Studies repeatedly show that students of color in K-12 schools are suspended more often and more harshly than white students. Yet drawing from ten years of New York City public school data from grades 4 to 8, a new working paper coauthored by UC Berkeley professor Tolani Britton found that Black, Latinx, and Asian American students were less likely to face such exclusionary discipline when their teachers matched their racial or ethnic background.

Sadly, journalists like me rarely provide a coherent picture of what's happening in the local schools our readers care about most. We report successes and failures, debates and innovations, but the sum of our stories is usually no clearer than a running account of squabbles in the playground. Still, it's worth doing. The best new example is a project that unleashed several scholars on our nation's second largest city and culminated with this book: "When Schools Work: Pluralist Politics and Institutional Reform in Los Angeles." The author is Bruce Fuller, a professor of education and public policy at the University of California at Berkeley. Participating in the research and writing were five graduate students: Melissa Ancheta, Malena Arcidiacono, Joonho Lee, Caitlin Kearns and Sarah Manchanda. Fuller summed it up this way: "The behemoth institution of L.A. Unified, written off as hapless and ineffectual, came alive with a pulse, a beating heart. Reading and math scores for Latino and white students proceeded to climb (more than one grade level) over the subsequent two decades, as gauged by a careful federal assessment of learning in L.A., finally leveling off in 2019. Other barometers of pupil progress climbed as well — enrollment in college-prep courses rose, student discipline incidents fell, and graduation rates steadily increased."

International rankings of universities raise numerous questions. How can you fairly compare universities that operate in different countries, with different sources of funds and different missions? Despite the obstacles, several players do such comparisons: Times Higher Education, U.S. News & World Report and QS are three. A report being released today by the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley, raises questions about whether QS has a conflict of interest in its rankings. QS has a consulting business that helps universities in various ways. The report - by Igor Chirikov, a senior researcher at the center - suggests that the business could be influencing the rankings inappropriately.

How have school districts dealt with the coronavirus pandemic? David Kirp, a professor of public policy at UC Berkeley, has completed a new book, "Greater Expectations," about three school districts and how they have responded to the coronavirus pandemic. Kirp writes, "Man plans, God laughs, as the adage goes. COVID-19 affected every aspect of education, even as it affected every aspect of our lives. In an attempt to halt the spread of the virus, principals, superintendents and then governors closed the schools. The wave of closures began in late February 2020, and by the first week of May all but two states had ordered that schools be shut for the rest of the school year."

A new analysis of 1,610 pre-K sites in New York City finds classroom quality is lower in sites located in poor neighborhoods and in centers serving higher percentages of Black and Latino children. The study was led by University of California, Berkeley, sociologist Bruce Fuller, who last year participated in a study showing Latino children, particularly those in immigrant families, are increasingly less likely to attend elementary schools with white students. Fuller has also long questioned whether universal preschool models improve outcomes for children from poor families.