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The state of the global education crisis, a path to recovery.

The global disruption to education caused by the COVD-19 pandemic is without parallel and the effects on learning are severe. The crisis brought education systems across the world to a halt, with school closures affecting more than 1.6 billion learners. While nearly every country in the world offered remote learning opportunities for students, the quality and reach of such initiatives varied greatly and were at best partial substitutes for in-person learning. Now, 21 months later, schools remain closed for millions of children and youth, and millions more are at risk of never returning to education. Evidence of the detrimental impacts of school closures on children’s learning offer a harrowing reality: learning losses are substantial, with the most marginalized children and youth often disproportionately affected.

The State of the Global Education Crisis: A Path to Recovery charts a path out of the global education crisis and towards building more effective, equitable and resilient education systems.

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• Progress towards quality education was already slower than required before the pandemic, but COVID-19 has had devastating impacts on education, causing learning losses in four out of five of the 104 countries studied.

Without additional measures, an estimated 84 million children and young people will stay out of school by 2030 and approximately 300 million students will lack the basic numeracy and literacy skills necessary for success in life.

In addition to free primary and secondary schooling for all boys and girls by 2030, the aim is to provide equal access to affordable vocational training, eliminate gender and wealth disparities, and achieve universal access to quality higher education.

Education is the key that will allow many other Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved. When people are able to get quality education they can break from the cycle of poverty.

Education helps to reduce inequalities and to reach gender equality. It also empowers people everywhere to live more healthy and sustainable lives. Education is also crucial to fostering tolerance between people and contributes to more peaceful societies.

• To deliver on Goal 4, education financing must become a national investment priority. Furthermore, measures such as making education free and compulsory, increasing the number of teachers, improving basic school infrastructure and embracing digital transformation are essential.

What progress have we made so far?

While progress has been made towards the 2030 education targets set by the United Nations, continued efforts are required to address persistent challenges and ensure that quality education is accessible to all, leaving no one behind.

Between 2015 and 2021, there was an increase in worldwide primary school completion, lower secondary completion, and upper secondary completion. Nevertheless, the progress made during this period was notably slower compared to the 15 years prior.

What challenges remain?

According to national education targets, the percentage of students attaining basic reading skills by the end of primary school is projected to rise from 51 per cent in 2015 to 67 per cent by 2030. However, an estimated 300 million children and young people will still lack basic numeracy and literacy skills by 2030.

Economic constraints, coupled with issues of learning outcomes and dropout rates, persist in marginalized areas, underscoring the need for continued global commitment to ensuring inclusive and equitable education for all. Low levels of information and communications technology (ICT) skills are also a major barrier to achieving universal and meaningful connectivity.

Where are people struggling the most to have access to education?

Sub-Saharan Africa faces the biggest challenges in providing schools with basic resources. The situation is extreme at the primary and lower secondary levels, where less than one-half of schools in sub-Saharan Africa have access to drinking water, electricity, computers and the Internet.

Inequalities will also worsen unless the digital divide – the gap between under-connected and highly digitalized countries – is not addressed .

Are there groups that have more difficult access to education?

Yes, women and girls are one of these groups. About 40 per cent of countries have not achieved gender parity in primary education. These disadvantages in education also translate into lack of access to skills and limited opportunities in the labour market for young women.

What can we do?  

Ask our governments to place education as a priority in both policy and practice. Lobby our governments to make firm commitments to provide free primary school education to all, including vulnerable or marginalized groups.

Facts and figures

Goal 4 targets.

• Without additional measures, only one in six countries will achieve the universal secondary school completion target by 2030, an estimated 84 million children and young people will still be out of school, and approximately 300 million students will lack the basic numeracy and literacy skills necessary for success in life.
• To achieve national Goal 4 benchmarks, which are reduced in ambition compared with the original Goal 4 targets, 79 low- and lower-middle- income countries still face an average annual financing gap of $97 billion.

Source: The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2023

4.1  By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and Goal-4 effective learning outcomes

4.2  By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and preprimary education so that they are ready for primary education

4.3  By 2030, ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university

4.4  By 2030, substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship

4.5  By 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations

4.6  By 2030, ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults, both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy

4.7  By 2030, ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development

4.A  Build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability and gender sensitive and provide safe, nonviolent, inclusive and effective learning environments for all

4.B  By 2020, substantially expand globally the number of scholarships available to developing countries, in particular least developed countries, small island developing States and African countries, for enrolment in higher education, including vocational training and information and communications technology, technical, engineering and scientific programmes, in developed countries and other developing countries

4.C  By 2030, substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers, including through international cooperation for teacher training in developing countries, especially least developed countries and small island developing states

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Global Education

By Hannah Ritchie, Veronika Samborska, Natasha Ahuja, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser

A good education offers individuals the opportunity to lead richer, more interesting lives. At a societal level, it creates opportunities for humanity to solve its pressing problems.

