Talk to school and district leaders and you’ll hear worries about the next recession, spending restrictions, and a public that knows little about worries that lawmakers and elected officials who know little about their funding needs.

A new mandate under the Every Student Succeeds Act requires a top-to-bottom look at how such districts deploy their money, staff, and the time used to support improvement.

The coronavirus crisis has made staffing and hiring decisions more uncertain, but planning needs to start now, writes Terry B. Grier.

A collection of news stories from this week.

Students who were chronically absent or at risk of dropping out before the coronavirus outbreak are even more at risk now that schools are closed, experts say.

Hosts Istanbul have the early initiative in Group A after a stunning long-range strike from Serkan Uysal, a free-kick and a late penalty earned a 3-0 win against Ukraine's Ingulec.

Bavaria will host the eight-team UEFA Regions' Cup finals from 18 to 26 June.

Theatre

Theatre

Neil Cooper

THIS year, more than ever, we need to see a love story played out on stage. We need to see Covid-19 killed off as convincingly as Snow White’s wicked step ma. We need lines such as: “He’s two metres behind you!” Or the Uglies throwing scorchers at each other like: “Did you get that face mask in Poundstretchers?” “Whit? A’m no’ wearing a face mask, ya cheeky madam.”

AN item for the “there’s always one” file. Only days into the great lockdown and some people are just not coping. Take the holidaymaker – British, of course – who decided she would flout the rules and have a dip at Paradise Park in Tenerife.

ONE of the few benefits of living in the Unprecedented Era is having the chance to experience life at another time and in a different place.

EVERY crime fiction fan will be familiar with the good cop-bad cop routine. One officer is friendly with a suspect to secure their cooperation, the other plays hard ball; one cop is a stickler for the rules, the other is a maverick.

OKAY, the tale that follows is not exactly up there with the yarns spun by those Florentines fleeing the plague in The Decameron, but bear with me. It is hard to be a Ustinov-standard raconteur when that big wide world you took for granted has shrunk to the size of an egg.

HOW does an opposition oppose without appearing to oppose for opposition’s sake? That is the tricky situation in which Labour now finds itself as the death toll from coronavirus reaches a horrific new high.

STRANGE things you never thought would come to pass. Queueing to enter a supermarket. Being thrilled by the sight of the bin lorry arriving. Making your own surgical mask. These days. But the oddest thing of all? Being glad to see politicians.

The only way an ed-tech company can have a meaningful impact in schools is by addressing a specific problem and offering a real solution.

Fewer than one-third of America's teachers say ed-tech innovations have changed their beliefs about what school should look like, according to a new Education Week survey.

Effective management approaches are not skills principals typically learn through the traditional pathways of education. To fill the gap, they are turning to business programs and publications.

Industry observers attribute the rise to heightened interest in ed-tech initiatives, decreasing technology costs, and the move to Common Core standards.

Following the thrill of launching new businesses, two ed-tech startups are facing the challenges of making smart decisions to attract more customers and grow revenues.

Analysts and business officials wonder if the education technology market faces the risk of a crash, similar to what occurred during the dot-com bust in the 1990s.

Education Week asked senior executives from some of the biggest and fastest-growing companies in the United States that question. You might be surprised by what they had to say.

A new nonprofit that will convene technology experts from across business, nonprofit, government, and education sectors will begin its big-picture problem solving in the educational arena.

"Folks in some foundations are quietly expressing frustration that they've been cautioned to stay in their lane and only fund things aligned with their pre-COVID strategy," says Stacey Childress.

Less than 20 percent of respondents to a new CoSN survey marked any items on a list of cybersecurity threats as "high-risk" from their perspective.

FIRST it was Bond, then Peter Rabbit, followed by The Secret Garden. Due to the coronavirus crisis, film distributors have been pulling movies from the schedules left, right and centre and postponing their releases till later in the year.

Keira Knightley plays a feminist activist who disrupts the Miss World contest in 1970 in the new film Misbehaviour.

RADIOACTIVE (12A)

WHILE we may not be able to venture far from home in the coming weeks, that doesn't mean we can't enjoy the wonders of Scotland – city skylines, beaches, mountains, woodland and rugged wilderness – safely from the comfort of our sofas.

The Conversation

FOOTBALLERS are performers, we all know that. But can they tackle a film script? Can they find the head space to turn out a tricky line on a crowded set? And what of football managers? Can they take to acting? We’ve long believed them to have the ego of an oligarch and to make the demands of a dictator. Does any of this suggest those born to kick balls around a park can turn their hand to thespianism?

NEIL Mackay (“Johnson? Sturgeon? When it comes to coronavirus they are both the same”, The Herald, May 5) lambasts Nicola Sturgeon and Boris Johnson for both taking an almost identical approach in their fight against Covid-19, somehow implying that this is in itself a fault.

YOU report (HeraldScotland, May 5) that Professor Neil Ferguson, one of the UK government’s key advisers on the current lockdown restrictions, has resigned after breaching the government (and his own) strong advice on the need for social distancing.

New findings on a state initiative in Wisconsin suggest that to make the most out of smaller class sizes in the early grades, teachers should focus on basic skills when they have one-on-one contact with students, ask children to discuss and demonstrate what they know, and have a firm, but nurturing,

Smaller classes could help bridge the gap between home and school, writes former teacher Marc Vincenti.

Hundreds of teachers across the Sacramento Unified school district walked out of their classrooms and onto picket lines last week for the first time in 30 years, staging a one-day strike alleging unfair labor practices by the California district.

It is time to refocus on building competency-based schools that work over time rather than forcing top-down laws that end in superficial changes in policy and no change in student outcomes, says guest blogger Van Schoales.

When the ruthless crime boss and Mafia Godfather Sam Giancana was gunned down in Illinois in 1975, he was quickly replaced by yet another murderous protégé from the Chicago Crime Syndicate, Tony Accardo.

This week, our resident cartoonist turned his pen on the Coronavirus outbreak, bullying claims surrounding the home secretary and Scotland making in to the world list of top beaches.

Balls up

BEING a sensible mother, Martha Bryson, from Falkirk, told her young daughter, Sue, never to sneak into the attic. Being a naughty scamp, Sue ignored this advice and got sneaky.

Force or farce?

An EL Education school in Rochester, NY, shows that giving young children real problems to solve can instill the qualities students will need as adults.

Rick talks with the CEO of Panorama Education, an ed-tech company whose college- and career-readiness tools are currently used each year in 11,500 schools.

The California district rolled out a culturally-specific program to support black male students, and the program has led to positive outcomes for students who had an opportunity to participate.

Every year about this time, I write a series of articles about suicide and bullying prevention, and this year will be no different. I can always count on advocates and education companies from all over the world to send me information about what's new in the field. Out of all the companies and produ