Category: Education

As Molly Hamill explains the origin of the Declaration of Independence to her students, she dons a white wig fashioned into a ponytail, appearing as John Adams, before sporting a bald cap in homage to Benjamin Franklin, then wearing a red wig to imitate Thomas Jefferson. But instead of looking out to an enraptured sea […]

A teacher’s classroom setup can reveal a lot about their approach to learning. April Jones, who is a ninth grade algebra teacher in San Antonio, Texas, has met more than 100 students this school year, in most cases for the first time. Part of what makes an effective teacher is an ability to be personable […]

From parents’ fraught decisions over whether they can safely send their children to class to reports of districts losing families to self-deportation, schools around the country are responding to the ripple effects touched off by the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids. More specifically, they are trying to counteract the resulting fear that’s keeping students away […]

When the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called the Nation’s Report Card, was released last year, the results were sobering. Despite increased funding streams and growing momentum behind the Science of Reading, average fourth grade reading scores declined by another two points from 2022. In a climate of growing accountability and public scrutiny, how […]

Exasperating. Depressing. Predictable. That’s how experts describe the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the “nation’s report card.” Considered a highly accurate window into student performance, the assessment has become a periodic reminder of declining academic success among students in the U.S., with the last several rounds accentuating yearslong […]

“I’ve never done this work alone,” I thought as I looked around the high school gymnasium at the other instructional coaches and school leaders. We had been given a critical, quick-write prompt to begin the professional learning session that asked: Who helped you grow the most in your profession? How did they help you grow? […]

Let me try to communicate what it feels like to be an English teacher in 2025. Reading an AI-generated text is like eating a jelly bean when you’ve been told to expect a grape. Not bad, but not… real. The artificial taste is only part of the insult. There is also the gaslighting. Stanford professor […]

More 4-year-olds across California are entering transitional kindergarten (TK) this year — curious and eager to play and learn. But some aren’t fully potty-trained, posing an unexpected challenge for schools. “They are younger, and they’re going to have more accidents,” said Elyse Doerflinger, a TK teacher in the Woodlake Unified School District in Tulare County. […]

Brandon Gabel expected an ordinary day of remote work when he woke up at 5:45 on a January morning in 2024. By 8:30 a.m., he was racing to his office, simultaneously fielding calls from the FBI, Arizona homeland security and insurance providers. His school district had just become the latest casualty in a wave of […]

This story was published by a Voices of Change fellow. Learn more about the fellowship here. It’s my ninth grade English class, and we are at the end of our unit on “A Raisin in the Sun.” We were writing an essay on the American Dream and the barriers marginalized people experience as they strive […]

The funding and overall future of Head Start — which helps low-income families with child development and family support services — has been in the headlines for the better half of the year because of potential program cuts, followed by lawsuits, then think pieces and statements lauding its benefits. The program, which is turning 60 […]

Second grade teacher Demetria Richardson spends so much on school supplies she has a designated credit card to cover classroom expenses. Just don’t tell her husband what the balance is, she said. Usually, the 26-year veteran educator in Richmond, Virginia, spends about $500 on back-to-school items. Over the past month, she has already topped that […]

This story was published by a Voices of Change fellow. Learn more about the fellowship here. I didn’t know I had ADHD until adulthood, but looking back, the signs were always there. I was the student who stayed up until 2 a.m. rewriting papers because I couldn’t organize my thoughts until the pressure turned into […]

Joanna Cook, chief technology officer at East Noble School Corporation in Indiana, had a problem. “We were transitioning from iPads to Chromebooks, but I was getting pushback from our elementary school special needs educators.” Cook emailed the situation to the 1,600 members on the HECC (Hoosier Educational Computer Coordinators) listserv. Within hours, tech leaders from […]

Heather Gauck has spent most of her three-decade teaching career sleep-deprived — turning in after midnight and waking up at dawn. The Michigander made the sacrifice to ensure she completed all the lesson planning and grading needed to serve her special education students in Grand Rapids Public Schools while raising three children of her own. […]

Discussion about the use of AI in the classroom has become as commonplace as pencils or notebooks, but many have struggled when it comes to implementing and deploying the ubiquitous technology. A new report looks at how — and if — AI tools specifically geared toward the education sector can ultimately help educators. Common Sense […]

For Christianna Thomas, a senior at Heights High School in Texas, an artificial intelligence policy once stymied an attempt to learn. Thomas is in her school’s International Baccalaureate program, which uses an AI detector to check for plagiarism. “We use AI to check for other types of AI,” Thomas says. But at the school, AI […]

In classrooms across the country, teachers are rethinking how students build reading comprehension — not just how they decode words, but how they make meaning from text. That shift is part of a larger movement toward the science of reading, a body of multidisciplinary research that outlines how children learn to read most effectively. Pedagogy […]

This story was published by a Voices of Change fellow. Learn more about the fellowship here. Part of my civic responsibility as an educator is to stay abreast of the news and its impact on K-12 education. However, in an increasingly fractious world, this is a depressing endeavor. Like many other anxious Americans, I’m guilty […]

What promise might generative artificial intelligence hold for improving life and increasing equity for students with disabilities? That question inspired a symposium last year, hosted by the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which brought together education researchers, technologists and students. It included a hackathon where teachers and students with disabilities joined AI innovators to develop product […]

High school students aren’t waiting for graduation to get a head start on college, and school districts aren’t waiting to rethink how they deliver it. Dual enrollment, once a niche offering, has become a cornerstone of college and career readiness strategies. And the data backs it up: Dual enrollment improves college enrollment and completion rates […]

Melanie Fisher understands why K-12 teachers might be nervous to tackle civics and the Constitution in their classrooms. In an era when Americans of every ideological stripe, at all levels of public life, clash over how to govern, fundamental subjects like voting rights and civil liberties can quickly become flashpoints. “A lot of things being […]

