current issues in k 12 education today

U.S. Government Accountability Office

Back to School for K-12 students: Issues Ahead

As students and teachers head back to the classroom this fall, they are likely to face a number of challenges that could impact the 2022-23 school year and learning outcomes.

We’ve reported on these mounting challenges during the last couple years. Today’s WatchBlog post looks at our work on the issues students, educators, and schools are facing including pandemic learning loss, absenteeism, achievement at virtual charter schools, school redistricting, and bullying.

Learning loss and absent students

Some students may be returning to school behind on their education.

For a series of 2022 reports, we surveyed teachers about students’ potential learning loss during the pandemic. They told us that many students struggled to learn during the pandemic because of its disruption.

We found that, in the 2020-21 school year, across all grades and regardless of in-person, remote, or hybrid learning models, nearly two-thirds of teachers (64%) had more students who made less academic progress than in a typical school year. And 45% of teachers reported that at least half of their students ended the year a grade level behind.

While this learning loss was widespread, some students were disproportionately impacted, including students from high poverty households, students learning English, and our youngest K-12 students. As a result, long term, the pandemic may have contributed to growing disparities between student populations.

In addition, some students may not return to school this year at all. We recently found that, during the 2020-21 school year, more than a million teachers reported having students who never showed up for class despite being registered for school.

Students who did not show up came mostly from majority non-White and urban schools and faced obstacles to learning, such as no adult assistance at home. We also found that older students may have missed school because they were caring for family members or working themselves.  

Lower student achievement in virtual charter schools

While many families were first introduced to virtual schooling during the pandemic, virtual and hybrid programs are not new.  We recently explored challenges for students in virtual charter schools—the largest sector of virtual schools and the fastest growing type of public school in the U.S. For example, students attending virtual charter schools generally showed significantly lower rates of academic proficiency compared to the rest of their public school peers.

Virtual charter schools also reported lower student participation on federally-required state testing—a key measure of academic achievement. Our podcast with K-12 education expert Jackie Nowicki explores our work on virtual charter schools.

Racial/ethnic composition of schools and bullying contribute to equity issues

In a July report , we found that while the U.S. student population has become significantly more diverse, many schools remain divided along racial, ethnic, and economic lines.

Our recent analysis of 10 years of the Department of Education’s data on student race and ethnicity also shows that when schools broke away from their school districts, it generally resulted in Whiter and wealthier districts.

Specifically, new districts had half the share of students receiving free or reduced price lunches compared to the remaining districts. They also had far larger shares of White students, and far smaller shares of Hispanic and Black students than the remaining districts.  

Racial/Ethnic Composition of New and Remaining Districts One Year after District Secession

Wealth and racial composition of schools matter.

It is widely known that a history of discriminatory practices has contributed to inequities in education, which are intertwined with disparities in wealth, income, and housing. We have previously reported that students who are poor, Black, or Hispanic generally attend schools with fewer resources and lower academic outcomes (about 80% of students attending low-income schools are Black or Hispanic).

Racial and ethnic minority students may face other obstacles in school beyond resources and quality of education. Each year, millions of K-12 students experience hostile behaviors like bullying, hate speech, hate crimes, or assault.

In a report published last November, we found that, during the 2018-19 school year, about 1.3 million students (ages 12 to 18) were bullied for their race, religion, national origin, disability, gender, or sexual orientation.

The Department of Education has resolved complaints about these hostile behaviors more quickly than in the past, largely because it dismissed more complaints than in previous years, and because the number of complaints filed declined overall. Some civil rights experts said they had become reluctant to file complaints because they lost confidence in the department’s ability to address these violations in schools. 

To learn more about our findings on bullying, hate crimes, and violence in K-12 schools, check out our podcast:  

While students will face significant obstacles this fall, their teachers are confronting burnout and concerns about teacher shortages abound. Our recent discussions with current and former teachers, as well as hiring officials and others involved in all levels of teacher recruitment and retention, will help shed light on the situation and ways to address it.

Keep an eye out for these findings and a report on discipline related to school dress code violations this fall.

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Related products, k-12 education: students' experiences with bullying, hate speech, hate crimes, and victimization in schools, product number, k-12 education: student population has significantly diversified, but many schools remain divided along racial, ethnic, and economic lines, k-12 education: an estimated 1.1 million teachers nationwide had at least one student who never showed up for class in the 2020-21 school year [reissued with revisions on apr. 19, 2022].

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Distracted students and stressed teachers: What an American school day looks like post-COVID

Pandemic in rearview, schools are full of challenges – and joy. step inside these classrooms to see their reality..

After a day full of math and reading lessons, third grader Ashley Soto struggles to concentrate during a writing exercise. She’s supposed to be crafting an essay on whether schools should serve chocolate milk, but instead she wanders around the classroom. “My brain is about to explode!” she exclaims. 

Across the country, fourth grade teacher Rodney LaFleur looks for a student to answer a math question. He reaches into a jar filled with popsicle sticks, each inked with the name of one of his students. The first student’s name he draws is absent. So is the second. And the third.

Principal Jasibi Crews goes through her email: She has seven absent employees and too few substitutes to fill in. She texts a plea to a group chat – are any coaches or support staff available to fill in? Dozens of children could be without teachers today if she doesn’t come up with a plan. 

These recent moments from public schools thousands of miles apart reveal a troubling fact confronting educators, parents and students: More than three years after the COVID outbreak began, some children are thriving but many others remain severely behind . This reality means recovering from COVID could be more costly, time-consuming and difficult than they anticipated, leaving a generation of young people struggling to catch up.

This isn’t what lawmakers and education leaders had envisioned. Many were hopeful the 2022-23 school year would be the one when things would return to normal – or, at least, closer to what they were like pre-pandemic. Schools were brimming with money to test new ways to accelerate learning and hire more staff. The new hires and the educators who stuck things out were determined to help kids make progress. There was no longer a health emergency.

USA TODAY education reporters spent six months observing elementary-school students, teachers and principals at four public schools in California and Virginia and asked them to keep journals to better understand the post-COVID education crisis and recovery. Districts in California and Virginia stayed remote for longer than those in many other states. Virginia also had some of the sharpest declines in test scores in the country. 

What the reporters observed and data confirms: Kids are missing more class time than before the pandemic because parents’ attitudes about school have changed. Educators encountered students who are severely behind in reading and math yet can hardly sit still after three years of shape-shifting school days. School administrators discovered that a deluge of cash doesn’t go very far in filling jobs too few people are willing to do. Staff shortages and experiments with new curriculum – sometimes intended to cram several years of lessons into one – collided with the everyday problems of many public schools: children and families without enough food or a consistent, safe home life. 

To tell this story, USA TODAY reporters cataloged moments they witnessed while visiting schools at different hours and days. What follows is a reconstructed timeline based on reporting that began last fall and an approximation of the challenges schools and students face on any given day. 

Teachers find new ways to cope with stress 

After rotating through sets of ab saws, leg lifts and battle ropes, a sweaty but grinning Daisy Andonyadis leaves her 6 a.m. high-intensity interval training class early so she can make it to school on time. Equipped with a piece of her mom's homemade Easter bread, Andonyadis – or Ms. A, as students and colleagues call her – is ready to start the school day. 

Ms. A, 32, started doing the class more regularly this school year to deal with the stress of teaching. She almost quit when she first started at Cora Kelly School for Math, Science and Technology in Alexandria, Virginia, six years ago, overwhelmed by the pressure to do everything perfectly. “Just being able to breathe – the exercise really helps with that,” she says. 

Educators’ mental health has significantly worsened since the onset of the pandemic: Nearly 3 in 4 teachers in a survey last year reported frequent job-related stress, compared with a third of working adults overall. More than a quarter of teachers and principals said they were experiencing symptoms of depression.

Later, now showered and nibbling on her bread, Ms. A kicks off the school day as she always does: with a lesson on social and emotional skills. Kids move magnets with their names on them to emoji-like faces representing different emotions. Each classroom at Cora Kelly has one of these posters, and teachers and kids alike reposition their eponymous magnets throughout the day as their moods change. Today, lots of kids put their magnets on “tired.” 

There aren’t enough substitute teachers

Principal Jamie Allardice has many items on his day’s to-do list: preparing for state testing, planning for next school year and attending to the varying needs of school staff.

It will all have to wait.

Like Principal Crews, Allardice has trouble finding substitutes at times. So he’ll be filling in for a kindergarten teacher at Nystrom Elementary School in Richmond, California.

Most of the country’s public schools reported last year that more teachers were absent than before the pandemic, and they couldn’t always find substitutes when needed. The substitute teacher shortage predates COVID – and it’s getting worse, particularly at low-income schools . 

Allardice anticipates spending the day teaching the school’s youngest kids how to read sentences like “Is the ant on the fan?” and “Is the fat ant in the tin can?”

Everyday reminders of the pandemic’s effects 

Circles under her eyes, fourth grade teacher Wendy Gonzalez speedwalks into E.M. Downer Elementary in San Pablo, California, ahead of the first bell. The hallways are lined with student work. “My goal for this year is to actully learn,” one sheet reads, with the misspelling, “because I didn’t learn last year.” 

Another wall displays photographs Downer sixth graders took during the pandemic as an ever-present reminder of the damage inflicted by the pivot to remote learning. Above pictures of an empty tetherball court, a dog sitting on a stoop and a frog in darkness looking up to light, one student wrote, “We had to go to school at home for about 13 months.”

Ms. G, 45, who has taught for 19 years in the West Contra Costa Unified School District, including three at Downer, is in a hurry to see what condition her class is in after a substitute filled in the two days she was absent last week. She had a ministroke in March, which she blames in part on stress from teaching this year. 

In her classroom, her copy of a new Spanish textbook, "Caminos al Conocimiento Esencial,” is on her desk next to a set of Black history flashcards, a San Francisco Giants bobblehead and a can of Sunkist. On top of all the other academic targets her students must meet this year, the principal and literacy coach want her to test new lessons for teaching kids how to read and write in Spanish. 

“If I didn’t love my community I would be gone,” says Ms. G says after taking a seat. Notes of thanks and praise are tacked onto a bulletin board next to her. 

If I didn’t love my community I would be gone .

Principals have to be ‘there for everyone’

As part of her morning rounds, Principal Crews, 45, stops by a fourth grade classroom in the middle of a lesson on future careers. 

She notices a boy’s face is swollen and pulls him to the side. She feels his forehead, asks him if he’s feeling OK, if he was playing out near the poison ivy. He says he was playing there and it feels like a mosquito bit his face. She escorts him to the school nurse. 

