We asked The 74 staff to offer up their latest recommendations, hoping that it might provide those looking for a good read during the cold winter months some engaging options. 

Here are 11 books we enjoyed this year:

1.

The best decision I ever made was to pursue my love of writing. Second to that is my love of art. I travel around the world with my sketchbook, inspired by architecture, sculptures and paintings from across the globe. 

That’s why I was so excited to read Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton. The opening pages of this incredible book were among the best written in the history of nonfiction books. It reads like a high-level master’s thesis — which sounds like an insult, but actually is not. It was so incredibly informative. 

Thornton takes the reader around the world to see where art is made and sold. It was fascinating. I’ve never read a more detailed account of this behind-the-scenes activity than the one Thornton provided. I would love to read this book again. —Jo Napolitano, Senior Reporter

2.

When President Barack Obama his annual summer reading list, I pay very close attention — especially to the fiction he chooses. Just days before I found The God of the Woods by Liz Moore on Obama’s list, a friend had touted it as meeting my two book qualifications: it had to be an engaging page turner and it had to grab me on page one — a nod to all my years in New York City tabloid journalism!

The God of the Woods is a combo mystery, thriller and family story set in the summer of 1975 at a camp in upstate New York when Barbara Van Laar — the daughter of the wealthy family that owns the camp — has gone missing. This isn’t the first time a Van Laar child has disappeared — Barbara’s older brother, Bear, also vanished more than a decade before, never to be found.

The search for Barbara uncovers many secrets and sends shockwaves through the wealthy family, the camp, and the blue-collar community that serves them. The characters, particularly Barbara, her parents and camp director T.J., are well-developed and compelling. The plot is full of twists and turns, just like the upstate mountain range where the story is set. I don’t want to say too much other than what my friend said: “Probably a little too good a read if you’ve got a kid at sleepaway camp!” —JoAnne Wasserman, Executive Editor

3.

I am a huge fan of journalist and historian Garrett Graff and last summer, I spent a lot of warm evenings on my deck with his Watergate: A New History.

I have vivid memories of watching the 1973 hearings with my parents as a child and of going to see the film version of All the President’s Men a couple of years later. The journalism bug bit me early. 

Despite its heft, Graff’s book, published in February 2022, is a page-turner. A half-century after Richard Nixon’s resignation, co-conspirators have served their sentences, sold memoirs and died — freeing an avalanche of information that was unavailable to reporters at the time. 

Without the pressure of breaking news deadlines, Graff turns minor players in the conspiracies, cover-ups and investigations into compelling characters. One after another, they come to grips with the depth of the wrongdoing — only to be stunned by new evidence of the president’s involvement. 

Especially riveting is the last third of the book, where Congress, cabinet members and Nixon intimates wrestle with questions that are not so removed from today’s headlines: Whether a sitting president can withhold records from the highest courts in the land, how to orchestrate hearings so that they create a narrative understandable to the public and whether it was possible to shield the dignity of the office from the depravity of its occupant. —Beth Hawkins, Senior Writer and National Correspondent

4.

For 2024, I committed to reading only literature by Black authors and it has challenged me to explore new genres. As a first-time mystery reader, I found Brendan Slocumb’s 2022 The Violin Conspiracy to be a captivating and accessible introduction.

The Violin Conspiracy focuses on main character Ray — an honest and passionate Black violinist who discovers a priceless violin connected to his enslaved ancestors. When he chooses to play the instrument during performances, Ray unexpectedly rises to fame as if the violin is a good luck charm. In the book, this is seen as a remarkable feat, reflecting the reality that Black musicians make up just 2.4% of American orchestra members, according to a . 

When Ray’s violin is stolen, his relentless search to recover it consumes his time and takes precedence over preparing for performances. As he navigates both the quest for his instrument and the systemic obstacles Black musicians face in a predominantly white field, Slocumb paints a vivid picture of the personal and professional challenges Ray endures. Though the book contains triggering elements, such as racial slurs and references to slavery, they can serve as crucial elements to understanding the racial issues Slocumb chooses to explore — adding depth to Ray’s struggle with his own identity in the classical music scene.

For those with a personal connection to music — like myself, having played instruments including the violin, for the majority of my life — the novel resonates on a profound level. It felt as though I was part of Ray’s global audience, with the power of his music transcending how I processed the racial tensions at play within the story. Slocumb’s seamless intertwinement of suspense, arts and culture has set a high bar for the rest of my literary journey. —Trinity Alicia, Digital Producer

5.

I deeply cherish the fact that the majority of my reading takes place with my children curled up around me, which on its own is pretty sweet. One of their most requested books is Shel Silverstein’s 1981 A Light in the Attic, or what they like to call “funny poem book.” 

A Light in the Attic is not only filled with whimsical poetry but is also accompanied by illustrations drawn by Silverstein himself. 

A few of my children’s favorite snippets include “mustard ice cream,” “polar bears in Frigidaires,” “Meehoos” and “Exactlywatts.” Some of the poems in the collection are pretty vicious like Who Ordered the Broiled Face? and Skin Stealer, but I think those tend to go over their heads. 

My daughter has been extremely interested in one poem called Ladies First! It features a character called Pamela Purse, whom my daughter calls Kamala Harris. Proclaiming “ladies first!” does not always work out well for Pamela, but in some way I think it is inspiring my daughter to understand her own power and how to advocate for herself — except around cannibals. 

Their grandpa was a poet, who probably preferred Robert Frost to Silverstein, but I’m sure he would have been proud to witness their fascination with the art form. —Eamonn Fitzmaurice, Art and Technology Director

6.

Colson Whitehead was inspired to write The Nickel Boys after reading a news article about archaeology students at the University of South Florida unearthing the bodies of dozens of boys who had been tortured and raped and then buried in unmarked graves on the grounds of The Dozier School for Boys.  

His novel revolves around fictional character Elwood Curtis, a Black boy being raised by his grandmother in the Jim Crow-era South. Elwood is a good student and hard worker who gets selected to attend classes at a local college. But when he is unfairly arrested and sentenced to a juvenile reform school called the Nickel Academy in Tallahassee, Florida, his dreams are dashed and his life takes a decidedly dark turn. 

At the Nickel Academy, Ellwood is separated from the only family he knows and subjected to strict disciplinary actions and severe beatings. He forges a friendship during his time at the Nickel Academy, an alliance that helps both he and his companion endure the racism and abuse they experience at the hands of the school’s staff. 

Whitehead’s novel is gut-wrenching and beautifully written. It shines a light on one of America’s darkest periods and depicts the scars that are left on people who have endured one injustice after another. —Nicole Ridgway, Editor in Chief

7.

If you’re an Emily in Paris fan, you may have seen the multi-talented Ashley Park singing the song Beautiful Ruins in Rome this season. I can’t help but think it was a sly nod to one of my favorite recent reads, Jess Walter’s 2012 bestseller by the same name that uses the filming of the epic 1960’s flop Cleopatra in Rome as a key plot device.

I am all there for books that satirize Hollywood. This one is a leading example of the insidery, delicious industry send-ups that make Beautiful Ruins such a fun, witty read — including an appearance by the beautiful ruin himself: Richard Burton. 

But the heart of the book is the enduring love and friendship between an American starlet and a wistful Italian innkeeper and what happens to them over the course of five decades after their forced parting. And speaking of multi-talented, Walter is also a former Spokane, Washington, newspaper reporter who wrote a definitive account of the 1992 siege at Ruby Ridge. —Kathy Moore, Executive Editor

8.