Bailey Hairston and Lauren Duval-Shepherd participate in a summer math lesson.Photo by Daniel Mollenkamp for EdSurge. PHILADELPHIA — Elle Oliver knows anger. Multiplying by 12 used to make the rising sixth grader fume. Now she’s tackling integers with relative calm. Still, confusion seems to trigger the frustration, she noticed. Bewilderment caused by a tough math […]

Over the last three years, generative artificial intelligence made its way into many classrooms. Now, a White House initiative could plant the pervasive technology right outside of schools as well. Late last month, the Trump administration rolled out its “Winning the AI Race: America’s AI Action Plan,” detailing efforts to accelerate innovation, build AI infrastructure […]

This story was published by a Voices of Change fellow. Learn more about the fellowship here. Dontrell* came to me early in my microschool journey. Bright. Hilarious. Expressive. Absolutely adorable, but also exhausting. He gave me the blues. When he got upset, he’d bang his head against the wall. He spoke with a kind of […]

It became a routine as familiar as going to lunch or picking up a child after school. Each day started with students logging online and listening as a teacher taught through a screen instead of at the front of a classroom. While this shift to virtual instruction during the COVID-19 pandemic eventually boomeranged back to […]

Academia is a high-stress, high-surveillance environment. Faculty are asked to do more with less: more students, more reporting, more unpaid labor — and less time, less support, and less say in decisions that shape our work. For many of us, the job has become a constant negotiation between our values and institutional priorities. And yet, […]

Lately, Angela Reyes’ oldest daughter talks her ear off. “Sometimes I’m like, ‘I need you to quiet down!’” Reyes laughed. But when the now-12-year-old was a kindergartener, her speech was largely unintelligible. Reyes credited school-based speech therapy for her daughter’s progress and that of her three sons. Reyes and her four children are among the […]

This story was published by a Voices of Change fellow. Learn more about the fellowship here. Growing up as a sci-fi geek, the promise of humanity’s future among the stars was bolstered by artificial intelligence. In “Star Trek,” the ship’s omnipresent computer was a font of knowledge, advice, and could even make a cup of […]

Two decades ago, Texas made history as the first state to grant in-state tuition to undocumented students. Now, it has taken that opportunity away — upending thousands of young lives and, advocates warn, potentially influencing other states to restrict higher education access for immigrants. The U.S. Justice Department filed a complaint against Texas in June […]

Daniel Montgomery’s love of books started as a youngster with weekly visits to the public library, which fittingly led him to a nearly two-decade career as an English teacher. As an educator, he became a union leader. That led to another long tenure, this time as president of the Illinois Federation of Teachers, where he […]

The enrollment cliff has long loomed in the minds of higher education leaders anticipating that a sharp decline in the number of incoming students starting around 2025 could spell disaster for their institutions’ bottom line. And a lesser discussed — but equally concerning — enrollment cliff is potentially emerging within the K-12 education sector. While […]

This story was published by a Voices of Change fellow. Learn more about the fellowship here. Consider the scene: I am an English teacher in a Title I school in Chicagoland with a predominantly Latino, immigrant and first-generation student population. It’s a diverse environment where the stakes are high for students. Because of this, I […]

School counselors Stephanie Nelson and Richard Tench, while hundreds of miles apart, give their rising seniors the same assignment when asked for a letter of recommendation: Take a “brag” sheet, fill it out with challenges they’ve overcome or accomplishments they’re particularly proud of, and give it back to the counselors to help guide their writing. […]

This story was published by a Voices of Change fellow. Learn more about the fellowship here. At Guilford Preparatory Academy, a K-8, Title 1 public charter school in Greensboro, North Carolina, our students and families bring a rich mix of resilience, culture and commitment. Being a Title 1 school means some of our families face […]

Even before Donald Trump moved into his second term as president, experts and advocates predicted a drop in school attendance by students from immigrant families, arguing that a “climate of fear” would prevent students from showing up in their classrooms. Now, emergent research suggests just how quickly that happened, and how staggering some of the […]

My 12-year-old twins can prompt ChatGPT with alarming fluency. They’ve generated AI music, transformed family photos into wispy Van Gogh-style portraits, and built a chatbot that mimics their favorite anime characters. As their mother, I’d love to say it’s because they’re brilliant, and of course they are, but the truth is less flattering and far […]

Let me take you back to my Brooklyn. Before the block became a movie set for gentrified dreams, it was something else entirely. It was home. In the late ’90s, I would walk to my zoned elementary school, a big red building, where the faces reflected my own. I was raised in a residential building […]

Roughly 1 out of every 7 children in public school has an identified disability, according to a recent analysis, but both traditional public and charter schools have a long way to go to provide equal opportunities for those students — which they have the right to receive. Now in its sixth year, the Center for […]

When sweeping announcements were made earlier this year that a swath of federal workers were slated to lose their jobs in the nation’s capital, neighboring state and city governments — Virginia, Maryland and Washington, D.C. — began to make the best out of a tough situation. Perhaps, state and local leaders thought, newly unemployed civil […]

As families face difficulty affording housing, food or health care, young children experience ripple effects, including emotional distress and developmental delays, according to new national research. The latest findings from Stanford University’s RAPID survey in partnership with the University of Nebraska Medical Center show that children’s well-being is at risk. Four in 10 families are […]

Five years ago, Alabama’s math was literally the worst. On national assessments from 2019, the state was ranked last in the country for math performance. Across the state, only 22 percent of students were proficient in math — a percentage that was lower for Black and low-income students. And 28 elementary schools in the state […]

When a high school student uses AI to design a community mural or a college freshman collaborates with peers across continents on a digital storytelling project, it’s clear the boundaries of learning are shifting. Classrooms are no longer just spaces for absorbing information; they’re becoming creative studios where students use technology to solve real-world problems. […]

Hayley Leibson, a mother from Mill Valley, a wealthy area just north of San Francisco, started hunting for a language-immersion child care program when her son was 8 months old. “I thought I was really early,” Leibson says, noting that her son wasn’t going to attend until he turned 2. Some schools laughed her out […]

