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Thursday, September 1

Are you burned out on toxic politics? Carli has you covered.

We'll begin the Thursday newsletter with a word from Carli Pierson, one of our opinion writers.

The more toxic things get in U.S. politics the more I find myself retreating to my newfound hobbies of studying ancient history and space. Right now, I'm really into ancient Sicily, which was the crown jewel of Magna Graecia and exploring every nook and cranny of NASA's very interactive website.

Last week I interviewed UC Berkeley professor Imke de Pater about exciting new images of Jupiter from the James Webb Space Telescope. And it looks like there's a lot more important work coming up for NASA's $10 billion project, which I will be writing about in the coming days!

Composite image of Jupiter from three filters and alignment due to the planet's rotation.

Judy Schmidt/NASA, European Space Agency, Canadian Space Agency

My talks with astronomers and planetary scientists has reminded me that experts have no secret alternative Earth, no backup for us as a species if we destroy the planet we live on. And that pushed me to reach out to conservation ecologists, specifically, an extinction expert, who talked in-depth about what we're doing to the planet, and what he thinks we can do to make things better, before it's too late.

I will be publishing about those conversations in the coming days, as well.

- Carli Pierson

Good news Carli has written about

•	How the James Webb telescope helps us get a clearer picture of Jupiter
•	'What I learned from my father,' the first Black secretary of the Army
•	This is why access to swim safety matters
•	We helped save the world's 'weirdest bird.' Here's how.

COVID hurt student academic achievements, but we can recover

By Miguel Cardona |Secretary of Education

As secretary of Education, I've traveled to 35 states and talked with countless students, families and educators. In every conversation, it's clear: The pandemic has had profound impacts on our children and youth. Our students' academic performance will reflect these impacts – as well as inequities in educational opportunity that preceded and continued through the pandemic.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona

Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

The latest data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress confirms this, showing long-term trends for America's 9-year-olds in reading and math. While NAEP scores were not increasing before March 2020, these results show that we cannot be complacent about accelerating our students' academic outcomes. Read more...

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