MUNCIE, Ind. — Just two weeks after students started returning to Ball State University last month, the surrounding county had become Indiana’s coronavirus epicenter. Out of nearly 600 students tested for the virus, more than half have been positive. Dozens of infections have been blamed on off-campus parties, prompting university...
Behind the ‘Wild West’ of School Reopenings
By Ricardo Cano and Ana B. Ibarra An academic year in which public education will intersect with public health has created back-to-school shopping lists unlike any other for California’s schools as they attempt to transition toward in-person instruction once they have the state’s blessing. Bakersfield’s Panama-Buena Vista Union School District...
More Than 200 Schools Back Lawsuit Over Foreign Student Rule
BOSTON — More than 200 universities are backing a legal challenge to the Trump administration’s new restrictions on international students, arguing that the policy jeopardizes students' safety and forces schools to reconsider fall plans they have spent months preparing. The schools have signed court briefs supporting Harvard University and the Massachusetts...
Want a Real Education, California Students? Go on Strike!
Dear California Kids, Don’t let us adults destroy your futures! This moment gives you unprecedented power to fix what’s wrong with how California treats kids. I am begging you to use it. Before COVID-19, California was shortchanging its 9.1 million children in education and health. Now in crisis, the state’s...
Saturday Classes? Schools Mull Ways to Make up Lost Time
When students return to school after a lengthy pandemic-induced absence, the consensus is they will have lost significant academic ground. Still unresolved for governments and educators are the questions of how — or even whether — teachers should try to make up for lost learning. Some have proposed holding evening...
Here’s a Way to Cut California’s College Costs and Help Students Succeed
The Varsity Blues scandal, in which wealthy parents paid bribes to get their kids into elite universities, laid bare a hard truth about college admissions in California: Opportunity is not equal. Public educators and policymakers should take Varsity Blues as a challenge to level the playing field for students who...
Universities Cancel Study-Abroad Programs Amid Virus Fears
As concerns about China's virus outbreak spread, universities are scrambling to assess the risks to their programs, and some are canceling study-abroad opportunities and prohibiting travel affecting hundreds of thousands of students. From Europe to Australia and the United States, universities in countries that host Chinese students have reconsidered academic-related...
Walters: California’s Stubborn ‘Achievement Gap’
Sooner or later, reality rears its ugly head and that seems to be happening with the state’s very expensive — but apparently failing — efforts to close a yawning “achievement gap” among the state’s nearly 6 million elementary and secondary school students. Early in the decade, as Jerry Brown began his second...
California May Pause Student Fitness Tests Due to Bullying
SACRAMENTO — The governor of California wants to pause physical education tests for students over concerns with bullying and discrimination. During a three-year suspension, the state would study whether the current test for children in fifth, seventh, and ninth grades can be modified or a new assessment should be drawn...
Walters: Community College Report Ignores Reality
The Legislative Analyst’s Office, which advises state lawmakers on budgetary matters, prides itself on taking an independent, nonpartisan and even nonpolitical approach to important policy issues. That well-established tradition continues in a new LAO report on a pilot program that allows a few community college districts to offer four-year degrees in a...