As classrooms across America become increasingly diverse, with growing populations of multilingual learners and students from various cultural backgrounds, school districts face a critical challenge: selecting educational technology that truly serves all students. According to the latest data from the National Center for Education Statistics, there were 5.3 million English learners in K-12 public schools […]

School shouldn’t just be a place to learn academic skills, but a place for students to practice making meaningful decisions about their learning and lives. I personally never faced a weighty decision about my learning until I had to declare a college major. In grade school, I was a confident student who knew how to […]

While social media, bullying and loneliness have long been flagged as top concerns among educators for their students, a new report shows the biggest concern for kids is balancing it all. The kicker: Students didn’t share these concerns with adults in their lives. Instead, they expressed these worries to an AI chat system, which schools […]

Young adults are finding it harder to borrow books reflective of their lived experiences in their schools and public libraries. It isn’t because these stories don’t exist — they do — but because they’ve been challenged and removed, restricted, or were never purchased at all. This is especially true in parts of the country where […]

A Supreme Court ruling at the end of June handed a major victory to parents who want to opt their children out of lessons that run counter to their religious beliefs, part of a push for parental rights over the finer details of what goes on in classrooms that has gained strength in recent years. […]

As Deborah Nichols traversed from Kansas City to Lawrence, Kansas, daily for her postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Kansas, her preteen son in the backseat, a familiar story flowed out from the car speakers: Every day, they listened to the same cassette tape detailing Disney’s story of Bambi. Nichols is now an associate professor […]

As technology reshapes the workforce, digital and AI literacies are becoming essential for every student. From early problem-solving to advanced AI skills, learners build critical thinking, ethical technology use and career-ready competencies — block by block. The progression of skills at each educational stage ensures that students are well-prepared for future challenges and can pursue […]

Writing a history that you helped to create is awkward, as Anne Trumbore acknowledges in her new book “The Teacher in the Machine: A Human History of Education Technology.” Yet as one of the many hardworking, unsung “humans in the loop,” as she calls them, who made the dream of mass education a reality, Trumbore […]

Schools increasingly find themselves on the front lines of managing the ripple effects of students’ online lives — from digital distractions that interfere with learning to online bullying and harmful content — leaving educators to address these challenges without the tools or authority to intervene effectively. In response, one social media platform is partnering directly […]

I’m entering my fifth year as the founder of a microschool, a small learning environment that currently serves approximately 20 students. After five years, this milestone is more than just a number — it is a symbol of survival, resistance and a promise kept to the children I refused to give up on. My journey […]

Figuring out the best colleges is big business. College rankings stay in the headlines for weeks after each release, and schools proudly tout their positions among their peers in marketing material. Parsing education data into snack-sized servings. It’s simple enough to figure out which schools produce the highest-paid graduates — federal data can provide that […]

When Wendy Lundeen began teaching transitional kindergarten over a dozen years ago, it was seen as an unconventional option to help prepare children to one day enter elementary school. Fast forward 13 years, and she is one of a growing number of teachers who have been tasked with expanding what is now essentially seen as […]

When generative AI entered classrooms, it promised a revolution. For many teachers, it delivered an avalanche of tools instead. While edtech vendors race to integrate AI into every aspect of teaching and learning, educators are drawing clearer boundaries: AI should save them time, not replace their judgment. They want support for differentiation, not decision-making. Most […]

“Back in school, you ever get busted for trying to walk and have some administrator tell you, ‘Son, you can shirk your obligations and try to be different from your peers, but the responsibility of your future is gonna find you!’” These are the opening lyrics to Operation Ivy’s song, “Gonna Find You.” As the […]

The energy was electric: Three teams of students from three neighboring school systems faced off in a high-stakes competition, their colorful jerseys and team pride on full display. But this wasn’t your typical sporting event; students were navigating block-based worlds, racing against the clock to design sustainable, hurricane-resistant schools. This was the South Florida Showdown, […]

Near a cardboard cutout of Daniel Tiger, a small stuffed version of Curious George and plenty of promotional posters in the PBS Kids office, there sits thick stacks of graduation invitations. Most are accompanied with handwritten letters from students extolling the influence children’s television shows had on their journeys to donning the cap and gown […]

“Let’s do it!” That was Alexis Johnson’s reaction when she saw professional learning opportunities focused on computational thinking. A first grade teacher with no formal CS background, she jumped at the chance to explore how computer science principles could enhance early literacy instruction — and ended up transforming her classroom in the process. Johnson is […]

“If you were an object, what object would you be?” Chris Gethard, a veteran comedian and improv teacher, posed this question to a group of high school students in Northern California at a Laughing Together workshop he was leading. He remembered one who identified as a fruit. “When I was a kid, I convinced myself […]

When artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT were first introduced for public use in 2022, Gillian Hayes, vice provost for academic personnel at the University of California, Irvine, remembers how people were setting up rules around AI without a good understanding of what it truly was or how it would be used. The moment felt akin […]

No generation is a monolith. That should go without saying. But over the past year, there’s been a growing narrative in business and media circles that Gen Z, a cohort born between 1997 and 2012, is starting to split in two. One half is described as entrepreneurial, image-conscious and highly motivated. The other is labeled […]

For Aspire Public Schools in Los Angeles, the turnaround took a couple of years. Coming back from the pandemic, the 11 charter schools serving about 4,400 students saw a steep drop in credentialed teachers sticking with their roles. So relying on a program at Alder Graduate School of Education that pays graduate students to work […]

With declining college enrollment, institutions are rethinking the traditional four-year model. Dual enrollment has emerged as a significant growth area, with high schools increasingly prioritizing these programs and colleges finding that dual enrollment students now comprise a significant portion of their student body. This trend has developed alongside the shift toward virtual and asynchronous course […]

Students light up when they create something meaningful, and every educator has seen that spark. Self-expression fuels learning, and creativity lies at the heart of the human experience. As AI rapidly reshapes software development, computer science (CS) education must move beyond syntax drills and algorithmic repetition. Coding alone isn’t enough; students must also learn to […]

