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Public school enrollment rose steadily throughout the first two decades of the 2000s. The National Center for Education Statistics was projecting public school enrollments to continue to grow, although its future projections were becoming less optimistic, thanks to falling immigration and birth rates. When COVID-19 hit, enrollments took an immediate dive, and the center lowered its […]
The exact date varies across grades and subjects, but Indiana’s student achievement scores peaked about a decade ago and have been falling since. The decline started well before COVID-19 and has not affected students evenly. Perhaps not surprisingly, Indiana’s lowest-performing youngsters have suffered the largest losses. This wasn’t always the case. In the early 2000s, […]
All around the country, districts are drafting budgets that will bring cuts to schools starting this fall. As those budgets come before school boards this spring, board members will undoubtedly hear from staff and families. Communities will push back against decisions that include layoffs; cuts to gifted programs, athletics and college advising; and reductions to […]
Nationally, school districts and charter schools have poured billions of federal pandemic relief dollars into staffing. Most states don’t detail that spending precisely, but North Carolina does. A FutureEd analysis of how North Carolina is spending its last and largest round of federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief money suggests that localities across the […]
Objectively speaking, it’s a weird time to be talking about layoffs in schools. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021 had the fewest layoffs in public education in the last two decades. Last year was just a bit higher, and so far 2023 is tracking about the same. There are still pockets of layoffs […]