Anya Kamenetz
Anya Kamenetz is an education correspondent at NPR. She joined NPR in 2014, working as part of a new initiative to coordinate on-air and online coverage of learning. Since then the NPR Ed team has won a 2017 Edward R. Murrow Award for Innovation, and a 2015 National Award for Education Reporting for the multimedia national collaboration, the Grad Rates project.
Kamenetz is the author of several books. Her latest is The Art of Screen Time: How Your Family Can Balance Digital Media and Real Life (PublicAffairs, 2018). Her previous books touched on student loans, innovations to address cost, quality, and access in higher education, and issues of assessment and excellence: Generation Debt; DIY U: Edupunks, Edupreneurs, and the Coming Transformation of Higher Education, and The Test.
Kamenetz covered technology, innovation, sustainability, and social entrepreneurship for five years as a staff writer for Fast Company magazine. She's contributed to The New York Times, The Washington Post, New York Magazine and Slate, and appeared in documentaries shown on PBS and CNN.
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The new children's book Hear My Voice/Escucha Mi Voz pulls from the author's interviews with migrant children detained in U.S. facilities in 2019. -
Juvenile incarceration is down, but many young people still in facilities have gone months without seeing their families. -
The first federal survey on school reopening shows racial and geographic differences in participation in full-time, in person learning. -
The CDC has updated its guidance for schools, saying it "now recommends that, with universal masking, students should maintain a distance of at least three feet in classroom settings." -
In many places, the 6-foot guidance was interpreted as requiring schools to operate on part-time schedules in order to reduce class sizes. A 3-foot rule would allow many more schools to reopen fully. -
The monthly checks would mark a big shift in the federal government's approach to child poverty. One study estimates they could cut the number of poor children by half. -
An NPR/Ipsos survey finds most parents support targeted interventions by schools that would help students recover academic, social and emotional skills. -
The updated guidelines make key changes to earlier language and include a new color-coded chart that divides school reopening options into four zones based on the level of community transmission. -
President Biden's relief bill currently includes $130 billion for public K-12 schools. The biggest chunk of of the spending would go to districts to avoid layoffs and hire more personnel.
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About a third of U.S. students haven't had a single day in a classroom since March 2020. Coming back now — with the virus still spreading and teachers pushing back — hasn't been easy.
