breaks. More than a quarter of students typically participate.

Combined with other tactics, like hiring local college students as tutors, Birmingham made up for its pandemic losses in math.

The pandemic also spurred educators to innovate.

Among other strategies, Durham, N.C., a racially and economically diverse district that is now fully recovered, asked its most effective teachers to teach summer school and paid $40 an hour, up from the usual $25 rate.

It is one example of setting high expectations, which the superintendent, Pascal Mubenga, said was integral to recovery. “We did not just give that opportunity to any person; we recruited the best,” he said.

In the Delano Union school district, which serves mostly poor Hispanic students in central California, employees began making daily visits to the homes of students who were frequently absent — a ballooning national problem since the pandemic. The district’s absenteeism rate has fallen under 10 percent, from 29 percent.

The district focused on student well-being as a prerequisite for academics. For example, teachers now ask students to write down how they are feeling each week, a simple and free strategy that has helped uncover obstacles to learning — a fight with a friend, money problems at home.

“If a child is not mentally OK, no matter how good my lesson is, my students will not learn,” said Maria Ceja, who teaches fourth grade.

Students in Maria Ceja’s fourth-grade class in Delano, Calif., with Rosalina Rivera, the superintendent. Since the pandemic, teachers have begun using hands-on tools during math lessons, a strategy they said is helping children after online learning.

Adam Perez for The New York Times

Despite the successes, the pace of national recovery has been “too little,” said Margaret Spellings, a former secretary of education under George W. Bush. “We’re slowly recovering, but not fast enough.”

Congress has shown little appetite to add more funding, and many districts will soon end or cut back programs.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Biden administration did not push for more federal dollars, and instead renewed its call for states to take a greater role, both in financing programs and tracking the number of students receiving intensive tutoring or summer school.

Professor Kane, one of the researchers, advised schools to notify the parents of all children who are behind, in time to sign up for summer school. Despite setbacks on standardized tests, report card grades have remained stable, and polling indicates most parents believe their children are on track .

And what if students never catch up?

While test scores are just one measure, lower achievement in eighth grade has real impact in adulthood. It is associated with lower lifetime earnings , as well as a higher risk of unemployment and incarceration, research has shown.

At this rate, the United States will have a less skilled work force in the future, leading to lower economic output, said Eric Hanushek, an education economist at the Hoover Institution.

The highest-achieving students are likely to be least affected, said Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University — perhaps fewer will study advanced math and science and enter rigorous professions like engineering.

Students in the vast middle — some who may otherwise have become nurses or electricians, for example — could lose opportunities to establish middle-class lives. Community college enrollment is down from 2019 .

And the lowest-achieving students may further disengage from school, making it harder to graduate from high school and hold down even low-wage jobs.

As the pandemic generation enters adulthood, they may face a lifetime of lost opportunities.

Update, Feb. 8, 2024: This article has been updated to reflect a change to the data from researchers at Stanford and Harvard. On Monday, the researchers removed Oregon from the data set because its test participation rates were slightly below their threshold of 94 percent in 2022 and 2023. This article previously said that test scores continued to decline there from 2022 to 2023. The researchers said even with the lower test score participation, the data showed that Oregon students, including in the Lake Oswego district, made a near-zero recovery. Source: The Educational Opportunity Project, Stanford University and the Center for Education Policy Research, Harvard University

Math and reading average test scores are calculated for students from third through eighth grade in about 30 states, which account for about 60 percent of the U.S. public school population in those grades.

Researchers excluded school districts in states that do not provide sufficiently detailed test data on their public websites, and in states for years where participation rates were below 94 percent. Some small districts and charter schools were also excluded due to insufficient data.

To develop a consistent scale across states and over time, researchers link test results with the results of a federal exam, the National Assessment of Educational Progress . Since there was no NAEP test in 2023, researchers relied on the stability of state tests and proficiency definitions for recovery estimates; states that changed their exams between 2021-22 and 2022-23 were excluded from the 2023 data.

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Image credit: Claire Scully

New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately worried that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or coach students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the AI + Education initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of CRAFT (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the Digital Learning initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of virtual field trips to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

The Ongoing Challenges, and Possible Solutions, to Improving Educational Equity

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Schools across the country were already facing major equity challenges before the pandemic, but the disruptions it caused exacerbated them.