The world has gone through a dramatic transition over the last few centuries, from one where very few had any basic education to one where most people do. This is not only reflected in the inputs to education – enrollment and attendance – but also in outcomes, where literacy rates have greatly improved.

Getting children into school is also not enough. What they learn matters. There are large differences in educational outcomes : in low-income countries, most children cannot read by the end of primary school. These inequalities in education exacerbate poverty and existing inequalities in global incomes .

On this page, you can find all of our writing and data on global education.

Key insights on Global Education

The world has made substantial progress in increasing basic levels of education.

Access to education is now seen as a fundamental right – in many cases, it’s the government’s duty to provide it.

But formal education is a very recent phenomenon. In the chart, we see the share of the adult population – those older than 15 – that has received some basic education and those who haven’t.

In the early 1800s, fewer than 1 in 5 adults had some basic education. Education was a luxury; in all places, it was only available to a small elite.

But you can see that this share has grown dramatically, such that this ratio is now reversed. Less than 1 in 5 adults has not received any formal education.

This is reflected in literacy data , too: 200 years ago, very few could read and write. Now most adults have basic literacy skills.

What you should know about this data

• Basic education is defined as receiving some kind of formal primary, secondary, or tertiary (post-secondary) education.
• This indicator does not tell us how long a person received formal education. They could have received a full program of schooling, or may only have been in attendance for a short period. To account for such differences, researchers measure the mean years of schooling or the expected years of schooling .

Despite being in school, many children learn very little

International statistics often focus on attendance as the marker of educational progress.

However, being in school does not guarantee that a child receives high-quality education. In fact, in many countries, the data shows that children learn very little.

Just half – 48% – of the world’s children can read with comprehension by the end of primary school. It’s based on data collected over a 9-year period, with 2016 as the average year of collection.

This is shown in the chart, where we plot averages across countries with different income levels. 1

The situation in low-income countries is incredibly worrying, with 90% of children unable to read by that age.

This can be improved – even among high-income countries. The best-performing countries have rates as low as 2%. That’s more than four times lower than the average across high-income countries.

Making sure that every child gets to go to school is essential. But the world also needs to focus on what children learn once they’re in the classroom.

Millions of children learn only very little. How can the world provide a better education to the next generation?

Research suggests that many children – especially in the world’s poorest countries – learn only very little in school. What can we do to improve this?

• This data does not capture total literacy over someone’s lifetime. Many children will learn to read eventually, even if they cannot read by the end of primary school. However, this means they are in a constant state of “catching up” and will leave formal education far behind where they could be.

Children across the world receive very different amounts of quality learning

There are still significant inequalities in the amount of education children get across the world.

This can be measured as the total number of years that children spend in school. However, researchers can also adjust for the quality of education to estimate how many years of quality learning they receive. This is done using an indicator called “learning-adjusted years of schooling”.

On the map, you see vast differences across the world.

In many of the world’s poorest countries, children receive less than three years of learning-adjusted schooling. In most rich countries, this is more than 10 years.

Across most countries in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa – where the largest share of children live – the average years of quality schooling are less than 7.

• Learning-adjusted years of schooling merge the quantity and quality of education into one metric, accounting for the fact that similar durations of schooling can yield different learning outcomes.
• Learning-adjusted years is computed by adjusting the expected years of school based on the quality of learning, as measured by the harmonized test scores from various international student achievement testing programs. The adjustment involves multiplying the expected years of school by the ratio of the most recent harmonized test score to 625. Here, 625 signifies advanced attainment on the TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) test, with 300 representing minimal attainment. These scores are measured in TIMSS-equivalent units.

Hundreds of millions of children worldwide do not go to school

While most children worldwide get the opportunity to go to school, hundreds of millions still don’t.

In the chart, we see the number of children who aren’t in school across primary and secondary education.

This number was around 260 million in 2019.

Many children who attend primary school drop out and do not attend secondary school. That means many more children or adolescents are missing from secondary school than primary education.

Access to basic education: almost 60 million children of primary school age are not in school

The world has made a lot of progress in recent generations, but millions of children are still not in school.

The gender gap in school attendance has closed across most of the world

Globally, until recently, boys were more likely to attend school than girls. The world has focused on closing this gap to ensure every child gets the opportunity to go to school.

Today, these gender gaps have largely disappeared. In the chart, we see the difference in the global enrollment rates for primary, secondary, and tertiary (post-secondary) education. The share of children who complete primary school is also shown.