The Bee Sting was by far one of my favorite reads of this year. In Paul Murray’s tragicomic saga, the Barnes family is definitely in trouble. 

Dickie’s car business is going under and to cope, he’s spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker. His wife Imelda is engrossed in selling her jewelry on eBay while barely dodging the attention of a local farmer. Their teenage daughter Cass is binge drinking, and their 12-year-old son PJ is plotting an escape from home. 

As the Barnes family grapples with their mounting problems, they face the question of whether they can still rewrite their story and find a happy ending.

Murray is a master in plot with the ability to brilliantly weave together the narratives of seemingly unrelated characters and moments in time. The shifting perspectives brought depth and nuanced character development and the writing was simultaneously crisp and beautiful. This, paired with the surprising and complex ending, has kept the book on my mind since finishing it. —Amanda Geduld, Staff Writer

9.

The Earthseed series by one of my favorite authors, Octavia Butler, transcends the typical sci-fi label given by fans and literary experts. Butler’s work is genre blurring, dealing with race, sexism, religion and social commentary. 

Published in 1993, the first book Parable of the Sower is set in a post-apocalyptic America where climate change and a kind of civil war feels prescient in today’s politically divided landscape. And guess when this novel takes place? 2025!

The novel follows Lauren Olamina, a young Black woman who can feel the physical and emotional pain of others. After a violent attack on her town she leads survivors and other people they meet along the way to find a safe place to live. Over the course of the story, Olamina forms a religion called Earthseed, which teaches “God is Change” and that humanity must spread out into the Galaxy to seed new worlds.

Parable of the Sower has earned multiple accolades, including being named the . The book has since been adapted into an opera and a graphic novel. 

Its 1998 sequel Parable of the Talents follows Olimina and daughter Larkin Olamina/Asha Vere. Set in 2032, Olamina establishes an utopian community called Acorn, centered around Earthseed, but things take a dark and brutal turn.

While Butler published a ton of great short stories and novels, this series is one of her best. I can’t recommend it enough. —James Fields, Video Director

10. 

Victor LaValle’s taut, disturbing novella The Ballad of Black Tom begins with a curious dedication: “For H.P. Lovecraft, with all my conflicted feelings.” It suggests the book’s dual purpose: to pay homage to one of the fathers of modern horror while also holding a funhouse mirror up to the legacy of one of the more notorious racist authors in any genre.  

LaValle, who is Black, sets his mystery in Jazz Age New York. Charles Thomas Tester, a hustler who walks the streets of Harlem with an empty guitar case, is trying to make ends meet and care for his father, “a man who’d been dying ever since his wife of twenty-one years expired.” The call to deliver a mysterious yellow book to a shadowy woman in Queens ultimately brings him in contact with a conspiracy of wealthy families who are quite literally playing with the nature of reality.  

LaValle has a lot of fun turning Lovecraftian tropes on their head. For Lovecraft, New York, with its immigrants, vice and crime, was the epitome of everything wrong with the Modern Age. In setting his story there, viewed through the eyes of a Black man, LaValle lovingly evokes Harlem in the morning as being like “a single drop of blood inside an enormous body that was waking up.”

The book was recommended to me by a friend who knows I’m not a fan of horror. But with the exception of one exceptionally bloody (but necessary) scene, The Ballad of Black Tom plays more with eerie psychological suspense than cheap thrills and gore. 

While many other books grapple with Lovecraft’s tortured legacy — Matt Ruff’s Lovecraft Country was turned into an uneven series on HBO — LaValle’s work was justly lauded, the 2016 Shirley Jackson award for best novella. It deals with timeless themes of identity and the relationship between fathers and sons. But especially in this post-election season, its meditation on conspiratorial thinking, violence and xenophobia feels frighteningly fresh. —Andrew Brownstein, Executive Editor

11.

Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer was my favorite read of the year. Yes, it’s wonky and not exactly a beach read, but Dederer, a Seattle-area critic, has written what is probably the most complete exploration ever of the complex relationship between art, its creators and its consumers. 

She directly confronts the sometimes uncomfortable truths about our beloved artists (Woody Allen, Miles Davis, Roman Polanski, Pablo Picasso, Wagner … do I need to go on?) who have had messy, sometimes criminally messy, personal lives. While they’re mostly men, she also offers up a critique of women artists (Doris Lessing, Joni Mitchell) who have made problematic personal decisions for their art.

The key question: Can we still love the art but not the artist? 

Dederer navigates her own experiences as a fan and a writer while staring down our often contradictory relationship with problematic figures. She offers a helpful analogy, suggesting that we should see our favorite art, music, poetry, writing, etc., as a tapestry. If it’s visibly stained, do we still love it? Perhaps we love it … more?

The book is not just a commentary on specific artists but also an invitation to engage with our own values as consumers of culture. And Dederer’s vulnerability (she is honest about her own shortcomings as a mother in service to both her writing and, well, her drinking) makes the book a compelling read that changed how I think about problematic geniuses. —Greg Toppo, Senior Writer

To be part of the growth and development of these young reporters, to watch and help them develop the skills and curiosity needed to become effective observers has been rewarding work.

This year, we worked with them on stories ranging from the rise in homelessness among LAUSD students; the making of an Academy Award-winning film about LAUSD’s musical repair shop; to the school system’s iconic coffee cake. Their enthusiasm for their work always comes through in their stories and in their willingness to work hard even as they carry a full load of classes, and, often a job.   

Here are 10 of the most read 2024 student stories:    

1. An LAUSD School Battles Chronic Absenteeism With Washers and Dryers

For most students, having clean clothes to wear to school is not a problem. But for many at 112th St. S.T.E.A.M. Academy in Watts, clean clothing is such a struggle it has become one of the main contributors to chronic absenteeism. In May the school was one of 20 to receive a new washing machine and dryer from the Rams and the Think Watts Foundation. Principal Jose Hernandez talks about the impact of the washer and dryer. Jinge Li has the story. 

Gen Z Black and Latino educators are passionate about inspiring their students but face significant challenges in LAUSD. A recent study highlights their experiences and concerns about job satisfaction and retention, finding that more than 70 percent are considering leaving the profession. Read the key findings and insights from the report. Jack Waterman has the story.

3. LA Housing Crisis Hits LAUSD as Number of Homeless Students Continues to Grow

The number of homeless students who attend Los Angeles Unified schools rose by more than a quarter in the last school year, new statistics show. As of the 2023-2024 school year, LAUSD enrolled 17,245 homeless students, up 26% from the previous school year, according to data the district made public last month. The dramatic jump comes as the district struggles with  in the enrollment of homeless students, and the  that has since 2020 propped up programs to aid kids experiencing homelessness. Katie VanArnam has the story. 

The number of homeless students who attend Los Angeles Unified schools rose by more than a quarter in the last school year, new statistics show. As of the 2023-2024 school year, LAUSD enrolled 17,245 homeless students, up 26% from the previous school year, according to data the district made public last month. The dramatic jump comes as the district struggles with  in the enrollment of homeless students, and the  that has since 2020 propped up programs to aid kids experiencing homelessness. Katie VanArnam has the story.