Kids aren’t as sneaky as they think they are. They do try, as Holly Distefano has seen in her middle school English language arts classes. When she poses a question to her seventh graders over her school’s learning platform and watches the live responses roll in, there are times when too many are suspiciously similar. […]

Picture this: Tomorrow’s graduates walk into workplaces where AI tools are as common as email — diagnosing patient symptoms, analyzing market trends, optimizing supply chains or designing new infrastructure. From healthcare to marketing to engineering, nearly every field is being transformed. Are our schools preparing them for this new reality? And do we have an […]

There was a moment in the mid-2010s when Montessori was inescapable. The century-old education philosophy, which prioritizes independence from a young age, had turned into a lifestyle brand. Blocks and other wooden activity sets were remarketed as “Montessori toys.” Parents flocked toward outdoor learning, which often involved livestock on a farm, sometimes dubbed “Montessori farms.” […]

As classrooms across the country become more linguistically diverse, educators face a growing challenge: ensuring that every student, regardless of English proficiency, can access learning, participate fully and feel included. Today, emergent bilingual (EB) students, also known as English learners, account for 10.6 percent of U.S. public school students — more than 5.3 million nationwide […]

Chronic absence, defined as missing 10 percent or more of school or about 18 school days in a year, is a national crisis. It peaked in the pandemic, when about 31 percent of students nationwide — 14.7 million kids — were chronically absent during the 2021-22 school year, according to data from the U.S. Department […]

The number of home-based child care programs is seeing a spike for the first time in five years — but experts remain concerned that with a rising child care crisis, there are still not enough programs to meet demand. According to a report from Child Care Aware of America, the number of licensed home-based child […]

Social media platforms like Instagram, X and TikTok have become landscapes for learning and increasing awareness of topics like mental health. But for children who are learning how to navigate virtual spaces, the pitfalls are many and hidden. Educators and researchers are becoming increasingly worried how much kids are absorbing the digital information they find […]

On a Wednesday afternoon, a school district director emailed to say she might be late to the first community of practice session. She explained she was giving a board presentation that evening, right before the session. Her story isn’t unique; it’s emblematic of the complexity educational leaders face as they navigate responsibilities, unforeseen demands and […]

When Molly Lane was a school social worker, walking down the hall with colleagues sometimes turned into impromptu therapy sessions. Parsing education data into snack-sized servings. It became clear, she says, that the school system wasn’t doing enough to support teachers’ mental health. Those experiences led her to open Teacher Talk, a therapy practice that […]

Wendy Lopez Elizondo traveled more than 800 miles last year to face her biggest professional challenge — teaching in the United States. Armed with just two suitcases and far away from her Mexican home, Lopez Elizondo came to Crain Elementary School in Victoria, Texas, to work in the district’s bilingual program. “I wanted to support […]

Although it is not known for swiftness, the Supreme Court surprised the nation last week with a relatively speedy decision on its first case involving charter schools. The court heard oral arguments for St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond at the end of April, less than a month before issuing its decision. […]

If you’ve ever watched a student light up after cracking a tough problem or finally connecting the dots, you know learning is personal. Every classroom is filled with students who bring their own strengths, quirks and questions to the table. Personalized learning is about meeting kids where they are — helping each one move forward […]

When Marisha Speights first started as a speech language pathologist in preschools serving affluent families in Nashville, Tennessee, she used the typical screening and assessment measures that she believed — and was taught — worked well. But when she was placed in Jackson, Mississippi, at preschools that served poorer families, she found the tests were […]

“True leadership involves not only encouraging teachers to reconnect with their purpose but also ensuring that they are seen, heard and supported,” writes Ryan Burns, an instructional coach and adjunct professor in Warwick, Rhode Island, and a 2024-2025 fellow of the EdSurge Voices of Change Writing Fellowship. Over the last nine months, we’ve worked with […]

Career and Technical Education (CTE) is at a turning point. What once lived on the margins of academic planning is now front and center in national conversations around workforce development, education equity and student well-being. As a former CTE educator and now working on CTE at Pearson, I’ve watched this evolution up close. Districts aren’t […]

As the education world grapples with a post-pandemic academic recovery that has stalled in some regions, a new research paper is taking the measure of key players in students’ success: their teachers. Parsing education data into snack-sized servings. Researchers are looking at whether teachers have what they need to thrive in “Teaching for Tomorrow: Educators […]

There aren’t as many librarians in schools as there used to be. At first it wasn’t as noticeable, as the reductions were local and the losses were absorbed by teachers. Nor did it happen all at once: Roles were left vacant after retirements, or they were replaced with lower paid aides or support staff. During […]

During the pandemic, school districts amassed an enormous amount of digital tools — sometimes out of necessity, sometimes out of urgency. But with pandemic relief funding winding down and pressure mounting to demonstrate educational impact, many districts are now facing a new challenge: cleaning house. According to LearnPlatform, U.S. school districts used an average of […]

Gen Z may be the first generation to have childhoods rife with screens and defined by having a second life online, but some of their cohort might also be first to say that connectivity has its downsides. Parsing education data into snack-sized servings. New data from the Pew Research Center shows that nearly half of […]

The Student Privacy Pledge — a voluntary promise to protect student data — ceased. The pledge was started to convince edtech companies to adopt transparency standards for working with K-12 schools. It’s an artifact of the early days of the edtech industry, when many states had yet to create laws around how these companies handle […]

When Angela Dominguez took the helm of Donna Independent School District in Texas in 2021, she thought the district’s original decision to use most of its federal Elementary and Secondary School Relief (ESSER) money to pay for existing fourth- and fifth-grade teacher positions was short-sighted. “I was like, ‘Did you guys think that we were […]

“When would I ever use this?” It’s a question that high school and middle school math teachers have heard many times. Some educators think it’s because math instruction is stuck in a rut. Procedural, boring and, in some cases, “totally outdated,” math lessons just don’t seem to pull students in. Solving this motivation problem is […]