Crews worked for more than 15 years in Virginia and California schools before becoming principal of Cora Kelly six years ago. She knows every student by name, greeting each one as they arrive at school. She’s also keenly attuned to each child’s individual needs on any given day – whether it’s for clothes or a first-aid kit.

Cora Kelly uses a framework known as a multitiered system of support, which is a fancy way of saying it works to address the core issues, in and out of the classroom, that may be affecting a child’s behavior or academic performance. That can mean home visits if a student misses a lot of school or help from a social worker if a child needs shoes or a screening. 

It’s emotionally grueling but gratifying work, Crews says, as is the job of supporting her own staff’s mental health.

“The hardest part of being an administrator has been coming back and making sure (the teachers) were OK so they could be there for the kids,” Crews says. “I wasn’t prepared for the tremendous emotional strain that that’s had on me. I had to be there for everyone, to make sure to take care of them so they could take care of the kids.”’

Rewarding good behavior

Ding. The students in Ms. A’s class are familiar with this chime. It means their teacher has given one of them a point using an app called Class Dojo that tracks their behavior. It has other functions, too, such as managing homework and communicating with parents.

Throughout the day, soft chimes signify when Ms. A has given a student a point. She rewards all kinds of things – being quiet, sitting nicely, getting an answer right, helping a classmate, simply attending. At other times, a different noise erupts when she’s deducting points. Maybe a kid wasn’t listening or following instructions. Maybe two students got into a tiff. 

Kids with lots of Dojo points can exchange them for prizes such as a gift card to Chick-fil-a. These incentive systems, Ms. A says, help reinforce the behaviors and habits – from respecting others’ physical space to coming to class on a consistent basis – that many students failed to learn because of remote schooling.

Kids’ attention spans have shrunk

Ashley and her classmates at Cora Kelly are in math class with the other third grade teacher. An assistant is out, the teacher announces, so the kids have to work independently while she consults with small groups. 

Today’s lesson is on imperial measuring units for liquids – gallons, quarts, pints, cups – and the teacher says she has a story that will help them memorize valuable information for their upcoming state math tests. The story is called The Kingdom of Gallon, she explains: The kingdom has four queens – in other words, four quarts. Each queen has a prince and a princess – two pints. Each prince or princess has two cats – two cups. 

Kids proceed to cut and paste pictures of different items – a gallon of paint, a carton of milk – onto papers with labels for the unit. Many, including Ashley, are distracted. She spins her notebook around a pencil. One of her knees bobbles from left to right. She gets up to tap a pencil on the table, to the projector to wave her hand under the camera. She yawns and plays with her shoe. 

Teachers and parents nationwide report kids’ attention spans are even shorter since the pandemic, perhaps in part because it led to unprecedented amounts of screen time among children . Educators strive to make lessons engaging but kids can’t always concentrate, especially when there’s only one adult in the classroom.  

Ashley pastes an image of a large water bottle under the wrong label – gallon when it should be quart. She quickly realizes it’s a mistake and tries to unstick the image. Ashley, who in her spare time loves drawing and making jewelry and collecting rocks, is careful to reposition the square so it doesn’t cover the face of a girl displayed on the worksheet. 

No multiplication charts allowed

Mr. LaFleur tells the class they'll review skills for a state math exam that will cover multiplying, long division and fractions. Jada Wilson groans when he says they can’t use multiplication charts on the test.

Jada, 10, has improved on fractions and expanded division this year but worries how she’ll do without the aid. She began fourth grade with the skills of a kid halfway through second grade, LaFleur said, but has made up most of that ground. 

Jada’s progress is an exception: Other students’ scores moved backward mid-year. 

“I really questioned myself and my teaching. It can’t get any worse than that feeling. But it helps to look at students like Jada who’ve grown each time,” LaFleur says. 

I really questioned myself and my teaching. It can’t get any worse than that feeling. But it helps to look at students like Jada who’ve grown each time.

Missing class instead of making up for lost time

As Mr. LaFleur’s class begins a reading lesson at Nystrom, several seats are empty. One of them belongs to Jayceon Davis. 

Jayceon’s mom, Georgina Medrano, works nights and occasionally gets home at 2 a.m. Sometimes she dozes off after waking her kids, and they don’t make it to school on time. Jayceon said he is sometimes confused doing his homework because he misses the lessons and hasn’t turned much of it in. 

For kids who are already behind this school year, every minute of learning this year was critical, but far more for students who missed more school days than before the pandemic. Chronic absenteeism – generally when kids miss more than 10% of the school year – increased in more than 70% of schools nationwide last school year, federal data shows.

Jayceon began the year with low test scores in reading and math, unbeknownst to Medrano, who says she’s frustrated no one told her about it at the beginning of the school year. “He reads to me at home, so I don’t understand how he’s behind,” she says.

Medrano says she also knew nothing about Jayceon’s missing assignments until March, when she got a text from LaFleur, who says he tried several times early in the school year to call Jayceon’s mom about the homework with no success. Then he gave up, hoping she would see notes sent through the school’s online messaging system. She, like many parents this year, didn’t have a real sense of how their kids were doing in school.

Reading, writing and riding

Ashley, like many kids in her class, has never ridden a bike without training wheels. Today in P.E. class, she and the other novices learn on a special bike designed without pedals. The purpose: to learn how to balance.

It takes a while, but before the end of class Ashley, her long curls streaming behind her, manages to glide for 10 seconds without touching her feet to the ground. She graduates to the stationary bike.  

She’s thrilled.

It may have nothing to do with phonics or probability or photosynthesis, but this learning matters, too. It’s the kind of lesson that was impossible to replicate during the pandemic, and one that students seem to enjoy most. 

Turkeys and monkeys

It’s just before recess and lunch in Ms. A’s class. She issues constant reminders to pay attention and be quiet. Yet some students lie on the ground, chit-chatting. Others make animal noises, gobbling like a turkey and grunting like a monkey. 

Ms. A moves her magnet on the classroom’s mood chart to “annoyed.”

Eventually she says to the group: “ I think we need to refresh. Everyone’s a little tired. And it’s Fri-Yay! But we are here to learn.” 

One boy sneaks out to get a pack of Gushers candy from his backpack hanging near the classroom door. With a smirk, Ms. A orders him to hand the gummies over, saying she doesn’t want him to get a sugar high. 

It’s the kind of thing she’s now able to brush off, a skill she didn’t have as a new teacher. She ignores children who are bickering, keeping her voice gentle and smooth as she delivers instructions. 

Despite all the distractions, she successfully engages most of the children in a game that quizzes them on their reading skills. 

Phonics time

Gathered at a half-moon-shaped table in the back of Lisa Cay's third grade classroom at Sleepy Hollow Elementary in Falls Church, Virginia, four students sound out rhyming words – search and perch, dead and lead – as they review phonics skills ahead of the state's reading tests. It's one of countless intensive phonics sessions these and other elementary schoolers have had this school year amid a renewed push for a more scientific approach to reading instruction partly in response to learning gaps deepened by the pandemic . 

Mrs. Cay, 58, then passes each student a copy of “The Wump World,” about creatures who live on an imaginary planet. One by one, they read aloud with the help of Mrs. Cay, who on a small white board, writes words they stumble over – “broad,” for example, and “chief.” After each passage, she reviews the problem word with them. The room is quiet with the exception of this group’s hushed voices, their peers reading independently elsewhere. 

Mrs. Cay hopes the district’s greater emphasis on phonics – and its distancing from an approach that focuses on helping kids dissect a text’s meaning without first showing them how to sound out words – helps boost Sleepy Hollow kids’ literacy. But “it’s going to take a few years” before the effects kick in, Mrs. Cay says. The local school district adopted the new phonics program last school year and started requiring it in the fall. 

New educators consider leaving

Seated at his desk at lunchtime underneath a pennant of his alma mater, University of California, Berkeley, LaFleur says it could take some students as many as five years to catch up to where they should be. He expects just a fifth of his own students to pass the state math test. LaFleur, 25, came to Nystrom in the 2020-21 school year through Teach for America, an organization that places recent college grads in high-needs classrooms.

“This is the only normal I’ve ever known,” he said.

But LaFleur recently decided he wants out. 

Teacher turnover has increased in recent years: More teachers left their jobs in at least eight states after last school year, and educator turnover was at its highest point this year than in the past five years, data shows.

LaFleur hopes he’ll get the new job for which he’s being considered. Otherwise he will return next year to Nystrom, as he wrote in his journal, to face “the same problems, move through the same cycles, and feel the same feelings.”

‘It’s been a long day’

Principal Crews planned an end-of-day assembly for all of Cora Kelly’s students about simple machines such as wheels, levers and pulleys. Given the day’s nonstop rain, which forced kids to have indoor recess, they’re in need of something fun and to channel their energy. But the traveling troupe scheduled to perform at the assembly is running late. 

Whipping out her walkie-talkie, she tells school leaders to prepare to pivot if the troupe doesn’t arrive in time before dismissal. Crews then unzips her black fanny pack – filled with Band-Aids and plastic gloves and Cora Kelly-themed play cash – and pulls out a bottle of Excedrin. Crews takes two. “It’s been a long day,” she says.

Catching up on reading time lost

During a class read along of “Esperanza Rising” for the Spanish portion of Ms. G’s class, students erupt in debate about whether Esperanza’s mother should marry for stability. Valeria Escobedo Martinez, 9, shouts “This is like a telenovela!” The scene reminds her of a TV show she watches at home with her mom, she says.

Even though Valeria says Ms. G’s classroom can be too loud, classroom discussion during reading lessons has helped her make up for reading time she and other kids lost out on during the pandemic. 

“I think I’m still leveling up,” she says. Ms. G says “she’s close” to meeting expectations for reading in English and may shed her “English learner” designation next year..

Ms. G is familiar with students who are behind on reading. She spends most school mornings teaching fourth, fifth and sixth graders how to read words using phonics, which is new to Downer this year. 

Intervention time

It’s time for Ms. A’s students to break out into small classes – enrichment for students who are advanced and intervention for those who are behind. Ashley and about half a dozen of her peers head to reading intervention class, which she spends laughing along with her peers at the teachers’ jokes, earnestly scanning her dictionary and reciting lines from a passage during a group read-aloud. At one point during the read-aloud, she notices the teacher accidentally skipped a paragraph. The teacher commends Ashley for noticing – what if, she asks, I had skipped a paragraph while taking the state reading test? 

Later, as kids independently fill out worksheets, Ashley erects her dictionary as a privacy shield. She doesn’t want others to copy her answers.

