Your weekend long reads 🗞️

Where has the summer gone, friends of The Short List? It's John, and I'm here to point out that the days are getting shorter, it's almost Labor Day, and there's a smell of fall in the air. The new school year is upon us!

It's clear that 2021-22 will be a school year like none other, thanks to the coronavirus. School districts are facing daunting challenges:

►As schools open for in-person learning, educators are on a desperate quest to find students that went missing during the long months of at-home instruction. On average nationwide, students are about five months behind in math and four months behind in reading, according to a recent study. One big problem is a lack of good data: Few of America’s largest districts can provide a clear picture of which students missed significant class time during the pandemic.

►Just days into the new school year, thousands of kids are under quarantine in public school districts after being exposed to COVID-19.

►Amid the push to restart in-person learning, some parents, particularly parents of color, argue that at-home learning worked better for them – and that their desires are being drowned out of the discussion.

Colleges and universities have their own problems:

►More than 700 colleges are requiring the COVID-19 vaccine for students or staff, but hundreds more are not. Students at these schools are meeting new – and possibly unvaccinated – roommates, just as the delta variant leads to an explosion of cases nationwide, including more breakthrough cases of fully vaccinated people. 

►Following an initial flood of interest, COVID-19 vaccination rates have slowed dramatically and young adults are among the holdouts. But some college students are working to change that.

Stay with Paste BN throughout the school year to learn how COVID-19 is affecting education around the country.

There are more long reads below. Have a great weekend.