5. All About LAUSD’s Iconic Coffee Cake: A Sweet Tradition Dating Back to the 1950s

It’s not every day a public school system produces a cafeteria item with a cult following — but that’s the case with iconic LAUSD’s coffee cake, one of the most popular items on the menu. The recipe dates back to 1954 and even after 70 years, it is still in high demand, with 800,000 slices served annually. Jinge Li got to watch LAUSD staff make the coffee cake and now we’re introducing people outside of LA to the recipe and its history.

FX’s Social Studies delves into the lives of Los Angeles teens navigating the complexities of social media and mental health. Through raw footage and candid interviews, the documentary exposes the challenges young people face—from substance abuse to bullying—and highlights the urgent need for community support and action. Enzo Luna has the story.

7. LAUSD Opens Housing Complex to Combat Rising Student Homelessness

LAUSD has partnered with housing developers to create affordable housing for struggling families after the district faced a 19% increase in homeless students from the previous school year. Once we know better, we need to do better,” said LAUSD superintendent Alberto Carvalho.  “Sun King is evidence that the impossible can be turned into the inevitable.” Katie VanArnam has the story.

8. LAUSD Rolls Out New Food Truck Program With Chef Roy Choi Teaching Students How to Get Cooking in the Real World

It has been a big priority for LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho to ensure student access to successful academic and career pathways post-graduation. His newest achievement is partnering with private sectors to establish a food truck program at LAUSD. “We don’t want a single student leaving high school without a college or university ticket or an opportunity for career and technical programming,” he said. Carvalho hopes that he will bring more partnerships like this to the district. “Today’s announcement is not only important,” Carvalho added, “It’s also a very cool announcement.” Jinge Li has the story.

9. Unsung LAUSD Workers Starring in Oscar-Nominated ‘The Last Repair Shop’ to Walk the Red Carpet With Directors

When the directors of the Oscar nominated short documentary “The Last Repair Shop” walk the red carpet next month, the four LAUSD workers who keep thousands of musical instruments in good repair will be right by their side. The four craftspeople are at the heart of the documentary, out now via the Los Angeles Times  and Disney +. “Everyone was over the moon excited for this once in a lifetime experience,” film co-director Ben Proudfoot told LA School Report. Sara Balanta has the story.

826LA, a tutoring program, is promoting out of the box methods to get LAUSD students confident in their writing abilities. “I think that when they’re in school every single day, they kind of start struggling to find the spark when it comes to writing,” said 826LA program development manager Alma Carillo. “I think being in spaces like this helps encourage that.” The organization partners with over 100 schools and uses activities such as publishing student work and hosting readings. Sara Balanta has the story.

One thing is clear from the stories that populate this year’s list: Many of America’s schools are still grappling with the academic struggles that followed the pandemic – as well as the end of federal relief funds, which expired this fall. Student enrollments have yet to recover and many districts are facing – or will soon face – tough decisions about closures.

Meanwhile, some educators are testing innovative ways of teaching math, reading and science, hoping to gain back some of the academic ground lost since the COVID shutdowns. Technology is also playing a pivotal role in this post-pandemic world, with communities weighing the impact of cellphones and artificial intelligence on student learning and mental health.

November’s election – which featured debates over school choice, Christianity in public schools and the fate of the Department of Education – also made headlines here at The 74. And, as calls for cracking down on immigration grew even louder, we dug deep into the hurdles facing immigrant students and schools. 

Here’s a roundup of our most memorable and impactful stories of the year:

Exclusive: Thousands of Schools at Risk of Closing Due to Enrollment Loss

By Linda Jacobson

Long before districts close schools, enrollment loss takes a toll on staff and families, from combined classes to the loss of afterschool programs. This exclusive analysis by Linda Jacobson, based on Brookings Institution research, found that more than 4,400 schools lost at least one-fifth of their students during the pandemic — more than double the number during the pre-COVID period. The detailed look shows how the crisis is playing out at the school level and which districts face tough decisions about closures and cuts. 

Unwelcome to America’: Hundreds of U.S. High Schools Wrongfully Refused Entry to Older, Immigrant Student

By Jo Napolitano

The 74’s 16-month-long undercover investigation of school enrollment practices for older immigrant students revealed rampant refusals of teens who had a legal right to attend, shutting a door critical to success in America. Senior reporter Jo Napolitano called 630 high schools in every state and D.C. to test whether they would enroll a 19-year-old Venezuelan newcomer who had limited English language skills and whose education was interrupted after ninth grade. “Hector Guerrero” was turned down more than 300 times, including 204 denials in the 35 states and D.C., where high school attendance goes up to at least age 20. The 74’s investigation revealed pervasive hostility and suspicion toward these students in a particularly xenophobic era and a deeply arbitrary process determining their access to K-12 education.

Interactive: Which School Districts Do the Best Job of Teaching Kids to Read?

By Chad Aldeman

It’s not news that low-income fourth graders are years behind their higher-income peers in reading. But poverty is not destiny, and some schools and districts hugely outperform expectations. Working with Eamonn Fitzmaurice, The 74’s art and technology director, contributor Chad Aldeman set out to find districts that are beating the odds and successfully teaching kids to read. From Steubenville City, Ohio, to Worcester County, Maryland, and across the country, click on their interactive map to find the highfliers in your state. 

Whistleblower: L.A. Schools’ Chatbot Misused Student Data as Tech Company Crumbled

by Mark Keierleber

In early June, a former top software engineer at ed tech startup, AllHere, warned Los Angeles district officials and others about student data privacy risks associated with the company’s AI chatbot “Ed.” The LA Unified School District had agreed to pay AllHere $6 million for the chatbot and the spring rollout of Ed was highly publicized, with L.A. schools chief Alberto Carvalho calling the chatbot’s student knowledge powers “unprecedented in American public education.” But, as Mark Keierleber reported, red flags soon began to emerge. The company financially imploded and its founder Joanna Smith-Griffin left the company. In November, federal prosecutors indicted her, accusing of defrauding investors of $10 million.

America’s Most Popular Autism Therapy May Not Work — and May Cause Serious Harms

by Beth Hawkins

Today, a child’s new autism diagnosis is frequently followed by a referral to a variation of an intervention called applied behavior analysis, or ABA, and four decades of pressure from parents and advocates has created a sprawling treatment industry. Yet, even as providers and lobbyists jockey to strengthen ABA’s dominance, autistic adults and researchers increasingly say there’s alarmingly little proof it’s effective — and mounting evidence it’s traumatizing. In an exclusive investigation, Beth Hawkins spoke with families, teachers and scholars about the growing controversy surrounding autism’s “gold standard” treatment. 

A Cautionary AI Tale: Why IBM’s Dazzling Watson Supercomputer Made a Lousy Tutor

by Greg Toppo

In 2011, IBM’s Watson supercomputer crushed Jeopardy! champions, raising hopes that it could help create a powerful tutoring system that would rival human teachers. But the visionary at the head of the effort watched as the project fizzled, the victim of AI’s inability to hold students’ attention. As new educational AI contenders like Khanmigo emerge, what lessons can they learn from the past? The 74’s Greg Toppo took a look at how IBM’s failed effort tempers today’s shiny AI promises.