Dual enrollment courses are considered some of the best ways to prepare students for the rigor and content in college-level curricula. Not only do these courses offer students a jump-start on credits once they get to college, but they also equip them with skills like time management, critical thinking and study habits that researchers say […]

While both enrollment and spending in early childhood education programs reached new levels in 2024, a few select states did the lion’s share of the work — with many states lagging behind. And with early childhood program funding in flux, some leaders in the sector are concerned the lack of investment — both financial and […]

In Nebraska, it’s trauma-informed training to support Native American students. In Arizona, it’s an effort to expand existing school mental health services. In a Texas region with high suicide rates, it’s a program to increase the number of mental health providers. These are among the school mental health programs that could be on the chopping […]

With a curriculum that includes slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, two world wars and the Civil Rights Movement, American history teachers are used to venturing into emotionally charged subjects. Walking students through the unsettling complexities of the past has never been an easy job. But as history is about to take center stage in 2026 […]

Imagine you’re a ninth grader navigating a world where generative AI, agentic AI and other emerging technologies dominate the headlines. The future feels uncertain, so how do you even begin to decide what you want to be when you “grow up”? Students today are shaping identities that will guide them through careers spanning the decades […]

Bruce McLaren has committed his career to understanding how education technologies, especially digital games and intelligent-tutoring systems, can help children learn. At the Human Computing Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, McLaren develops digital learning games to study how effective they are in the classroom and beyond. One such game is called Decimal Point. It’s […]

A new study shows trust is the most important factor for parents when choosing child care, with many leaning toward at-home programs or relying on their families, friends and neighbors. But researchers are concerned there is not adequate support in place for those systems to flourish, with the majority of legislation focused on bolstering child […]

Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs are evolving, becoming more deeply integrated into mainstream high school curricula. Alongside this transition is an expanded perspective on career exploration, and a stronger emphasis on student agency and well-being. In this first episode of a new series, The Idea Spark podcast, host Carl Hooker speaks with Elyse Monahan, […]

Schools across the country are racing to integrate artificial intelligence into classrooms, but the real challenge isn’t just adopting the technology — it’s making sure it works for all students. Will AI be a tool for innovation or yet another factor widening educational gaps? As districts explore AI’s potential, they must also confront critical questions […]

The Trump administration took aim at another keystone in public education, this time looking to shake up how schools handle discipline. It’s not the disparate rates of punishment levied against racial minority children that concerns this White House, though. Rather, it’s the years-long attempts to make school discipline more fair that earned ire. An executive […]

Several years after the release of ChatGPT, which raised ethical concerns for education, schools are still wrestling with how to adopt artificial intelligence. Last week’s batch of executive orders from the Trump administration included one that advanced “AI leadership.” The White House’s order emphasized its desire to use AI to boost learning across the country, […]

Health leaders, educators and farmers throughout the country are growing increasingly concerned about the impact to children’s nutrition after the U.S. Department of Agriculture cut two programs — totaling more than $600 million in funding — that helped to put fresh farm food in schools. “We’re really disappointed, particularly given that there’s this focus on […]

Since generative artificial intelligence burst onto the scene a few years ago, schools and educators have grappled with how to approach the powerful-but-experimental technology. Ban it? Embrace it? A new executive order plants the White House firmly in the latter camp. On April 23, President Donald Trump signed Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth. […]

Gen Z is in an awkward phase. Parsing education data into snack-sized servings. The oldest of the cohort — born from 1997 to 2012 — are in their mid- to late 20s and taking heat for chafing against workplace culture in ways that come off as entitled (sound familiar, millennials?). The youngest Zoomers, as they’re […]

From the time we’re kids, we’re asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It’s a big question — one that many students struggle to answer. Without real exposure to different career paths or learning about careers they may never have heard of, students often make choices based on limited information, missing […]

When the Eaton and Palisades fires raged through Los Angeles, home of the second-largest school district in the country, they took lives and turned thousands of homes to ash, causing billions of dollars in damage. Much of the devastation was immediate and visible. But some scars will emerge slowly and last for years to come. […]

Students in schools run by the Department of Defense have staged multiple walkouts in recent months to protest the agency’s decision to pull books that may not align with President Donald Trump’s executive orders on race and gender. Now, a dozen students from six families are suing the department for sidelining books, curriculum and cultural […]

Along the Canadian border in north central Washington’s Okanogan County, where the closest major city is at least 100 miles away and infrastructure is sparse, the Okanogan County Child Development Association oversees nine Head Start centers in the region. In an area where wages haven’t kept up with inflation, forcing working families to make measured […]

For thousands of public school students, the ringing of the final bell doesn’t signal an end to their day. Parsing education data into snack-sized servings. Instead, they might shuffle into the cafeteria or computer lab for an afterschool program. It’s where they’ll spend a few hours with teachers or tutors doing their homework, socializing with […]

“Hey, I’m a principal at a school, and I forgot my password,” the voice said. “Can you help me?” The call came into a help desk at Beaverton School District in Oregon. A city in Portland’s metropolitan area, Beaverton is home to a Nike factory and is the site of upcoming expansions for semiconductor manufacturing, […]

From customer service chatbots to personalized shopping recommendations, artificial intelligence has become integral to our daily lives. Mainstream generative AI tools, which can create original content, have risen dramatically in popularity. Many educators have begun exploring these tools to streamline administrative tasks — from composing parent emails to analyzing assessment data and differentiating instruction. Yet, […]

When it comes to math, students are struggling. The recent national assessment underscored that by revealing that 24 percent of fourth graders are still performing below basic math skills, also shining a spotlight on an ever-growing inequality in math performance across the country. Other assessments — such as the critical thinking-focused international PISA exam — […]

It’s been a little over a year since Tram Gonzalez opened Color Wings Preschool in her home in Portland, Oregon. Of the 15 children enrolled in her program, 10 attend for free, covered in full by Multnomah County’s Preschool for All initiative, which was passed by Portland voters in November 2020 to create universal free […]

