Education Week’s photo staff presents images that informed, delighted, or disturbed us throughout the past 12 months. These are our favorite photographs of 2015.
Preschoolers Liezel, 4, left, and Ryan, 4, walk the hall at a prekindergarten center in the Windsor Terrace neighborhood in Brooklyn. To accommodate expanded enrollment, New York City places children in new pre-K centers, traditional schools, and community-based organizations. —Mark Abramson for Education Week
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Students from Cohen College Prep Academy in New Orleans celebrate their acceptance to college during a Declaration Day parade. —Swikar Patel/Education Week
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Billie Dolce, a special education teacher for 31 years, in her New Orleans East home. A decade after Hurricane Katrina destroyed the school she worked in, the pain and symbolism are as profound for Dolce as they were in the storm’s fresh wake. —Edmund Fountain for Education Week
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J’Remi Barnes, a recent graduate of New Orleans’ Sci Academy, walks to the bus stop in May. A college scholarship to a distant school could pave the way to a better life for his family. —Swikar Patel/Education Week
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Recovery School District Superintendent Patrick Dobard sits for a portrait on the stoop of his childhood home in New Orleans’ 7th Ward. —Edmund D. Fountain for Education Week
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Normandy Middle School students in Inda Schaenen’s classroom, from left to right: Cartayza Shelton, 13, 8th grade; Jalisa Kibble, 14, 8th grade; Margaret Mischeaux, 12, 7th grade; Jamyra Holmes, 13, 8th grade; Darrell Thomas, 13, 8th grade; Braulio Escalante, 13, 7th grade; Lamarvin Darden, 13, 8th grade; Walter Harper, 12, 7th grade; and Mekil Sims, 13, 7th grade. —Swikar Patel/Education Week
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Habeeb Quadri, the principal of Muslim Community Center Academy, shakes hands with students following afternoon prayers at the school’s Morton Grove, Ill., campus. —Alyssa Schukar for Education Week
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Paraprofessional Vicky Henderson works with a 3rd grader, Payton, during story time in his special education classroom at Clinch County Elementary School in Homerville, Ga. The law now called the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act turned 40 this year. —Melissa Golden for Education Week
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Michael V. Walker, bottom left, the director of Minneapolis schools’ Office of Black Male Student Achievement, greets students before the group heads into a college fair. A growing number of urban districts are creating special offices to address educational disparities. —Courtney Perry for Education Week
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Janna Sells, an instructional facilitator, hugs 3rd grader Shamonica Branch at East Iredell Elementary School in Statesville, N.C. The district faces an uncertain economic future as federal grants taper off. —Justin Cook for Education Week
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Ayat Husseini, a 17-year-old daughter of immigrant parents, and her friend travel on a school-sponsored bus trip to visit Lafayette College in Pennsylvania. —Mark Abramson for Education Week
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These children live at a trailer park in Mendota, Calif., a farmworker community hit hard by the state’s historic drought. Schools statewide are feeling the impact, but it’s especially acute for districts in the Central Valley, where farm jobs are drying up with the water. —Matt Black photo
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Former Atlanta Public Schools School Research Team Director Tamara Cotman, center, is led to a holding cell after a jury found her guilty in the test-cheating trial in Atlanta. —Kent D. Johnson/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP
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A series of screen grabs from video taken by a Spring Valley High School student shows Ben Fields, a sheriff’s deputy, forcibly removing a student from her desk after she refused to leave her high school math class in Columbia, S.C. —AP photos
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Teachers practice during a concealed firearm permit class in October in South Jordan, Utah. The training was reserved for educators free of charge. Utah allows permitted concealed weapons in public schools. –Jeffrey D. Allred/The Deseret News/AP
Carson Luke, 14, heads outside at his family’s home in Gambrills, Md. Carson, who has autism, ended up with broken bones at age 10 when staff at a Virginia school tried to muscle him into a seclusion room after an outburst. —Matt Roth for Education Week
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President Barack Obama pats U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s back as Duncan announces that he will be stepping down after seven years in the administration. —Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
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At tiny Datil Elementary in Datil, N.M., “personalized learning” for students like 8-year old Chisum Harriet doesn’t involve much technology. —Swikar Patel/Education Week
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Sunrise in the tiny town of Vardaman, Miss., where everything moves slowly, especially the Internet at the local high school. —Swikar Patel/Education Week
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