State-by-State, How Segregation Legally Continues 7 Decades Post Brown v. Board

by Marianna McMurdock

Seventy years after the Supreme Court outlawed separating public school children by race, Marianna McMurdock sought to answer a pivotal question: How are some of the most coveted public schools in the U.S. able to legally exclude all but the most privileged families? Last spring, she spoke with researchers at the nonprofits Available to All and Bellwether, which published a report that examined the troubling laws, loopholes and trends that are undermining the legacy of Brown v. Board in each state. The researchers called for urgent legal reform to offset the impact that one’s home address has on enrollment, particularly as many districts have started considering closures.

Being ‘Bad at Math’ Is a Pervasive Concept. Can it Be Banished From Schools?

by Jo Napolitano

Are you bad at math? If you are, it’s likely that self-fulfilling seed got planted early. Many math education leaders are trying to uproot that thinking, arguing that any student can master the subject with the right accommodations and tutoring. Changing the bad-at-math mindset in U.S. schools, however, will not be easy, others warn. “We use math as a means to sort kids by who gets to be at the top and who gets to be at the bottom,” one math equity advocate told Jo Napolitano. 

Hope Rises in Pine Bluff: Saving Schools in America’s Fastest-Shrinking City

by The 74 Staff

Pine Bluff, Arkansas, earned the unwelcome distinction in the 2020 census of being America’s fastest-shrinking city, losing over 12% of its population in one decade. Amid this exodus of families, students and taxpayers, its school district had to navigate school closures, budget pressures and a state takeover. Throughout last winter, members of The 74’s newsroom embedded in Pine Bluff to report on the region’s trajectory. Here are some of the powerful stories they came back with: 

Kids, Screen Time & Despair: An Expert in the Economics of Happiness Echoes Psychologists’ Warnings About Tech

By Kevin Mahnken

A prominent economist has joined the growing chorus of experts warning against the dangers posed to youth mental health by screens and social media, reported Kevin Mahnken. New papers released by Dartmouth College professor Danny Blanchflower, a leading expert in the burgeoning field of happiness economics, suggest that the huge increase in screen time over the last decade has made the young more likely to despair than the middle-aged. 

Why Is a Grading System Touted as More Accurate, Equitable So Hard to Implement?

By Amanda Geduld

As educators push for more transparency in grading policies post-pandemic, some are turning to standards-based grading. When done correctly, it separates academic mastery from behavior and more accurately reflects what students know. But misunderstandings of the model, a lack of proper training, and a rush to adopt it often leads to messy implementation. Associate professor Laura Link told Amanda Geduld that as schools look to fix learning gaps, “standards-based grading is one that seems like it can be a quickly adopted effort. But it could backfire — and does backfire — very easily.”

Texas Seeks to Inject Bible Stories into Elementary School Reading Program

by Linda Jacobson

Last May, a sweeping redesign of Texas’ elementary school curriculum that used Bible stories to teach reading was unveiled. At the time, state education Commissioner Mike Morath described the changes as a shift toward a “classical model of education.” But the revisions raised questions about potential religious indoctrination and bias. Nevertheless, in November, the Texas Board of Education approved the new curriculum in a close vote. Linda Jacobson followed the story closely.

The Political War Over the Department of Education Is Only Beginning

By Kevin Mahnken 

Fresh from their November victories, Republicans are already working to help President-elect Donald Trump achieve his promise of abolishing the U.S. Department of Education. But research suggests that, while perceptions of the agency are mixed, the public is unlikely to back a sweeping course of elimination. “Saying you’ll get rid of it reads generically as being anti-education,” one political scientist told Kevin Mahnken. “That strikes me as a very heavy albatross to hang around your neck come the midterms.” 

18 Years, $2 Billion: Inside New Orleans’ Biggest School Recovery Effort in History

By Beth Hawkins

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed 110 New Orleans schools. Displaced families could not return until there were classrooms to welcome their kids, but no one had ever tried to rebuild an entire school system. While many of the buildings were moldering even before the storm, federal funds couldn’t be used to build something better. Some of the schools had landmark status and were of great historical significance. Eighteen years and $2 billion later, Beth Hawkins took a look at seven schools that illustrate how the district accomplished the task.

As Ryan Walters’ Right-Wing Star Rose, Critics Say Oklahoma Ed Dept. Fell Apart

By Linda Jacobson

Oklahoma state education chief Republican Ryan Walters has acted as a one-man publicity machine, a performance that’s earned him venomous foes and ardent fans who follow him with a near-religious fervor. But one casualty of his approach might be a functioning state education bureaucracy. Even Republican lawmakers have grown impatient, calling for a probe into how Walters handles state and federal funds. As Rep. Tammy West, a GOP incumbent running for re-election, told reporter Linda Jacobson, “Regardless of party, citizens want transparency, accountability and communication.”

AI ‘Companions’ Are Patient, Funny, Upbeat — and Probably Rewiring Kids Brains

By Greg Toppo

A college student relies on ChatGPT to help him make life decisions, including whether to break up with his girlfriend. Is this a future we feel good about? While AI bots and companions like ChatGPT, Replika and Snapchat’s MyAI, can offer support, comfort and advice, experts are beginning to warn of potential risks. The 74’s Greg Toppo talks to researchers and policy experts about what we should be doing to help make them safer.

Indiana Looks to Swiss Experts to Create Thousands of Student Apprenticeships

By Patrick O’Donnell

Indiana officials have turned to experts at the Swiss version of MIT for help in becoming a national career training leader by making apprenticeships available to thousands of high school students across the state. Indiana is the latest state to work with ETH Zurich — where Albert Einstein once studied — to develop ways to break down barriers between educators and businesses so that career training can be a large part of a reinvented high school experience, reported Patrick O’Donnell. 

Investigation: Nearly 1,000 Native Children Died in Federal Boarding Schools

By Marianna McMurdock 

Nearly 1,000 Native American children died while forced to attend government-affiliated boarding schools, according to a report published last summer by the Interior Department. The children are buried in 74 unmarked and marked graves, reported Marianna McMurdock, as tribes assess repatriation of remains. Nearly 19,000 children were estimated to be kidnapped, often at gunpoint, and enrolled in the schools with the aim of assimilation. “We [were] never called by our name, we were all called by our numbers,” said one survivor. 

The Nation’s Biggest Charter School System Is Under Fire in Los Angeles

By Ben Chapman 

The nation’s largest experiment with charter schools is no longer growing. These days, Los Angeles charter operators say they are just trying to survive. With tough new policies governing co-locations, falling enrollment, and a hostile district school board, charter leaders say they’ve never faced stronger headwinds, reported Ben Chapman. With enrollment plummeting across the district, some charter networks have recently announced closures while others have stopped submitting proposals for new campuses. “Now, particularly in L.A., our focus is not on growing,” said Joanna Belcher, chief impact officer for KIPP SoCal. 

Florida Students Seize on Parental Rights to Stop Educators from Hitting Kids

By Mark Keierleber 

Late last year, Florida senior Brooklynn Daniels was called to the principal’s office and spanked with a wooden paddle “that was thick like a chapter book.” Like in many enclaves that dot the Florida panhandle, Liberty County permits corporal punishment as a form of student discipline. But her flogging, the honors student said, went much further: She alleged sexual assault and filed a police report, reported Mark Keierleber. Daniels joined a student-led movement to change Florida law that has latched onto the GOP-led parental rights movement. 