After students came back to school buildings after more than a year of hybrid schooling, districts were dealing with discipline challenges and re-segregating schools. In a national EdWeek Research Center survey from October, 65 percent of the 824 teachers, and school and district leaders surveyed said they were more concerned now than before the pandemic about closing academic opportunity gaps that impact learning for students of different races, socioeconomic levels, disability categories, and English-learner statuses.

But educators trying to prioritize equity have an uphill battle to overcome these challenges, especially in the face of legislation and school policies attempting to fight equity initiatives across the country.

The pandemic and the 2020 murder of George Floyd drove many districts to recognize longstanding racial disparities in academics, discipline, and access to resources and commit to addressing them. But in 2021, a backlash to such equity initiatives accelerated, and has now resulted in 18 states passing laws restricting lessons on race and racism, and many also passing laws restricting the rights and well-being of LGBTQ students.

This slew of Republican-driven legislation presents a new hurdle for districts looking to address racial and other inequities in public schools.

During an Education Week K-12 Essentials forum last week, journalists, educators, and researchers talked about these challenges, and possible solutions to improving equity in education.

Takeru Nagayoshi, who was the Massachusetts teacher of the year in 2020, and one of the speakers at the forum, said he never felt represented as a gay, Asian kid in public school until he read about the Stonewall Riots, the Civil Rights Movement, and the full history of marginalized groups working together to change systems of oppression.

“Those are the learning experiences that inspired me to be a teacher and to commit to a life of making our country better for everyone,” he said.

“Our students really benefit the most when they learn about themselves and the world that they’re in. They’re in a safe space with teachers who provide them with an honest education and accurate history.”

Here are some takeaways from the discussion:

Schools are still heavily segregated

Almost 70 years after the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, most students attend schools where they see a majority of other students of their racial demographics .

Black students, who accounted for 15 percent of public school enrollment in 2019, attended schools where Black students made up an average of 47 percent of enrollment, according to a UCLA report.

They attended schools with a combined Black and Latinx enrollment averaging 67 percent, while Latinx students attended schools with a combined Black and Latinx enrollment averaging 66 percent.

Overall, the proportion of schools where the majority of students are not white increased from 14.8 percent of schools in 2003 to 18.2 percent in 2016.

“Predominantly minority schools [get] fewer resources, and that’s one problem, but there’s another problem too, and it’s a sort of a problem for democracy,” said John Borkowski, education lawyer at Husch Blackwell.

“I think it’s much better for a multi-racial, multi-ethnic democracy, when people have opportunities to interact with one another, to learn together, you know, and you see all of the problems we’ve had in recent years with the rising of white supremacy, and white supremacist groups.”

School discipline issues were exacerbated because of student trauma

In the absence of national data on school discipline, anecdotal evidence and expert interviews suggest that suspensions—both in and out of school—and expulsions, declined when students went remote.

In 2021, the number of incidents increased again when most students were back in school buildings, but were still lower than pre-pandemic levels , according to research by Richard Welsh, an associate professor of education and public policy at Vanderbilt’s Peabody College of Education.

But forum attendees, who were mostly district and school leaders as well as teachers, disagreed, with 66 percent saying that the pandemic made school incidents warranting discipline worse. That’s likely because of heightened student trauma from the pandemic. Eighty-three percent of forum attendees who responded to a spot survey said they had noticed an increase in behavioral issues since resuming in-person school.

Restorative justice in education is gaining popularity

One reason Welsh thought discipline incidents did not yet surpass pre-pandemic levels despite heightened student trauma is the adoption of restorative justice practices, which focus on conflict resolution, understanding the causes of students’ disruptive behavior, and addressing the reason behind it instead of handing out punishments.

Kansas City Public Schools is one example of a district that has had improvement with restorative justice, with about two thirds of the district’s 35 schools seeing a decrease in suspensions and expulsions in 2021 compared with 2019.

Forum attendees echoed the need for or success of restorative justice, with 36 percent of those who answered a poll within the forum saying restorative justice works in their district or school, and 27 percent saying they wished their district would implement some of its tenets.

However, 12 percent of poll respondents also said that restorative justice had not worked for them. Racial disparities in school discipline also still persist, despite restorative justice being implemented, which indicates that those practices might not be ideal for addressing the over-disciplining of Black, Latinx, and other historically marginalized students.