We see these lines converging over time, and recently they met: rates between boys and girls are the same.

For tertiary education, young women are now more likely than young men to be enrolled.

While the differences are small globally, there are some countries where the differences are still large: girls in Afghanistan, for example, are much less likely to go to school than boys.

Research & Writing

Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not. We are all losing out because of this.

Access to basic education: almost 60 million children of primary school age are not in school, interactive charts on global education.

This data comes from a paper by João Pedro Azevedo et al.

João Pedro Azevedo, Diana Goldemberg, Silvia Montoya, Reema Nayar, Halsey Rogers, Jaime Saavedra, Brian William Stacy (2021) – “ Will Every Child Be Able to Read by 2030? Why Eliminating Learning Poverty Will Be Harder Than You Think, and What to Do About It .” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 9588, March 2021.

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How technology is reinventing education

Stanford Graduate School of Education Dean Dan Schwartz and other education scholars weigh in on what's next for some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom.

Image credit: Claire Scully

New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately worried that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or coach students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the AI + Education initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of CRAFT (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the Digital Learning initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of virtual field trips to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

The World Bank Group is the largest financier of education in the developing world, working in 90 countries and committed to helping them reach SDG4: access to inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all by 2030.

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Education At-A-Glance

Education is a human right, a powerful driver of development, and one of the strongest instruments for reducing poverty and improving health, gender equality, peace, and stability. It delivers large, consistent returns in terms of income, and is the most important factor to ensure equity and inclusion. For individuals, education promotes employment, earnings, health, and poverty reduction. Globally, there is a 9% increase in hourly earnings for every extra year of schooling. 

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FOCUS AREAS

Early childhood development.

Investing in the early years is one of the smartest things a country can do.

Higher Education

Higher Education is instrumental in fostering growth, reducing poverty and boosting shared prosperity.

Skills Development

Skills development can reduce unemployment, raise incomes, and improve standards of living.

Girls’ Education

Every day, girls face barriers to education caused by poverty, cultural norms, poor infrastructure, violence and fragility.

Digital Technologies

The use of information and communication technologies in education can play a crucial role in providing new and innovative ...

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Global Director

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Human Capital Project

The Human Capital Project is a global effort to accelerate more and better investments in people for greater equity and economic growth.

Impact Evaluations

Research that measures the impact of education policies to improve education in low and middle income countries.

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April 30, 2024 • As college administrators face growing unrest on campuses, a growing number are grappling with whether to bring in law enforcement to quell the demonstrations.

A crowd gathers Tuesday evening by the gates in front of Columbia University's Hamilton Hall. Brian Mann hide caption

Police enter Columbia University's Hamilton Hall amid pro-Palestinian protests

April 30, 2024 • A steady stream of officers entered through a second story window using an NYPD armored vehicle with a mechanized drawbridge.

A man holds up a Palestinian flag as activists and students chant, surrounding piled barricades at an encampment at University Yard at George Washington University on April 29. Kent Nishimura/Getty Images hide caption

Consider This from NPR

How the college protests echo history.

April 29, 2024 • Protests against Israel's war in Gaza on college campuses have expanded across the country. They're the biggest student protests, since college students demonstrated against the Vietnam war in the late sixties and early seventies.

Dozens of tents are seen on a lawn inside the Columbia University Campus after students refused to take down the encampment by the 2 p.m. EDT deadline given to students protesting by Columbia President Minouche Shafik. Luiz C. Ribeiro/Tribune News Service/Getty Images hide caption

As student protesters get arrested, they risk being banned from campus too

April 29, 2024 • Students continue to protest at campuses across the country, despite the risk of arrest. Some schools now threaten demonstrators with disciplinary action, while others promise the opposite.

How much does the government spend on education? What percentage of people are college educated? How are kids doing in reading and math?

Table of Contents

What is the current state of education in the us.

How much does the US spend per student?

Public school spending per student

Average teacher salary.

How educated are Americans?

People with a bachelor's degree

Educational attainment by race and ethnicity.

How are kids doing in reading and math?

Proficiency in math and reading

What is the role of the government in education?

Spending on the education system

Agencies and elected officials.

The education system in America is made up of different public and private programs that cover preschool, all the way up to colleges and universities. These programs cater to many students in both urban and rural areas. Get data on how students are faring by grade and subject, college graduation rates, and what federal, state, and local governments spending per student. The information comes from various government agencies including the National Center for Education Statistics and Census Bureau.

During the 2019-2020 school year, there was $15,810 spent on K-12 public education for every student in the US.

Education spending per k-12 public school students has nearly doubled since the 1970s..

