The average U.S. public elementary class had 19.1 students in 2020-21, according to federal survey data, ranging from 14.2 in Maine to 23.0 in California. Here is every state, plus the reason class size runs higher than the student-teacher ratio.
Kate Carter
U.S. public schools employ about 3.15 million full-time-equivalent teachers in 49 states and D.C. with reported data. Texas has the most, with 369,150, even though California enrolls more students. Here is every state, with students per teacher.
Arthur Chen
Hannah Jorgensen, a 24-year-old fifth-grade teacher at Borlaug Elementary in Coralville, and 10-year-old student Ahmed Osman died after going into the water near the Coralville Reservoir spillway during a class trip. The Johnson County Sheriff's Office is investigating how each of them got into the water.
Mary Johnson
Samira Hardcastle, a former Metro Nashville Teacher of the Year, resigned after nearly a decade and went public with claims that district practices pushed her out, including being asked to change a student's failing grade. Metro Nashville Public Schools disputes key parts of her account.
Mary Johnson
North Carolina rewrote four of its teacher licensure rules in the July 2026 state budget, including the test scores once required just to get into a teacher prep program. Here's what you actually need to teach in NC public schools now: the degree, the program, the exams, and which license you hold along the way.
Mary Johnson
Assume that in ten to twenty years an AI explains any K-12 concept better than the average adult in the room. The job of teacher still is not the same thing as the task of instruction. What holds an adult in that room is legal, custodial and economic, not technical.
Arthur Chen
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
A Georgia English teacher who said she was pushed out of her job over a private social media post about Charlie Kirk has reached a confidential settlement with the Oglethorpe County School District, ending a federal free-speech lawsuit.
Mary Johnson
Your child comes home and says their teacher is mean. Before you fire off an email, sort out what you are actually dealing with. Here is how to tell ordinary friction from real harm, and exactly what to do about each.
Mary Johnson
The accusation of favoritism is one of the most uncomfortable a teacher can receive, partly because it's hard to disprove and partly because it forces you to examine your own behavior in ways that aren't always comfortable. A parent who believes their child is being treated unfairly compared to classmates is already in a defensive posture when they contact you, and the wrong response in the first thirty seconds can turn a manageable complaint into a formal grievance...
Mary Johnson
Every student will eventually have a teacher who is short-tempered, dismissive, sarcastic, or just plain unpleasant to be around. It's one of those unavoidable parts of school that nobody puts in the brochure. How you handle it matters, not just for your grade in that class, but for the skill you're building of navigating difficult people, which is going to come up for the rest of your life.
Mary Johnson
At some point in the last thirty years, failing a student became complicated in a way it wasn't before. Not impossible, not prohibited in most places, but complicated enough that many teachers feel the path of least resistance is to pass a student along and let the next grade level deal with the gap. The result is a system where grade retention has declined significantly even as academic performance has stagnated or declined, and where both the teachers and administrators involved generally know the promoted student isn't ready but promote them anyway...
Mary Johnson
