Student Success

Education faces no shortage of important challenges in the quest to improve our nation’s schools. Whether it’s the debate over testing, racial issues, learning standards or shrinking funding, 2017 promises to be a year of change—for better or worse. We asked education thought leaders and experts to identify a single issue in K12 education where […]

Nearly half of all superintendents say STEM will receive new or additional attention this year in classrooms, according to a DA survey of K12 leaders. Unlike last year, which showed that more readers would implement new reading and language arts programs (at least in elementary schools), nearly half of all readers say they will focus […]

Students in districts across the nation have been harassed and intimidated based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion and sexual identity in the wake of the presidential election, according to the nonprofit organization Southern Poverty Law Center. Much of the harassment was directed against immigrants. Black, LGBT, Muslim, female and Jewish students also have been targeted. […]

Superintendents in states that passed referendums legalizing marijuana in November are pressing for more clear legal guidance on how to best address issues like drug possession. They also say more research is needed on the possible impacts of marijuana legalization on K12 academic achievement. “I don’t think anyone has any clear answers at this point—there’s […]

As a Title 1 school, LAUSD’s 186th Street School jumped at a chance to expose primarily low-income students to the possibilities of a medical science career. Physicians from Harbor-UCLA Medical Center’s pediatrics department approached the school in 2015 asking if they want to use the center’s science enrichment curriculum for fifth-graders in the gifted and […]

Superintendent Yolanda Valdez takes messaging seriously. Not emoji-filled texts or IMs, but messages that convey a goal for 4,000-plus students at Cutler-Orosi Joint USD in rural California: That they will attend college. Superintendent Yolanda Valdez takes messaging seriously. Not emoji-filled texts or IMs, but messages that convey a goal for 4,000-plus students at Cutler-Orosi Joint […]