Last week, I received an email from my children’s principal, sharing some of the first details about plans to reopen New York City schools this fall. The message explained that the city’s Department of Education, following federal guidelines, will require each student to have 65 square feet of classroom space. Not everyone will be allowed […]
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LONDON — Conner Ives had big dreams for his master’s degree show at Central Saint Martins, the renowned art and design school in London. The equivalent of a designer’s final exam, the graduate shows each May are not only an academic rite of passage, but also an opportunity to build a profile, make industry contacts […]
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The way states lifted social distancing restrictions imposed to fight the coronavirus sadly demonstrates our priorities. Officials let bars, restaurants and gyms open, despite warnings from public health experts that these environments pose the greatest risk for spreading the disease. Yet political leaders seem to have paid scant attention to safely reopening schools. The consequences […]
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The American Academy of Pediatrics has a reputation as conservative and cautious, which is what you would expect from an organization devoted to protecting children’s health. But this week, the academy made a splash with advice about reopening schools that appears to be somewhat at odds with what administrators are hearing from some federal and […]
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At Food and Finance High School, a New York City public school devoted to culinary arts, the Junior Spring Showcase is a big deal. The students, who split their days between academic classes and hands-on work in the kitchen, prepare for the event all year. They work within a theme, studying a chosen topic and […]
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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that states may not exclude religious schools from programs that provide scholarships to students attending private schools. The decision was the latest in a series of Supreme Court rulings interpreting the Constitution’s protection of the free exercise of religion to bar the government from treating religious groups differently […]
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Scott Stringer, the comptroller of New York City, has sons who are 7 and 8 years old. Over the last three months, like many parents, he’s tried to navigate what schools are optimistically calling “remote learning” while he and his wife both worked from home. It’s been, he told me, “one of the most challenging […]
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Each fall, millions of students head to college campuses. Most stay close to home, but many crisscross the country to study in a different state. Students typically move into crowded housing and reconnect with friends at parties, mixers and bars. When classes start, they customarily file into large lecture halls and small seminar rooms, sitting […]
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UNION, N.J. — At high schools across America, senior night is bittersweet even in the best of times. This year, it became just another milestone, alongside senior proms and graduation ceremonies, erased from the calendar by the coronavirus pandemic. The exceptional few graduating seniors will get to continue their athletic careers in college. The majority […]
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There are so many upsetting things about the assault Lacy Crawford suffered in 1990, when she was 15 and a junior at St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire, but one of the most upsetting is how commonplace she believes it was. “This may sound disingenuous, but I don’t think my assault is particularly interesting,” she […]
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Listen and subscribe to our podcast from your mobile device: Via Apple Podcasts | Via Spotify | Via Stitcher Gregg Breinberg has been directing the chorus at Public School 22 on Staten Island for twenty years. He tells his fourth and fifth grade students that participation is not about whether they can sing on key […]
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As school districts across the country began to reveal reopening plans this week, parents and students were forced to grapple with a difficult reality: It is unlikely that many schools will return to a normal schedule this fall, requiring the grind of online learning, makeshift child care and stunted workdays to continue. Students in Seattle […]
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No spring sports. No long-awaited trips abroad or senior spirit week. Proms delayed indefinitely, and graduations switched to Zoom. Seniors at New York City high schools have spent the past few months watching as the semester they had anticipated for four years evaporated in just a few weeks. Despite what they had lost, newspaper and […]
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“We don’t really need going to school,” Ella Wagar, a 10-year-old from Seattle, told her online peers during a recent Zoom session. “What we really do need are friends. If you don’t have friends, it sucks; you play alone, you eat alone.” The children were exploring the difference between needs and wants in light of […]
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In the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic, countless colleges and universities shifted from to A-F grades to a pass/fail system. As officials at Wellesley College explained, the general aim in doing so is to “support one another without being required to make judgments.” Many K-12 school districts have done the same. From Palo Alto, […]