Growing up in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, Anushay Anjum loved school but was especially enamored with the sciences. Biology, physics, chemistry, information technology — she enjoyed them all and had her sights set on a career in engineering. But Anjum also felt the drag of discouragement in a society that, as she describes it, […]

As designers drew up plans to revitalize the visual arts complex at California State University, Fullerton, they hoped to create a space that would encourage students to stay on campus as much as possible. Many of Fullerton’s students commute to campus from home. That means they need comfortable places to do homework, meet with professors […]

Colleges and universities are at a crossroads when it comes to student data. They have more information at their fingertips than ever before, yet harnessing it to drive meaningful change remains a challenge. A 2022 UCLA-MIT Press study found that higher education struggles to capture and leverage data for impact. This digital disconnect isn’t just […]

Do you remember the last time you were on endless hold with customer service? Or in line at the DMV with no end in sight? Take those experiences and multiply them together and it might begin to explain what life’s been like for Felisa Wright since January. She lost her Altadena home, where she also […]

The state of early care and education today is, in a word, unsustainable. That’s what a recent survey of 10,000 early childhood educators found, and it’s what providers continue to share anecdotally. With the pandemic in the rearview — and the accompanying funding it brought the field now a fading memory — many early education […]

One of the perks of Angie Adams’ job at Samsung is that every year, she gets to witness how some of the country’s most talented emerging scientists are tackling difficult problems in creative ways. They’re working on AI tools that can recognize the signs of oncoming panic attacks for kids on the autism spectrum in […]

Under the first couple of months of the new administration, education has come in for significant and contested revamping. The federal education department has suffered deep cuts, which are the subject of a lawsuit from Democratic state attorneys general. A bitterly disputed executive order has tasked Education Secretary Linda McMahon, wife of the wrestling impresario, […]

Looking back on my educational journey, I recently reflected on my classroom experiences from kindergarten to fourth grade. The summer before I entered the fourth grade, my mother informed me that I would be attending a new school in my same community with one caveat: it was a class in the gifted and talented education […]

For almost three hours last month, Linda McMahon sat through a confirmation hearing in which senators pressed her on everything from teacher pay to transgender athletes. But none from either party asked her about school shootings. That’s a glaring oversight, according to some leaders working to reduce youth gun violence. Others say that fears about […]

As PTA president at my children’s school, I rely on social media to keep families informed about everything from sports and musicals to important school updates. But I’ve also seen firsthand how it can be distracting or be used to share comments that conflict with school values. It is particularly hard to create a healthy […]

In late January, the White House instructed the Department of Defense to craft a plan that would make funds available for military families to pay for public charters and private religious schools. It’s part of the administration’s push to decentralize education, which comes along with a burst of energy for school choice options around the […]

In the 2021-2022 academic year, the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce found more than 43,000 individuals with active teaching credentials were not employed as teachers or staff members in a public school. Furthermore, the Thomas Fordham Institute describes Ohio’s teacher shortage as unclear due to a lack of data that could shed light on […]

Technology in today’s classrooms is advancing rapidly, reshaping the way students learn and teachers teach, especially with advancements in AI. Educators play a vital role in shaping meaningful and impactful learning opportunities for students through emerging technologies like AI. It’s more important than ever to provide teachers with tools and opportunities to explore technology to […]

Panicked calls from parents. More empty desks in classrooms. Higher anxiety. Those are some of the effects school officials from around the country say their communities have been experiencing in the weeks since the Trump administration rolled back a federal policy that restricted Immigrations and Customs Enforcement from conducting raids on school grounds. No ICE […]

The future isn’t just approaching — it’s moving fast. As industries evolve and workforce demands shift, schools and districts have a critical role in ensuring students are prepared for what’s ahead. Traditional education models, which focus on knowledge retention alone, aren’t enough. Students need digital fluency and adaptability to succeed in an era of constant […]

Several years ago, Oklahoma City Public Schools shuttered more than a dozen of its school buildings. It was part of a realignment process in the district to right-size student populations within schools — some were overcrowded, others were underenrolled — and to make the school experience better and more consistent for students across the city. […]

A couple of months ago, I had a conversation with another leader who was listening to some of my frustrations about how the school year was going. This school year is unique as we just opened a new building with over 450 students in kindergarten through eighth grade, consolidating three different elementary and middle campuses […]

Julius Cervantes, a first generation college graduate, didn’t appreciate school’s relevance for his life until senior year of high school. Prior to that, Cervantes would show up to school late, and teachers didn’t seem to mind. It’s not that he thought school was useless. He knew the importance of an education for making money, and […]

Scaffolding in Tier 1 instruction helps all students access grade-level content by providing temporary support that is gradually removed as students gain independence. Key strategies include activating prior knowledge, pre-teaching vocabulary, using visual aids, modeling and encouraging student discourse. This approach ensures diverse learning needs are met, fostering gradual mastery of skills and promoting student […]

America’s schools are facing a crisis in reading achievement. The recently released National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) found that only 31 percent of 4th graders and 30 percent of 8th graders were reading at or above a proficient level. Dr. Julie A. Evans, the CEO of education nonprofit Project Tomorrow, has found that educators […]

Nancy Muñoz is on her second act — this time, in a school — and she feels she’s finally where she belongs. After a long career working in health care, the pandemic led her to seek a new opportunity. She found it in the form of an operations coordinator role inside a middle school in […]

The Trevor Project, a national suicide prevention nonprofit for LGBTQ+ youth, released a new report that gives a state-by-state look at the mental health of their target demographic. The data is based on a 2024 survey of more than 28,500 LGBTQ+ youth ages 13 to 24. Nationally, 39 percent of LGBTQ+ young people reported considering […]

San Francisco is seen as a global tech capital, yet even here, high school students are shockingly ill-equipped to survive in the modern digital age. The school where I teach science is nestled in the historic Mission District of San Francisco, mere miles from the sprawling campuses of X, Meta and Google. During the pandemic, […]