Interactive: See How Student Achievement Gaps Are Growing in Your State

By Chad Aldeman

In 2012, then-President Barack Obama freed states from the accountability provisions of No Child Left Behind in exchange for reforms related to standards, assessments and teacher evaluations. That relaxing of school and district accountability pressures corresponded with a decline in student performance across the country that is still being felt — achievement gaps are growing across subjects and all across the country. To illustrate these alarming discrepancies, contributor Chad Aldeman and Eamonn Fitzmaurice, The 74’s art and technology director, created an interactive tool that enables you to see what’s happening with student performance in your state.

Left Powerless: Non-English–Speaking Parents Denied Vital Translation Services

by Amanda Geduld

Flouting federal laws, K-12 public schools routinely fail to provide qualified interpreters to non-English-speaking families. Parents must instead rely on Google translate, their own kid or a bilingual staff member who isn’t a trained interpreter for issues as simple as their child’s absence for a day or as complex and intimidating as a special education meeting or a school disciplinary hearing. The problem is pervasive and vastly underreported, experts told Amanda Geduld. School leaders say they are trying their best, but lack the money and staffing to meet the need. 

Failed West Virginia Microschool Fuels State Probe and Some Soul-Searching

By Linda Jacobson

The West Virginia treasurer’s investigation into a microschool, funded with education savings accounts, offers a glimpse into an emerging market that has mushroomed since the pandemic. When the program shut down after a few months, parents were left demanding their money back and scrambling to find other arrangements for their children. The example, experts say, shows that it takes more than good intentions to provide a quality education program. As one parent told Linda Jacobson, “I should have seen the red flags.”

In the Rush to Covid Recovery, Did We Forget About Our Youngest Learners?

by Lauren Camera

The country’s youngest elementary school students suffered steep academic setbacks in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic – just like students in older grades. But new research shows that they aren’t catching back up to pre-pandemic levels in reading and math the way older students are. And when it comes to math, many are falling even further behind. “We were shocked when we first saw the data,” Kristen Huff, vice president of assessment and research at Curriculum Associates, told Lauren Camera.

Nearly five years after the emergence of COVID, the pandemic’s after-effects still ripple through schools and communities, with student learning persistently failing to reach levels seen in 2019. Just under $200 billion in federal assistance to states, which was used to keep districts afloat during the crisis, expired in September — with no further help visible on the horizon.

Increasingly, though, the kids filling American schools have only dim memories of quarantines or virtual instruction. Their experience is instead defined by a rash of trends and technologies that sprang up, or became much more common, during the period when schooling was scrambled: a massive build-out of tutoring programs; the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence as a tool of both academic achievement and academic dishonesty; a rise in student despair and anxiety, which some experts attribute to the spread of smartphones; and, for adolescents, soaring recreational marijuana use under newly permissive state laws.

Tomorrow is coming faster than ever, and its contours will be shaped by new leadership in Washington. After a fervid campaign season, President-elect Trump has already vowed to essentially terminate the federal government’s role in setting education policy by eliminating the U.S. Department of Education. 

But before turning to the future, The 74 is taking a look back at 2024’s biggest discoveries from the world of education research. Welcome to the year in charts.

Federal Funds Lifted Learning — But Not Enough

Two papers released this summer by the Education Recovery Scorecard and the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research attempted to quantify the effects of the federal government’s , which channeled $190 billion to schools and districts over the last four years in response to the pandemic. Their findings showed that the money has helped, but came nowhere close to filling the academic hole left by COVID.

ESSER’s benefits were relatively modest (measured in math test scores, each $1,000 spent yielded about 10 percent of what is generally considered a medium-sized effect in education research) and distributed unequally, as different school districts received wildly divergent amounts from Washington. Assuming a similar bang for the buck, Congress would have to appropriate between $450 and $900 billion in further legislation in order to bring learning back to where it was in 2019, the researchers estimated.

That’s almost certainly not going to happen; ESSER funds officially dried up this September, and no effort has been made to renew them. If no further assistance is coming, the program’s legacy will have been helping to spur an incomplete learning recovery: According to released by the leaders of the Education Recovery Scorecard, students across the country had only made up one-quarter of their lost progress in reading, and one-third of their deficits in math, by the beginning of this year.

Students Are Still Hurting

The full picture of learning loss remains discouraging, particularly for those who were in their foundational years of schooling when the pandemic threw their education into chaos. 

According to by the testing group NWEA, eighth graders in 2024 were still a full school year behind in both math and reading compared with similar students from five years prior. Derived from the scores of 7.7 million students on the organization’s MAP Growth measure, that assessment also pointed to racial achievement gaps that have only grown wider in the 2020s, with Hispanic students falling the furthest behind in both elementary and middle school.

While academic damage has been especially scarring for those in middle and high school, even elementary schoolers are making slower academic progress today than in previous years. A separate report, released in March by the curriculum provider Amplify, showed that students from kindergarten through the second grade are making less progress toward literacy than they did during the 2021–22 and 2022–23 school years. In other words, growth has even slowed down since the immediate post-COVID period.

The Disappearing College Freshman

Colleges and universities face punishing demographic challenges in the years to come, as smaller birth cohorts and shrinking high school classes leave institutions to fight over a diminished applicant pool. Even more worrying, data suggests that rising numbers of potential college-goers are reconsidering their future plans and heading . 

The end result is a surprising erosion in the numbers of rising college students. According to by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, freshman enrollment has declined by 5 percent since last year, with 18-year-old freshmen falling by 6 percent. What’s more, that drop comes after a 3.6 percent decline just last year.

Much of the shrinkage was concentrated in particular student demographics and institutional types. For example, the number of white students — who constitute a healthy majority of all college attendees — fell by 0.6 percent this year, while their non-white peers continued to tick upwards. Most striking of all, both public and private colleges that enroll high percentages of Pell Grant recipients saw double-digit losses in freshman enrollment. 

Charter Schools Boost College-Going, If Not Test Scores

Charter schools have long enjoyed an uneven reputation based on geography. While those located in cities — often built on a “no excuses” framework that emphasizes high standards and tough discipline — can achieve incredible results, their suburban and rural counterparts traditional public schools.

But a paper authored by University of Michigan researcher Sarah Cohodes added a striking addendum. In an experiment based in Massachusetts, where Boston-based charters post anywhere in the country, she discovered that non-urban charters also manage to significantly increase students’ chances of enrolling and graduating from college. Paradoxically, however, they do so even as those same students perform worse on standardized tests than their peers in nearby public schools. 

It’s an open question how children’s achievement could decline even as post-secondary outcomes improve. Cohodes allowed for the possibility that families in suburban and rural school districts might enroll their kids in charters that focus heavily on areas like arts programming or social-emotional instruction, rather than elevating achievement in core subjects like math or English. 

“The whole premise of test-based accountability is that test-scores predict longer-term outcomes,” Cohodes told The 74. “But this situation shows it is not always the case, and other things are going on in schools.” 

AI Could Get the Most out of Tutors

Tutoring programs exploded in the last five years as states and school districts searched for ways to counter plummeting achievement during COVID. But the cost of providing supplemental instruction to tens of millions of students can be eye-watering, even as the results seem to taper off as programs serve more students.  

That’s where artificial intelligence could prove a decisive advantage. circulated in October by the National Student Support Accelerator found that an AI-powered tutoring assistant significantly improved the performance of hundreds of tutors by prompting them with new ways to explain concepts to students. With the help of the tool, dubbed Tutor CoPilot, students assigned to the weakest tutors began posting academic results nearly equal to those assigned to the strongest. And the cost to run the program was just $20 per pupil. 