This estimate of spending on education is produced by the National Center for Education Statistics. Instruction accounts for most of the spending, though about a third includes support services including administration, maintenance, and transportation. Spending per student varies across states and school districts. During the 2019-2020 school year, New York spends the most per student ($29,597) and Idaho spends the least ($9,690).

During the 2021-2022 school year , the average public school teacher salary in the US was $66,397 .

Instruction is the largest category of public school spending, according to data from the National Center for Educational Statistics. Adjusting for inflation, average teacher pay is down since 2010.

In 2021 , 35% of people 25 and over had at least a bachelor’s degree.

Over the last decade women have become more educated than men..

Educational attainment is defined as the highest level of formal education a person has completed. The concept can be applied to a person, a demographic group, or a geographic area. Data on educational attainment is produced by the Census Bureau in multiple surveys, which may produce different data. Data from the American Community Survey is shown here to allow for geographic comparisons.

In 2021 , 61% of the Asian 25+ population had completed at least four years of college.

Educational attainment data from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey allows for demographic comparisons across the US.

In 2022, proficiency in math for eighth graders was 26.5% .

Proficiency in reading in 8th grade was 30.8% ., based on a nationwide assessment, reading and math scores declined during the pandemic..

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the only nationally representative data that measures student achievement. NAEP is Congressionally mandated. Tests are given in a sample of schools based on student demographics in a given school district, state, or the US overall. Testing covers a variety of subjects, most frequently math, reading, science, and writing.

In fiscal year 2020, governments spent a combined total of $1.3 trillion on education.

That comes out to $4,010 per person..

USAFacts categorizes government budget data to allocate spending appropriately and to arrive at the estimate presented here. Most government spending on education occurs at the state and local levels rather than the federal.

Government revenue and expenditures are based on data from the Office of Management and Budget, the Census Bureau, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Each is published annually, although due to collection times, state and local government data are not as current as federal data. Thus, when combining federal, state, and local revenues and expenditures, the most recent year for a combined number may be delayed.

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70 years after brown v. board of education, new research shows rise in school segregation.

As the nation prepares to mark the 70th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education , a new report from researchers at Stanford and USC shows that racial and economic segregation among schools has grown steadily in large school districts over the past three decades — an increase that appears to be driven in part by policies favoring school choice over integration.

Analyzing data from U.S. public schools going back to 1967, the researchers found that segregation between white and Black students has increased by 64 percent since 1988 in the 100 largest districts, and segregation by economic status has increased by about 50 percent since 1991.

The report also provides new evidence about the forces driving recent trends in school segregation, showing that the expansion of charter schools has played a major role.  

The findings were released on May 6 with the launch of the Segregation Explorer , a new interactive website from the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University. The website provides searchable data on racial and economic school segregation in U.S. states, counties, metropolitan areas, and school districts from 1991 to 2022. 

“School segregation levels are not at pre- Brown levels, but they are high and have been rising steadily since the late 1980s,” said Sean Reardon , the Professor of Poverty and Inequality in Education at Stanford Graduate School of Education and faculty director of the Educational Opportunity Project. “In most large districts, school segregation has increased while residential segregation and racial economic inequality have declined, and our findings indicate that policy choices – not demographic changes – are driving the increase.” 

“There’s a tendency to attribute segregation in schools to segregation in neighborhoods,” said Ann Owens , a professor of sociology and public policy at USC. “But we’re finding that the story is more complicated than that.”

Assessing the rise

In the Brown v. Board decision issued on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racially segregated public schools violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and established that “separate but equal” schools were not only inherently unequal but unconstitutional. The ruling paved the way for future decisions that led to rapid school desegregation in many school districts in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Though segregation in most school districts is much lower than it was 60 years ago, the researchers found that over the past three decades, both racial and economic segregation in large districts increased. Much of the increase in economic segregation since 1991, measured by segregation between students eligible and ineligible for free lunch, occurred in the last 15 years.

White-Hispanic and white-Asian segregation, while lower on average than white-Black segregation, have both more than doubled in large school districts since the 1980s. 

Racial-economic segregation – specifically the difference in the proportion of free-lunch-eligible students between the average white and Black or Hispanic student’s schools – has increased by 70 percent since 1991. 

School segregation is strongly associated with achievement gaps between racial and ethnic groups, especially the rate at which achievement gaps widen during school, the researchers said.  

“Segregation appears to shape educational outcomes because it concentrates Black and Hispanic students in higher-poverty schools, which results in unequal learning opportunities,” said Reardon, who is also a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research and a faculty affiliate of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . 