Early literacy often dominates conversations around foundational learning in today’s educational system. However, despite the emphasis on STEM in later years, the importance of early numeracy in shaping long-term academic success is equally critical yet sometimes overlooked. Recognizing the role of early numeracy skills in academic and career readiness can unlock transformative opportunities for student […]

Near the beginning of every semester, Sarah Z. Johnson has her students make her a promise: If they think about dropping the class, they will meet with her first. While many of the students roll their eyes, “it may save at least one student a year,” says Johnson, who is a writing instructor and head […]

Nita Creekmore is coauthor of Every Connection Matters: How to Build, Maintain, and Restore Relationships Inside the Classroom and Out. A longtime instructional coach, presenter and education consultant, Creekmore has returned to the classroom as a fifth-grade teacher. In this interview with Educational Leadership magazine, Creekmore discussed how she approaches each day with joy and […]

Idaho is poised to become the first state in the country to eliminate state-mandated child-to-staff ratios for early care and education settings — a longstanding and universal licensing requirement used to ensure minimum quality standards and health and safety in environments where babies, toddlers and young children are being served. It’s one of a handful […]

As high school seniors ponder the route they want to take for college, a fresh cache of data sheds light on which higher education institutions and programs are paying off for students — and which ones are yielding smaller pay days. Parsing education data into snack-sized servings. EdSurge crunched the newest batch of data from […]

What does Blackness mean to you? My Black is colorful, quick-witted, dynamic, innovative and brilliant. My Blackness meant I grew up getting my hair straightened with a hot comb that would burn the tops of my ears if I didn’t quickly and effectively hold my ears down. It meant my mom had a personal deep […]

When Louisiana made gains in reading proficiency in a recent Congressionally-mandated assessment, it stuck out. NAEP — known as the nation’s report card — painted a grim picture about reading skills across the country, with an uncomfortable number of fourth and eighth graders scoring below basic reading levels. But Louisiana was an exception. The state […]

How can we prepare students for a world increasingly influenced by artificial intelligence? If you are in the education field, it’s likely that you are dealing with AI in some way. “AI readiness” has emerged as a key focus area for forward-thinking educators. This approach goes beyond simply teaching students how to use AI tools; […]

Debi Ryan insists that bad days are few and far between in her line of work as a school-based speech language pathologist. The good days, she says, are abundant — thanks in great part to her ongoing enthusiasm for and belief in the power of communication in the lives of children and adults. She calls […]

When he teaches a math class, Tom Fisher wants students to feel confused. At least, he wants them to feel that way occasionally and temporarily. Mostly an administrator these days, Fisher still teaches honors algebra at Breakwater, a pre-K-8th independent school in Portland, Maine. For Fisher, it’s important to mingle math and play. It’s not […]

The push for universal public education across the United States began in the midst of the Civil War — on the Union-occupied Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina. There, thousands of Black children began going to schools built expressly for them, where they learned to read and write after decades of being denied […]

Reading fluency — the ability to read accurately, automatically and with appropriate expression — remains a critical yet often overlooked component of literacy development. According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 68 percent of U.S. students are not reading at proficient levels. By fourth grade, students transition from learning to read to reading […]

Have you ever made a student cry? I have. Earlier this year, one of my fourth grade students kept disrupting my instructions during class. This behavior was unusual for her. I had taught her all of last year, and she had always been attentive and engaged. I tried various classroom management strategies: positive narration, proximity […]

Policymakers across the political spectrum ran for office on child care issues in 2024. From the presidential campaigns to local races, Democrats and Republicans both acknowledged that our early care and learning systems are not functioning for families, educators or their communities. “You have to be willing to think about the work differently, and to […]

The recent unveiling of national reading and math scores revealed some disheartening trends about learning recovery with the collective main headline: Students Are Doing Worse Than Before the Pandemic Started. Parsing education data into snack-sized servings. The factors behind the continued dip in scores are multilayered, but teachers might tell you that the key reason […]

During my eight-year teaching career in Colorado, I’ve heard many schools and districts claim they want to “develop the whole child.” For example, the Colorado Department of Education supports statewide infrastructure and systems to promote a whole-child approach called Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child . Furthermore, Denver Public Schools Ends Policy requires all students […]

The extra money that flowed from the federal government during the pandemic has left districts in New Mexico with a problem. The pandemic boosted internet access for students. That’s in part because school districts purchased devices with relief money. These days, around 285,000 students in the state have a school-issued device, says John Chadwick, digital […]

DENVER — In Zach Kennelly’s senior civics class, students are building custom chatbots with artificial intelligence. One student is working on a chatbot that better curates movie and television show recommendations based on a viewer’s recent watch history. Another is creating a chatbot that — somewhat ironically — helps members of Gen Z like herself […]

To support improved student outcomes, educators increasingly look to technology. But how do they fuel authentic engagement, using technology as a tool to not only enhance learning but also inspire curiosity and strengthen connections? Recently, EdSurge spoke with Kelly Mitchell, Digital Learning and Teaching Facilitator with Onslow County Schools in North Carolina. Mitchell spent four […]

BROWNSVILLE, Texas — It’s nearly 5 p.m. on a Friday, and Dolores S. Perez is hard at work in the Brownsville Public Library. She’s also one of the people having the most fun. Parsing education data into snack-sized servings. Perez, known as Ms. D to her pupils, sits at a table with one of the […]

The Creativity with AI in Education 2025 Report, based on insights from over 2,800 educators across the United States and UK, reveals how AI technology is transforming classrooms by enhancing creative thinking, supporting multimedia content creation and developing essential communication skills. The findings demonstrate AI’s potential to foster academic success, career readiness and personal growth […]

I first realized I wanted to be a teacher around the same time I received my first mental health diagnosis. At the time, I was at an elite institution reckoning with class, imposter syndrome and chronic loneliness. I went through states of ruthless insomnia, dissociation and brain fog. I was tired and anxious all the […]