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Why children with disabilities are missing school and losing skills

Cory Turner

Fahmida Azim for NPR hide caption

On a recent school day in Del Norte County, Calif., in one of the state's northernmost school districts, 17-year-old Emma Lenover sits at home on the couch.

In some ways, Emma is a typical teen. She loves Disneyland and dance class. But she has already faced more adversity than some classmates will in a lifetime.

"All of October and all of November, there was no school because there was no aide" says Emma's mother, Melony Lenover, leaning her elbows into the kitchen table.

Emma has multiple health conditions, including cerebral palsy. She uses a wheelchair, a feeding tube and is nonverbal. To communicate, she uses a special device, like an iPad, that speaks a word or phrase when she presses the corresponding button. She is also immunocompromised and has mostly done school from home this year, over Zoom, with help from an aide in the classroom. At least, that's what was supposed to happen.

Students with disabilities are missing school because of staff shortages

Melony Lenover says her daughter's special education plan with the district guarantees her a dedicated, one-on-one aide. But the district is in the throes of a special education staffing crisis. In the fall, without an aide, Emma had to stop school. As a result, she missed out on the dance and art classes she loves and regressed on her communication device.

The fact that a district could struggle so mightily with special education staffing that students are missing school – that's not just a Del Norte problem. A recent federal survey of school districts across the U.S. found special education jobs were among the hardest to staff – and vacancies were widespread. But what's happening in Del Norte is extreme. Which is why the Lenovers and five other families are suing the school district , as well as state education leadership, with help from the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund.

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The California Department of Education says it cannot comment on pending litigation.

"It's very, very, very, very difficult when we are trying to bring people on board, trying to provide these services, when we want the best that we can give – cause that's our job – and we can't," says Del Norte Superintendent Jeff Harris. Harris says he cannot comment on the lawsuit, but acknowledges the staffing crisis in Del Norte is very real.

Emma Lenover, left, works through a literacy lesson at home with special education teacher Sarah Elston. Emma loves these visits and, on this day, waited anxiously at the picture window for Elston to arrive. Cory Turner/NPR hide caption

Emma Lenover, left, works through a literacy lesson at home with special education teacher Sarah Elston. Emma loves these visits and, on this day, waited anxiously at the picture window for Elston to arrive.

In December, after the lawsuit was filed, district special educator Sarah Elston told the local Wild Rivers Outpost : "Just a few days ago I had two or three [aides] call out sick, they weren't coming to work, and so this starts my morning at 5:30 having to figure out who's going to be with this student... It is constant crisis management that we do in special education today."

Del Norte's isolation makes it more difficult to hire needed staff

The district sits hidden away like a secret between Oregon, the frigid Pacific and some of the largest redwood trees in the world. It's too isolated and the pay is not competitive enough, Harris says, to attract workers from outside Del Norte. Locally, these aides – like the one Emma requires – earn about as much as they would working at McDonald's.

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Harris has even tried hiring contractors from Oregon. But "it's a two-hour drive from southern Oregon here," Harris says, "so four hours of the paid contract time was not even serving students."

The district's hiring process is also too burdensome, according to Harris, taking weeks to fill a job. Hoping to change that, the district declared a special education staffing state of emergency earlier this school year, but the problem remains.

In April, the district still had more than 40 special education job openings posted.

Melony Lenover says she knows supporting Emma can be challenging. But decades ago, Congress made clear, through the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act , that her daughter is legally entitled to that support.

The federal government said it would cover 40% of the cost of providing special education services, but it has never come close to fulfilling that promise. In 2023, the National Association of Elementary School Principals said , "Since the law was enacted, the closest the federal government has come to reaching the 40 percent commitment was 18 percent in 2004-2006, and current funding is at less than 13 percent."

All this leaves Melony Lenover chafing at what she considers a double standard for children with disabilities.

"If it'd been one of my typically-functioning kids who are not in school for two months, [the school district] would be coming after me," Lenover says.

In many places, a child who has missed about 18 school days – far less than Emma – is considered chronically absent. It's a crisis that triggers a range of emergency interventions. Lenover says Emma's absences weren't treated with nearly the same urgency.

While Emma Lenover still doesn't have a dedicated aide, she is finally getting help.

"We said as a team, enough is enough," says Sarah Elston, who is Emma's special education teacher. "We're gonna do whatever it takes to get this girl an education."

Elston has been working with her high school principal to patch together as much help as they can for Emma, including shifting a classroom aide to help Emma participate in one of her favorite classes remotely, dance.

