Education
OPINION: Three-year degrees may become a viable option in the U.S., but questions about their value remain
Three-year bachelor’s degrees are no longer merely a thought experiment. In my home state of Massachusetts, the board of higher education announced in February that it will accept pilot proposals for these three-year degrees.  Across the country, at least one U.S. institution is now expanding
By The Hechinger Report
A lifeline or ‘dystopian’?: Schools open parking lots for homeless students and families
SAN DIEGO — As an 8-year-old boy steered his bicycle in figure eights, his mother piled three plates with pizza and pineapple slices from an outdoor kitchen shared with more than a dozen other families who call this parking lot home. She carried the plates past her family’s sedan — their last asset
By The Hechinger Report
As school districts cut budgets, DEI work may be first to go
BROOKLINE, Mass. — Claire Galloway-Jones stepped up to lead the Brookline school district’s Office of Educational Equity in July 2023 at a time when families, staff and students were losing trust.  The wealthy, coveted district on Boston’s edge faced allegations of repeatedly failing to addres
By The Hechinger Report
OPINION: Against all odds, a small school in a big city is changing lives by focusing on emotions
Schools routinely administer academic assessments to get a handle on what incoming students know, and how best to help them learn more.  They should do the same for what’s going on inside a student’s heart, taking a lesson from “the toughest prep school in America,” which Benedictine monks hav
By The Hechinger Report
Kids are in a ‘reading recession,’ as test scores continue to decline
This story was produced by the Associated Press, in partnership with Chalkbeat and AL.com, and reprinted with permission.  MODESTO, Calif. – Before every important test, teacher Nancy Barajas dims the lights, turns on a disco ball and blasts music from her playlist. Her sixth graders dance tog
By The Hechinger Report
Putting college on the fast track
Online shopping. Smartphones with 5G. Meal delivery. Instantaneous access to information.  So much of the world has speeded up. But college seems to take forever. Now change may be coming to long-standing practices that slow students down. Some colleges and the accreditors and states that over
By The Hechinger Report
Want to boost early literacy skills? Try singing
Parents and educators intuitively know the many benefits of singing and music for young children. It’s why children learn the alphabet through song, PBS’ Daniel Tiger sings to teach emotional regulation, and lullabies are used to lull babies to sleep.  But there is also a growing body of resea
By The Hechinger Report
OPINION: Putting students on school boards treats young people as participants in their own democracy, but only if adults listen to them
Public school is the first place most Americans meet democracy. It is also, for almost all of them, the last place they experience it without a vote. School boards are elected by adults, staffed by adults and run for adults. They make decisions every week about buildings full of young people who ge
By The Hechinger Report
A new law in Utah allows students to opt out of coursework that conflicts with their beliefs
OGDEN, Utah — The syllabus in 18-year-old Madelynn Wells’ introductory film studies class assigned “Jaws” first, and then the Spanish dark comedy “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.” She said she watched those, and did the written assignments with no problem.  Around the third week of
By The Hechinger Report
As more rural students apply to college, attention turns to helping them succeed there
AMHERST, Mass. — Crowding around a fire pit outside the Amherst College campus center, earnest-looking high school seniors offered fire-building suggestions as intently as if they were taking a final exam. “This is our test of how rural you are, is how good you are at making a fire,” the college’s
By The Hechinger Report
New study measures whether school cell phone bans actually work
A first-of-its-kind national study looks at the impacts of cell phone bans in schools.
By NPR Education
Making a podcast helped one family talk about aging, dementia and death
This year's winner in NPR's College Podcast Challenge is a letter to a grandparent that grapples with health issues including dementia. It's the story of a family learning to talk about hard things.
By NPR Education
Canvas is back online, but questions — and final exam disruptions — linger
Some schools are warning users not to log back into Canvas yet, after a ransomware group claimed credit for a data breach. Half of North America's higher education institutions use the platform.
By NPR Education
Oregon's most unexpected gubernatorial candidate? A pencil with a point
Oregon's public schools rank last in fourth-grade reading, according to an analysis of national testing. As a wake-up call for elected leaders, Pencil is running for governor as a write-in candidate.
By NPR Education
Kids' test scores began declining way before COVID. These schools are making gains
Remember those devastating learning losses that began during the pandemic? Turns out, they began years before COVID-19. Some states are finally turning things around.
By NPR Education
Kids' test scores began declining way before COVID. These schools are making gains
The annual Education Scorecard shows the nation's schools still rebounding from serious losses in math and reading, but it also found those declines began well before the pandemic.
By NPR Education
Native kids with disabilities were held in wooden boxes. Sweeping reforms are coming
State officials in New York say the Salmon River district's special education program confined young children with disabilities in wooden boxes. Parents weren't notified.
By NPR Education
Colleges got more rural students to apply. The challenge is getting them to attend
Some of the nation's most selective institutions are slowly increasing their rural enrollment with the help of millions of dollars from a rural alumnus of the University of Chicago.
By NPR Education
How to recognize student loan scams, and protect yourself
If you have student loan debt, you might receive calls or see targeted social media ads promising to help reduce, or even eliminate, your balance — for a fee.  The problem is, many of these offers are fraudulent, in some cases the companies trick people into paying fees, but don’t put any of t
By The Hechinger Report
Fake student loan debt offers proliferate as federal government rolls back enforcement
A teacher in Wisconsin recently got a call with an intriguing offer: a promise to have 80 percent of her federal student loans forgiven — for a fee. The teacher, Lauren, owes about $60,000 in debt more than a decade after graduation, so she was more than happy to hear the company out.  Lauren
By The Hechinger Report
Confusing financial aid offers can leave families deeper in debt. Student groups say a new fix doesn’t go far enough
It happens every spring: Families receive financial aid offers from colleges, puzzle over them and are still left with the question — how much will this college actually cost me? Instead of stating how much a family must pay out of pocket, some letters use jargon like “total net expenses” or “total
By The Hechinger Report
Screen time in the early grades: a parent and teacher weigh in
There’s a growing backlash to educational technology in the classroom, as I described in my story co-published with The New York Times in March. To dig deeper into the topic, I led a Hechinger Report webinar last week on screen time in the early grades. It featured Jill Anderson, a third-grade teac
By The Hechinger Report
U.S. citizen students face an agonizing choice: Affording college or protecting parents from deportation
It hadn’t occurred to Ryan that going to college could endanger his parents’ safety, until he was halfway through filling out the financial aid form. He sat in his room at his computer, staring at the box he had to click acknowledging that his parents didn’t have social security numbers. It was in
By The Hechinger Report
OPINION: As graduation looms, students need pathways that are practical, affordable and connected to opportunity
For too long, higher education has acted as if learning only counts when it happens inside a classroom. Millions of Americans know otherwise. Opportunity should not require relocation, excessive debt or navigating systems built for someone else’s life. Our nation needs to broaden its definition of
By The Hechinger Report
Should schools get rid of homework? Some educators are saying yes
Some experts worry that less homework could be a problem for math achievement, at a time when test scores nationwide are already at a dismal low.
By NPR Education