Franklin Towne Charter High School agreed Friday to a False Claims Act settlement over its January 2023 admissions lottery, which prosecutors say was manipulated to lower Black applicants' odds. The school is 17% Black in a city where district schools are 42% Black. Neither the school nor former CEO Joseph Venditti admitted liability.
Mary Johnson
Federal law mostly forbids public schools from separating students by sex, with one carve-out that a few cities have used heavily. We counted every public school in the country where at least 95% of students are boys or girls. Texas and New York hold half, and the biggest is a 180-year-old girls' school in Baltimore.
Arthur Chen
Nearly three in four parents planned to use an AI tool somewhere in this year's school shopping, up from a channel that barely existed a year ago. Retailers say those shoppers now buy more often than people arriving from search. Here is what the surveys show, where the tools help, and where they still get prices wrong.
Kate Carter
In 15 states a student can legally leave school at 16. In 26 states and Washington, D.C., the law requires attendance until 18, and Texas goes to 19. The start age varies too, from 5 to 8. Here is the full state-by-state picture, and why the end age is not the same as graduation.
Kate Carter
A 4-3 vote in one of Douglas County's fastest-growing towns rewrote the rules for 13 sites that developers set aside for schools. The district now has to fund a school before it gets the land, and seven of those sites are already penciled in for parks. We read the ordinance and the town's site memo.
Mary Johnson
Mid-year moves are harder than summer moves for reasons most families do not anticipate: credits that do not transfer cleanly, support plans that pause, and a social world that has already formed. Here is what to handle before, during, and after the switch.
Mary Johnson
The nation's largest school system will bar student-facing generative AI from 2-K through eighth grade for the 2026-27 year, ban companion chatbots in every grade, cap classroom screen time, and limit high school AI to five named pilots. The mayor's message to the tech industry was blunt.
Mary Johnson
We compared 2025 and 2026 STAAR results for more than 8,000 Texas schools. Reading, math, and social studies each moved one to two points. Science moved seven, in both tested grades, and at a majority of schools. Here is where the gains landed, which districts moved most, and the caveat on science.
Arthur Chen
A fifth straight failing rating forces the Texas education commissioner to replace a district's elected school board or close the school. At least 14 districts now have a school at four, and the list runs from San Antonio ISD to a district of 172 students.
Arthur Chen
Pennsylvania is unusual: the state does not hand you one credit number. Districts set the credits, and the statewide requirement is Act 158, which gives every student five different pathways to a diploma, with the Keystone Exams at the center of two of them.
Kate Carter
Google announced a wave of AI study tools for the new school year, including a free year of its paid tier for college students. What the announcement does not include is guidance on how students should use any of it. Here is the practical version, plus what families should check first.
Kate Carter
A K-8 school keeps students in one building from kindergarten through eighth grade, skipping the move to middle school. Research on that extra transition is unusually consistent, and it is the strongest argument in the K-8 school's favor.
Kate Carter
The US has recorded more than 2,700 measles cases in 2026, the most in decades, and kindergarten vaccination has slipped below the level that protects a community. Here is how schools respond to a case, what the 21-day exclusion rule means, and what to check now.
Mary Johnson
Uniforms are one of the most confidently debated policies in American schooling and one of the least settled by evidence. Studies find little effect on achievement, modest and inconsistent effects on attendance and behavior, and one finding that surprised researchers.
Arthur Chen
A 14-year-old is usually a freshman, a 10-year-old is usually in fifth grade, and the word usually is doing real work in both sentences. Here is the full age-to-grade chart, why the ranges overlap, and how cutoff dates and holding kids back shift the math.
Mary Johnson
A coalition of Virginia parents and former teachers is asking the state Board of Education for a statewide framework governing digital tools in schools, plus the right to opt a child out. A state senator plans to introduce a model policy in January.
Mary Johnson
About 90% of America's 480,000 school buses run on diesel, now averaging $5.62 a gallon against $3.70 a year ago. Districts are consolidating routes, staggering bell times, and tapping rainy-day funds, and one Washington official measured the hit in teachers.
Mary Johnson
The American school year is famously 180 days, but that is a convention, not a national rule. Colorado requires as few as 160 days, Kansas goes to 186, some states count hours instead of days, and the four-day week is quietly rewriting the math in hundreds of districts.
Arthur Chen
Meta settled with 52 attorneys general and agreed to default limits on teen accounts: two hours a day, no access overnight, hidden likes, and muted notifications during school hours. It does not block the apps during class, and it does not cover TikTok, YouTube, or Snapchat.
Mary Johnson
Shifting bedtime 15 to 30 minutes earlier each night for a week or two is the method pediatricians recommend. It works well for younger kids. For teenagers there is a complication worth understanding, because their body clocks are working against the school bell.
Kate Carter