How the staffing shortage can become dangerous

Linda Vang is another plaintiff in the Del Norte lawsuit, alongside Emma Lenover's parents. On a recent Thursday, she sits at her kitchen table, her back to a refrigerator covered with family photos. She grips her phone hard, like a lifeline, watching old videos of her son, Shawn.

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The cell phone videos show a young boy with a broad smile, being urged by his mother to pull up his socks. Or being taught by his doting sister to ride a scooter. Or dressed up for what appears to be a wedding, and doing the chicken dance. He is a joyful kid.

Much has changed since then.

Shawn is a pseudonym, chosen by Vang and his attorneys in the lawsuit. We're not using his real name because Shawn is a minor and his mother asked us to protect his identity.

To understand Shawn's role in the lawsuit – and the depths of Del Norte's staffing crisis – you have to understand what happened to him on Tuesday, Feb. 28, 2023.

He was 15 at the time. Shawn has autism and is nonverbal, and as part of his special education plan, he gets his own, dedicated aide at school. But again, because of Del Norte's struggles to hire enough special education staff, those aides are often in short supply and undertrained.

Shawn's lead teacher that day, Brittany Wyckoff, says, when he grew frustrated in class, his fill-in aide did not follow procedure. It was snack time, but "this staff said, 'No, you're not being calm' and pulled [the snack] away. So that wasn't the appropriate way to handle it."

Another staff member later told police Shawn had begun to calm down, but the aide still wouldn't give him the snack – pistachios. Instead, Wyckoff says, the aide used a firm tone and continued telling Shawn to calm down. Shawn got more agitated, hitting himself in the face.

The aide later told police he began to worry Shawn might try to bite him – because Shawn had bitten other staff before. Witnesses told police he warned Shawn, "You will not bite me. You will not bite me."

Wyckoff says standard procedure, when a student gets agitated and potentially violent, is to move classroom furniture – a table, a desk – between your body and the student. Instead, Wyckoff says, this aide moved furniture out of the way. When Shawn moved toward the aide, unobstructed, the aide raised his hands.

"The staff member just instantly reached out and choked [Shawn]," Wyckoff remembers. "And full-on, like one hand over the other hand choke."

Multiple staff told police, Shawn had not tried to bite the aide. Wyckoff says she was yelling at the aide to stop and finally pulled him off of Shawn, "who was turning purple."

How the incident led to missed school

The aide left school after choking Shawn and went to a local bar for a beer, according to the police report. He later told police he'd acted in self-defense. When he was arrested, for child endangerment, and asked why he hadn't called police himself, the aide said, because he'd been in many similar situations and didn't think this rose to that level.

The district attorney ultimately chose not to file charges.

Emma, left, works with her sister, Kelsey Mercer, to join one of her favorite school classes, dance, from home. Cory Turner/NPR hide caption

Emma, left, works with her sister, Kelsey Mercer, to join one of her favorite school classes, dance, from home.

Linda Vang says the incident changed Shawn. He became less trusting and was scared to return to the classroom. "It is the hardest thing in my life to watch my son go through this."

To make matters worse, after the incident, the school couldn't provide Shawn with a new aide, and, like Emma Lenover, he couldn't do school without one. After the encounter, he was forced to miss two months of school – because of the staffing crisis.

"It was just week after week, them telling us, 'There's no staff. There's no staff,' " Vang remembers. "I feel for him. I'm angry for him. I'm upset for him. It's hard."

Again, Superintendent Jeff Harris can't comment on the specifics of the lawsuit, or on the incident involving Shawn, but he defends the district.

"We don't come in everyday going, 'How can we mess with people's lives?' We come in every day going, 'What can we do today to make this work?' "

Shawn, like Emma, lost skills during his time away from school. His mother says he struggled more to control his behavior and was less willing to use his communication device.

Shawn is back at school and finally improving, Vang says. He even likes the aide he has now.

"It has been very hard the last year. But you know, we're getting there. You know, I'm doing my best, every single day."

With inadequate staff, students can lose vital skills

Wyckoff, Shawn's former teacher, says the staff shortage is so acute that some aides are being hired with little to no special education experience.

"They could know absolutely nothing about working with a student with special needs," Wyckoff says, "and [the district] is like 'Hey, you've gotta work with the most intensively behaviorally challenging student. Good luck!'"

