From the outside, the headquarters of Alcove Learning looks like any small home in the largely Latino Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles. Flanked by similar houses and located among varied storefronts and restaurants, this self-directed learning center for teens and tweens offers young people the freedom to direct their own education. It is part...

It’s back-to-school time across America, but millions of families have stepped away from a traditional classroom. Instead, they have chosen to stick with homeschooling, an option that grew in popularity during COVID school closures and has remained above pre-pandemic levels ever since. “COVID put things under a microscope,” said Amber Okolo-Ebube, a Texas homeschooling mother....

Debates about education policy and the workplace are typically carried out by people far removed from high school classrooms. There’s good reason for that, since age and experience often bring clearer insights not visible to the young. But education today is in a time of disruption and transition. In many respects, it’s not meeting the...

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. The big idea When the main character of a kids TV show can both listen and respond to viewers by using advances in artificial intelligence, youngsters learn more from the program. That’s what my colleagues and I found in a series of peer-reviewed studies. We are...

For several years there have been lots of available jobs in school districts. Employees could take a year off and, with all the openings, take comfort in the knowledge that districts would always be hiring if and when they wanted to come back. But those days are over. Thinking of quitting in the next few...

Over the last decade, educators and administrators have often encountered lofty promises of technology revolutionizing learning, only to experience disappointment when reality failed to meet expectations. It’s understandable, then, that educators might view the current excitement around artificial intelligence with a measure of caution: Is this another overhyped fad, or are we on the cusp...

Most of the programs school districts have implemented to address COVID learning loss are doomed to fail. Despite well-intended and rapid responses, solutions such as tutoring or summer school will miss their goals. Existing policies have failed to consider the unique needs of the students these services seek to help, and thus are destined to...

Los Angeles teachers have much to cheer about. Less than a month after the district’s school support workers received a contract with 30% salary increases, United Teachers Los Angeles came away with a mammoth deal of its own. On April 13, the district made what it called a “historic offer” of 19% in pay hikes...

When President Ronald Reagan proclaimed the first National Math Awareness Week in April 1986, one of the problems he cited was that too few students were devoted to the study of math. “Despite the increasing importance of mathematics to the progress of our economy and society, enrollment in mathematics programs has been declining at all levels of...

April 3 and 4 marked the last two of four “acceleration days” for students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The optional extra tutoring was designed to help make up for instruction lost during COVID school closures. Of course, things didn’t work out as planned. United Teachers Los Angeles voted to boycott the extra...