An independent research arm within the U.S. Department of Education is being all but shut down, employees of the department say. The Institute of Education Sciences (IES) is responsible for gathering and disseminating data on a wide range of topics, including research-backed teaching practices and the state of U.S. student achievement. Many contracts have already been canceled, according to two employees briefed on the moves. The employees said they learned of the cuts at an emergency…
America’s children have continued to lose ground on reading skills in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and have made little improvement in math, according to the latest results of an exam known as the nation’s report card. The findings are yet another setback for U.S. schools and reflect the myriad challenges that have upended education, from pandemic school closures to a youth mental health crisis and high rates of chronic absenteeism. The national exam…
A new $2.5 billion plan will modernize public universities and colleges across Massachusetts, Gov. Maura Healey announced January 1st, 2025. An Act to Build Resilient Infrastructure to Generate Higher Education Transformation, known as The BRIGHT Act, will modernize the UMass system, state universities, and community colleges. It will create approximately 15,000 construction-related jobs, Healey said in a statement. The $2.5 billion bond bill represents the largest proposed investments in capital improvements in Massachusetts’ public higher…
As anti-LGBTQ+ legislation skyrockets across the country, so do suicide attempts and other mental-health concerns among LGBTQ+ youth. A 2022 national survey of nearly 34,000 LGBTQ+ youth, ages 13-24, paints a clear, distressing picture of the trauma endured by LGBTQ+ students in America. Nearly three-quarters reported symptoms of anxiety; 58 percent reported symptoms of depression; and 45 percent said they had seriously considered committing suicide within the past year. However, the survey also shows that…
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…
Four years after the pandemic shuttered schools, we all want to be done with COVID, but the latest analyses from three assessment companies paint a grim picture of where U.S. children are academically. While there are isolated bright spots, the general trend is stagnation. One report documented that U.S. students did not make progress in catching up in the most recent 2023-24 school year and slid even further behind in math and reading, exacerbating pandemic…
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…
Although e-cigarettes have been around for more than a decade, vaping rates have skyrocketed in recent years, especially among teens. E-cigarettes are now the most frequently used tobacco product among adolescents — some 2.1 million middle and high school students were e-cigarette users in 2017 — far surpassing traditional combustible cigarettes. Vaping has gotten much more popular among teenagers in the past few years. Teens often vape because vapes come in fun flavors, have sleek…
It’s an ominous phrase that is top of mind for many school district officials: the “education funding cliff.” This refers to the imminent end of billions of dollars in federal COVID relief money that schools have been relying on during the pandemic. “The feds pushed a lot of money into the K-12 system,” said Lori Taylor, an education finance researcher at Texas A&M University. “Now the districts are being weaned off of that funding —…
Kids around the country are still suffering academically from the pandemic, but more than three years after schools shut down, it’s hard to understand exactly how much ground students have lost and which children now need the most attention. Some new reports offer some insights. All three were produced by for-profit companies that sell assessments to schools. Unlike annual state tests, these interim assessments are administered at least twice a year and help track student…