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Wyckoff says the staff the district is able to hire need more and better training, too. The stakes are just too high.

Superintendent Harris says the district does provide staff training, but he also has to balance that with the need to get staff into classrooms quickly.

Veteran special education staff in Del Norte tell NPR they've seen what happens when students with disabilities don't get consistent, quality support: They lose skills.

"One particular student, he was doing well," says Emily Caldwell, a speech-language pathologist in the district. "We were talking about removing his communication device from coming to school because he's communicating verbally."

Caldwell works with many students who, like Shawn and Emma, use a communication device. This student, though, had been learning to use his own voice. It was a big deal, Caldwell says. But the student began losing those skills as he was shuffled between inexperienced staff.

Emma, right, communicates with her sisters Ashley Lenover, left, and Kelsey Mercer using body language and a special tablet device. Cory Turner/NPR hide caption

Emma, right, communicates with her sisters Ashley Lenover, left, and Kelsey Mercer using body language and a special tablet device.

Now, "he's not communicating verbally at school anymore, he's only using his device and only when prompted," Caldwell says.

"I have a student whose toileting skills have regressed," says Sarah Elston, Emma's teacher. "I have more than one student who have lost skills on their [communication] device, that is their only way of communicating with the world."

This sense of loss, Elston says, keeps her up at night.

Superintendent Jeff Harris acknowledges the effects of the staffing crisis have been painful.

"When you have a child who can't do something that they were able to do before because they don't have that consistency, that's hard. I mean, that's a knife to the heart."

Looking forward

The lawsuit against the Del Norte Unified School District and state education officials is ongoing. The families hope it will not only help their children, but also raise awareness around a crisis they know is larger than themselves – and larger than Del Norte.

In the meantime, Del Norte teachers are doing everything they can to support their students with disabilities.

Elston, Wyckoff and Caldwell all say they have raised alarms with the district around students not getting the support they're entitled to – and even being mistreated by untrained or inexperienced staff.

Caldwell says some veteran staff have quit out of frustration. Though she insists, she's staying.

"I just worry," Caldwell says, tearing up. "The kids I work with, most of them don't communicate effectively without support. And so they can't go home and be like, 'Hey, Mom, so-and-so held me in a chair today.' And so I feel like, if I wasn't there and if I wasn't being that voice and that advocate, who would be?"

Digital story edited by: Nicole Cohen Audio stories produced by: Lauren Migaki Audio stories edited by: Nicole Cohen and Steve Drummond Visual design and development by: LA Johnson

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In 2024, 5 big issues will shape education.

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I see five big things on the horizon for education and learning in 2024.

It is impossible to predict the future–as much as we’d like to be able to.

We can, however, look around corners.

By looking at the emerging trends, the thoughtful projections of those in a given field, we can begin to make some forecast about the questions and opportunities likely to come into focus in the weeks, months, and year(s) ahead.

With all of that as context, I wanted to use my first piece of the new year to highlight five big things that I see on the horizon for education and learning.

Artificial intelligence and the use of new technologies to transform learning

There has been enough ink spilled on the impending impact of AI on education, learning, and society in the past year to fill a dozen encyclopedias; expect more in the year ahead.

The truth is that AI, nascent as it still may be, represents a transformation on the scale of the industrial revolution and very possibly even bigger. We are entering a new era, a new AI epoch even, for humanity. Our schools will be among the first parts of life and society to experience this change.

While this level of change can bring reasonable trepidation, it also portends the creation of entire universes of new ways of doing, being, and working. In education, we’ll see the creation of new means of applying technologies to the learning context .

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These new technologies, intelligent agents, virtual tutors, and ever more responsive and adaptive curricula have the potential to help learners of every age, ability, experience, and background to flourish. It’s the personalized learning that we’ve long been promised, but thus far has yet to come to fruition. As the use of AI continues to advance in our classrooms, the growth and expansion of personalized learning technologies can remake how, when, what, and where learning takes place.

Student engagement, advocacy, and agency

Chronic absenteeism has reached a full-fledged crisis in the post-COVID school years. Millions more children are regularly absent from school in the years after COVID than those before with widespread chronic absenteeism in some 70 percent of the highest poverty schools compared to 25% pre-COVID. The social disconnection and distance from schooling during the pandemic is proving more durable than anticipated.