The paper suggests that tutoring initiatives may successfully adapt to the challenges of cost and scale. Another hopeful piece of evidence appeared this spring, when Stanford University researchers found that a “small burst” program in Florida produced meaningful literacy gains for young learners through micro-interactions lasting just 5–7 minutes at a time. If the success of such models can be replicated, there’s a chance that the benefits of tutoring could be enjoyed by millions more students.

Teachers Aren’t Happy

K–12 educators have had a tough few years. While there’s strong disagreement about just how many of them actually walked off the job during the worst years of COVID, a combination of public health fears and worsening conditions in schools has led many to consider leaving the field since the pandemic began.

A published this fall by Brown University economist Matt Kraft put those fears into a much larger context. Using polling data going back decades, he found that public esteem for teaching — as measured by how many people called it a prestigious career, compared with other professions — is now at the lowest level seen in half a century. Fewer than half of all teachers said that the stress of their job was worth the effort, compared with over 80 percent in the 1970s.

Those numbers are bad enough, but they also appear to be turning off potential teaching candidates. The number of newly licensed teachers fell by one-third between 2006 and 2020, indicating that the reputational problems facing the K–12 workforce came about long before the pandemic. Interest in teaching as a career path among high school seniors and college freshmen has also dropped substantially since 2010.

Even with a precipitously shrinking number of K–12 students, schools will have a hard time coping if this generation of educators is replaced by a smaller, more demoralized cohort of successors.  

The Culture Wars Are Coming to a School Near You

One likely reason for lower job satisfaction among those toiling in the classroom? Disputes over politics and culture, which have recently grown far more contentious.

released by the RAND Corporation in February first publicized what many school employees have complained about for years. Lawmakers in 18 states passed legislation restricting classroom discussion of some topics, whether related to politics, history, race, gender, or sexuality, between 2021 and 2023. Those states are home to approximately one-third of all American teachers.

Strikingly, however, a full two-thirds of all teachers polled by RAND said that they self-censored or otherwise curtailed dialogue with students about hot-button issues. The authors dubbed that trend a “spillover” between school communities, often driven by groups of particularly vocal parents who may not reflect the attitudes of their neighbors. In the end, more than half of all teachers working in states with no statutory restrictions on classroom discussion still self-censored to one degree or another, the poll indicated. 

Notably, those findings dovetail neatly with other research showing that clashes over culture war issues can be and potentially harmful to student learning. 

Screentime Is On the Rise. So Is Depression

This year will likely be remembered as the period when concerns over children’s smartphone use, both inside schools and out, came under a microscope as never before. An increasing number of schools in the United States and around the world have moved to restrict the use of phones in the classroom, with many complaining of both disengagement during lessons and an atomized culture brought about by technological distraction.

But a growing scientific literature suggests that young people may be profoundly impacted by phones and social media during their hours at home and with friends. In , British academic Danny Blanchflower — a labor economist who has also specialized in the study of public happiness over decades — demonstrated a close correlation between the steep increase in youth exposure to screens and a concurrent upswell in self-described feelings of despair, worry and self-doubt. 

In 2022, Blanchflower and his colleagues found, over one-in-ten young women said they’d experienced a bad mental health day every day over the previous month, tripling the rate they’d reported in the early 1990s. At the same time, the percentage of young women who absorbed more than four hours of screen time each day jumped nearly eightfold.

Arguments about the effect of information technology on youth mental health are hotly contested, with skeptics observing that the evidence for a firm casual relationship between smartphones and depression is still quite tentative. But Blanchflower believes the downside risk of unfettered screentime is too great for policymakers not to act.  

“We could fart around about causality, but the potential cost of not doing something is so much greater than the cost of doing something and being wrong,” he told The 74.

Catholic Schools Might Need Vouchers to Survive

Since the beginning of the charter school explosion in the late 1990s, denizens of the policy world have speculated that the birth of a new educational model could escalate the decades-long decline in Catholic schooling. While increasing secularization has likely driven much of , the more recent emergence of free, easily accessible schools of choice in virtually every major American city seemed like the equivalent of throwing an anvil to a drowning man. 

In , Boston College professor Shaun Dougherty offered persuasive evidence that charter expansion had indeed come at the expense of the Catholic sector. Relying on data collected from over 25,000 K–12 institutions, the study calculated that between 1998 and 2020, an average of 3.5 percent of Catholic school students disenrolled within two years of a charter opening in the vicinity. Given the thin margins in Catholic education, those declines made full-on closures significantly more likely. 

In a telling wrinkle, those trends were considerably muted in 10 jurisdictions that offered some form of private school choice, which provides families with money to spend on tuition or other educational expenses. That suggests that, with the spread of education savings accounts and similar policies, the multi-generational eclipse of Catholic schooling may begin to slow or even reverse. But, as Notre Dame law professor Nicole Stelle Garnett told The 74, it could be too late for the Church to reverse its losses.

“If we’d gotten this much of private school choice in 1999, instead of 25 years later, we might have a lot more kids in Catholic schools today.” 

School’s In, So Is Crime

As community hubs attracting large numbers of young people, schools are somewhat unavoidably linked to violence and antisocial behavior. Previous research has shown that when low-performing schools in Philadelphia were permanently closed in the early 2010s, the surrounding areas saw a pronounced reduction in violent crime.

But released this fall gave a much more sweeping overview of the link between schools and disorder. Using data from the National Crime Victimization Survey, the authors found that criminal activity among children from the ages of 10 to 17 — whether as perpetrators or victims — peaks during the school year, particularly during the autumn and spring. That’s an exact inversion of the pattern for older offenders, who are much more likely to commit crimes during the summer months.

Across more than 3,000 school districts, the school calendar was linked to a 41 percent increase in youth arrests and a 47 percent increase in reported crime, with the surge mostly occurring during school hours and during the week rather than the weekend. Much of the lawbreaking even occurs in schools themselves. 

“In poor and rich counties; well-resourced school districts and poorly resourced school districts; and rural and urban counties, schools are a primary driver of criminal activity involving children,” the authors conclude.

For High Schoolers, Weed is Everywhere

One form of vice is particularly prevalent among older adolescents: marijuana use. According to published in March, over 30 percent of seniors reported using weed over the past year. 

That figure reflects a few coalescing trends, most importantly the legalization (or decriminalization) of weed . Three-quarters of Americans now live in a jurisdiction where the drug is available for either medicinal or recreational use, though age restrictions still make it illegal for almost any high schooler to do so legally. What’s more, the development of kid-friendly gummies and vape flavors makes marijuana more accessible to young people than in decades past. 

That’s especially concerning given the elevated potency of new cannabis items, which are far stronger on average than the common street product of even a few decades ago. Youth marijuana use to inhibited brain development and increased risk of psychological disorders in later life.

“The biggest consequence that we think about in the field of child development … is that using substances that are potentially psychoactive and addictive and have effects on development,” Columbia psychiatrist Ryan Sultan told The 74’s Amanda Geduld. “The younger you are, the more problematic they might be.”

Pre-K Helps Families’ Bottom Lines

Early childhood education has been shown to be an effective tool for improving students’ near-term academic performance, though research is unclear on can be sustained over time. In the hopes of reaching students before the K–12 years and combatting gaps in readiness and achievement, a growing number of states and cities have their public pre-kindergarten offerings in recent years.

