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
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
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
New federal guidance says considering race in student discipline is itself discrimination, reversing a decade-old policy that told schools to examine their discipline data for racial disparities. Two districts are under investigation, and both say they have not been told why.
Arthur Chen
There is no federal ban on paddling students, so it is left to states. Fifteen still have laws allowing corporal punishment in public schools, almost all in the South, even as psychologists broadly agree it is harmful and ineffective. Here is where it happens, what the research shows, and why supporters defend it.
Mary Johnson
Texas released its 2026 A-F accountability ratings for 1,202 districts and 9,105 schools. A ratings climbed, F ratings fell, and 585 schools jumped straight to an A. The ratings also arrive on time, after lawsuits blocked them for years.
Arthur Chen
The Quality Education Commission says schools need $13.8 billion just to hold steady and $16.2 billion to hit new targets. Enrollment has dropped nearly 33,000 students since 2017, and even the commission's own chair says more money alone won't fix it.
Mary Johnson
High schoolers from all 50 states spent a weekend in a replica Senate chamber in Boston and passed the Students First Act. A superintendents group is now sending it to 10,000 school leaders who are writing their own AI rules with no federal guidance.
Mary Johnson
Charter schools cluster where state law invites them and vanish where it doesn't. Our count of every active public school in the NCES data shows California with the most charters, Washington, D.C. running more than half its schools as charters, and six states with none at all.
Mary Johnson
School closures have jumped 35% in four years, and the reason is not mainly budgets. It is bodies. Our own enrollment data shows the districts now closing schools, from Houston to Broward, have each lost 9% to 17% of their students since 2017-18.
Kate Carter
US public-school enrollment fell about 2.9 percent between 2017-18 and 2024-25, a loss of roughly 1.45 million students. But the national number hides a sharp regional split, with the Northeast and coastal West shrinking while the Sun Belt and Mountain West grow.
Arthur Chen
The 5th Circuit lifted the decades-old desegregation mandate over Concordia Parish, a case dating to 1965. Supporters call it local control restored. Civil rights groups call the orders still-needed tools. Here is what the ruling does.
Mary Johnson
The new state budget quietly rewrote how North Carolina licenses teachers: no more admissions tests for teacher-prep programs, more time for new teachers to pass exams, and an easier path for out-of-state hires. Here is what each change actually does.
Mary Johnson
The four-day week is spreading fast across the rural West, and its appeal is real: teacher recruitment, morale, and a day off families cherish. But the cost savings are modest and the achievement research leans slightly negative. Here is what the evidence actually says.
Arthur Chen
Under a new Indiana law, a school must earn an 'A' on the state's accountability scale, among other requirements, before it can apply to run a four-day week. The state's only four-day school is a high-poverty elementary that has never earned one.
Mary Johnson
New Jersey's 2027 budget sends districts a record $12.4 billion in state aid, but leaders say it will not cover soaring health-insurance premiums and other rising costs. Many are again facing staff and program cuts weeks before school starts.
Mary Johnson
The cost of covering employee healthcare has risen astronomically for Georgia school systems over 16 years, from about $2,000 per worker a year in 2010 to more than $23,000 now. Districts say it is forcing tradeoffs that reach students.
Mary Johnson
Under a new state law, Maryland's 24 school districts must adopt classroom AI policies by this fall, guided by recommendations the state education department just released. Some districts are already piloting tools.
Mary Johnson