Ashley wasn’t always this confident. She needs glasses and while she proudly wears a pair of pink frames now, during the pandemic her vision problems went undiagnosed. Schools usually provide vision screenings but they were one of the services that went away with COVID closures. Her inability to see the screen and understand homework left her feeling frustrated and defiant. 

‘Never going back to normal’

Maria Bustos picks up her son Erick from Ms. G’s class. Pre-pandemic, Bustos may have spent the afternoon on Downer’s campus, helping her son’s teachers or planning a school event with fellow parents. Now, lingering pandemic restrictions don’t allow for her to be as active in the school community as she used to be.

“I feel like we're never going to go back to normal – and not just in schools but in everything and everywhere,” Bustos says. “We used to do a Halloween parade, and even celebrate kids' birthdays by bringing pizza." 

She is optimistic about being able to volunteer next year, though, given she was able to attend Erick’s music performance on campus at the end of the school year and an in-class party three days before the end of school in Ms. G’s classroom. 

I feel like we’re never going to go back to normal – and not just in schools but in everything and everywhere.

Leadership turnover creates further challenges

As the new leader of her school, Ruby Gonzalez, 61, is in the midst of two separate video calls in her office: one about the education plan for a student with disabilities and another that includes other school administrators.

She took over when Downer’s longtime principal, Chris Read, found out he had colon cancer. Read began chemotherapy in March and took a six-month leave to avoid other sickness. After Principal Gonzalez filled in, she tapped Ms. G to take over given her past experience as a vice principal. Ms. G lasted for two days before deciding she didn’t want to abandon her fourth graders. “The kids notice when I’m gone,” she says.

She still helps out often.

Two other substitute principals stepped in months before the end of the school year. One quit after a few days. The other comes a few days a week to help out. It’s unclear who will lead next year. Once Read returns from leave, he will have a new job overseeing visual and performing arts education districtwide, a role he’s long wanted.

Recent data shows that more principals last year quit their jobs than early on in the pandemic.

“This has been one of the most difficult years I think; even more than last year,” Ms. G says. “There’s multiple things: Our principal is out and Ruby’s trying to do the best she can. … And there are new things we're all trying to learn. On top of that there's more work and discipline. The kids are feeling it.”

Not enough time

It’s time for kids in Cora Kelly’s after-school tutoring to be dismissed, but Ashley doesn’t want to leave. She’s eager to master the skill of reading an analog clock. She begs her tutor, the same math teacher she had earlier in the day, to stay longer. 

“I love, love, love learning,” Ashley says.

But it turns out her school year is ending earlier than she may have liked, too, much to Principal Crews’ frustration. Ashley and her family will be traveling to her mom’s home country of El Salvador a week before the last day of school. Experts say absenteeism remains widespread in elementary schools, whose students’ attendance relies on their parents’ decisions and schedules. 

Giving in to a calculator

Jada is stationed in the school cafeteria trying to solve a multiplication problem while she and her younger sister wait for their mother to pick them up from Nystrom’s after school program. She sighs, leans her face on her fist on the cafeteria table and says, “This is too hard!” A few seconds later, she pulls out a calculator to solve the problem.

Despite her growth this year – end-of-year math tests show Jada jumped from having middle-of-second-grade skills to working at a mid-fourth-grade level – she and many classmates are behind where they should be.

Her mom, Michaela Alexander, rushes into the cafeteria to get the girls. Alexander tells Jada she isn’t too worried she’s behind on math: She understands Jada had a very different experience from a lot of kids in elementary school who learned in a classroom setting uninterrupted by a global pandemic. She has faith that the teachers at Nystrom will help her catch up. 

‘She’s better than me’

At her small white trailer in a mobile home park in San Pablo, Valeria, her mom, Maira Martinez Perez, and her grandma, who is visiting from Mexico, sit on separate benches next to each other in a tidy combined living room and kitchen. It’s the same home in which Valeria would pull out her Google Chromebook each morning, log onto school and start the day with jumping jacks to loosen up, as instructed by her teacher, when school shifted online.

Just as Downer pivoted to remote learning, Valeria’s mother lost her job cleaning at another school. Now her mother is working again, and though a kid herself, Valeria has taken on some of the care of her younger sister Itzel. Valeria is sometimes interrupted by the 5-year-old when she tries to read at home.

Itzel peeks out from the only bedroom in the home closed off by a sliding door. 

At school, “she’s better than me,” Valeria says of her sister. 

No pandemic interrupted Itzel’s schooling.

Story editing by Nirvi Shah

How technology is reinventing education

Stanford Graduate School of Education Dean Dan Schwartz and other education scholars weigh in on what's next for some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom.

Image credit: Claire Scully

New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately worried that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or coach students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the AI + Education initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of CRAFT (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the Digital Learning initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of virtual field trips to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

clock This article was published more than  2 years ago

Public education is facing a crisis of epic proportions

How politics and the pandemic put schools in the line of fire.

A previous version of this story incorrectly said that 39 percent of American children were on track in math. That is the percentage performing below grade level.

Test scores are down, and violence is up . Parents are screaming at school boards , and children are crying on the couches of social workers. Anger is rising. Patience is falling.

For public schools, the numbers are all going in the wrong direction. Enrollment is down. Absenteeism is up. There aren’t enough teachers, substitutes or bus drivers. Each phase of the pandemic brings new logistics to manage, and Republicans are planning political campaigns this year aimed squarely at failings of public schools.

Public education is facing a crisis unlike anything in decades, and it reaches into almost everything that educators do: from teaching math, to counseling anxious children, to managing the building.

Political battles are now a central feature of education, leaving school boards, educators and students in the crosshairs of culture warriors. Schools are on the defensive about their pandemic decision-making, their curriculums, their policies regarding race and racial equity and even the contents of their libraries. Republicans — who see education as a winning political issue — are pressing their case for more “parental control,” or the right to second-guess educators’ choices. Meanwhile, an energized school choice movement has capitalized on the pandemic to promote alternatives to traditional public schools.

“The temperature is way up to a boiling point,” said Nat Malkus, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative-leaning think tank. “If it isn’t a crisis now, you never get to crisis.”

Experts reach for comparisons. The best they can find is the earthquake following Brown v. Board of Education , when the Supreme Court ordered districts to desegregate and White parents fled from their cities’ schools. That was decades ago.

Today, the cascading problems are felt acutely by the administrators, teachers and students who walk the hallways of public schools across the country. Many say they feel unprecedented levels of stress in their daily lives.

Remote learning, the toll of illness and death, and disruptions to a dependable routine have left students academically behind — particularly students of color and those from poor families. Behavior problems ranging from inability to focus in class all the way to deadly gun violence have gripped campuses. Many students and teachers say they are emotionally drained, and experts predict schools will be struggling with the fallout for years to come.

Teresa Rennie, an eighth-grade math and science teacher in Philadelphia, said in 11 years of teaching, she has never referred this many children to counseling.

“So many students are needy. They have deficits academically. They have deficits socially,” she said. Rennie said that she’s drained, too. “I get 45 minutes of a prep most days, and a lot of times during that time I’m helping a student with an assignment, or a child is crying and I need to comfort them and get them the help they need. Or there’s a problem between two students that I need to work with. There’s just not enough time.”

Many wonder: How deep is the damage?

Learning lost

At the start of the pandemic, experts predicted that students forced into remote school would pay an academic price. They were right.

“The learning losses have been significant thus far and frankly I’m worried that we haven’t stopped sinking,” said Dan Goldhaber, an education researcher at the American Institutes for Research.

Some of the best data come from the nationally administered assessment called i-Ready, which tests students three times a year in reading and math, allowing researchers to compare performance of millions of students against what would be expected absent the pandemic. It found significant declines, especially among the youngest students and particularly in math.

The low point was fall 2020, when all students were coming off a spring of chaotic, universal remote classes. By fall 2021 there were some improvements, but even then, academic performance remained below historic norms.

Take third grade, a pivotal year for learning and one that predicts success going forward. In fall 2021, 38 percent of third-graders were below grade level in reading, compared with 31 percent historically. In math, 39 percent of students were below grade level, vs. 29 percent historically.

Damage was most severe for students from the lowest-income families, who were already performing at lower levels.

A McKinsey & Co. study found schools with majority-Black populations were five months behind pre-pandemic levels, compared with majority-White schools, which were two months behind. Emma Dorn, a researcher at McKinsey, describes a “K-shaped” recovery, where kids from wealthier families are rebounding and those in low-income homes continue to decline.

“Some students are recovering and doing just fine. Other people are not,” she said. “I’m particularly worried there may be a whole cohort of students who are disengaged altogether from the education system.”

A hunt for teachers, and bus drivers

Schools, short-staffed on a good day, had little margin for error as the omicron variant of the coronavirus swept over the country this winter and sidelined many teachers. With a severe shortage of substitutes, teachers had to cover other classes during their planning periods, pushing prep work to the evenings. San Francisco schools were so strapped that the superintendent returned to the classroom on four days this school year to cover middle school math and science classes. Classes were sometimes left unmonitored or combined with others into large groups of unglorified study halls.

“The pandemic made an already dire reality even more devastating,” said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, referring to the shortages.

In 2016, there were 1.06 people hired for every job listing. That figure has steadily dropped, reaching 0.59 hires for each opening last year, Bureau of Labor Statistics data show. In 2013, there were 557,320 substitute teachers, the BLS reported. In 2020, the number had fallen to 415,510. Virtually every district cites a need for more subs.

It’s led to burnout as teachers try to fill in the gaps.

“The overall feelings of teachers right now are ones of just being exhausted, beaten down and defeated, and just out of gas. Expectations have been piled on educators, even before the pandemic, but nothing is ever removed,” said Jennifer Schlicht, a high school teacher in Olathe, Kan., outside Kansas City.

Research shows the gaps in the number of available educators are most acute in areas including special education and educators who teach English language learners, as well as substitutes. And all school year, districts have been short on bus drivers , who have been doubling up routes, and forcing late school starts and sometimes cancellations for lack of transportation.

Many educators predict that fed-up teachers will probably quit, exacerbating the problem. And they say political attacks add to the burnout. Teachers are under scrutiny over lesson plans, and critics have gone after teachers unions, which for much of the pandemic demanded remote learning.

“It’s just created an environment that people don’t want to be part of anymore,” said Daniel A. Domenech, executive director of AASA, The School Superintendents Association. “People want to take care of kids, not to be accused and punished and criticized.”

Falling enrollment

Traditional public schools educate the vast majority of American children, but enrollment has fallen, a worrisome trend that could have lasting repercussions. Enrollment in traditional public schools fell to less than 49.4 million students in fall 2020 , a 2.7 percent drop from a year earlier .