Policies shaping recent trends 

The recent rise in school segregation appears to be the direct result of educational policy and legal decisions, the researchers said. 

Both residential segregation and racial disparities in income declined between 1990 and 2020 in most large school districts. “Had nothing else changed, that trend would have led to lower school segregation,” said Owens. 

But since 1991, roughly two-thirds of districts that were under court-ordered desegregation have been released from court oversight. Meanwhile, since 1998, the charter sector – a form of expanded school choice – has grown.

Expanding school choice could influence segregation levels in different ways: If families sought schools that were more diverse than the ones available in their neighborhood, it could reduce segregation. But the researchers found that in districts where the charter sector expanded most rapidly in the 2000s and 2010s, segregation grew the most. 

The researchers’ analysis also quantified the extent to which the release from court orders accounted for the rise in school segregation. They found that, together, the release from court oversight and the expansion of choice accounted entirely for the rise in school segregation from 2000 to 2019.

The researchers noted enrollment policies that school districts can implement to mitigate segregation, such as voluntary integration programs, socioeconomic-based student assignment policies, and school choice policies that affirmatively promote integration. 

“School segregation levels are high, troubling, and rising in large districts,” said Reardon. “These findings should sound an alarm for educators and policymakers.”

Additional collaborators on the project include Demetra Kalogrides, Thalia Tom, and Heewon Jang. This research, including the development of the Segregation Explorer data and website, was supported by the Russell Sage Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.   

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20th anniversary

In 2022 we marked the 20th anniversary of the Global Education Monitoring Report.

The Global Education Monitoring Report

Achieving the fourth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 4) on education requires sound evidence and analysis to support policy-making, facilitate the sharing of good practice, and hold those responsible to account for fulfilling their commitments. The Global Education Monitoring Report (GEM Report) is the global public good that serves this purpose.

Established in 2002, the GEM Report is an editorially independent report, hosted and published by UNESCO. At the 2015 World Education Forum, it received a mandate from 160 governments to monitor and report on:  

● Progress on education in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), with particular reference to the SDG 4 monitoring framework ● The implementation of national and international strategies to help hold all relevant partners to account for their commitments, as part of the overall SDG follow-up and review process.

The annual GEM Report is based on multiple sources of data, which enables it to provide a macro view of education issues. Through multiple communication channels, it reaches all regions of the world. It serves as a foundation for evidence-based advocacy to promote progress towards SDG 4, including by convening dialogue on education issues among key decision makers that can effect policy change.

With 18 editions between 2002 and 2023, the GEM Report is an indispensable part of the global education architecture. Four evaluations, including one carried out in 2018, have found that it successfully fulfils its mandate, providing rigorous, relevant, high-quality and authoritative evidence for its broad audiences. Its users include but are not limited to: governments (including leadership and senior civil servants of ministries of education and finance and implementing agencies); experts (including academic researchers, think tanks and consultants); multilateral, international, regional and national development organizations; teachers and their unions; youth, students and their organizations; civil society and non-government organizations engaged in education; and the general public.   The GEM Report’s vision is to serve as the main resource for decision makers who seek comparative research and knowledge to inform their actions on inclusive and equitable quality education at national, regional and global levels.

Its mission is to synthesise, analyse and clearly present the best available data, evidence and research to explain progress and differences in education, and to make recommendations that stimulate reflection and dialogue and thereby improve policymaking.

The GEM Report team aims to fulfil its vision and serve its mission in accordance with its core values:

● Quality: We commit to maintaining the highest standards in our reporting of evidence and data so as to be able to inform advocacy and hold education stakeholders to account for delivering on their commitment to SDG 4. ● Independence: We commit to maintaining our editorial independence, which is essential to serving our audiences and stakeholders; the GEM Report is not beholden to the interests of any country, organization, agenda or group, and we commit to upholding that autonomy.

The theory of change underlying the GEM Report’s approach is based on the idea that, by making rigorous evidence, data and recommendations on education available and accessible, the GEM Report will improve policy dialogue and peer learning and will strengthen education systems, plans, policies and budgets towards achieving SDG 4.

The report’s strategy outlines our plans to 2024, while this brochure provides a quick overview of our activities.

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Education reform ‘accelerated,’ ‘fueled’ by ‘post-pandemic concerns’ from parents: report

E ducation reform has accelerated over the past 30 years and was "fueled" by post-pandemic concerns from parents, according to a report from the Center For Education Reform (CER).

"I do think that, fundamentally, once parents have the power, as you can see, in places like Florida and Arizona, they protect it. But when they don't, they have no idea where to start," CER founder and CEO Jeanne Allen told Fox News Digital .