Student engagement, rebuilding that sense of connection and closing that distance between students and schooling, is therefore front and center as we enter 2024. The experience of the world’s high-performing education systems can be instructive to those efforts. In many of these systems, student engagement increases as pupils rise through grade levels. In the U.S., chronic absenteeism is highest among high schoolers .

One reason for this is that learning in those systems becomes more and more connected to student interests, more relevant to their futures , be they in college, career, or some other form of training. In the U.S., it’s often the opposite. Higher-level course work can feel less and less connected to the postsecondary future of many learners. With that comes declining interest and excitement for what’s on offer at school.

The rise of newly personalized learning, more robust career-connected pathways, and culturally relevant curricula are promising means of improving student engagement and attendance. As is the recognition of the need to center student voice in learning and in the broader ways that schools and communities function.

Leading the work in that area is a new generation of inspiring and talented young people. I am inspired by this new generation of student leaders and as the year progresses I’m sure you will be too. Among the incredible, world-changing work being done by this generation is a new national effort to educate and support student school board members. The National Student Board Member Association launched in 2023 with the mission to empower and elevate students who serve on boards of education so that they better represent students and strengthen the boards on which they serve.

The centering of student voice in tandem with the efforts to improve engagement overall point to a renewed focus on student agency. It’s timely given the obvious need to address chronic absenteeism and aligned with the way that Gen Z leaders are stepping into their futures with aspirations of positive impact.

Teacher and leader pipelines

Teacher shortages and supply mismatches continued to dominate headlines in 2023 . In 2024, look for expanded focus on efforts to address the issue. Fortunately, there is great work underway around the country

We’ve seen increasing efforts by school districts and teacher preparation programs to coordinate more effectively and expert organizations like the Branch Alliance for Educator Diversity thoughtfully working to facilitate these partnerships . States-led efforts like Pennsylvania's PA Needs Teachers alongside “grow your own” models of teacher and leader development are responses that are likely to continue to gain traction as more states and districts invest in programs focused on the health of their talent pipelines.

Representation with respect to race and gender in our teachers and leaders must be at the forefront of these conversations. Organizations like the Center for Black Educator Development are helping to address the demographic mismatch between our teaching force–overwhelmingly white–and our student populations–majority Black and brown. Similarly, organizations like Women Leading Ed are taking aim at the persistent and unacceptable gender gap in education leadership where despite nearly 8 in 10 teachers being women, just 3 in 10 rise to the top jobs in school districts .

Given its demonstrated impact on student achievement as well as the clear moral obligation we have to advance equity in education, these worthy pursuits must continue in the year and years ahead.

Future-ready education and systems to deliver it

There are powerful changes occurring in the world of work including the continued globalization of talent sourcing, quickening of automation, and the previously referenced rise of AI. Those changes will only accelerate. Students will need an education fit for a future dominated by these dynamics and an education that equips them with the ability to continue to learn across their lives.

That means looking at the whole of a state’s system and aligning it to ensure that all students succeed. Such efforts are already underway in Maryland and beginning to launch in Michigan , Pennsylvania , and beyond. Aligning systems to create future-ready graduates means shifting those systems from what has come to be known as P-20 (meaning pre-school through higher education) thinking.

Expanding career-connected learning, embracing a modernized take on career and technical education, and a transition to a lifelong learning paradigm are all elements of this shift that are front of mind as the new year begins.

Rethinking what, when, and how we assess student learning

The tired old battles about assessment will limp along, as they always do, in the year ahead. The more interesting and important conversation, however, will be about how we use assessments to not just understand what students know, but also how they are learning and how to improve that learning process.

That means more focus on testing the application of knowledge and more inclusive visions of what is important to assess in the first place. Talented and committed educators are advancing our thinking around how to measure what we really care about including academic learning, yes, but also personal wellbeing, social connection, and civic engagement.

While we absolutely must address the very real decline in mathematics performance of students in our schools, we should pay as much attention to ensuring we have the tools and awareness of how well students can collaborate, communicate, and create–and much, much more.

Optimistically Onward in the New Year

There will be more issues that rightly draw our attention in the coming year; there will be unexpected events that consume more mindshare.

But whatever issues we choose or are forced to address in the year ahead, our common aim must be trained upon the provision of an excellent education for all students.

We can disagree on the how of it, but always in the spirit of finding solutions that will benefit our children, our communities, and our country.

Here’s to a purposeful and progress-filled year ahead.

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