Many migrants, especially unaccompanied youth, face uncertain paths in detention and after their release in local communities. Schools are often the first and sometimes the only places they can turn for resources. Research shows that everyday educators have been left to deal with the aftermath of recent political charades, as well as a broken immigrant system, racialized immigration surveillance, deplorable detention facility conditions, and lack of access to educational and social resources for young people.…
Schools nationwide are cutting bus service to account for a widespread bus driver shortage—and students are paying the price by missing school more often. Those are the main takeaways from a report published this month from HopSkipDrive, a private school transportation provider. The report includes results from a nationally representative survey of school and district leaders, transportation directors, counselors, and other employees. More than two-thirds of survey respondents said they see a link between driver…
New research from Boston University’s Wheelock Education Policy Center finds that teacher diversity increased in Massachusetts during the COVID-19 pandemic. The racial and ethnic diversity of teachers hired for the 2020-2021 Massachusetts school year increased. This was particularly true in schools serving the state’s highest concentrations of Black and Latinx students, where roughly 41% of newly hired teachers were people of color. These increases combined with lower turnover among Black and Latinx teachers resulted in…
A national group that seeks to curb chronic absenteeism is sounding an alarm after finding that the number of chronically absent students continued to surge even as pandemic closings abated. The organization, Attendance Works, believes that the number of students missing at least 18 days of school a year doubled to 16 million in 2021-22 from 8 million students before the pandemic. If correct, this means that one out of every three public school children…
Voting is one of the primary ways we participate in our democracy, but it can be hard to know how to talk to kids about voting, especially during a contentious election season. Election Day is a great opportunity to help your kids understand how our country works—and to talk about the values you believe in (no matter who you’re casting your ballot for). Wondering how to get started? Try these seven tips for kicking off…
Children might start going to school in darkness next year in exchange for more sun later in the day, while their parents commute home from work with the benefit of light. Those would be among the impacts of ditching standard time and adopting year-round daylight saving time, a change in legislation the Senate recently passed with virtually no opposition. If the Sunshine Protection Act, as written, were to gain House approval and President Joe Biden’s…
Incoming charter schools will have to gather community input and prove they aren’t managed by a for-profit company to receive federal funding under the Biden administration’s finalized Charter School Program rules. The U.S. Department of Education’s final notice on the new regulations published July 1 is the latest development in the controversy surrounding charter school rules. Since the proposed charter school rules were published for public comment in March, charter school advocates—including a group of…
When teacher Brandon Graves in Louisville, Kentucky, talks with his elementary school students about the attacks of September 11th, 2001, he tells them where he was that day — in Washington, D.C., a freshman at Howard University, where he could smell smoke from the Pentagon. Teaching K-12 students about the attacks on September 11th has always been difficult, but time has brought a new challenge: students today have no memories of that day. So how…
Many Americans’ first thought after seeing school shootings in the news was likely “not again.” For parents, teachers, and school administrators, other thoughts probably followed: How will I explain this to the young people in my life? How can my school respond and help students process this tragedy? Could it happen here? The attack at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, was the deadliest school shooting since a gunman killed 26 people at Sandy Hook…
Parents of children under 5 could be able to get their youngest family members vaccinated as soon as next week after the Food and Drug Administration authorized the vaccines by Modern and Pfizer on Friday. COVID vaccines for kids under 5 are slowly rolling out around the US as of June 21, 2022. Children under 5 are the last age group to become eligible for COVID vaccines. While only 3% of U.S. COVID cases were…