A paper released in October found that one such expansion brought considerable benefits to participating families — but for a somewhat surprising reason. When New Haven, Connecticut, established a pre-K program in the 1990s, enrolled students saw only ephemeral improvements to their test scores, school attendance, and likelihood of being held back in school, with effects essentially disappearing by the time they finished the eighth grade. But by participating in the program, which provided 10 hours of instruction and supplementary programs each day, those children allowed their parents to work more during the day. On average, caregivers earned 22 percent more, or nearly $5,500 per year for each year their kids remained in pre-K.

Even better, the same parents went on to earn 21 percent more in the six years after the program ended, likely because of their increased experience and job continuity, and their higher income dwarfed the costs of implementing the program. In other words, even if it contributes little in long-term academic gains, pre-K may generate huge value purely as a childcare benefit.

At The 74, we’re celebrating the most memorable coverage about schools and students that we’ve read. Our picks include stories on a range of education topics, from teacher shortages and learning recovery to a notable tribute to a crossing guard who left an indelible impression on the students he guided safely to school each day.

Below, in no particular order, are 16 of the articles we felt were the most impactful in 2024. We hope you take the time to read (and share) these important stories written by talented journalists from across the country.

CT Mirror

By , CT Mirror

We know the shocking truth: The U.S. adult illiteracy rate is high, with 21%, or 43 million adults, unable to understand basic vocabulary, compare and contrast information and paraphrase what’s been read.

Jessika Harkay’s Connecticut Mirror story is a carefully executed autopsy of how one young woman became part of that statistic. This story is a standout to me because it documents how a student like Aleysha Ortiz could be pushed through school and graduate – even though she is barely literate. I like its tight structure and details, such as how she had to go to “school two times in one day,” recording what the teacher said during class; and then going home and listening to the recording again. The cost was high and heartbreaking: “To this day I’ve never been out to a movie theatre with friends, ever,” Ortiz reveals. “I didn’t have time to have fun.” .

ProPublica

By  & , ProPublica

Known as a model for school choice nationally, Arizona’s voucher program is a case study ripe for investigation. ProPublica reporters Eli Hager and Lucas Waldron dug into Maricopa County’s data, finding the vast majority of families attending private schools using public funds were from more affluent ZIP codes. This is despite conservatives touting the program as transformational for all. 

Like many inequities in education, ProPublica’s probe led reporters to housing segregation. Private schools, typically located in wealthier areas, remain out of reach geographically, with some facing two-hour city bus routes or $30 cab rides each way. While the reporting in this story is data-driven, the storytelling stays rooted in empathy for the daily lives and concerns of three families who were eager to use the state’s voucher system to pursue a better education for their children, but ultimately gave up on the idea. Instead, the article points out, many parents are coming together to make their own public schools better. Read the full story .

Block Club Chicago

By , Block Club Chicago

School staffing crisis stories were abundant this year, but Block Club Chicago’s investigative reporter Mina Bloom humanized the consequences of teacher shortages, centering the story on one brave student who took control of her class’s education after the teacher’s long absence. A model of how local stories can bring awareness to national issues, Bloom skillfully weaved in meticulous data and the history of the school. 

After a year of headlines decrying the “disengaged student,” it was heartening to read about students so committed and passionate about learning that they refused to let the school’s shortcomings disrupt their education. I will be thinking often about Carolina Carchi, the 15-year-old who taught her classmates about the properties of liquids and solids and how to balance chemical equations. It’s crucial to celebrate young people like Carolina and amplify their voices to hold systems accountable. .

The New York Times

By  and , The New York Times

When I was in grade school in the Midwest we regularly practiced tornado drills, filing down to the basement to duck and cover. Today, the kids are trained to barricade themselves in the classroom to protect against a different nemesis: school shooters. With common-sense solutions to school shootings seemingly stalled, worried parents are taking matters into their own hands to protect their kids at whatever cost.

This New York Times story by Emily Baumgaertner and Alex Kalman is an eye-opening expose of the solutions and products that parents and school districts are being sold to protect their children. At one education trade show, the reporters saw vendors offering a wide range of bulletproof school items, from pencil pouches, clipboards and three-ring binders to hoodies, desks and whiteboards. Bulletproof backpack inserts were also being marketed with the help of an animated turtle named Tank who struggles to pronounce and encourages the kids to crouch behind their backpack “shells” in a safe spot. As Baumgaertner and Kalman explain, the market is almost as absurd as the problem it seeks to resolve. .

Oregon Live

By , OregonLive

For decades, boys have been shrinking as a percentage of American college students. As Sami Edge reported for The Oregonian and its website OregonLive this summer, the gender gap is especially prominent in rural areas, where even high-achieving males are unlikely to proceed immediately to college after finishing high school. As part of a wide-ranging, , the reporter followed several seniors in comparatively remote districts across Central and Eastern Oregon, artfully uncovering their reasons for holding pat rather than signing up for more years of schooling.

Some of the boys Edge encounters say they and their friends feel financially pressured to defer their plans for college, citing either the high cost of tuition or the need to assume responsibility at family farms. But others — including the main subjects of her story, a high school valedictorian and his close friend — simply seem adrift. Maybe they’ll enroll in an apprenticeship, or else take a job at a gas station; maybe they’ll study music, or move East to live with a long-distance romantic partner. Readers will finish the piece with a better understanding of social trends in parts of Oregon that might otherwise be overlooked, but they also gain a sense of the generational ambivalence toward higher education that has taken hold far beyond the Pacific Northwest. .

The Hechinger Report

By  & , The Hechinger Report

Fazil Khan and Sarah Butrymowicz’s story about the nebulous nature of school suspensions in several states shines a light on a critical form of chronic inequity in American schools. The story notes the uneven application of such harsh discipline and how some administrators, recognizing that students of color are too often targeted, are desperate for better alternatives. 

The Hechinger Report’s deep data dive found 88% of suspensions in Texas in 2023 were marked as a “violation of student code of conduct” with no additional detail. “That’s more than a million suspensions last school year alone,” the authors note. In Mississippi, the similarly vague “noncriminal behavior” slot described hundreds of thousands of suspensions over a five-year period. Students in Indiana, Alabama and Vermont were cast out for equally vague reasons, the reporters found. All this can lead to some long-term consequences: Research has shown suspended students often suffer poor academic performance and higher dropout rates. Highlighting this important story is bittersweet as it marks a posthumous tribute for Khan, who died in a fire earlier this year. You can read.

ProPublica

By  and , ProPublica

As a former charter and public school teacher, stories about private, for-profit schools always catch my skeptical eye. When I saw this piece from ProPublica homed in on one such school that serves particularly vulnerable students in a residential setting, I was intrigued. Shrub Oak International School, which opened in 2018 in Westchester County, New York, enrolls students with autism, including kids who have behavioral challenges and complex medical needs and who other schools have turned away. 

Shrub Oak is one of the most expensive therapeutic boarding schools in America, with tuition as high as $316,400 per year, ProPublica found. Despite lacking any meaningful oversight from the state, the school still receives public money from districts across the country. Beyond the financial component, the lack of regulation has allowed the school to renege on promises to parents and has resulted in several alleged incidents of abuse and neglect. Pulling from court documents, interviews with nearly 30 families and dozens of workers, ProPublica’s Jennifer Smith Richards and Jodi S. Cohen present a compelling and gutting investigation about what happens when a school meant to protect and educate students in need falls through the cracks of regulatory oversight and fails the people who need its services most. .