National data for the current school year is not yet available. But if the trend continues, that will mean less money for public schools as federal and state funding are both contingent on the number of students enrolled. For now, schools have an infusion of federal rescue money that must be spent by 2024.

Some students have shifted to private or charter schools. A rising number , especially Black families , opted for home schooling. And many young children who should have been enrolling in kindergarten delayed school altogether. The question has been: will these students come back?

Some may not. Preliminary data for 19 states compiled by Nat Malkus, of the American Enterprise Institute, found seven states where enrollment dropped in fall 2020 and then dropped even further in 2021. His data show 12 states that saw declines in 2020 but some rebounding in 2021 — though not one of them was back to 2019 enrollment levels.

Joshua Goodman, associate professor of education and economics at Boston University, studied enrollment in Michigan schools and found high-income, White families moved to private schools to get in-person school. Far more common, though, were lower-income Black families shifting to home schooling or other remote options because they were uncomfortable with the health risks of in person.

“Schools were damned if they did, and damned if they didn’t,” Goodman said.

At the same time, charter schools, which are privately run but publicly funded, saw enrollment increase by 7 percent, or nearly 240,000 students, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. There’s also been a surge in home schooling. Private schools saw enrollment drop slightly in 2020-21 but then rebound this academic year, for a net growth of 1.7 percent over two years, according to the National Association of Independent Schools, which represents 1,600 U.S. schools.

Absenteeism on the rise

Even if students are enrolled, they won’t get much schooling if they don’t show up.

Last school year, the number of students who were chronically absent — meaning they have missed more than 10 percent of school days — nearly doubled from before the pandemic, according to data from a variety of states and districts studied by EveryDay Labs, a company that works with districts to improve attendance.

This school year, the numbers got even worse.

In Connecticut, for instance, the number of chronically absent students soared from 12 percent in 2019-20 to 20 percent the next year to 24 percent this year, said Emily Bailard, chief executive of the company. In Oakland, Calif., they went from 17.3 percent pre-pandemic to 19.8 percent last school year to 43 percent this year. In Pittsburgh, chronic absences stayed where they were last school year at about 25 percent, then shot up to 45 percent this year.

“We all expected that this year would look much better,” Bailard said. One explanation for the rise may be that schools did not keep careful track of remote attendance last year and the numbers understated the absences then, she said.

The numbers were the worst for the most vulnerable students. This school year in Connecticut, for instance, 24 percent of all students were chronically absent, but the figure topped 30 percent for English-learners, students with disabilities and those poor enough to qualify for free lunch. Among students experiencing homelessness, 56 percent were chronically absent.

Fights and guns

Schools are open for in-person learning almost everywhere, but students returned emotionally unsettled and unable to conform to normally accepted behavior. At its most benign, teachers are seeing kids who cannot focus in class, can’t stop looking at their phones, and can’t figure out how to interact with other students in all the normal ways. Many teachers say they seem younger than normal.

Amy Johnson, a veteran teacher in rural Randolph, Vt., said her fifth-graders had so much trouble being together that the school brought in a behavioral specialist to work with them three hours each week.

“My students are not acclimated to being in the same room together,” she said. “They don’t listen to each other. They cannot interact with each other in productive ways. When I’m teaching I might have three or five kids yelling at me all at the same time.”

That loss of interpersonal skills has also led to more fighting in hallways and after school. Teachers and principals say many incidents escalate from small disputes because students lack the habit of remaining calm. Many say the social isolation wrought during remote school left them with lower capacity to manage human conflict.

Just last week, a high-schooler in Los Angeles was accused of stabbing another student in a school hallway, police on the big island of Hawaii arrested seven students after an argument escalated into a fight, and a Baltimore County, Md., school resource officer was injured after intervening in a fight during the transition between classes.

There’s also been a steep rise in gun violence. In 2021, there were at least 42 acts of gun violence on K-12 campuses during regular hours, the most during any year since at least 1999, according to a Washington Post database . The most striking of 2021 incidents was the shooting in Oxford, Mich., that killed four. There have been already at least three shootings in 2022.

Back to school has brought guns, fighting and acting out

The Center for Homeland Defense and Security, which maintains its own database of K-12 school shootings using a different methodology, totaled nine active shooter incidents in schools in 2021, in addition to 240 other incidents of gunfire on school grounds. So far in 2022, it has recorded 12 incidents. The previous high, in 2019, was 119 total incidents.

David Riedman, lead researcher on the K-12 School Shooting Database, points to four shootings on Jan. 19 alone, including at Anacostia High School in D.C., where gunshots struck the front door of the school as a teen sprinted onto the campus, fleeing a gunman.

Seeing opportunity

Fueling the pressure on public schools is an ascendant school-choice movement that promotes taxpayer subsidies for students to attend private and religious schools, as well as publicly funded charter schools, which are privately run. Advocates of these programs have seen the public system’s woes as an excellent opportunity to push their priorities.

EdChoice, a group that promotes these programs, tallies seven states that created new school choice programs last year. Some are voucher-type programs where students take some of their tax dollars with them to private schools. Others offer tax credits for donating to nonprofit organizations, which give scholarships for school expenses. Another 15 states expanded existing programs, EdChoice says.

The troubles traditional schools have had managing the pandemic has been key to the lobbying, said Michael McShane, director of national research for EdChoice. “That is absolutely an argument that school choice advocates make, for sure.”

If those new programs wind up moving more students from public to private systems, that could further weaken traditional schools, even as they continue to educate the vast majority of students.

Kevin G. Welner, director of the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado, who opposes school choice programs, sees the surge of interest as the culmination of years of work to undermine public education. He is both impressed by the organization and horrified by the results.

“I wish that organizations supporting public education had the level of funding and coordination that I’ve seen in these groups dedicated to its privatization,” he said.

A final complication: Politics

Rarely has education been such a polarizing political topic.

Republicans, fresh off Glenn Youngkin’s victory in the Virginia governor’s race, have concluded that key to victory is a push for parental control and “parents rights.” That’s a nod to two separate topics.

First, they are capitalizing on parent frustrations over pandemic policies, including school closures and mandatory mask policies. The mask debate, which raged at the start of the school year, got new life this month after Youngkin ordered Virginia schools to allow students to attend without face coverings.

The notion of parental control also extends to race, and objections over how American history is taught. Many Republicans also object to school districts’ work aimed at racial equity in their systems, a basket of policies they have dubbed critical race theory. Critics have balked at changes in admissions to elite school in the name of racial diversity, as was done in Fairfax, Va. , and San Francisco ; discussion of White privilege in class ; and use of the New York Times’s “1619 Project,” which suggests slavery and racism are at the core of American history.

“Everything has been politicized,” said Domenech, of AASA. “You’re beside yourself saying, ‘How did we ever get to this point?’”

Part of the challenge going forward is that the pandemic is not over. Each time it seems to be easing, it returns with a variant vengeance, forcing schools to make politically and educationally sensitive decisions about the balance between safety and normalcy all over again.

At the same time, many of the problems facing public schools feed on one another. Students who are absent will probably fall behind in learning, and those who fall behind are likely to act out.

A similar backlash exists regarding race. For years, schools have been under pressure to address racism in their systems and to teach it in their curriculums, pressure that intensified after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Many districts responded, and that opened them up to countervailing pressures from those who find schools overly focused on race.

Some high-profile boosters of public education are optimistic that schools can move past this moment. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona last week promised, “It will get better.” Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said, “If we can rebuild community-education relations, if we can rebuild trust, public education will not only survive but has a real chance to thrive.”

But the path back is steep, and if history is a guide, the wealthiest schools will come through reasonably well, while those serving low-income communities will struggle. Steve Matthews, superintendent of the 6,900-student Novi Community School District in Michigan, just northwest of Detroit, said his district will probably face a tougher road back than wealthier nearby districts that are, for instance, able to pay teachers more.

“Resource issues. Trust issues. De-professionalization of teaching is making it harder to recruit teachers,” he said. “A big part of me believes schools are in a long-term crisis.”

Valerie Strauss contributed to this report.

The pandemic’s impact on education

The latest: Updated coronavirus booster shots are now available for children as young as 5 . To date, more than 10.5 million children have lost one or both parents or caregivers during the coronavirus pandemic.

In the classroom: Amid a teacher shortage, states desperate to fill teaching jobs have relaxed job requirements as staffing crises rise in many schools . American students’ test scores have even plummeted to levels unseen for decades. One D.C. school is using COVID relief funds to target students on the verge of failure .

Higher education: College and university enrollment is nowhere near pandemic level, experts worry. ACT and SAT testing have rebounded modestly since the massive disruptions early in the coronavirus pandemic, and many colleges are also easing mask rules .

DMV news: Most of Prince George’s students are scoring below grade level on district tests. D.C. Public School’s new reading curriculum is designed to help improve literacy among the city’s youngest readers.

Transforming K–12 education for the better

August 26, 2023 K–12 schools have dealt with many challenges over the past few years, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic put many existing problems into much sharper focus. Even so, there are many bright spots to point to as children head back into the classroom this fall. Some districts are rolling out new mental health interventions to support their students’ needs and others are seeing accelerated rates of learning recovery after adopting new instructional materials, according to McKinsey senior partner Jimmy Sarakatsannis , partner Jake Bryant , and colleagues. Read the full report to see how these combined interventions can create better learning experiences for all, and explore the rest of our recent education insights about how schools can transform for the better.

What it would take for US schools to fully recover from COVID-19

Author Talks: How educators can avoid burnout and embrace self-care

K–12 teachers are quitting. What would make them stay?

