Education Policy | Penn Today

Understanding the pandemic classroom

Penn professors join the “Understand This ...” podcast to talk about the fall 2021 return to the classroom, reflecting on what students and educators have experienced during the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, while examining lessons from remote learning.

self-assured high school student in classroom

In a California district, Latinx students with Latinx teachers attend more school

While the teaching workforce continues to be heavily dominated by white teachers, in particular white women, the academic and social-emotional benefits for students of color of having a teacher who is their same race have been widely documented. Less studied is the impact that having a same-race teacher has on attendance.

Vivian Gadsen stands at the front of a classroom speaking to students.

Collaborating with communities: Vivian Gadsden works to help children and families

The Graduate School of Education professor speaks to how she is collaborating with students, parents, educators, and the City of Philadelphia to imagine and build a brighter future through education.

What won’t the infrastructure plan do? Repair our crumbling schools

Nell Williams, a Ph.D. student in the Graduate School of Education, wrote an op-ed in support of the Biden administration’s infrastructure plan, which allocates funds to repair school buildings. “As the infrastructure plan undergoes further negotiation in the House and Senate, I urge policymakers note the gaping hole that was left when most U.S. schools went virtual last year,” she said.

Teacher wearing face mask standing alone in a school hallway.

A post-pandemic wave of teachers leaving the workforce, and other trends

Penn GSE’s Richard Ingersoll has published a new report looking at who is at work in America’s classrooms, and finds that many trends he has tracked since publishing his first study continue to hold true, and in some ways have deepened.

A group of educators in training work on a project building a tower of wooden sticks on a table.

How project-based learning can prepare students for the 21st century

Penn GSE dean Pam Grossman and peers argue in a new book that project-based learning, a method of instruction that identifies a project or problem that students work on, should be at the center of American public education.

five students sitting on steps looking at computers and phones

A high school cheerleader’s free speech and the First Amendment

A Pennsylvania high school cheerleader’s profanity-laced rant is now the foundation of a U.S. Supreme Court decision on free speech. Sigal Ben-Porath shares her arguments in her amicus brief to the court, and her predictions on the court’s decision.

Students in a parking lot of a school, some playing, one on a laptop, during the pandemic.

The multilayered challenges of broadband expansion

Penn professors identify the challenges ahead for expanding broadband access to people who need it, in areas both rural and urban.

Black teachers ground down by racial battle fatigue after a year like no other

Richard Ingersoll of the Graduate School of Education and the School of Arts & Sciences spoke about the pandemic’s impact on the teaching workforce and suggested that the economy’s recovery could increase teacher turnover and retirements.

Wearing a suit and tie, Walter Palmer stands outside of Penn's School of Social Policy and Practice with his hands in his pockets.

Q&A

The world according to Walter Palmer

The educator, organizer, and alumnus discusses his six decades of activism, growing up in the Black Bottom, studying and teaching at Penn, his work at CHOP, the student strike of 1967, the Vietnam War, Frank Rizzo, Donald Trump, school choice, gun violence, the Chauvin trial, and why he thinks racism should be declared a national public health crisis.

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