Tommy Orange sat at the front of a classroom in the Bronx, listening as a group of high school students discussed his novel “There There.” A boy wearing blue glasses raised his hand. “All the characters have some form of disconnection, even trauma,” Michael Almanzar, 19, said. “That’s the world we live in. That’s all […]
Read MoreTag: Education (K-12)
What the Data Says About Pandemic School Closures, Four Years Later
Four years ago this month, schools nationwide began to shut down, igniting one of the most polarizing and partisan debates of the pandemic. Some schools, often in Republican-led states and rural areas, reopened by fall 2020. Others, typically in large cities and states led by Democrats, would not fully reopen for another year. A variety […]
Read MoreA NYC School Space Fight Spurred by Student Losses and Migrant Arrivals
A bitter clash over space has emerged in recent weeks at a beloved New York City school building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side that two programs have shared for the past decade. It is a battle that reflects events that have caused two of the biggest demographic shifts in New York City’s recent history: the […]
Read MoreJames Crumbley Found Guilty in Michigan School Shooting Trial
A jury found James Crumbley guilty of involuntary manslaughter late Thursday after about 11 hours of deliberation, holding him partially responsible for failing to prevent his son from carrying out Michigan’s deadliest school shooting. Mr. Crumbley’s wife, Jennifer Crumbley, was convicted of identical charges last month in the same Pontiac, Mich., courtroom, after a jury […]
Read MoreJonathan Kozol Is Still Fighting for Equal Schools With His Last Book
There are certain motifs in Jonathan Kozol’s half-century of writing about America’s failure to adequately educate poor Black and Hispanic children, which began with “Death at an Early Age,” a blistering account of his year teaching in the Boston Public Schools. Decrepit school buildings with rancid bathrooms and leaking ceilings. Students stultified by scripted curriculums […]
Read MoreJames Crumbley Declines to Testify in Oxford High School Shooting Trial
Testimony ended Wednesday morning in the trial of James Crumbley, whose son carried out Michigan’s deadliest school shooting more than two years ago, and whose wife was convicted last month in the same courtroom for failing to prevent the rampage. Prosecutors took the rare step of seeking to hold the Crumbleys partially responsible for the […]
Read MoreWhy Children Are Selling Candy in the Subway During School Hours
On a subway platform in the Bronx recently, a girl in a puffer coat strolled past passengers with a basket of M&M’s, Kit Kats and Trident gum slung across her shoulder. She looked to be 7 or 8. One rider captured her on a video posted on X, calling out, “No parent, no parent, where […]
Read MoreOn the Supreme Court, Disagreeing Without Being Disagreeable
A week after Justice Amy Coney Barrett chastised Justice Sonia Sotomayor for choosing “to amplify disagreement with stridency” in a Supreme Court decision on former President Donald J. Trump’s eligibility to hold office, the two women appeared together on Tuesday to discuss civics and civility. They gave, for the most part, a familiar account of […]
Read MoreLegal Settlement Clarifies Reach of Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ Law
The State of Florida and plaintiffs who challenged a parental rights law that critics nicknamed “Don’t Say Gay” agreed to a settlement on Monday that clarifies the reach of the legislation, which prohibits instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through eighth grade. The plaintiffs, a group that included students, parents, educators and […]
Read MoreThe SAT Is Now Fully Digital for the Remote-Learning Generation
With adolescent anxiety surging and attention spans challenged, high school students will take a revamped version of the SAT on Saturday, which has been designed in part to reduce stress, according to the College Board, which administers the test. The exam will be briefer — two hours and 14 minutes instead of three hours — […]
Read MoreThe Disappearance of Mayor Adams
Halfway through Eric Adams’s term as mayor of New York, many of the headlines he generates aren’t about the city; they’re about his personal problems. The F.B.I. raided the home of his chief campaign fund-raiser. Agents seized his cellphones and iPad. Government officials are looking into whether he received illegal campaign donations from foreigners. These […]
Read MoreEight Teens Are Shot at Philadelphia Bus Stop, Police Say
Eight Philadelphia high school students were shot and wounded as they waited for a public bus after school on Wednesday, the latest in a spate of shootings that have touched off outrage in the city, the police said. The students, who attend Northeast High School, were shot at about 3 p.m. as they waited at […]
Read MoreThe School Issues We’re Battling Over Aren’t the Ones That Matter
A Florida school district, facing pressure about “nudity” in schools, removed from shelves a picture book that showed an illustration of a goblin’s bare bottom. Some students were saved from debauchery when school officials colored in a pair of pants on the goblin. That’s a particularly nutty example, from the newsletter “Popular Information” (the school […]
Read MoreIn Video, Nonbinary Student Describes Fight in Oklahoma School Bathroom
An altercation at an Oklahoma public school involving a 16-year-old nonbinary student who died the next day began after the student “poured water” on girls who had been making fun of the teenager, according to a body camera video interview released by the Owasso Police Department late Friday. The video of the 16-year-old student, Nex […]
Read MoreTeachers Are Missing More School, and There Are Too Few Substitutes
Schools across the country have faced no shortage of challenges since the pandemic. Students are behind academically. Cases of misbehavior are up. Students are absent far more frequently than before. But there is another problem that has left some school districts scrambling. Teachers are also missing more school. Teachers typically receive paid sick days and […]
Read MoreUtah School Board Member Is Censured After Questioning Student’s Gender
A Utah State Board of Education member was stripped of her committee assignments and asked to resign this week after she questioned the gender of a high school basketball player in a Facebook post. Natalie Cline, the board member, posted a flyer for a high school basketball team in Salt Lake County on Feb. 6 […]
Read MoreCalifornia’s Push for Ethnic Studies Runs Into the Israel-Hamas War
California has grand ambitions for ethnic studies. By 2025, the state’s public high schools — about 1,600 of them — must teach the subject. By 2030, students won’t be able to graduate high school without it. For policymakers, a goal is to give California students, 80 percent of whom are nonwhite, the opportunity to study […]
Read MoreNYC Revived Remote Schooling for a Day. It Was a Mess.