Advancing racial equity in US pre-K–12 education

Expanding publicly funded pre-K: How to do it and do it well

Lessons in leadership: Transforming struggling US K–12 schools

Author Talks: To nurture true potential, reimagine intelligence

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FACT SHEET: Biden- ⁠ Harris Administration Highlights Efforts to Support K-12 Education as Students go Back-to-School

The President and First Lady will mark the start of the school year by visiting students at Eliot-Hine Middle School in Washington, D.C. When President Biden took office, less than half of K-12 students were going to school in person. Today, thanks to the President’s swift actions and historic investments, every school in America is open safely for in-person instruction. Since Day One, President Biden has worked to help every school open safely for in-person instruction, accelerate academic achievement, and build communities where all students feel they belong. The actions the President has taken to support schools and the students they serve, include: Securing the Largest Investment in Public Education in History to Help Students Get Back to School and Recover Academically: COVID-19 created unprecedented challenges for kids, from school closures to lost instructional time and social isolation from their peers. To support the immediate response and the long-term recovery work our students need, the President secured $130 billion through the American Rescue Plan (ARP) to help schools safely reopen, stay open, and address the academic and mental health needs of students. American Rescue Plan funding has put more teachers in our classrooms and more counselors, social workers, and other staff in our schools; is providing high-quality tutoring; supporting record expansion of summer and after-school programming; supporting HVAC improvements within school buildings to address air quality and environmental and safety needs in aging school buildings; and providing a wide range of student supports. Compared with the pre-pandemic period, as of the end of last year school year, the number of public school social workers is up 39% and the number of public school nurses is up 30%. Nearly half of school districts using these funds to expand summer learning programs have shown clear gains in math. While we have further to go, we are seeing increased evidence of improvement, including several states returning to pre-pandemic levels of achievement on their state math and literacy assessments. Expanding Access to Mental Health Support in Schools Across the Country: Students around the nation continue to grapple with mental health challenges. Rates of depression, anxiety, and feelings of hopelessness were already on the rise, but unprecedented disruptions in their school and social lives in the past years, have exacerbated these concerns. That’s why the President named tackling the mental health crisis, particularly among America’s young people, a top priority. Last year, the President signed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) into law last year as the first major federal gun safety bill passed in nearly 30 years. BSCA included historic levels of funding to address youth mental health, including $2 billion for ED to create safe, inclusive learning environments for students and hire and train more mental health professionals for schools – where students are most likely to receive these crucial services. ED has awarded $286 million to date across 264 grantees in 48 states and DC to support mental health services in schools – investments that are estimated to support more than 14,000 new mental health professionals in schools in the coming years. ED is also working closely with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to further extend the reach of Federal mental health programs and investments into schools, and to leverage Medicaid funding to provide crucial health and mental health services at schools. Earlier this year, the Administration released comprehensive guidance to make it easier for schools to bill Medicaid, including proposing a rule that would streamline Medicaid billing permissions to deliver mental health services to students. The Administration also launched a technical assistance center to help schools take advantage of this crucial funding stream – which supported an additional investment of more than $6 billion in schools in 2022. Expanding Community Schools that Improve Academic Success: Meeting the needs of the whole child is essential to help America’s students grow academically and improve their well-being. That’s why the President is committed to increasing and supporting the adoption of community school models across the country. Full-Service Community Schools leverage local non-profit, private sector, and public partnerships to bring wraparound services into school buildings, such as health services, and assistance with shelter and nutrition. Research has shown that these schools contribute to increased student attendance, on-time grade progression, and high school graduation. Because of the President’s commitment to this model, federal funding for this model has increased five-fold over the course of this Administration. While the program supported 170 schools before 2021 it is now reaching more than 1,700 schools serving almost 800,000 students. Additionally, agencies across the federal government have also identified the ways that additional resources can support the expansion of this model and further integrate wraparound supports into our schools. Expanding Teacher and Staff Capacity by Bringing in Tutors and Mentors: To provide students with the support they need to recover from the impacts of the pandemic, the President issued a call to action to bring 250,000 more tutors, mentors and other critical supports into schools over three years. Last summer, the Department of Education (ED), AmeriCorps, and the Johns Hopkins University’s Everyone Graduates Center launched the National Partnership for Student Success (NPSS), a public-private partnership to accomplish this goal. To support this effort, ED recently launched a call to action to colleges, encouraging them to devote a greater share of their Federal Work-Study funds to bring college students into K-12 schools as tutors and in other high-impact roles. Early adopters include more than two dozen colleges ranging from large public university systems, like the State University of New York, to Howard University and Hispanic-serving institutions. In the coming weeks, the NPSS will highlight progress towards the President’s goal during the 2022-2023 school year. Growing an Effective Teacher and School Leadership Workforce: From February to May 2020, communities lost 730,000 local public education jobs during the pandemic—a 9 percent decline in local public education employment—including teachers, specialized instructional support personnel, and other critical staff. As of June 2023, local public education employment has increased by 635,000 jobs since its low point in May 2020. This significant rebound now means that there are now only 1.2 percent fewer individuals working in local public education than before the pandemic; this progress has been significantly fueled by investments in educators through the American Rescue Plan and other Administration investments. The President has prioritized building an effective, diverse teacher pipeline, including by expanding high-quality and affordable programs that prepare and support teachers, including teacher Registered Apprenticeships. Registered Apprenticeship can be an effective, high-quality “earn and learn” model that allows prospective teachers to earn their credential while earning a salary by combining coursework with structured, paid on-the-job learning experiences with a mentor teacher. The Administration has worked closely with States to grow the number of registered apprenticeship programs for teachers from 2 to 23, with bipartisan Governors across the country scaling this effective model. The Department has also advanced teacher diversity by including priorities focused on educator diversity in 14 grant programs, totaling over $470 million and funding; for the first time, funding a teacher preparation program for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges or Universities (TCUs), and Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) to help accelerate the pace of preparing teachers of color for America’s schools. The Department’s Raise the Bar Policy Brief highlights progress by states across the country, with the support of the Administration, in advancing key strategies to eliminate educator shortages in the long term. Directing Resources to Historically Underserved Schools and Students: The President’s leadership has garnered substantial increases for Federal student support programs to meet the needs of historically underserved students. The President has secured a nearly $2 billion (or 11%) increase in Title I funds, which delivers critical resources to 90 percent of school districts across the Nation and helps them provide students in low-income communities with necessary academic opportunities and supports. Additionally, the President has secured a historic $1.3 billion (or 10%) increase in Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) funds, which helps States support special education instruction and services for 7.4 million students with disabilities, and increased funding by $92 million for programs that support English learners. The Administration has also increased funding to support subpopulations of students, including Alaska Native Education and Native Hawaiian Education programs which have increased by over 20%.

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The alarming state of the American student in 2022

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November 1, 2022

The pandemic was a wrecking ball for U.S. public education, bringing months of school closures, frantic moves to remote instruction, and trauma and isolation.

Kids may be back at school after three disrupted years, but a return to classrooms has not brought a return to normal. Recent results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed historic declines in American students’ knowledge and skills and widening gaps between the highest- and lowest-scoring students.

But even these sobering results do not tell us the whole story.

After nearly three years of tracking pandemic response by U.S. school systems and synthesizing knowledge about the impacts on students, we sought to establish a baseline understanding of the contours of the crisis: What happened and why, and where do we go from here?

This first annual “ State of the American Student ” report synthesizes nearly three years of research on the academic, mental health, and other impacts of the pandemic and school closures.

It outlines the contours of the crisis American students have faced during the COVID-19 pandemic and begins to chart a path to recovery and reinvention for all students—which includes building a new and better approach to public education that ensures an educational crisis of this magnitude cannot happen again.

The state of American students as we emerge from the pandemic is still coming into focus, but here’s what we’ve learned (and haven’t yet learned) about where COVID-19 left us:

1. Students lost critical opportunities to learn and thrive.

• The typical American student lost several months’ worth of learning in language arts and more in mathematics.

• Students suffered crushing increases in anxiety and depression. More than one in 360 U.S. children lost a parent or caregiver to COVID-19.

• Students poorly served before the pandemic were profoundly left behind during it, including many with disabilities whose parents reported they were cut off from essential school and life services.

This deeply traumatic period threatens to reverberate for decades. The academic, social, and mental-health needs are real, they are measurable, and they must be addressed quickly to avoid long-term consequences to individual students, the future workforce, and society.

2. The average effects from COVID mask dire inequities and widely varied impact.

Some students are catching up, but time is running out for others. Every student experienced the pandemic differently, and there is tremendous variation from student to student, with certain populations—namely, Black, Hispanic, and low-income students, as well as other vulnerable populations—suffering the most severe impacts.

The effects were more severe where campuses stayed closed longer. American students are experiencing a K-shaped recovery, in which gaps between the highest- and lowest-scoring students, already growing before the pandemic, are widening into chasms. In the latest NAEP results released in September , national average scores fell five times as much in reading, and four times as much in math, for the lowest-scoring 10 percent of nine-year-olds as they had for the highest-scoring 10 percent.

At the pace of recovery we are seeing today, too many students of all races and income levels will graduate in the coming years without the skills and knowledge needed for college and careers.

3. What we know at this point is incomplete. The situation could be significantly worse than the early data suggest.

The data and stories we have to date are enough to warrant immediate action, but there are serious holes in our understanding of how the pandemic has affected various groups of students, especially those who are typically most likely to fall through the cracks in the American education system.

We know little about students with complex needs, such as those with disabilities and English learners. We still know too little about the learning impacts in non-tested subjects, such as science, civics, and foreign languages. And while psychologists , educators , and the federal government are sounding alarms about a youth mental health crisis, systematic measures of student wellbeing remain hard to come by.

We must acknowledge that what we know at this point is incomplete, since the pandemic closures and following recovery have been so unprecedented in recent times. It’s possible that as we continue to dig into the evidence on the pandemic’s impacts, some student groups or subjects may have not been so adversely affected. Alternatively, the situation could be significantly worse than the early data suggest. Some students are already bouncing back quickly. But for others, the impact could grow worse over time.

In subjects like math, where learning is cumulative, pandemic-related gaps in students’ learning that emerged during the pandemic could affect their ability to grasp future material. In some states, test scores fell dramatically for high schoolers nearing graduation. Shifts in these students’ academic trajectories could affect their college plans—and the rest of their lives. And elevated rates of chronic absenteeism suggest some students who disconnected from school during the pandemic have struggled to reconnect since.

4. The harms students experienced can be traced to a rigid and inequitable system that put adults, not students, first.

• Despite often heroic efforts by caring adults, students and families were cut off from essential support, offered radically diminished learning opportunities, and left to their own devices to support learning.

• Too often, partisan politics, not student needs , drove decision-making.

• Students with complexities and differences too often faced systems immobilized by fear and a commitment to sameness rather than prioritization and problem-solving.

So, what can we do to address the situation we’re in?

Diverse needs demand diverse solutions that are informed by pandemic experiences

Freed from the routines of rigid systems, some parents, communities, and educators found new ways to tailor learning experiences around students’ needs. They discovered learning can happen any time and anywhere. They discovered enriching activities outside class and troves of untapped adult talent.

Some of these breakthroughs happened in public schools—like virtual IEP meetings that leveled power dynamics between administrators and parents advocating for their children’s special education services. Others happened in learning pods or other new environments where families and community groups devised new ways to meet students’ needs. These were exceptions to an otherwise miserable rule, and they can inform the work ahead.

