 Dear reader,
With rampant inflation boosting the cost of everything from coffee to gas and bread, it’s inevitable that college students are facing out-of-control rents as they search this fall for increasingly scarce student housing. On top of rising tuition and debt loads, high rents are becoming another completion hurdle, sending students such as JoLynn Kelly back to her parents’ home 30 minutes away from her campus at the University of California, Berkeley.
“It’s insane,” Kelly told us in a Hechinger story that also appeared in USA Today last week. “Everyone is either taking out loans, or someone else is paying for it or they’re commuting.”
Higher education is feeling the pinch, but there are also new challenges facing our stressed early education system. Experts are anticipating an uptick in low-income families needing more social supports in the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent abortion decision, but more money won’t be forthcoming in the stripped-down reconciliation package that replaces President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan.
There’s another Hechinger Report column I’d like to call your attention to this week, one that takes a different approach to analyzing the teacher shortage we are reading so much about. Turns out, some education researchers who study the teaching profession believe the crisis is exaggerated. It’s true that some schools are experiencing dire shortages, especially in rural and low-income districts, but some struggled to fill vacancies before the pandemic, especially for special education and ELL roles. What are you hearing?
In our mission to cover both inequality and innovation in U.S. education, we often find ourselves the bearer of disturbing trends, but I want to point out that we are also deeply committed to solutions about what is working. Check out our solutions section, where you will find some encouraging news. And, as always, tell us what is working and what is not in education and remind others to sign up for our newsletters. We love hearing from our readers.
Liz Willen, Editor
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Main Idea
