Center for Law and Education

06/30/2023

The Center for Law and Education (CLE) is actively seeking a Managing Director to join our team in advancing the right of all students to a high-quality education, particularly those from low-income families. This is an exciting opportunity to work with us and expand our efforts and resources nationally. The position does NOT require a law degree. Depth of understanding of education policy, research, and school reform is a big plus. Please click on the our search firm’s link below to learn more, and please share widely with your networks.

04/19/2022

"At the Timilty, [Boston] saw firsthand how school success could happen. It would also see how hard it was to make it last."

Timilty's enrollment plummeted from 700 in 2012 to just 200 this year. The district will shut the school's doors in June.

04/18/2022

Florida "has rejected more than 50 math textbooks [41% of submissions] from next school year's curriculum, citing references to critical race theory among reasons for the rejections." Huh??

Move follows a series of hardline measures by Republicans in the state to alter teaching in schools as governor welcomes news

04/17/2022

"With districts seeing absenteeism rates as high as almost 50%, experts suggest improving school climate and providing attendance incentives could help."

With districts seeing absenteeism rates as high as almost 50%, experts say improving school climate and providing attendance incentives could help.

04/14/2022

"From 2009 to 2021, the share of American high-school students who say they feel “persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness” rose from 26 percent to 44 percent...This is the highest level of teenage sadness ever recorded."

Four forces are propelling the rising rates of depression among young people.

04/14/2022

"[A] focus on data transparency could better enable schools and stakeholders to understand where students missing in the margins are in real time: across enrollment in school at all, daily attendance, and engagement in learning." "The problem is toobigto ignore."

In October 2020, Bellwether Education Partners’ estimate that as many as 3 million students were missing in the margins and were receiving no formal education at all became a national shorthand about the severity of the pandemic for America’s young people. More than one year later, and with the ...

04/07/2022

New study says “we find no evidence that state takeover improves academic achievement".... "What’s more, there was even the suggestion of “disruptive” effects on student outcomes in the early years of takeovers..."

A YEAR AGO this month, the state board of education took up a proposal to temporarily suspend annual performance reviews of Massachusetts school districts because the MCAS test they would be based on had been canceled in 2020 due to the COVID pandemic. During the discussion, Michael Moriarty, a boar...

04/07/2022

“The law would erase me as an LGBTQ teacher...Nobody would be able to know, which then puts me in the closet, and I’m there seven hours a day, if not more, five days a week. I wouldn’t be able to be who I am.”

Following the enactment of what critics call the “Don’t Say Gay” law, some LGBTQ teachers have quit the profession altogether.

04/07/2022

"Jackson, a daughter of schoolteachers . . .will become the first Black woman to sit on the court and only the eighth who is not a White man."

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson won support from all Democrats and a handful of Republicans in her Senate confirmation vote Thursday. She will be sworn in when Justice Stephen G. Breyer retires this summer.

04/07/2022

A reminder to all about students with communication challenges: "Though my cognition — my understanding and intelligence — is unaffected by my aphasia, sometimes that is not clear to new acquaintances because of my speech. That misunderstanding can itself be painful and frustrating."

My message for Bruce Willis and for everyone out there struggling with aphasia — or any other communication disorder — is that you are not alone.

04/07/2022

Fifteen Republican attorneys general challenge Title IX rule protecting transgender students' identities, some because it would conflict with laws in their states.

The attorneys general are threatening to take legal action if the Biden administration issues a regulation protecting transgender students.

04/06/2022

"The pause on federal student loan payments introduced and extended during the pandemic meant borrowers could redirect money — potentially hundreds of dollars a month — that would have gone toward repaying their debt to other needs."

Black women, who stood the most to gain from the payment moratorium, shoulder a disproportionate share of the $1.7 trillion student debt burden in the United States.