"And that's why we're kind of running in place," she added. "And if we can, we can blame the unions all day long. We're not. That's not going to make them go away. But what we need to do is actually arm and abet parents to understand their options and what exists."

"Not since the beginning of the education reform movement when, between 1991 and 1999, states created 36 new laws providing parents power over their children’s education have we seen such a rapid expansion in an accelerated period of time for education innovation and opportunity," Allen said in a press release on the report .

BIDEN’S TITLE IX CHANGE BLASTED BY PARENTS’ RIGHTS GROUP AS REDEFINING SEX: ‘A GRAVE THREAT’

CER’s report outlines how education programs and policies enable parental involvement in education. CER highlights that the effort was "fueled" by post-pandemic education concerns and a "renewed understanding of the power of education freedom."

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The report details that from 2021 to April 2024, 26 education reform laws were instituted to enshrine parental rights and involvement. 

"The result is at least another 600,000 students having access to a variety of learning approaches across all education sectors," the report states. "The number is more than half the amount of the students who have, according to research, exited traditional public schools in the COVID-era."

The report also highlights a "Parent Power! Index" ranking the top five best and worst states in terms of their efforts in pushing education freedom laws.

Three of the top five states in the Parent Power! Index were Arizona, Florida, and North Carolina — states that have seen the largest influx of people moving in over the three-year period. CER added that these states’ policies resulted in more than one million students leaving "public schools to pursue other education opportunities in states that have a policy environment that enables options for parents."

Reacting to the report, ACE Scholarships CEO Norton Rainey, told Fox News Digital that "never before have we seen higher demand for educational choice."

"Throughout the pandemic, students faced significant educational disruptions such as school closures and uneven digital access, which led to profound learning loss across the board. These problems illuminated to parents the value of moving towards more individualized education options," Rainey said.

American Federation For Children senior fellow Corey DeAngelis told Fox News Digital that teachers unions overplayed their hand and "awakened a sleeping giant: parents."

"The power-hungry teachers unions fought to keep schools closed and accidentally revealed to parents — through remote learning — the socialist indoctrination in the public school system. That woke families up like never before and sparked a parent revolution," DeAngelis said.

DeAngelis, author of "The Parent Revolution: Rescuing Your Kids from the Radicals Ruining Our Schools," added that the U.S. has "seen bigger education freedom wins in the past three years than the preceding three decades."

SIX STATE SUE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION OVER NEW TITLE IX PROTECTIONS FOR TRANS ATHLETES IN GIRLS' SPORTS

The Florida Department of Education (DOE) sent Fox News Digital a statement responding to its top ranking in the Parent Power! Index.

"This recognition is a testament to Florida's unwavering commitment to empowering parents and providing students with educational freedom, including the ability to choose the best school for their individual needs," Florida DOE Press Secretary Nathalia Medina told Fox News Digital.

"Florida's dedication to universal school choice and protection of parental rights is why Florida stands first in the nation," she added. "Under Governor Ron DeSantis' leadership, parents have more choices than ever when it comes to choosing the best educational environment for their child."

DeSantis has prioritized cutting "woke" elements out of state schools. Since taking office, DeSantis has enacted a Parents Bill of Rights to prohibit instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation and moved to enforce laws banning pornographic material from school children, such as LGBTQ books featuring graphic sexual content.

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Since the COVID-19 pandemic , parents have taken a closer look at what is happening in their children's schools, which caused many to speak out against certain books and curricula being taught. Critics argue these parents are censoring children and pushing to erase LGBTQ and other minority identities from schools. 

Reports show that COVID-19 had an impact on the education of students at all grade levels and college. Learning loss, social and emotional development and college acceptance standards have all changed since the early days of 2020.

Original article source: Education reform ‘accelerated,’ ‘fueled’ by ‘post-pandemic concerns’ from parents: report

Lakewood Schools consultant fires back at 'twisted' and 'skewed' state report

LAKEWOOD — An education consultant hired by Lakewood Schools to review its operations claims a recent state report ripping school management and policies was off base, calling it “twisted” and “skewed.”

Elizabeth Keenan, hired by the district for $22,800, delivered her findings at the April 17 Board of Education meeting and declared the district’s operations to be commendable.

“No district is going to be perfect but you are a district that supports your students,” Keenan told the board. “A district that really wants to take care of each other and support students and the students feel that. You are doing a lot better than most districts.”

The school board hired Keenan – a former school administrator in Chicago and St. Louis County, Missouri – after the New Jersey Department of Education on March 1 issued a scathing report that accused the district of violating a long list of policies, suffering from poor morale, and experiencing “high levels of distrust.”

