Post-pandemic staffing challenges have eased up slightly this fall, but many school leaders report that they still have crucial vacancies to fill. The latest federal data on the public education workforce, released Tuesday, shows 45% of leaders said they were understaffed as the new school year began. That’s down from just over half last year....

Los Angeles Unified school superintendent Alberto Carvalho and a team of officials visited the homes of chronically absent students last month for the district’s fifth iAttend Student Outreach Day, an initiative to promote daily attendance. The program was introduced after LAUSD’s chronic absenteeism rate skyrocketed to 40% for the 2021-22 school year after students returned...

When I was young, I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about what I wanted to be when I grew up. I came to the United States from El Salvador when I was five years old, and while my mom and I liked to dream, we were more focused on meeting our day-to-day needs...

In 2019, Westcliffe Elementary in Greenville, South Carolina, got troubling news: It was one of 265 schools in the state where more than a third of third graders failed to meet literacy standards. Then the pandemic hit and “there were bigger fish to fry,” said Principal Beth Farmer. But the state had a plan. Teachers...

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist’s weekly newsletter here. Jesika Gonzalez will tell you that she wasn’t the biggest fan of Porterville, California, while she was growing up. “When I was younger, I was very, like, angsty,” the 18-year-old said as she flicked her purple hair over her shoulder. “Whatever,...

It’s well established that chronic absenteeism has skyrocketed since the pandemic. But a new analysis of federal data shows the problem may be worse than previously understood. Two out of three students were enrolled in schools with high or extreme rates of chronic absenteeism during the 2021-22 school year — more than double the rate in 2017-18,...

Experts have spent years trying to quantify the pandemic’s toll on a generation of K–12 students. Some have focused on the months of incomplete or nonexistent learning opportunities while instruction was being delivered remotely in 2020 and 2021. Others were most disturbed by the deferred development of social-emotional skills for the youngest students, or the...

The Los Angeles Unified School District’s recent decision to drop its staff vaccine mandate sparked little concern among parents and health officials as COVID-19 enters an endemic phase. “We face vastly different circumstances,” LAUSD superintendent Alberto Carvalho said. “It is a decision based on scientific knowledge and current conditions, nothing more, nothing less.” Carvalho said...

When the Supreme Court delivered its landmark ruling prohibiting the consideration of race in college admissions, Richard Kahlenberg was the rare liberal intellectual who celebrated. A prolific researcher at Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, Kahlenberg didn’t just welcome the end of affirmative action as we knew it — he served as an...

A new GPS system for L.A. Unified parents to track their children’s bus routes on the LAUSD app launched in May to share real-time updates and information about delays — but there have been glitches.   Several parents and bus drivers told LA School Report the feature is often inaccurate, creating confusion in what can already...