We must act quickly but we must also act differently. Important next steps include:

• Districts and states should immediately use their federal dollars to address the emergent needs of the COVID-19 generation of students via proven interventions, such as well-designed tutoring, extended learning time, credit recovery, additional mental health support, college and career guidance, and mentoring. The challenges ahead are too daunting for schools to shoulder alone. Partnerships and funding for families and community-driven solutions will be critical.

• By the end of the 2022–2023 academic year, states and districts must commit to an honest accounting of rebuilding efforts by defining, adopting, and reporting on their progress toward 5- and 10-year goals for long-term student recovery. States should invest in rigorous studies that document, analyze, and improve their approaches.

• Education leaders and researchers must adopt a national research and development agenda for school reinvention over the next five years. This effort must be anchored in the reality that the needs of students are so varied, so profound, and so multifaceted that a one-size-fits-all approach to education can’t possibly meet them all. Across the country, community organizations who previously operated summer or afterschool programs stepped up to support students during the school day. As they focus on recovery, school system leaders should look to these helpers not as peripheral players in education, but as critical contributors who can provide teaching , tutoring, or joyful learning environments for students and often have trusting relationships with their families.

• Recovery and rebuilding should ensure the system is more resilient and prepared for future crises. That means more thoughtful integration of online learning and stronger partnerships with organizations that support learning outside school walls. Every school system in America should have a plan to keep students safe and learning even when they can’t physically come to school, be equipped to deliver high-quality, individualized pathways for students, and build on practices that show promise.

Our “State of the American Student” report is the first in a series of annual reports the Center on Reinventing Public Education intends to produce through fall of 2027. We hope every state and community will produce similar, annual accounts and begin to define ambitious goals for recovery. The implications of these deeply traumatic years will reverberate for decades unless we find a path not only to normalcy but also to restitution for this generation and future generations of American students.

The road to recovery can lead somewhere new. In five years, we hope to report that out of the ashes of the pandemic, American public education emerged transformed: more flexible and resilient, more individualized and equitable, and—most of all— more joyful.

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2023 Trends in K-12 Education

• Posted on: January 25, 2023
• Topic: K–12 Education , K–12 Trends

This school year K–12 leaders are tackling academic recovery and operational effectiveness to overcome noticeable setbacks in test scores, mental health challenges, and staff turnover. Understanding how to make informed decisions amid so many complex challenges has never been more urgent. The 2023 Trends in K–12 Education report provides insights, recommendations, and case studies that illuminate emerging issues in schools and districts.

Download the 2023 Trends in K–12 Education report to find guidance for:  

• Transforming strategic plans into meaningful action  
• Increasing the quality of instruction to advance academic recovery  
• Including student voice in key decisions  
• Strengthening teacher retention strategies
• Protecting student well-being  

“Even as they try to make sense of so many challenges and setbacks, district leaders are pushing forward and striving to turn the tide. Around the nation, districts are faced with tackling short-term hurdles while looking to the future with greater flexibility and empathy. Addressing these concerns is critical if schools hope to stem historic levels of teacher turnover, improve the well-being of students and teachers, and successfully achieve academic recovery.”  

Hanover’s 2023 Trends in K–12 Education report highlights both new and ongoing issues and priorities that will remain prominent throughout the coming year. Drawn from Hanover’s K–12 experience advising and collaborating with hundreds of districts and education agencies, this report will help district leaders make informed decisions about the complex challenges they face in 2023–24 — decisions that can have positive, lasting effects on their schools and communities.  

Embracing Change in Schools in 2023 and Beyond

To keep pace with the changes in K–12 education, K–12 leaders are focused on developing new strategic action plans and instructional programs for a changed landscape, all while targeting long-term goals and successes. It’s a huge undertaking, one made even more difficult in an atmosphere where polarized public discourse permeates the classroom, often putting teachers and the public at odds when it comes to addressing sensitive subject matter. But tackled with energy and empathy, these challenges offer leaders an opportunity to enact meaningful change.

As schools adapt and persevere, they understand that strategic action is necessary to preserve effective learning and staffing levels. With a long-term focus on mental health and school climate, districts are striving to ensure a safe, equitable environment for students. And by providing additional training and wellness resources for educators, leaders can help to calm the chaos of the past three years. There is hope on the horizon, and preparedness can help districts’ optimism become a reality.   

“Leaders that dig deep to update strategic plans, improve school climate, and foster inclusion will be strongly positioned to navigate the years ahead. They must continue looking forward, knowing that a strong road map will help them stay the course.”

See what's on the horizon for K–12 education

Read the report to inform your 2023–24 planning.

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The Right Has an Opportunity to Rethink Education in America

T he casual observer can be forgiven if it looks like both the left and the right are doing their best to lose the debate over the future of American education.

On the left, public officials and self-righteous advocates practically fall over themselves working to subsidize and supersize bloated bureaucracies, hollowed-out urban school systems, and campus craziness. They’ve mutely watched teacher strikes shutter schools and insisted that “true history” requires the U.S. to be depicted as a cesspool of racism and villainy .

Meanwhile, on the right, bleating outrage impresarios have done their best to undercut the easy-to-make case for educational choice by weaving it into angry tirades against well-liked local schools. They’ve taken Taylor Swift, a strait-laced pop star beloved by middle school and high school girls, and imagined her as part of some bizarre Biden Administration PSYOP. Heck, they’ve even decided to try to “ take down ” Martin Luther King, Jr., a Civil Rights icon honored for his legacy of justice, equality, and nonviolence.

What gives?

The left has a problem. Democrats have long benefited from alliances with teacher unions, campus radicals, and the bureaucrats who run the college cartel. This played well with a public that tended to  like  its teachers, schools, and colleges. But  pandemic school closures ,  plunging trust in colleges , and  open antisemitism  have upended the status quo.

This has created an extraordinary opportunity for the right—free of ties with unions, public bureaucracies, and academe—to defend shared values, empower students and families, and rethink outdated arrangements. The right is uniquely positioned to lead on education because it’s not hindered by the left’s entanglements, and is thus much freer to rethink the way that early childhood, K-12, and higher education are organized and delivered.

The right also needs to demonstrate that it cares as much (or more) about the kitchen table issues that affect American families as the culture war issues that animate social media. Affordability, access, rigor, convenience, appropriateness, are the things that parents care about, and the right needs something to offer them.

The question is whether the right will choose to meet the moment at a time when too many public officials seem more interested in social media exposure than solving problems.

We’re optimists. We think the right can rise to the challenge.

It starts with a commitment to principle, shared values, and real world solutions. This is easier than it sounds. After all, the public  sides  with conservatives on hot-button disputes around race, gender, and American history by lopsided margins. Americans broadly  agree  that students should learn both the good and bad about American history,  reject  race-based college admissions,  believe  that student-athletes should play on teams that match their biological sex, and  don’t think  teachers should be discussing gender in K–3 classrooms.

And, while some thoughtful conservatives recoil from accusations of wading into “culture wars,” it’s vital for to talk forthrightly about shared values. Wall Street Journal-NORC  polling , for instance, reports that, when asked to identify values important to them, 94 percent of Americans identified hard work, 90 percent said tolerance for others, 80 percent said community involvement, 73 percent said patriotism, 65 percent said belief in God, and 65 percent said having children. Schools should valorize hard work, teach tolerance, connect students to their community, promote patriotism, and be open minded towards faith and family.

At the same time, of course, educational outcomes matter mightily, for students and the nation . A commitment to rigor, excellence, and merit is a value that conservatives should unabashedly champion. And talk about an easy sell! More than 80 percent of Americans say standardized tests like the SAT should matter for college admissions . Meanwhile, California’s Democratic officials recently approved new math standards that would end advanced math in elementary and middle school and Oregon’s have abolished the requirement that high school graduates be literate and numerate. The right should both point out the absurdity of such policies and carry the banner for high expectations, advanced instruction, gifted programs, and the importance of earned success.

When it comes to kitchen table issues, conservatives can do much more to support parents. That means putting an end to chaotic classrooms. It means using the tax code to provide more financial assistance. It means making it easier and more appealing for employers to offer on-site daycare facilities. It means creating flexible-use spending accounts for both early childhood and K–12 students to support a wide range of educational options. It means pushing colleges to cut bloat and find ways to offer less costly credentials. This means offering meaningful career and technical options so that a college degree feels like a choice rather than a requirement, making it easier for new postsecondary options to emerge, and requiring colleges to have skin in the game when students take out loans (putting the schools on the hook if their students aren’t repaying taxpayers).

Then there’s the need to address the right’s frosty relationship with educators. It’s remarkable, if you think about it, that conservatives—who energetically support cops and have a natural antipathy for bureaucrats and red tape—have so much trouble connecting with teachers. Like police, teachers are  well-liked  local public servants frustrated by bureaucracy and paperwork. It should be easy to embrace discipline policies that keep teachers safe and classrooms manageable, downsize bloated bureaucracy and shift those dollars into classrooms, and tend to parental responsibilities as well as parental rights.  

There’s an enormous opportunity for the right to lead on education today. The question is whether we’re ready to rise to the challenge.

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How much does the government spend on education? What percentage of people are college educated? How are kids doing in reading and math?

Table of Contents

What is the current state of education in the us.

How much does the US spend per student?

Public school spending per student

Average teacher salary.

How educated are Americans?

People with a bachelor's degree

Educational attainment by race and ethnicity.

How are kids doing in reading and math?

Proficiency in math and reading

What is the role of the government in education?

Spending on the education system

Agencies and elected officials.

The education system in America is made up of different public and private programs that cover preschool, all the way up to colleges and universities. These programs cater to many students in both urban and rural areas. Get data on how students are faring by grade and subject, college graduation rates, and what federal, state, and local governments spending per student. The information comes from various government agencies including the National Center for Education Statistics and Census Bureau.

During the 2019-2020 school year, there was $15,810 spent on K-12 public education for every student in the US.

Education spending per k-12 public school students has nearly doubled since the 1970s..

This estimate of spending on education is produced by the National Center for Education Statistics. Instruction accounts for most of the spending, though about a third includes support services including administration, maintenance, and transportation. Spending per student varies across states and school districts. During the 2019-2020 school year, New York spends the most per student ($29,597) and Idaho spends the least ($9,690).

During the 2021-2022 school year , the average public school teacher salary in the US was $66,397 .

Instruction is the largest category of public school spending, according to data from the National Center for Educational Statistics. Adjusting for inflation, average teacher pay is down since 2010.

In 2021 , 35% of people 25 and over had at least a bachelor’s degree.

Over the last decade women have become more educated than men..

Educational attainment is defined as the highest level of formal education a person has completed. The concept can be applied to a person, a demographic group, or a geographic area. Data on educational attainment is produced by the Census Bureau in multiple surveys, which may produce different data. Data from the American Community Survey is shown here to allow for geographic comparisons.