More: Lakewood teachers' union, LEA, claims student misbehavior, low morale affecting work

“Staff reported not feeling respected and fear retaliation from the administration if they speak out in a critical way,” the report from former State Education Commissioner Kimberly Markus said, in part. “Instances of unresponsiveness or unclear communication from the district contribute to a perception of inadequate support.”

The report, portions of which were obtained by the Asbury Park Press, was released March 1 to both parties in the Alcantara case, a 10-year-old lawsuit filed on behalf of parents against the Department of Education seeking to improve state aid to Lakewood schools.

Markus was appointed last year to conduct the district review by then-Education Commissioner Angelica Allen-McMillan after Allen-McMillan received a court order to formulate a plan to improve Lakewood aid.

Allen-McMillan, who has since left the post, announced that Markus’ review would help her office create a new state aid plan.

Among the state report’s findings:

• Board meeting practices do not align with practices of comparable districts or follow recommendations from the New Jersey School Boards Association.
• Board meetings lacked policy discussions and use “outdated and/or ill-informed” policies.
• Board involvement with budget development was minimal with “no observed board meetings that discussed financial issues or presented detailed information regarding budgets.”
• There appears to be “no urgency or accountability for the district’s financial situation by leadership.”

Two weeks after the report was sent to the district, Lakewood Superintendent Laura Winters penned a response to the Department of Education blasting the findings as “riddled with inaccuracies.”

Her letter claimed the report “was written without proper fact-checking and was riddled with inaccurate information, based largely on hearsay, personal opinion, and undocumented and contradictory statements,” Winters wrote in a letter to state officials in March, later adding that they “ignored easily accessible supporting evidence to the contrary that was provided by the district. The result of this report is to the detriment of students, staff, and the greater Lakewood community.

“Because of these concerns, this report should be immediately withdrawn with prejudice. Lastly, it is important to note that the Lakewood School District was not given the opportunity to review and respond to this report prior to publication.”

More: Scathing state report rips Lakewood schools' backroom decision-making

The board then hired Keenan on March 15 to conduct her own review, which included three days of focus groups with 235 district staff, including principals, teachers, assistant principals, supervisors, and employees in finance, security, and transportation.

“The focus group questions were general questions as well as specific questions about interventions, student expectations, curriculum and curriculum writing, and walkthroughs,” the report said.

Keenan also visited five to six classrooms in each school.

'Deep dive' reveals concerns with state review

Keenan countered the state report with a point-by-point presentation responding to each issue raised by the state review. Her report contends the state used misinformation and faulty reviews to criticize the district.

“After a deep dive into the (state report), it is very clear that the comments are based on subjective interpretation and not an understanding of schools, school boards and communities,” Keenan wrote in her report, later adding, “the number of conflicting and subjective criticisms on practices and policies are unlike any other report.”

State Department of Education officials declined comment on Keenan’s findings, citing the ongoing litigation.

As to the state’s claim that board agenda items were not properly reviewed, specifically consent items often voted on all at once, Keenan said they followed the law.

“Boards have a right to run their board meetings as they want to,” she said. “That really was skewed in terms of how the board is open to people … You have a right to pull items from a consent agenda but if you do not do that it does not mean you are violating the law.”

Keenan also dismissed state claims that the district’s organizational plan was incorrect, that curriculum was revised too often, and that special education programs and kindergarten admissions were improperly handled.

“This was puzzling that they brought this up as a concern,” she said about the special education critique.

Staff retention issue draws dispute

Among the most prominent state criticisms was related to staff retention, which has been a problem for the past few years.

Winters, the superintendent, cited the issue in October when the district received a $50 million state loan, saying such financial uncertainty has affected teacher stability. 

“ We hire teachers and they love it, but it is always in the back of their mind, will there be a loan?” Winters said then. “The stability for the kids and the staff is needed.”

Since 2019, more than 100 staffers a year have left the district. With about 500 on staff, that means 20% are leaving annually, nearly triple the state average of 8%, according to a recent Department of Education report.

Winters said at the time that 12 teachers hired over the summer for the current school year changed their minds and went elsewhere before school started because they feared a lack of job security in Lakewood.

More: Lakewood Schools' auditor says poor state aid makes finances 'tricky'

“They were worrying about what will happen next year,” Winters said. “They called and told me they got a job in another district and they wanted a district that is more stable and doesn’t have to take loans. I have had teachers cry that they love it here, but they want more stability with another district.”

The recent state report pointed to the retention problem, claiming, “the district reports struggling to hire staff to fill all their vacancies each year. Lack of competitive salaries with neighboring districts was cited as a key barrier, yet several current practices may impact staff morale. New staff are hired at a higher pay rate than veterans and 77 teacher contracts have been non-renewed in the past five years. School administrators reported frequent building reassignments, with limited communication or notice.”

