Education

The Biden administration last week released new guidelines on schools reopening, for the first time offering federal guidance on issues including physical distancing and air quality in classrooms, testing and acceptable community spread rates.

Our elected officials must commit themselves to ending systemic racism which creates the current segregated system in which some students receive a quality education and others do not. We need leadership to narrow opportunity gaps and focus on the residents who are experiencing the worst of the pandemic, not just in the Boston Public Schools but in all our neighborhoods.

The Policy for Progress group in Massachusetts is taking a closer look at the problem of segregated schools. Its recent “Commonwealth Fault Lines” study compares pairs of neighboring Massachusetts cities, including Boston and Needham. In a webinar on Jan. 26, hosted by MassINC, researchers and legislators concerned about the issue discussed how segregation has increased over the years and methods to reduce it.

A group of educators is pushing to prepare the next generation of voters with an update to civics education in grade school. Though the practice isn’t widespread, there is evidence that required civic education curriculums have had positive effects in states like Florida and Illinois.

At RCC, Your Future is Our Focus, now and always. While  we have adjusted our course offerings in light of  the COVID-19 pandemic, we have never strayed from our commitment to ensuring your success. 

The incoming administration of President-elect Joe Biden will invest billions of dollars in public education to close achievement gaps, modernize school buildings and support schools with high concentrations of low-income students, campaign policy director Stef Feldman told the Education Writers Association in an interview last week.

The push to reopen schools in Massachusetts mirrors a national trend in which governors and mayors are pushing for a return to schools at the same time COVID rates are spiking around the country.

As progressive Asian American activists, we support the suspension of the entrance exam as a criteria for selection to attend the exam schools in favor of standards that will lead to increased diversity and improved access, particularly for Black and Latinx communities.

Like many schools and extracurricular programs reorienting during the pandemic, the ACE Mentor Program of Greater Boston is grappling with the big question: How do you create an engaging online learning program?

Roxbury Latin is a democratically gathered community, a school where individuals from a great diversity of backgrounds are brought together by shared goals and common ideals.

Now that we’ve been at Park for several years, we have found it is providing an exceptional educational foundation for our children, Sarah-Alysee in Grade 5, Rodney in Grade 1, and Micah in PreK. (Our youngest, Elaina, isn’t quite old enough for Park yet!)