In 2021 , 61% of the Asian 25+ population had completed at least four years of college.

Educational attainment data from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey allows for demographic comparisons across the US.

In 2022, proficiency in math for eighth graders was 26.5% .

Proficiency in reading in 8th grade was 30.8% ., based on a nationwide assessment, reading and math scores declined during the pandemic..

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the only nationally representative data that measures student achievement. NAEP is Congressionally mandated. Tests are given in a sample of schools based on student demographics in a given school district, state, or the US overall. Testing covers a variety of subjects, most frequently math, reading, science, and writing.

In fiscal year 2020, governments spent a combined total of $1.3 trillion on education.

That comes out to $4,010 per person..

USAFacts categorizes government budget data to allocate spending appropriately and to arrive at the estimate presented here. Most government spending on education occurs at the state and local levels rather than the federal.

Government revenue and expenditures are based on data from the Office of Management and Budget, the Census Bureau, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Each is published annually, although due to collection times, state and local government data are not as current as federal data. Thus, when combining federal, state, and local revenues and expenditures, the most recent year for a combined number may be delayed.

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What’s it like to be a teacher in america today, public k-12 teachers are stressed about their jobs and few are optimistic about the future of education; many say poverty, absenteeism and mental health are major problems at their school.

Pew Research Center conducted this study to better understand the views and experiences of public K-12 school teachers. The analysis in this report is based on an online survey of 2,531 U.S. public K-12 teachers conducted from Oct. 17 to Nov. 14, 2023. The teachers surveyed are members of RAND’s American Teacher Panel, a nationally representative panel of public K-12 school teachers recruited through MDR Education. Survey data is weighted to state and national teacher characteristics to account for differences in sampling and response to ensure they are representative of the target population.

Here are the questions used for this report , along with responses, and the survey methodology .

Low-poverty , medium-poverty and high-poverty schools are based on the percentage of students eligible for free and reduced-price lunch, as reported by the National Center for Education Statistics (less than 40%, 40%-59% and 60% or more, respectively).

Secondary schools include both middle schools and high schools.

All references to party affiliation include those who lean toward that party. Republicans include those who identify as Republicans and those who say they lean toward the Republican Party. Democrats include those who identify as Democrats and those who say they lean toward the Democratic Party.

Public K-12 schools in the United States face a host of challenges these days – from teacher shortages to the lingering effects of COVID-19 learning loss to political battles over curriculum .

In the midst of all this, teachers express low levels of satisfaction with their jobs. In fact, they’re much less satisfied than U.S. workers overall.

Here’s how public K-12 teachers are feeling about their jobs:

• 77% say their job is frequently stressful.
• 68% say it’s overwhelming.
• 70% say their school is understaffed.
• 52% say they would not advise a young person starting out today to become a teacher.

When it comes to how their students are doing in school, teachers are relatively downbeat about both academic performance and behavior.

Here’s how public K-12 teachers rate academic performance and behavior at their school:

• 48% say the academic performance of most students at their school is fair or poor. A third say it’s good, and only 17% describe it as excellent or very good.
• 49% say the behavior of most students at their school is fair or poor; 35% say it’s good and 13% say it’s excellent or very good.

The COVID-19 pandemic likely compounded these issues. About eight-in-ten teachers (among those who have been teaching for at least a year) say the lasting impact of the pandemic on students’ behavior, academic performance and emotional well-being has been very or somewhat negative.

Assessments of student performance and behavior differ widely by school poverty level. 1 Teachers in high-poverty schools have a much more negative outlook. But feelings of stress and dissatisfaction among teachers are fairly universal, regardless of where they teach.

Related: What Public K-12 Teachers Want Americans To Know About Teaching

As they navigate these challenges, teachers don’t feel they’re getting the support or reinforcement they need from parents.

Majorities of teachers say parents are doing too little when it comes to holding their children accountable if they misbehave in school, helping them with their schoolwork and ensuring their attendance.

Teachers in high- and medium-poverty schools are more likely than those in low-poverty schools to say parents are doing too little in each of these areas.

These findings are based on a survey of 2,531 U.S. public K-12 teachers conducted Oct. 17-Nov. 14, 2023, using the RAND American Teacher Panel. 2 The survey looks at the following aspects of teachers’ experiences:

• Teachers’ job satisfaction (Chapter 1)
• How teachers manage their workload (Chapter 2)
• Problems students are facing at public K-12 schools (Chapter 3)
• Challenges in the classroom (Chapter 4)
• Teachers’ views of parent involvement (Chapter 5)
• Teachers’ views on the state of public K-12 education (Chapter 6)

Problems students are facing

We asked teachers about some of the challenges students at their school are facing. Three problems topped the list:

• Poverty (53% say this is a major problem among students who attend their school)
• Chronic absenteeism (49%)
• Anxiety and depression (48%)

Chronic absenteeism (that is, students missing a substantial number of school days) is a particular challenge at high schools, with 61% of high school teachers saying this is a major problem where they teach. By comparison, 46% of middle school teachers and 43% of elementary school teachers say the same.

Anxiety and depression are viewed as a more serious problem at the secondary school level: 69% of high school teachers and 57% of middle school teachers say this is a major problem among their students, compared with 29% of elementary school teachers.

Fewer teachers (20%) view bullying as a major problem at their school, though the share is significantly higher among middle school teachers (34%).

A look inside the classroom

We also asked teachers how things are going in their classroom and specifically about some of the issues that may get in the way of teaching.

• 47% of teachers say students showing little or no interest in learning is a major problem in their classroom. The share rises to 58% among high school teachers.
• 33% say students being distracted by their cellphones is a major problem. This is particularly an issue for high school teachers, with 72% saying this is a major problem.
• About one-in-five teachers say students getting up and walking around when they’re not supposed to and being disrespectful toward them (21% each) are major problems. Teachers in elementary and middle schools are more likely than those in high schools to see these as challenges.

A majority of teachers (68%) say they’ve experienced verbal abuse from a student – such as being yelled at or threatened. Some 21% say this happens at least a few times a month.

Physical violence is less common. Even so, 40% of teachers say a student has been violent toward them , with 9% saying this happens at least a few times a month.

About two-thirds of teachers (66%) say that the current discipline practices at their school are very or somewhat mild. Only 2% say the discipline practices at their school are very or somewhat harsh, while 31% say they are neither harsh nor mild. Most teachers (67%) say teachers themselves don’t have enough influence in determining discipline practices at their school.

Behavioral issues and mental health challenges

In addition to their teaching duties, a majority of teachers (58%) say they have to address behavioral issues in their classroom every day. About three-in-ten teachers (28%) say they have to help students with mental health challenges daily.

In each of these areas, elementary and middle school teachers are more likely than those at the high school level to say they do these things on a daily basis.

And teachers in high-poverty schools are more likely than those in medium- and low-poverty schools to say they deal with these issues each day.

Cellphone policies and enforcement

Most teachers (82%) say their school or district has policies regarding cellphone use in the classroom.

Of those, 56% say these policies are at least somewhat easy to enforce, 30% say they’re difficult to enforce, and 14% say they’re neither easy nor difficult to enforce.

Experiences with cellphone policies vary widely across school levels. High school teachers (60%) are much more likely than middle school (30%) and elementary school teachers (12%) to say the policies are difficult to enforce (among those who say their school or district has a cellphone policy).

How teachers are experiencing their jobs

Thinking about the various aspects of their jobs, teachers are most satisfied with their relationship with other teachers at their school (71% are extremely or very satisfied).

They’re least satisfied with how much they’re paid – only 15% are extremely or very satisfied with their pay, while 51% are not too or not at all satisfied.

Among teachers who don’t plan to retire or stop working this year, 29% say it’s at least somewhat likely they will look for a new job in the 2023-24 school year. Within that group, 40% say they would look for a job outside of education, 29% say they’d seek a non-teaching job in education, and only 18% say they’d look for a teaching job at another public K-12 school.

Do teachers find their work fulfilling and enjoyable?

Overall, 56% of teachers say they find their job to be fulfilling extremely often or often; 53% say their job is enjoyable. These are significantly lower than the shares who say their job is frequently stressful (77%) or overwhelming (68%).

Positive experiences are more common among newer teachers. Two-thirds of those who’ve been teaching less than six years say their work is fulfilling extremely often or often, and 62% of this group says their work is frequently enjoyable.

Teachers with longer tenures are somewhat less likely to feel this way. For example, 48% of those who’ve been teaching for six to 10 years say their work is frequently enjoyable.

Balancing the workload

Most teachers (84%) say there’s not enough time during their regular work hours to do tasks like grading, lesson planning, paperwork and answering work emails.

Among those who feel this way, 81% say simply having too much work is a major reason.

Many also point to having to spend time helping students outside the classroom, performing non-teaching duties like lunch duty, and covering other teachers’ classrooms as at least minor reasons they don’t have enough time to get all their work done.

A majority of teachers (54%) say it’s very or somewhat difficult for them to balance work and their personal life. About one-in-four (26%) say it’s very or somewhat easy for them to balance these things, and 20% say it’s neither easy nor difficult.

Among teachers, women are more likely than men to say work-life balance is difficult for them (57% vs. 43%). Women teachers are also more likely to say they often find their job stressful or overwhelming.

How teachers view the education system

A large majority of teachers (82%) say the overall state of public K-12 education has gotten worse in the past five years.

And very few are optimistic about the next five years: Only 20% of teachers say public K-12 education will be a lot or somewhat better five years from now. A narrow majority (53%) say it will be worse.

Among teachers who think things have gotten worse in recent years, majorities say the current political climate (60%) and the lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic (57%) are major reasons. A sizable share (46%) also point to changes in the availability of funding and resources.

Related:  About half of Americans say public K-12 education is going in the wrong direction

Which political party do teachers trust more to deal with educational challenges?

On balance, more teachers say they trust the Democratic Party than say they trust the Republican Party to do a better job handling key issues facing the K-12 education system. But three-in-ten or more across the following issues say they don’t trust either party:

• Shaping school curriculum (42% say they trust neither party)
• Ensuring teachers have adequate pay and benefits (35%)
• Making schools safer (35%)
• Ensuring adequate funding for schools (33%)
• Ensuring all students have equal access to high-quality K-12 education (31%)

A majority of public K-12 teachers (58%) identify or lean toward the Democratic Party. This is higher than the share among the general public (47%).