New York City public schools on Tuesday embarked on their first major experiment with remote learning since the coronavirus pandemic. More than 900,000 students were asked to join virtual classes during the winter storm. It didn’t go well. Many teachers, parents and students trying to log on found that they were locked out of their […]
Read MoreNYC Public Schools Will Hold Remote Classes for Snow
New York City public schools will hold classes remotely on Tuesday, Mayor Eric Adams announced on social media, as the metro area prepares for what could be its largest snowfall in more than two years. A winter storm is likely to blanket parts of the Northeast from late Monday into Tuesday, with up to two […]
Read MorePro Sports in Las Vegas Aren’t Cheered by Everyone
The history of Las Vegas has been marked by a relentless churn of hotels, casinos, theaters and restaurants. But only recently has the city’s landscape included major professional sports teams. The Golden Knights of the National Hockey League were the first to start play here in 2017. The Aces of the Women’s National Basketball Association […]
Read MoreMany Southern California Schools Will Remain Open Despite Floods
Most school districts in Southern California, including Los Angeles Unified, the second-largest in the country, were planning to keep most classrooms open on Monday, officials said, even as the state battled heavy rain, flooding and mudslides. Many students depend on schools for basic nutrition, the Los Angeles superintendent, Alberto Carvalho, said at a news conference […]
Read MoreCalifornia Aims $2 Billion to Help Students Catch Up From the Pandemic
In the fall of 2020, around the height of the debate over pandemic school closures, a lawsuit in California made a serious claim: The state had failed its constitutional obligation to provide an equal education to lower-income, Black and Hispanic students, who had less access to online learning. Now, in a settlement announced on Thursday, […]
Read MoreThe Young Black Conservative Who Grew Up With, and Rejects, D.E.I.
For many progressives, it was a big moment. In 2019, Congress was holding its first hearing on whether the United States should pay reparations for slavery. To support the idea, Democrats had invited the influential author Ta-Nehisi Coates, who had revived the reparations issue in an article in The Atlantic, and the actor and activist […]
Read MoreNew York Will Debate Mayoral Control of the NYC Schools This June
For two decades, New York City has been something of an anomaly: Unlike the school boards that reign over thousands of towns and cities, the nation’s largest public school system is ruled by the mayor. But this year, the city’s method of running its schools is facing a unique and significant challenge that threatens to […]
Read MoreAn Autistic School Board Member Sued for Discrimination. She Won $10.
When Sarah Hernandez joined the Enfield, Conn., Board of Education in 2017, she had a goal: making sure schools met the needs of students with disabilities. Among the first openly autistic candidates to be elected to public office in the country, she saw her win as a sign that her small town was open to […]
Read MoreHate Crimes Reported in Schools Nearly Doubled Between 2018 and 2022
The number of reported hate crimes in schools and colleges nearly doubled between 2018 and 2022, according to data released Monday by the F.B.I. About 1,300 hate crimes were reported in elementary schools, secondary schools and colleges in 2022, up from 700 in 2018 — an increase of about 90 percent, according to the report, […]
Read MoreToday’s Teenagers: Anxious About Their Futures and Disillusioned by Politicians
Although it has never been easy to be a teenager, the current generation of young Americans feels particularly apprehensive, new polling shows — anxious about their lives, disillusioned about the direction of the country and pessimistic about their futures. Just one-third of respondents ages 12 to 17 said things were going well for children and […]
Read MoreJury to Decide if Mother of Michigan School Shooter Is Guilty, Too
Frequently left home alone, Ethan Crumbley texted his mother in March 2021 that he had seen a demon in their house, one that hurled dishes across the kitchen. Days later, his parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, discussed how their teenage son was “worked up and agitated,” weighing whether to give him Xanax. The next November, […]
Read MoreNew York City Schools Will Teach About Antisemitism and Islamophobia
New York City will offer new curriculum materials on antisemitism and Islamophobia in its public schools and train principals and teachers on how to have difficult conversations about politically charged issues, officials said on Monday in response to criticism that the system has done too little to address the Israel-Hamas war. In higher education, colleges […]
Read MoreClimate Change Education May Soon Be Incorporated Into More NYC Classrooms
Third graders at Public School 103 in the north Bronx sat on a rug last month while their teacher, Kristy Neumeister, led a book discussion. The book, “Rain School,” is about children who live in a rural region of Chad, a country in central Africa. Every year, their school must be rebuilt because storms wash […]
Read MoreA Map Without Israel Plunges a Grade School Into a Political Firestorm
A cherished tradition at Public School 261 in Boerum Hill, the heart of gentrified Brooklyn, is the annual march to Borough Hall in honor of Martin Luther King’s Birthday. Children prepare for weeks, making signs denouncing racism, homophobia, climate upheaval and other expressions of social and ecological pox. So the disappointment was pervasive this year, […]
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