As families and communities grapple with the COVID-19 crisis, child care should be a front-and-center issue. Widespread school and child care closures have created an immediate crisis for workers whose jobs don't allow telework options--whether it's those in the health care industry or people employed in grocery stores or other low-wage…

Parents and caregivers across Boston continue to face immense challenges to find quality, affordable childcare and this crisis is having a far-reaching impact on our society. Neighborhood disparities continue to exist, but families in all 15 neighborhoods face this challenge -- child care in Boston remains unaffordable for the majority of…

All children -- regardless of race, class, gender, or national origin -- deserve to fulfill their potential and have the opportunity to thrive. Over the last several years, Texas children and youth have faced serious challenges and disruptions to their lives due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Children of color, in particular, were disproportionately…

For years, parents and policymakers have raised concerns about teacher shortages. These concerns escalated during the COVID-19 pandemic, amid reports of teachers leaving the profession, fewer new teachers entering, and schools struggling to hire teachers. The Explanatory Statement accompanying the Further Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2020…

This report provides an overview of kindergarten readiness of six Baltimore City Public Schools (City Schools) kindergarten cohorts from the 2016-17 to the 2021-22 school year. This report is accompanied by the Annual Digest of City Schools Kindergarten Statistics, 2022 Edition (Baltimore Education Research Consortium [BERC], 2022), which provides…

"Making the Grade analyzes the condition of public school funding in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The current report presents a picture of school funding in 2020-2021, the first full school year of the COVID-19 pandemic and the most recent data available. The report ranks and grades each state on three measures to answer the…

Because of the pandemic, many states will likely need to determine how they can best address shrinking revenues with the least harm to students, even as the needs of students have increased and the crisis has exposed gaping disparities. ExcelinEd, in partnership with a diverse group of organizations--the Aspen Institute, the District Management…

State and district budgets are spread thin as a result of the pandemic, leaving state and district leaders to make tough decisions about what to prioritize and where to invest resources during the COVID-19 crisis and recovery. Actionable research provides state and district leaders with insights into the policies and programs that best serve their…

To prepare for the future, state policymakers can learn from the past -- specifically, the Great Recession and the COVID-19 Recession. Drawing on lessons learned from both time periods, the authors of this brief set out to answer the following questions: (1) What lessons from past economic crises might help state policymakers and advocates prepare…

Nationwide, public schools began to experience a youth population decline prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. After 14 years of successively smaller U.S. birth cohorts, elementary public schools now face gradually declining student counts. The complex convergence of shifting age demographics, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, and ongoing…

The 2020-2021 school year presented unprecedented challenges for States and local educational agencies (LEAs) throughout the country because of the national pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). For successful recovery efforts, it is essential to examine the expectations for children with disabilities, English learners…

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the reality of life in all aspects of human endeavors. The education sector was not spared--the school system was uprooted and procedures had to be made quickly for the safety of students and faculty. As a result, educators struggled with keeping students engaged academically during online learning and the stress…

The COVID-19 crisis has been a nearly unprecedented disruption to American education at all levels. Disruptions to early childhood learning have also been widespread. Public pre-K programs attended by 1.6 million children nationwide were closed to help stop the community spread of COVID-19. Roughly one-third of children under age five typically…

The COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented, urgent challenges for the child care and early education workforce. Though the workforce has always been fragile, new stressors presented over the past year have highlighted fundamental structural problems in the system, including the inequities facing Black, Latina, and Native American child care…

Background/Context: Despite the surge in efficacy studies, a recent meta-analysis indicates that the relative effectiveness of any two math interventions is largely unknown (Nelson & McMaster, 2019). Additionally, policy makers rarely choose educational programs based on an assessment of costs and cost-effectiveness (Hollands et al., 2016;…