Author: Jerry Leger

No virtual tour has ever been able to fully capture the feeling of being on a university campus for the first time. When you’re physically present, the weight of a decision that will affect several years of your life tends to feel a little more real. You can observe students moving across the quad, overhear bits of conversation outside lecture halls, and subtly gauge whether a place feels like a place you could truly belong. Bristol University appears to be aware of this, which may be why thousands of potential students nationwide look forward to its undergraduate open days on…

When a teacher calls in sick and no one has found a replacement by seven in the morning, a certain kind of anxiety takes hold in the school hallway. Although it’s quiet, the employees sense it. Even if they are unable to identify it, students experience it as well. For many years, substitute teaching was merely seen as a transactional afterthought, a warm body in a chair, as part of the way American public education operated. It appears that Scoot Education decided that was never truly sufficient. Founded with the seemingly straightforward goal of placing the right teacher in the…

A certain type of denial says “absolutely not, and how dare you suggest otherwise.” It goes beyond simply saying “no.” The word that almost always appears when a political party denounces an act of violence without using any qualifiers to soften the message or when a football team releases a statement claiming there was no emergency board meeting is vehemently. Not “firmly.” Not “strongly.” fiercely. Pausing over that decision is worthwhile. Seldom does language happen by accident, particularly when making public remarks where each word is carefully considered. Like most adverbs, vehemently serves to modify—that is, to explain how something…

The New York City Department of Education has a subtle, startling quality that only becomes apparent when you compare the numbers. 1.1 million or more students. Five boroughs are home to more than 1,800 schools. a budget of about $38 billion per year. By nearly every metric, it is the biggest public school system in the US and among the biggest worldwide. You get a tiny but genuine sense of the sheer amount of machinery needed to keep this thing running when you walk past a neighborhood school in the Bronx on a Tuesday morning and watch kids pour through…

A specific type of institutional power functions virtually unnoticed by the general public. No press conferences. No moments that went viral. Decisions that affect some of the most vulnerable lives in San Diego County are made by just five individuals who are chosen by their neighbors. That type of organization is the San Diego County Board of Education, and the majority of locals couldn’t identify a single member. Each of the five trustees on the board, chosen through local elections and holding staggered four-year terms, represents a distinct region of the county, including the 3rd District. This deliberate staggering is…

Conan O’Brien’s origin story is almost purposefully ridiculous. This man began by writing a senior thesis on William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor. Over the course of three decades, he would perfect the art of awkward self-deprecation and surreal physical comedy. The thesis, Literary Progeria in the Works of Flannery O’Connor and William Faulkner, looked at how children are used as symbols in serious American literature. It’s not exactly what you would expect from a guy who used to slow-dance on cable television with a bear that was masturbating. O’Brien was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on April 18, 1963, into a…

A bright student who has just received an admission letter from a reputable university and has no idea how to pay for it may experience a certain kind of quiet desperation. It’s not overly dramatic. The news doesn’t report on it. It simply sits between the fee challan and the acceptance notice on kitchen tables all over Pakistan. Nevertheless, the system intended to address this issue has been in place for many years, but it is frequently misinterpreted, underutilized, and in certain situations, completely unknown. The State Bank of Pakistan’s Higher Education Financing Scheme served as the foundation for Pakistan’s…

Nowadays, if you walk by practically any public school in California, everything appears to be relatively normal. Teachers setting up, children arriving, the quiet buzz of a typical morning. However, the atmosphere in district budget offices is more akin to controlled panic. Spreadsheets are being run again. Plans for contingencies are being completed. Additionally, the question that looms over more than 2,000 teachers in the state this summer is whether they will still be employed in September rather than curriculum or lesson plans. Although Governor Gavin Newsom’s office has been careful to frame his revised budget around record-breaking figures, such…

The money held for a few years. State tax revenues unexpectedly surged, federal relief funds flooded into school districts across the nation, and the more serious structural issues with K–12 education financing remained politely hidden. However, that window is now closed. Legislators in dozens of states are now directly confronting the $190 billion in pandemic-era emergency school relief that has mostly expired: funding formulas that don’t reflect the modern world. You’ll see that the numbers don’t add up when you stroll through the hallways of many mid-size public school districts today. fewer pupils occupying seats. more pupils with unique learning…

Last month, something subtly historic occurred in a federal California courtroom, and it had nothing to do with a billionaire or a celebrity. It concerned a small, rural school district in eastern Kentucky called Breathitt County, which is the type of American community where the school counselor most likely knows every child by first name. YouTube, Snap, TikTok, and Meta were sued by that district. And all four of them reached a settlement in the weeks preceding what was meant to be a historic trial. It came to about $27 million. At $9 million, Meta made the biggest payment. Alphabet,…