BIANCA VÁZQUEZ TONESS

National education reporter

Vázquez Toness is an Associated Press reporter who writes about the continuing impact of the pandemic on young people and their education.
Students protest at an encampment on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tuesday, April 23, 2024, in Cambridge, Mass. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa)
Pro-Palestinian student protests target colleges’ financial ties with Israel
Students at a growing number of U.S. colleges are gathering in pro-Palestinian encampments with a unified demand to end investments supporting Israel’s war in Gaza.
 
FILE - A student wears a mask and face shield in a 4th grade class amid the COVID-19 pandemic at Washington Elementary School on Jan. 12, 2022, in Lynwood, Calif. Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools and upended child care, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, File)
The CDC has relaxed COVID guidelines. Will schools and day cares follow suit?
Four years after the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools, the CDC says parents can start treating the virus like other respiratory illnesses.
 
This photo taken Aug. 15, 2016, shows the front of the Bellefonte Area School District certified school nurses office. Schools are confronting soaring absence rates. Some are calling for parents to send their children to class even if they are not feeling 100% well. During the pandemic, schools urged parents and children to stay home at any sign of illness. Now that the COVID-19 emergency has ended, guidance on when to keep children home varies widely. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends staying home with fever, vomiting or diarrhea, or when students “are not well enough to participate in class.” But many districts go far beyond that, delineating a dizzying array of symptoms they say should rule out attendance. (Abby Drey/Centre Daily Times via AP, file)
Cough? Sore throat? More schools suggest mildly sick kids attend anyway
Schools are confronting soaring absence rates. Some are calling for parents to send their children to class even if they are not feeling 100% well.
 
Tameka's 8-year-old daughter ties her shoe before running out to play in Atlanta on Dec. 5, 2023. The little girl should be in second grade but has never attended school. Tameka's kids have essentially been out of school since COVID hit in March 2020. They have had a consistent place to live, but nearly everything else in their lives collapsed during the pandemic. (AP Photo/Bianca Vázquez Toness)
These kids want to go to school. The main obstacle? Paperwork
Thousands of kids went missing from schools during the pandemic. For some who have tried to return, school paperwork has proved a daunting obstacle.
 
Deneffy Sánchez, 15, rests on a bed he shares with his mother and little sister just feet away from their roommate's bed in Los Angeles, Saturday, Sept. 9, 2023. In Los Angeles, housing insecurity is one of the biggest reasons kids have missed school since the pandemic and struggle to catch up. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
At 15, he is defending his home and parenting his sister. One young man’s struggle to stay in school
Housing insecurity has hurt kids’ chances of recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic in Los Angeles and much of California.
 
Rousmery Negrón stands with her son at home in Springfield, Mass., on Thursday, Aug. 3, 2023. When in-person school resumed after pandemic closures, Negrón and her son both noticed a change: School seemed less welcoming. Parents were no longer allowed in the building without an appointment, Negrón said. Punishments were more severe. Everyone seemed less tolerant, more angry. Negrón's son even overheard a teacher mocking his learning disabilities, calling him an ugly name. He would end up missing more than five months of sixth grade. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)
Millions of kids are missing weeks of school as attendance tanks across the US
Nationwide, students have been absent at record rates since schools reopened after COVID-forced closures.
 
Reece Bratton, from left, Jordan Bratton and Nia Bratton and their parents, Faith and Kevin Bratton, watch Katy's first Juneteenth parade, Monday, June 19, 2023, in Katy, Texas. (Yi-Chin Lee/Houston Chronicle via AP)
Americans mark Juneteenth with parties, events and quiet reflection on the end of slavery
Americans are observing the relatively new Juneteenth federal holiday with festivals, parades, cookouts and other gatherings.
 
Michael Crowder, 11, reads during an after-school literacy program in Atlanta on Thursday, April 6, 2023. Michael missed most of first grade, the foundational year for learning to read. It was the first fall of the pandemic, and for months Atlanta only offered school online. Michael's mom had just had a baby, and there was no quiet place to study in their small apartment. He missed a good part of second grade, too. (AP Photo/Alex Slitz)
‘Too much to learn': Schools race to catch up kids’ reading
Third graders aren’t reading well — and that poses an urgent problem. In one Atlanta classroom, will extra class time, plus phonics, be enough?
 