• Poverty levels are based on the percentage of students in the school who are eligible for free and reduced-price lunch. ↩
• For details, refer to the Methodology section of the report. ↩
• Urban, suburban and rural schools are based on the location of the school as reported by the National Center for Education Statistics (rural includes town). Definitions match those used by the U.S. Census Bureau. ↩

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Table of contents, ‘back to school’ means anytime from late july to after labor day, depending on where in the u.s. you live, among many u.s. children, reading for fun has become less common, federal data shows, most european students learn english in school, for u.s. teens today, summer means more schooling and less leisure time than in the past, about one-in-six u.s. teachers work second jobs – and not just in the summer, most popular.

About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .

Big Ideas 2021: 10 Broad Trends in K-12 Education in 10 Charts

Each year, for the past four years, Education Week has produced a special report on big ideas in K-12 education. The reports focus on important and timely issues that schools have grappled with in the past 12 months. Not surprisingly, the coronavirus pandemic was a major emphasis in the 2021 edition, Big Ideas for Education’s Urgent Challenges . Initially published in September 2021, this report examined such pandemic-related topics as remote learning, educator stress, and student home environments.

Drawing upon the results of a nationally representative survey of nearly 900 teachers, principals, and district leaders that was incorporated into Education Week’s fourth annual report on big ideas in K-12 education, this Spotlight sums up 10 broad trends in 10 accompanying charts. These ideas include the transformation of educational technology, educators’ knowledge of students’ lives outside of school, and educator stress. Given the time period covered by the survey, all of these broad trends were deeply impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, a theme that resonates throughout this report.

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Consumer price growth accelerated in March, adding to cloudy picture for U.S. economy

Inflation remained elevated once again in March, adding another round of price increases to Americans' already-strained wallets.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 12-month price growth accelerated from 3.2% in February to 3.5% in March, matching consensus forecasts among economists.

Excluding food and energy, which represent commodities with more volatile prices, the so-called core 12-month reading was unchanged in March at 3.8%.

Some of the items seeing the largest 12-month leaps in price gains included auto insurance, which soared 22.2%; domestic services like home cleaning, up 10.9%; baby food and formula, up 9.9%; and outpatient hospital services, up 8.3%.

If there was any relief, it was in grocery prices, which were up just 1.2% on the year. And prices for new and used vehicles fell.

But Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate, put the situation succinctly in an email following Wednesday's release.

“There is no improvement here, we’re moving in the wrong direction,” he said.

On paper, the U.S. economy has looked solid. The unemployment rate has now remained below 4% for the longest stretch since the 1960s. Stocks have been at all-time highs. The economy continues to add jobs.

But since the start of the pandemic, Americans have seen average prices increase more than 20% overall — giving people a sense that the cost of many goods and services, not to mention housing, has surged to unreasonable levels.

When will prices come down?

So what will cause price growth to finally slow down to the Federal Reserve's 2% target?

Unfortunately, it usually takes a major economic crisis for broad categories of prices to reverse. Instead, the best that consumers can hope for is that they stop going up so fast.

While there are some signs that it's happening — grocery price increases, for instance, have finally fallen below 2% after surging during the pandemic — economists say it's likely to still take some time for inflation to truly subside.

Complex economic forces, they say, continue to keep price growth elevated.

A significant worker shortage sparked by the pandemic — especially for front-line service employees — helped push hourly pay higher. But this resulted in pushing up prices on the consumer side, since labor costs represent a significant portion of the overall cost of given goods or service.

Meanwhile, supply chain disruptions that emerged during the pandemic have yet to fully subside, said Sarah House, a managing director and senior economist at Wells Fargo.

She pointed to automobile prices, which have surged more than 20% since the start of the pandemic for new vehicles and more than 30% for used vehicles. While the pace of their price increases has abated, difficulties in sourcing auto parts, plus the loss of experienced technicians, have pushed vehicle prices higher.

This, in turn, has pushed auto insurance rates higher — and it turns out that car insurance commands a significant percentage of the overall increase in consumer prices.

“The services side is where we’re continuing to see stronger [price] growth,” House said. “That’s where we’re still getting an elevated degree of inflation from.”

Stagnant pay and higher borrowing costs

Americans’ pay has barely kept up with the price increases. While federal stimulus at the outset of the pandemic helped give people a cash cushion during the worst of it, there is an emerging consensus that this same cushion helped drive prices higher by giving people money to spend.

On net, Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that the effect of inflation has caused Americans’ average hourly pay to rise by just a few cents compared with where it was at the start of the pandemic.

The Federal Reserve, which is in charge of taming price growth, in part by raising interest rates, has sought to fight fire with fire. By raising the cost of borrowing money, the central bank has tried to reduce demand for goods and services, ultimately pushing price growth down.

The Fed’s interest rate hikes have indeed caused borrowing costs for everything from credit cards to automobiles to homes to climb to levels not seen in years.

For many Americans, that’s meant getting locked out of the housing market, not to mention paying credit card rates above 20% and auto loan rates above 8%.

But inflation has persisted, surprising many economists. At the start of the year, the consensus forecast was for economic growth to slow, allowing the Fed to start cutting interest rates this spring, with a total of three cuts for 2024.

But a growing number of analysts now say that, at a minimum, rate cuts will be delayed. Still others say there won’t even be three cuts.

Despite all the challenges, the risk of a recession that would lead to significant job losses remains low. Yet there are signs that consumer jitters are accelerating. The New York Federal Reserve reported Monday that fears of job losses are climbing and that workers who are already out of a job say getting hired is now more difficult than it was prior to the pandemic.

While about one-quarter of Americans report their household financial situation to be better than a year ago, about one-third report being worse off.

It all adds up to a precarious situation. In a speech last week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell called the economic outlook "still quite uncertain."

"The job of sustainably restoring 2% inflation is not yet done," he said.

Rob Wile is a breaking business news reporter for NBC News Digital.

Six people killed in stabbing attack at Sydney's Westfield Bondi Junction, offender shot dead by police officer

Six people have been killed in a knife attack at Westfield Bondi Junction shopping centre in Sydney's east.

The offender, who NSW Police believe to be a 40-year-old man, was shot dead at the scene by a senior officer.

Five of the victims — four women and a man — died at the busy centre on Saturday afternoon and another woman died from her injuries in hospital.

Eight others who were injured, including a nine-month-old child, remain in hospital and some are in a critical condition.

As the attack unfolded, some shoppers ran to find safety in stores while others fled the building and some confronted the armed man.

Warning: Some readers may find the following details of the attack, witness accounts and footage of the incident distressing. 

NSW Police Assistant Commissioner Anthony Cooke said authorities believed the man acted alone and there was no ongoing threat.

Police Commissioner Karen Webb said police believed they knew who the man was but he had not been formally identified.

She said the man was known to police and, while the motive was unclear, early indications suggested the attack was not related to terrorism.

"There's no suggestions anyone was targeted but that could change," she said.

Police said the man was in the shopping centre at about 3pm before leaving and then returning around 20 minutes later with a knife.

A police inspector, who was nearby, was directed towards the man by witnesses, and she shot him dead after the offender confronted her.

"She confronted the offender, who had moved by this stage to level five, as she continued to walk quickly behind him to catch up with him. He turned to face her, raised a knife," Assistant Commissioner Cooke said.

"She discharged a firearm and that person is now deceased."

Commissioner Webb said the officer was "doing well under the circumstances".

"She showed enormous courage and bravery … we just talked [and] she's OK, her family is OK. She's got everything she needs for the time being."

She said the officer would be formally interviewed on Sunday.

A NSW Ambulance spokesperson said the injured people were taken to a number of hospitals across Sydney.

The baby has undergone surgery at Sydney Children's Hospital at Randwick. Another victim was taken to St George Hospital and another to Royal North Shore Hospital.

Three people were taken to St Vincent's Hospital at Darlinghurst. Another two are at Royal Prince Alfred in Camperdown. 

Acting NSW Premier Penny Sharpe said the event was horrific and distressing for the whole state, particularly as it came at a time when people were doing ordinary things and enjoying the first day of the school holiday.  

"I'm personally distressed by this … This is not who we are, this is not the community that we live in," Ms Sharpe said.

"We hold in our hearts the families and the friends and those who have lost loved ones.

"We stand with those who are waiting to hear from those that have been injured."

She thanked the innocent bystanders who risked their lives to help others, particularly the police officer who stopped the offender.

Premier Chris Minns is in Tokyo on leave, but Ms Sharpe said he had been briefed and was part of a crisis cabinet meeting which would be looking at providing support to those affected.

"This is going to be difficult, it's going to be hard for days to come," she said.

"This is really just the beginning of the pain and the grief for so many people."

Federal police join response to attack

The shopping centre, where a crime scene has been established, will remain closed on Sunday.

A large number of emergency vehicles and personnel arrived at the scene, one of the biggest shopping precincts in the city, after receiving triple-0 calls.

Armed police could also be seen conducting a search of the rooftop car park.

Commissioner Reece Kershaw said the Australian Federal Police (AFP) would support NSW Police in the investigation of the attack.

"The AFP has deployed AFP members to the crime scene and we've offered our full specialist capabilities such as digital forensics," he said.

"It is too early to determine a motive and it would be unhelpful to speculate."

Commissioner Kershaw said he had also spoken to the NSW police commissioner and the director-general of ASIO.

"I want to thank NSW Police, emergency services and first responders and the community for their bravery in the face of this shocking incident," he said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the attack was "beyond words or understanding".

"Australians will be shocked this evening," Mr Albanese said.

"This was a horrific act of violence, indiscriminately targeted at innocent people going about an ordinary Saturday doing their shopping."

The prime minister praised the bravery of the police officer who confronted and shot the offender.

"She is certainly a hero," he said.

Witnesses describe 'horrific experience'

As the attack unfolded and police responded, shoppers were evacuated from the centre.

ABC sound engineer Roi Huberman said he was inside a shop when he heard gunshots.

"And suddenly we heard a shot or maybe two shots and we didn't know what to do," he said.

"Then the very capable person in the store took us to the back where it can be locked.

"She then locked the store and then she let us through the back and now we are out."

Shopper Adriana was with her two daughters at a beauty store when they heard gunshots.

"All of a sudden the front doors were closed, and in a matter of seconds we heard some gunshots and got sent to the storage room at the back of the shop. There were about 30 or 40 people there," she said.

"Everyone was screaming, crying, trying to call their relatives. It was a horrific experience.

"There was a lot of screaming and people just screaming, 'Get out, get out, get out of the shopping centre.'"

Nearby salon owner Leanne Devine said she was alerted to the attack by "hundreds and hundreds of people" running out of the centre.

"It was absolutely horrific," she said.

"We're in shock mode. We're traumatised."

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