Strapped for Cash: Districts OK Union Raises, Don’t Have the Money to Fund Them
School systems in Philadelphia, Fairfax County and Baltimore County had to borrow money or renegotiate contracts after budget shortfalls. Several major school districts have approved teachers union contracts only to find they didn’t have the money to pay for them. In late August, Philadelphia Public Schools and its teachers union narrowly avoided a strike with […]
New Gallup Poll: 1 in 4 Teachers Don’t Have Necessary Resources, Support Staff
Over 60% of educators reported a shortage of teaching assistants, mental health resources and special educators, seriously impacting job satisfaction. More than 1 in 4 U.S. public school teachers are missing the basic materials or staffing support needed to effectively do their jobs, significantly impacting workplace satisfaction, according to a new Gallup-Walton Family Foundation report. Teachers […]
$200 Rent, District Supe as Landlord: Affordable Teacher Housing Is on the Rise
As housing prices spike, more districts are building teacher homes to attract young, lower-paid school staffers and help keep those they already have. When Nathan Phipps interviewed for a teaching job four years ago in Byers, Colorado, he didn’t know that his future superintendent would also be his landlord. A recent college graduate from Kansas, […]
Federal Aid Stalled for Schools Near Military Bases, Reservations, Parks
Imai and O’Brien: About 1,100 school districts near federal properties— with 8 million students — rely on Impact Aid to replace lost local taxes. The clock is ticking for some of the nation’s most vulnerable school districts as delayed federal payments amid the government shutdown push them toward financial and operational breaking points. In Oglala Lakota County […]
A School Full of Teachers Who Reflect Its Community Doesn’t Happen By Accident
Educator’s view: My New Jersey schools recruit locally, pay people as they train, coach them well and show a clear path forward so they stay. I could have been another name in a long list of statistics. I grew up in Paterson, New Jersey, raised by a single Black teenage mother. She worked long hours […]
Inside the ‘TA to BA’ Educator Fellowship: How One Rhode Island Initiative Is Elevating Experienced Paraprofessionals — and Creating a More Diverse Teacher Force
It was past 7 p.m. and everyone on the Zoom call had already worked jam-packed days in the classroom. But still, over 90 minutes into the session, the energy was palpable: cameras on, participants speaking without hesitation and listeners nodding vigorously. It was the weekly full-cohort meeting for the “TA to BA” fellowship, a group […]
Why Michigan Legislators Want to Make it Easier to Become a Substitute Teacher
The state’s House Education Committee heard testimony from educators to modify current requirements. Lawmakers on the Michigan House Education Committee heard testimony from educators earlier this month regarding HB 4549, which would modify the requirements to become a substitute teacher in hopes of addressing the ongoing shortage. Rep. Nate Shannon (D-Sterling Heights), who sponsored the bill, […]
Amid Texas’s Substitute Teacher Shortage, Many Classrooms Are Being Led By Administrators, School Staff and Uncredentialed Stand-Ins
When high school teacher Jennifer Lee came down with COVID-19-induced pneumonia during winter break, first-year teacher Hana Oglesby-Hendrix “adopted” her class. The two teachers share a portable building at Harker Heights High School in Killeen Independent School District, and substitutes are harder to come by than in previous years. Since the beginning of January, Oglesby-Hendrix […]
Educating Through COVID: From Utah’s Substitute Teacher Crisis to a Driver Shortage in Chicago Leading District to Look Beyond Yellow Buses, 9 Ways States Are Confronting the Crisis
Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, delves into a conversation in Education Next concerning how school leaders can most effectively use COVID-19 relief funds to accelerate learning, give students needed support, and position schools for success as the pandemic wanes. Roza touches on promising ways she’s seeing the money being spent, including “districts […]
Oregon Schools Not Using Millions of State Funds on Substitute Teacher Training
Many substitute teachers across Oregon claim districts owe them for the time they spent taking mandatory training.When Debbie Fery started hearing this year from substitute teachers who had not been paid for time spent taking mandatory trainings, it felt personal. Fery, treasurer and chair of government affairs for the Oregon Substitute Teachers Association, and a […]
In Los Angeles, 45 Elementary Schools Beat the Odds in Teaching Kids to Read
When The 74 started looking for schools that were doing a good job teaching kids to read, we began with the data. We crunched the numbers for nearly 42,000 schools across all 50 states and Washington, D.C. and identified 2,158 that were beating the odds by significantly outperforming what would be expected given their student demographics. Seeing all that data was […]
Are Kids Making Progress in Reading? It All Depends on How You Measure It
Different literacy tests evaluate different things. It may not be a question of gains vs. declines, but of decoding vs. comprehension. Earlier this summer, the curriculum and assessment company Amplify reported that 70% of kindergartners and first graders were on track to learn to read. According to data collected from a test called DIBELS, scores were up […]