Keenan said that such a claim ignores data in the same report that indicated Lakewood Schools have a 93% retention rate, slightly above the state average of 92.4%.

“The district has a great retention rate, especially after COVID where many districts continue to struggle with retaining staff,” she wrote. “In addition, in the focus groups on March 18, and 19 2024, it was reported in more than one focus group that staff know they can go to other districts but choose to stay at Lakewood because of the support, the professional development and the reflection of learning culture.”

District leaders did not indicate what they might do with the report to counter the state claims.

Spokesman Michael Inzelbuch, who is also board attorney, said, “I think we move on, it is what it is. We have been living with this for some time, move on, it is quite clear.”

Superintendent Winters did not respond to requests for comment.

Joe Strupp is an award-winning journalist with 30 years’ experience who covers education and several local communities for APP.com and the Asbury Park Press. He is also the author of four books, including Killing Journalism on the state of the news media, and an adjunct media professor at Rutgers University and Fairleigh Dickinson University. Reach him at [email protected] and at 732-413-3840. Follow him on Twitter at @joestrupp

Accreditors, Education Department Limit Public Access to Findings on Troubled Colleges

Accrediting agencies — the private gatekeepers charged by the U.S. Department of Education with issuing the approvals that make colleges eligible for student financial aid — sometimes send letters to schools describing violations of rules and establishing penalties. These letters, when posted online, can help the public, including students, understand devel0pments and misconduct at schools. But recent actions involving the Accrediting Commission of Career Schools and Colleges (ACCSC), a major accreditor of for-profit colleges, suggest things may be moving in a bad direction — away from transparency and disclosure and toward greater concealment of abuses. 

In the past few years, letters from ACCSC to schools have allowed the public and students to learn about critical issues regarding schools. These include letters: to now-closed Independence University explaining ACCSC’s withdrawal of accreditation after years of school abuses ; to International Education Corporation (IEC), placing on “warning” status remaining schools of a company whose Florida Career College was shuttered after the Department of Education moved to withdraw federal aid because of blatant violations; and to Atlantis University , which voluntarily closed a troubled branch school but still seemed to have its own serious violations meriting warning status.

However, ACCSC and other accreditors sometimes redact those letters, often heavily, and accreditors often remove those letters entirely from their public websites once the issues have been resolved. Both developments have occurred with ACCSC’s October 2023 letter to Atlantis, for example – the broken link is here . (But we saved a copy .)

More recently — after Republic Report wrote about the IEC and Atlantis letters — it appears that ACCSC is posting online summaries of at least some of its letters to institutions instead of the letters themselves – meaning even less transparency for the public.

To make matters worse, the Department of Education normally does not post online such letters from accreditors to institutions, if it obtains them at all. 

A recent interaction I had with the Department’s Freedom of Information Act office highlighted this issue.

ACCSC’s Rules of Process and Procedure , Standards of Accreditation, Section X (C)(2), says:, 

The Commission, at the same time it notifies the school, will provide notice and the reasons why a school is placed on Probation or Warning to the U.S. Department of Education, the appropriate state licensing agency, and other accrediting agencies.

However, when I sought to obtain under FOIA an unredacted version of the ACCSC letter to Atlantis, which placed the school on ACCSC’s warning status, the response from the Department informed me that there were no responsive records, and included this explanation:

Please note, the ACCSC has four levels of corrective actions that are lesser than a probation. Those include: stipulations, heightened monitoring, reporting, and warning. The agency is not required to provide the Department with a decision letter on any of these statuses so long as they are not treated as the equivalent of a probation. 

These responses from ACCSC and the Department may not be completely inconsistent – perhaps, in the case of a warning status, ACCSC is providing reasons without providing actual letters to the institutions. But, at least, these matters require clarification. The idea that ACCSC would send a significant letter to an institution regarding possible violations, and even post it online for the public, as in the case with Atlantis, but, according to the Department, not provide it to the Department, is concerning.

The apparent ACCSC shift from posting the actual letters to posting summaries is also concerning, as is the failure of the Department to post online the letters it does receive. 

ACCSC’s executive director, Michale McComis, has not responded to a request to discuss these matters, and neither has the press office at the Department of Education. 

This issue is one more aspect of the concern by advocates for students that the Department is not providing sufficient transparency regarding institutions of higher education.  We have been raising these issues with the Department for years, including a letter we sent Secretary Cardona in March 2021. 

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Reporting by Mohammed Ghobari; Writing by Michael Georgy and Maha El Dahan; Editing by Alex Richardson

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