Wenatchee Public Schools in Washington state has revived its former high-school online education platform, Wenatchee Internet Academy, to now provide a distance learning option for K-12 students during the pandemic. For high-school students, the academy offers courses through the Apex Virtual Learning School platform, and officials say the district is considering continuing the academy for at least another year.

Some school districts are offering night school to students, including a Virginia district that started a virtual night program for students who are learning English and work during the day -- in some cases, because their families have lost jobs during the coronavirus pandemic. The options, officials say, ensure students do not have to choose between their education and a paycheck.

Districts nationwide are planning summer programs aimed at helping to curb learning loss related to the coronavirus pandemic. Plans include robust summer school, experiential projects and internships, and in Tulsa Public Schools in Oklahoma, high schools will hold camps to help students recover credits.

Online teacher communities on social media or other online spaces can help support STEM education, writes Naomi Harm, a STEM innovator specialist and global K-12 education consultant. In this blog post, Harm shares three ways she has connected with online teacher communities, including by searching key hashtags.

Hope is a learnable skill, and educators can take steps to instill hope in students, researchers have found. Researchers and psychologists suggest small changes in curricula, bringing in new activities and addressing trauma of the past year head on.

Educators should teach students to focus, to avoid procrastination and to study effectively to improve outcomes -- both for students learning in person and online -- suggests Daniel Willingham, a psychologist at the University of Virginia. In this article, Willingham shares 13 tips to help students study, including limiting distractions such as watching TV while studying.

Sixth-grade math teacher Jessica Peacock of Raleigh, N.C., says that getting her students to participate during the early days of online learning was so disheartening that she broke down in front of her students, telling them that she felt as if she was teaching in an aquarium. Students instantly started turning on their cameras and engaging and soon were sharing their screens, Peacock says.

President Joe Biden on Friday released his $1.5 trillion spending proposal for fiscal year 2022, which includes close to $103 billion for the Education Department -- a 40.8% increase from the previous fiscal year. The proposal includes $36.5 billion in Title I grants -- $20 billion more than the 2021 level and the largest investment in the program's history.

The US Education Department cited Washington, D.C.'s high number of remote students and concerns about safe spaces for test administration in its decision issued last week to grant a broad waiver from the annual assessments required by the Every Student Succeeds Act. The department also said Oregon may reduce the number of tests it gives but did not permit Michigan and Montana to use local tests instead of state assessments, and did not grant New York's request to cancel testing.

This new webinar series is dedicated to your continued professional learning. We'll evaluate topics such as the role of social and emotional learning in student success, teaching standards for online learning, and special education student needs. Each topic will be shared in a three-part mini-series, and you can attend one, two, or three 30-minute sessions that can count toward a CEU credit as allowed by your school district. The first webinar is Supporting Credit Recovery Students, Part 1: Student Mindset. Watch the webinar.

The pandemic forced district leaders to make big decisions quickly on how to keep students learning. Dr. Quintin Shepherd, superintendent at Victoria Independent School District in Victoria, Texas, shares his strategies for serving a school community during the pandemic, including what he calls radical transparency and putting the public back in public education. Listen to the podcast.

The sudden rise in virtual learning during the COVID-19 pandemic illustrated how, at its best, the increased use of technology can help school districts provide a personalized learning experience. It also showed that districts must address the challenges of keeping students engaged and motivated, especially when they are dealing with external stressors and unexpected interruptions to their educational routines. Read the blog.