Schools play key role in supporting homeless students — if they can identify them

School districts are key to supporting homeless students and helping them overcome the challenges they face, however, this population is typically undercounted due to difficulties related to identification, according to the report Supporting students experiencing homelessness: District approaches to supports and funding, released by the […]

Schools play an important role in prevention and awareness of the fentanyl crisis

Headlines involving young people overdosing on opioids, sometimes while on school campuses, have become all too frequent. On Nov. 15, the California Department of Education hosted a webinar with guidance for schools regarding the opioid crisis. An example shared by CDE’s Deputy Superintendent of Operations […]

Low-income youth need expanded access to Medicaid services

The state Department of Health Care Services (DHCS) must do more to ensure children in the California Medical Assistance Program (Medi‑Cal) receive preventive health services, according to a Sept. 13 report from the California State Auditor’s office. Schools can play a significant role in accomplishing this. […]

Out-of-school suspension trends and disparities explored in new report

Removing students from the classroom through exclusionary discipline practices like suspensions and expulsions has been proven to negatively impact academic achievement and disproportionately effect specific groups including students of color, low-income children, LGBTQ youth, males and students with disabilities. Following decades where a zero-tolerance approach […]

Supporting students in foster care requires time and resources

California’s Students in Foster Care: Challenges and Promising Practices, a report released by the Learning Policy Institute in July 2022, considers statewide pre-pandemic education data and conversations with county offices of education foster youth services coordinators to find promising practices that can implemented. In 2018–19, […]

LEAs, federal leaders share how they’re addressing youth mental health

“Addressing the Student Mental Health Crisis,” a webinar hosted by the Healthy Schools Campaign on Sept. 14, showcased how some local educational agencies are handling the challenge as well as what’s being done at the federal level. “The last two-and-a-half years have been intensely difficult […]

Report lays out strategies leading to student success

Last week, the CSBA blog highlighted the findings from Curriculum Associates analysis of reading and mathematics data gathered from nearly 2 million first- through eighth-grade students during the 2021–22 school year via the company’s diagnostic i-Ready Assessment. That report found that while younger students are […]

CSBA report finds that learning recovery is a top priority for school leaders

By Jeremy Anderson Since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been a national conversation about its impacts on student learning. Compounding this concern is the educational inequities that pre-existed the pandemic were worsened in school districts that primarily serve historically marginalized students. This conversation […]