Civil Beat

By , Honolulu Civil Beat

School bus driver shortages remained in 2024, and education reporters did their part to cover the chaos. Stories described students waiting hours for buses that never came and districts recruiting lunchroom staff and office clerks to drive. But Megan Tagami of Hawaii’s Civil Beat broke down the reason why the state education department kept canceling and combining routes at the last minute — its heavy reliance on contracts with private bus companies instead of owning its own fleet and hiring its own drivers. One contractor, in particular, failed to notify the department that it would be unable to fulfill more than 100 of its routes until just weeks before the school year started. 

Tagami showed how transportation costs in Hawaii have skyrocketed — in part because the state’s education department increased the size of its bus contracts to avoid these hassles and reimburses parents for driving their kids to school. The piece offered readers a valuable, local angle on a national problem that is disruptive for families and impacts learning time for students. .

AP

By & , Associated Press

Smokin’ in the boys’ room is a thing of the past — and now it appears vaping is, too. In an article for The Associated Press, Jacqueline Munis and Ella McCarthy reveal the startling degree to which schools nationwide deploy “vape detection” surveillance tools to sniff out students’ electronic cigarette use in school bathrooms. Schools have spent millions of dollars on sensors designed to detect e-cigarette vapor and surveillance cameras that capture the students-turned-suspects on their way out of the facilities. Along with privacy concerns, the censors have led to harsh discipline for students, including in-school suspensions and even felony charges. .

The Lens – NOLA

By , The Lens

by Marta Jewson of the New Orleans nonprofit The Lens is a master class on the value of pushing beyond a news item’s top, four-alarm takeaway to probe for broader potential ramifications. Few other outlets so much as noticed that in September Louisiana joined 16 other states in suing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, arguing that gender dysphoria — a medical diagnosis sometimes made when a person’s gender identity differs from the gender they were assigned at birth — should not be considered a disability. Jewson’s story not only reported that the lawsuit could dismantle portions of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which provides key protections to people in schools and in employment, housing, public services and many other spheres of society, but at a moment when much “culture war” reporting focuses on adult politics, she made a point to include the voices of students who could be impacted by this lawsuit in multiple ways. Read .

Vox

By , Vox

I’m drawn to stories that examine how historical movements have influenced current events and can challenge readers to learn from the past and apply it to what is happening now. In this story, Vox reporter Nicole Narea excels at this by shining a light on the parallels between today’s youth-led pro-Palestine protests on college campuses and student activism of the past, including the 1960s protests against the Vietnam War and the 1980s campus movements against apartheid in South Africa. 

The story is not just a mere timeline of student protest coverage. It describes why college campuses remain distinctive environments for fostering critical thinking, personal development and cultural awareness. Narea’s story blends history, politics, activism and the power of student voices to illustrate how college students have long been at the forefront of social change. 

The story also notes how swiftly today’s student movements can be met with police crackdowns, arrests and political pressure, even when they are predominantly peaceful in nature. It’s  a thought-provoking piece that speaks to what today’s students encounter as they fight for their rights and those of others — often facing backlash and personal danger. .

The New York Times

By  & , New York Times

There’s been a good deal of reporting on the effects of the pandemic on older children. Less covered is the impact on the nation’s youngest children — those who were babies, toddlers and preschoolers during the height of the pandemic and who are now school-aged.

In this story, The New York Times’ Claire Cain Miller and Sarah Mervosh share findings from interviews with teachers, pediatricians and early childhood experts. The bottom line: Many of these younger children are showing signs of academic and developmental delays. There are also concerns related to a variety of areas, like speech and language development, emotional regulation, social interactions, behavior, attention span, core strength and fine motor skills. Researchers suggested that a number of factors affected young children during the pandemic, including parental stress, less exposure to people, more time on screens and lower preschool attendance.

Despite these trends, some experts said recovery is possible, pointing to resources that can help as well as evidence that the early years of brain development in young children positions them well to “catch up.” .

The Boston Globe

By , The Boston Globe

The Boston Globe’s Mandy McLaren and Neena Hagen collected and reviewed more than 2,600 confidential agreements between Massachusetts school districts and families of students with special needs showing that families who can afford a lawyer are often able to negotiate six-figure placements at specialized schools, while those who can’t afford one watch their kids languish in neighborhood schools.

It’s an amazing investigative effort that lays bare what one mother calls the “tedious and maddening back-and-forth” with a district. She negotiates a secret agreement for annual $40,000 tuition payments at a private school, but no one can know — especially not other parents “still fumbling in the dark” for ways to help their kids. The nondisclosure agreements weaken other families’ ability to find “free and appropriate” settings for their kids, as federal law demands. One expert tells the Globe that such secrecy runs counter to the spirit of the law, which envisioned families being resources for each other. “The way this is set up, it’s made to break you,” says a father who doesn’t have the money to fight his kid’s district. .

ProPublica

By , ProPublica

Enrollment drops. Funding cliff. School closures. These are the buzzwords and edu-cliches that often mask the complex realities behind one of the bigger school shifts in recent memory. In this collaboration between ProPublica and The New Yorker, reporter Alec MacGillis reverses the script, focusing on the effects of closing one school — Walter Cooper Academy, located in a mostly Black neighborhood of Rochester, New York — on one family. This close-up approach humanizes a sense of loss that often gets clouded by the abstractions. “There is a pathos to a closed school that doesn’t apply to a shuttered courthouse or post office,” he writes.

While not pulling punches on the disastrous effects of COVID school lockdowns, which sent many parents to charters or schools in the suburbs, MacGillis keeps his eye on the Black families who research shows are disproportionately affected by such closures. “Every time we think we’re doing something right for our kids,” one parent says, “someone comes in and dictates to us that our choices are not valid.”

Houston Landing

By , Houston Landing

When a Houston middle school made a remarkable turnaround in just one year, Houston Landing’s Asher Lehrer-Small wanted to know what was happening there. He spent two full days at Forest Brook Middle school, observing 16 classes, conducting two dozen interviews and joining staff meetings. 

What he found was a school that embraced the priorities of the district’s new superintendent, Michael Miles: stricter disciplinary practices, more rigorous instruction and increased emphasis on test scores. But he also found teachers taking the time to build relationships with students and to bring their own personalities into their lessons.

“Last year, when we started this process, scholars went home tired,” Principal Alicia Lewis told him. “The parents call me. ‘Ms. Lewis,’ they say, ‘it’s too much work.’ It’s not. It’s not too much work. They need it. And look at what happened. They grew.” The story by Lehrer-Small, a veteran of The 74, demonstrates the power of getting out from behind the computer and experiencing what is actually happening in the classroom. .

The New York Times

By , The New York Times

Many of the education stories we read have a big frame, focused on topics like science of reading that affect millions of students but are often abstract.

Joe Sexton’s article for The New York Times highlights the importance of students’ human interactions at school. He focuses on crossing guard Richard Henderson, who greeted children by name at a New York City school and became a beloved member of the community. When he was shot to death on a subway, the school community came together to support his family, setting up memorials outside of the school and establishing a GoFundMe site that raised $378,000. The right policies are obviously crucial, but this article is a good reminder that schools are made up of people. And the best schools have really good people. .