The overarching goal of schools is to create a safe, supportive environment where students can thrive and learn. This begins with a dedication to students' social and emotional well-being, and effective policies and programs that create a culture of trust. Such a culture provides an optimal learning environment, and is also a proactive step…

Since March of 2020, educational communities have largely been in survival mode with little attention, time, or resources allocated to the ongoing work of school safety and violence prevention. Planning and implementing initiatives for a return to school cannot just focus on a return to "normal" because of significant increases in other…

It is estimated that, on average, students will have suffered a 30 to 40 percent learning loss due to the disruption in face-to-face learning caused by COVID-19. This assessment is alarming for any student but is even more troubling when one considers the persistent performance trends for students of color, students with disabilities, and students…

Last year, school leaders were faced with unprecedented challenges as they grappled with school closures, the shift to online and hybrid models of instruction, and supporting their communities with an increased awareness of the need for social justice reform. The COVID-19 pandemic and killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and…

When K-12 school districts nationwide closed buildings and moved instruction online in the spring of 2020, American life changed. This guide identifies some of the legal issues school leaders should be considering as schools reopen in a world where the new coronavirus and the illness it causes, COVID-19, continue to be major public health…

As school leaders faced school building closures and shifted to online and hybrid models of instruction, National School Boards Association (NSBA) issued its guide entitled, "Setting a New Course: A Legal Guide to Operating Schools in the Pandemic Era" (ED626073), to help schools navigate salient issues surrounding the pandemic. Nearly…

The Center for Public Education (CPE) explored data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY97) and investigated the relationship between students' employment experiences and their achievements. Our findings suggest that employment experience -- appropriate quantity and quality of employee-type jobs -- not only has positive effects on…

School boards have the opportunity to shape a new vision for instruction where students take an active role in their learning and build the skills necessary to mitigate effects of opportunity gaps. This publication provides a framework for implementing active student roles and provides data and case studies to support its recommendations.

Child exploitation and victimization occur in numerous ways and affect young people of all ages, races, backgrounds, socioeconomic situations, and geographic locations. It is a difficult but important subject for educators, who interact with students more directly and for more hours in a week than most other adults in students' lives. But armed…

This guide is intended to inform school district leaders about the federally identified risks associated with a new coronavirus that is now present in the U.S., known as "COVID-19," and to provide a checklist of issues school leaders should consider when planning for any such crisis in the community. School systems can be proactive and…

Nearly 1 in 5 U.S. students attend rural schools. Researchers report that at least half of public schools are rural in 12 states (i.e., Montana, South Dakota, Vermont, North Dakota, Maine, Alaska, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Mississippi) (Showalter et al., 2019). Providing quality education to all rural students is a…

In CPE's 2024 report on urban education, researchers explore the unique challenges and strengths of urban schools. This comprehensive analysis offers insights into demographic diversity, equity issues, and the meaning of high-quality education for every urban student. The report incorporates many data points and best practices at the district…

"Data security" describes the protections in place to prevent unauthorized access to or acquisition of personal student and staff information. A school district's data security measures might include keeping student and staff personal data in locked filing cabinets, and limiting access to those filing cabinets to people within the school…

In the United States, most students attend a public school in a district overseen by a democratically elected school board. In political science, school boards are often portrayed as ten thousand democracies (Berkman and Plutzer, 2005). School board members are often described as "citizens-policymakers" because they "constitute a…

Nearly 1 in 5 U.S. students attend rural schools. Researchers report that at least half of public schools are rural in 12 states (i.e., Montana, South Dakota, Vermont, North Dakota, Maine, Alaska, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Mississippi) (Showalter et al., 2019). Providing quality education to all rural students is a…