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When kids on the gaming site Roblox were darkening the skin color of their avatars to support Black Lives Matter, 12-year-old Garvey Mortley decided to speak up. She created a video explaining the offensive history of blackface, and offered viewers more appropriate ways they could show support. “Changing your skin tone to a darker skin […]
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A Crossroad For Us and The World My boyfriend and I often fight about dishes. One night, post-fight, I remembered reading an article with the headline, “Fighting About the Dishes? It Might Be About Something Else.” The mandatory confinement in our small Berlin apartment created a crisis in our relationship. The entire world seemed to […]
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In early June, as outrage over racism and police brutality erupted nationwide, three teenagers from Katy, Texas, grew frustrated by a void of activism in their affluent Houston suburb. They banded together under the name Katy4Justice. Over four days, through text messages and video chats, they organized a protest at a neighborhood park, leading hundreds […]
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My mom drove me to my high school for the last time this morning. I walked through the halls, while I was on the phone with my A.P. government classmates for the last time. I was still saying goodbye to my classmates over the phone when I returned my textbook in the gym. Then I […]
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Stories of racism faced by black students at New York City’s top private schools were once largely limited to whisper networks among alumni. But over the last few weeks, many of the often harrowing testimonies have been made public by graduates of Chapin, Brearley and Spence, among others, all some of the nation’s most prestigious […]
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Last week, Deanna Robertson and her two sons stood on their front lawn in western Virginia scanning the sky for a drone they could hear humming from almost a mile away. When it finally arrived, hovering above their heads, the boys rushed forward to take what it offered: a copy of “All Quiet on the […]
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On the evening of the first Friday this month, in a tiny town in a rural Kansas county where you could have tallied the coronavirus cases on two hands and had fingers left over, Leslie Coats headed to the high school where she has taught drama for more than 40 years. School has been out […]
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WASHINGTON — Charter schools, including some with healthy cash balances and billionaire backers like Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates, have quietly accepted millions of dollars in emergency coronavirus relief from a fund created to help struggling small businesses stay afloat. Since their inception, charter schools have straddled the line between public schools and private entities. […]
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PHOENIX — Angel Palazuelos donned a maroon cap and gown one recent afternoon, one of two colors of his alma mater, Metro Tech High School, where almost every student is an immigrant or comes from a family of immigrants. The school is part of the Phoenix Union High School District, one of the largest in […]
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Over four days in mid-March, Cindy Hansen, an 11th grade English teacher at Timpanogos High School in Orem, Utah, had to go fully virtual, and took her class of some 30 students reading “The Great Gatsby” online. Ms. Hansen had no experience with virtual courses and, like teachers around the country, had to experiment. She […]
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Daavion Lee sported a Kelly green cap and gown, and his cousin Daniyah Bennett wore the black regalia from her middle school. They stood in the back of a pickup truck with an organizer of a march against police brutality and racism. “These two have graduated, and they are the future of our community,” the […]
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Listen and subscribe to our podcast from your mobile device:Via Apple Podcasts | Via Spotify | Via Stitcher Ronda McIntyre’s classroom is built around a big rug, where her students often crowd together for group instruction. But since March, when schools across the country shut down because of the coronavirus, she has had to try […]
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The national reckoning over police violence has spread to schools, with several districts choosing in recent days to sever their relationships with local police departments out of concern that the officers patrolling their hallways represent more of a threat than a form of protection. School districts in Minneapolis, Seattle and Portland, Ore., have all promised […]
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Around the world, students are learning from home. For Chegg, the online learning company, that has meant unprecedented demand for its services. Chegg got its start as a textbook rental company, but has expanded to offer services like online tutoring. And while some teachers believe it facilitates cheating, students love it. Dan Rosensweig, Chegg’s chief […]
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When New York City became the national epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, its once-sacrosanct practice of sorting thousands of children into selective public schools suddenly collapsed: The metrics that dictate admissions evaporated as schools shuttered. Then, the city erupted in protest over the killing of George Floyd, and the fact that the proudly progressive city […]
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E.L. Doctorow was born and grew up in the Bronx, where in the 1940s, he attended the Bronx High School of Science, a top public school founded in 1938 whose entrance requirements were stringent even then. He did not become a scientist, but as the author of “The Book of Daniel,” “Ragtime,” “World’s Fair,” “Billy […]
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