New test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation’s Report Card, show eighth-graders’ science scores have fallen 4 points since 2019 and 12th-graders’ math and reading scores have fallen 3 points in the same time period. The tests were administered between January and March 2024. This is the first Nation’s Report Card score release since the Trump administration began making cuts to the U.S. Education Department. Those cuts,…
Social media can help teenagers with healthy development, but it can also create risks. Psychological research shows it is critically important to focus on how teens use social media and the type of content they see. As a parent or caregiver, you are the expert on your child, and you know what experiences will fit with their strengths and areas of vulnerability. These recommendations from the American Psychological Association are based on research and will…
In early 2024, initial reports indicated that tutoring might not only help kids catch up academically after the pandemic, but could also combat chronic absenteeism and increase school attendance. More recent research, however, suggests that prediction may have been overly optimistic. Stanford University researchers have been studying Washington, D.C.’s $33 million investment in tutoring, which provided extra help to more than 5,000 of the district’s 100,000 students in 2022-23, the second year of a three-year…
Youth mental health has steadily declined in the years prior to and following the COVID-19 pandemic. Among the worst affected are pre-teen boys and teenage girls, according to the August 2024 report, “A Nation’s Children At Risk,” published by the Center for Applied Research in Education at the University of Southern California. According to the study, teen girls were more than three times as likely to experience abnormal levels of emotional symptoms compared to the…
Last year, Roosevelt Middle School in San Francisco, California introduced a campus-wide cellphone and smartphone ban. That meant devices are “off and away at all times while you’re on campus,” said Emily Leicham, Roosevelt Middle School’s principal. Among those in favor of the policy was Marta Lindsey, whose child started sixth grade at Roosevelt in fall 2024. She said that the cellphone bans were the reason her family chose the school as their first pick…
There will always be some students that are revolted by the prospect of reading, and reluctant readers certainly have their reasons. Perhaps they haven’t found a book, author, or genre yet that they like, and they don’t know where to begin. Maybe they would prefer to occupy their time with different forms of media or more kinesthetic activities. Or they could find reading boring — not long after they start reading, they lose track of…
Fall will be here before we know it, and there are lots of new children’s books to be excited about! Here are some of the most highly anticipated children’s books releasing in fall 2024. 1. Good Night Thoughts by Max Greenfield. From actor Max Greenfield, the author of I Don’t Want to Read This Book and its two companion titles, comes a sweetly funny bedtime book about anxiety and being present. What do we do…
Fall will be here before we know it, and there are lots of new young adult books to be excited about! Here are some of the most highly anticipated young adult books releasing in fall 2024. 1. Everything We Never Had by Randy Ribay. This exploration of four generations of Filipino American boys spans the 1930s to the 2020s. Told in multiple perspectives, Everything We Never Had unfolds like a beautifully crafted nesting doll, where…
When Celeste Gravatt first heard about a data breach in her kids’ school system in February 2023, it sounded innocuous. “I didn’t really think anything of it at first,” Gravatt says. Officials at Minneapolis Public Schools called it a “system incident,” then “technical difficulties,” and finally, “an encryption event.” She says it was only when she checked social media that she realized the true extent of the attack, and what it could mean for her…
For a few weeks in the spring of 2016, nearly all the eighth grade students at a small public school affiliated with Columbia University agreed to stay late after school to study math. They were preparing for a critical test, the New York State’s Regents examination in algebra. Half of the kids came from families that lived below the poverty line in Harlem and upper Manhattan. They attended a selective middle school and were advanced…