Evena Joseph, left, sits with her son J. Ryan Mathurin, 9, as he does his homework, Thursday, Dec. 22, 2022, at their home, in Boston. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)
Many kids are struggling in school. Do their parents know?
It’s widely known from test scores that the pandemic set back students across the country. But many parents don’t realize that includes their own child.
 
Kailani Taylor-Cribb walks through her neighborhood in Asheville, N.C., on Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2023. Kailani hasn’t taken a single class in what used to be her high school since the height of the coronavirus pandemic. She vanished from the public school roll in Cambridge, Mass., in 2021 and has been, from an administrative standpoint, unaccounted for since then. (AP Photo/Kathy Kmonicek)
The pandemic missing: The kids who didn’t go back to school
Hundreds of thousands of students who have dropped off public school rolls since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic are unaccounted for.
 
2 cities pursued more school for kids. Only 1 pulled it off.
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — Jonathan Oliva is in third grade, but struggles to read and write.

“His teacher said he’s like a kindergartner.
 
First grader Amora Speid, left, stretches out during classes at Chimborazo Elementary School Thursday, Nov. 17, 2022, in Richmond, Va. The Richmond school district, which includes Chimborazo elementary, ultimately decided against year-round school. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
2 cities pursued more school for kids. Only 1 pulled it off.
Facing massive pandemic learning loss, the superintendent in Richmond, Virginia, tried to remake one of the most untouchable aspects of school – the academic calendar.
 
Bishop Charles Lampkin, a pastor in Memphis has started offering tutoring at his church after school to help children who have pandemic learning loss, Friday, Oct. 28, 2022, in Memphis, Tenn. (AP Photo/Karen Pulfer Focht)
Massive learning setbacks show COVID’s sweeping toll on kids
The COVID-19 pandemic that shuttered classrooms set back learning in some U.S. school systems by more than a year, with children in high-poverty areas affected the most, according to a district-by-district analysis of test scores shared exclusively with The Associated Press.
 
Miles Fallon works at his computer in his Chicago home Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2022. His mother, Marla Williams, initially supported the Chicago Public Schools decision to instruct students online during the fall of 2020. Williams, a single mother, has asthma, as do her two children. While she was working, she enlisted her father, a retired teacher, to supervise her children’s studies. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)
Online school put US kids behind. Some adults have regrets.
As the harmful effects of extended pandemic school closures become more apparent, some educators and parents have regrets.
 
FILE - Residents who rode out the storm arrive at a dock to evacuate by boat in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian on Florida's Pine Island, in Lee County, Sunday, Oct. 2, 2022. The only bridge to the island is heavily damaged so it can only be reached by boat or air. The devastation from Hurricane Ian has left schools shuttered indefinitely in parts of Florida, leaving storm-weary families anxious for word on when and how children can get back to classrooms. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)
Hurricane Ian closes some Florida schools indefinitely
The devastation from Hurricane Ian has left schools shuttered indefinitely in parts of Florida, leaving storm-weary families anxious for word on when and how children can get back to classrooms.
 
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai speaks during the Transforming Education Summit at United Nations headquarters, Monday, Sept. 19, 2022. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
At UN, leaders confront COVID’s impact on global education
With COVID-related school disruptions setting back children around the world, activists implored world leaders Monday to prioritize school systems and restore educational budgets slashed when the pandemic hit.
 
Third-grade students take part in a small group reading session at Beecher Hills Elementary School on Friday, Aug. 19, 2022, in Atlanta. Mounting evidence shows that students who took part in remote learning during the coronavirus pandemic lost about half of an academic year of learning. (AP Photo/Ron Harris)
High-stakes year begins for kids still learning to read
Mounting evidence from around the country shows that students who spent more time learning remotely during the 2020-2021 school year, many of them Black and Latino, lost about half of an academic year of learning.
 
Nick Marcil, 24, of Wayne, Pa., poses for a photograph on Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2022, in Devon, Pa. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)
Who gets student loan forgiveness? Relief prompts joy, angst
For the millions whose entire student debt is being wiped out, the Biden administration’s announcement on forgiveness means new freedom to move, start a family or keep a low-paying but fulfilling job.