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Legislation to replace the 14 year-old No Child Left Behind law—The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) signed by President Obama on Dec. 10—was widely praised by the administration, legislators of both parties in the House and Senate, and the organizations concerned about education policy from the NEA to the Education Trust. The consensus is that the bill is not perfect but provides a needed recalibration of federal authority over the states in education policy while protecting...

In December, a hung jury resulted in a mistrial in the Freddie Gray case. The death of the 25-year-old Baltimore black man while in police custody , and the protests that followed, brought to light the long history of strained police-community relations in the city’s highly segregated, very poor neighborhoods. Poor black kids growing up in Baltimore’s high-poverty neighborhoods are least likely to escape their circumstances compared to other U.S. cities, according to research...

On a typical morning, the first to wake is 6-month-old Nathaniel. He doesn’t always sleep through the night, so by the time his mother, Cierra Thomas, sits up in the twin bed she shares with her husband, Tony Gardner, she’s already dreading the day. “I’m mad that I woke up here,” she says. “Here” is the Gardner family’s room in a 135-bed shelter for homeless families. Their space, bright and painted beige, is the size of a modest kitchen.

The federal government has announced a $157 million project to help hospitals and doctors link Medicare and Medicaid patients to needed social services that sometimes have a bigger impact on their health than medical interventions. Public health experts have known for decades that even with medical care easily available, patients are often limited in their ability to get better or maintain good health if they lack stable housing, access to healthy food, or the ability to get to and from...

It was 5 a.m.—right before I was due to rise, dress, get my two children ready to go to church—and tears began to stream down my face. I was struck by the irony of my emotion: Seven years before, I’d been crying because I thought I had a serious illness and could not have children. This morning, I was crying because of my children: in particular, my boy child, about whom I was desperately worried, unsure how to help him navigate the everyday world of school as an...

The U.K. government is so tired of waiting on private developers to build new homes that it’s going to build its own. Faced with a nationwide housing crisis, Britain just earmarked £1.2 billion to directly commission 30,000 affordable new homes on brownfield sites by 2020, part of a target of 200,000 new homes in total. To speed things up, the first five new projects will be built on government land—ex-military sites, a goods yard, and a former hospital—in Southeast...

As the days get shorter, first grade teacher Esmeralda Jimnez watches the dimming afternoon sky outside her classroom window the way her pupils watch the clock at dismissal time. The studio apartment Jimnez rents for $1,783 a month, or 43 percent of her salary, is located in one of San Francisco’s sketchiest neighborhoods. Getting home involves running a gauntlet of feces-strewn sidewalks, popping crack pipes, discarded needles and menacing comments — daily irritants that become...

The only sound that could be heard in Maria Simon’s first-grade classroom one December morning was the soothing hum from a vibrating Tibetan singing bowl. Her students had gathered on a brightly colored rug at the back of the classroom, sitting with their eyes shut, their legs crossed, and their arms extended outward palms up. Each time a classmate struck the small bowl with a mallet — releasing a low sounding gong — the students breathed in. Then as the sound faded away,...

In New York, kids are fighting to stay alive; in Seattle kids are contemplating suicide. This is one way to describe the vast differences in the student populations I have spent my career working with. As a high school teacher for the past eight years, and facilitator of restorative justice (RJ) for the past three, it has been my honor to help guide and coach students through the extremely tough years of high school and adolescence. [For more of this story, written by David Levine, go...

At a warehouse near Dallas, a black Lab named Papi tugs on a rope to open a fridge and passes his trainer a plastic water bottle with his mouth. Service dogs are often trained to help veterans with physical disabilities. Now, a growing number are being trained to meet the demand from vets with post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health issues. Those dogs learn extra tricks — how to sweep a house for intruders, for example, so a veteran feels safe. [For more of this story,...

After swelling for decades, the number of Americans in prison is finally, gradually beginning to shrink. For the first time since 1978, populations in both state and federal prisons are getting smaller, the result of an overall decline in crime, an easing of the War on Drugs and reform efforts on the part of many states. But what about the racial disparity in incarceration? Is it easing, too? [For more of this story, written by Eli Hager, go...

A city in Arkansas has taken steps to address the pitfalls facing young people who age out of foster care, sometimes with a financial stipend but without the adequate supports that a traumatized, late-adolescent really needs in order to thrive.