“U.S. Department of Education ends Biden’s book ban hoax.” That headline from a recent press release by the federal agency has sparked outcry from free speech advocates and teachers who dispute that President Joe Biden’s administration exaggerated the pervasiveness of book bans in the nation’s schools. In fact, educators say they’ve been subjected to censorship […]

Early learning is taking center stage in education, and for good reason. As schools across the country face resource constraints and potential teacher shortages, innovative approaches to early childhood education are yielding impressive results. By using data to guide instruction, building community ties and focusing on targeted help for students, some districts are seeing remarkable […]

It’s that time of year when seemingly everyone has the sniffles, and many people are laid up with a cold, the flu or some other unsavory affliction. While staff absences are rarely seamless in any setting, in K-12 schools, there is at least a system designed to support such occurrences. Public school districts have a […]

The pandemic jostled students off course, disrupting learning around the country. Billions in federal relief dollars later and rigorous assessments show that students are still struggling to recover. A federally mandated evaluation of student performance, the National Assessment of Educational Progress — known as the “nation’s report card” — is considered one of the most […]

On my first day as an Arabic teacher, my school mentor sternly advised me, “Avoid the three taboos: sex, politics, and religion.” When I started teaching Arabic in a public school, I inherited the curriculum and materials from the previous teacher. These materials, designed by Arab and Muslim curriculum developers, included religious references, such as […]

In the hallways of schools across the nation, a quiet revolution is taking place. As students tap away on their devices and teachers explore new digital tools, artificial intelligence is silently reshaping how school districts operate. AI is no longer confined to tech companies and research labs; it’s entering the heart of educational administration, offering […]

Education in the 21st century is obsessed with assessing children, attempting to measure every aspect of their intelligence, learning and growth. Yet we are not, according to Isabelle Hau, measuring what matters: relationships. “There’s a disconnect between what we know is really critical and then what we’re paying attention to,” says Hau, executive director of […]

One of Kevin Gannon’s favorite class discussion activities doesn’t involve much talking. Inspired by complete-the-story games in which players each write a line of a tale that builds off a previous person’s idea, Gannon, director of the Center for the Advancement of Faculty Excellence at Queens University of Charlotte, North Carolina, uses a similar concept […]

Danielle Robinson desperately wants to help math teachers, but it’s a tough job. An instructional coach for K-5 math teachers in Milwaukee Public Schools in Wisconsin, Robinson can find herself zipping around several of the schools she works with in the city to assist teachers, give workshops or try to help vice principals grasp the […]

Recent federal data on school enrollment adds more detail to the picture we have about falling numbers of students in the nation’s public K-12 classrooms. Most of the country’s 100 largest districts by enrollment have seen declines since the 2019-20 school year. The National Center for Education Statistics released its data for 2023-24 in December. […]

Earlier this month at Truesdell Elementary, in the last five minutes of one of my classes, I called for my students’ attention. “Class, class!” I called. “Yes, yes,” they responded in unison. “I have a recognition to make.” I held up one of my fourth grade student’s perspective drawings and projected it for the class […]

Jami Rhue thought her first stint as a school librarian would be a quick detour in her career as a classroom teacher. But by the time she was heading up her own elementary school classroom in Chicago, she found herself missing the library and longing to teach media literacy again. So it was back to […]

Can I have your attention? The challenge of getting and keeping the attention of students in schools and colleges was the topic of several of our most popular episodes of the EdSurge Podcast over the past year. Part of that involved the question of whether schools should ban smartphones — one of the biggest policy […]

A typical career trajectory in early care and education might follow like this: start as an assistant teacher in a classroom, eventually gain the experience to move up to lead teacher, and if you’re ambitious and able, one day become the assistant director, director or even owner of a program. On paper, it seems reasonable. […]

I was recently sitting with my friend’s 9-year-old son, Guillermo, as he teed up a YouTube video on the TV. I’d wanted to get a kid’s perspective on “brain rot,” Oxford University Press’ 2024 word of the year that describes both low-quality video content and what seemingly happens to the mind after watching too much […]

2025 marks an exciting journey into AI-powered learning! Use these AI tools and activities to deepen AI understanding, spark student curiosity and foster impactful classroom experiences. Click here to see the full infographic. HP AI Spotlight Schools are innovative secondary schools in the United States that are committed to powerful teaching and learning with technology, […]

The lights dimmed, and the audience fell silent. It was a cold January afternoon in 2007, and I was sitting in a crowded auditorium in Providence, Rhode Island, nervously thinking about the week ahead. In just a few days, I’d travel across the world and step into a classroom for the first time as a […]

Donora, Pennsylvania, once housed a thriving steel mill that stretched for about four miles, though that factory closed more than 50 years ago. Today, the town of about 5,000 people has no gas station, no bank and no grocery store. And just a few years ago its only school closed. The shuttering of that school […]

Lara Evangelista remembers a high school student calling her to say his parents were picked up by immigration officers while selling clothes on the side of the road. That was 2017, and Evangelista was then a principal. Now the executive director of Internationals Network, a nonprofit that works with schools to support immigrant youth, Evangelista […]

Schools should provide a window through which all students can see the future they want for themselves. Students arrive in the classroom with a diverse range of needs, and helping them succeed isn’t always straightforward. Centering instruction in Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and implementing both direct and student-driven instruction can help engage learners, address […]

Imagine a recent graduate armed with a degree but struggling to convey their specific skills to potential employers. Now picture that same graduate confidently presenting a suite of microcredentials that precisely showcase their abilities. This scenario isn’t just possible; it’s becoming increasingly necessary in today’s competitive job market. Yet, some educational institutions view microcredentials with […]

We’ve been crunching the numbers, and your votes are in. Here’s the countdown of the top EdSurge stories about the college world in 2024, based on readership. Nearly half of the stories in our top 10 involve the impact that AI tools like ChatGPT are having on campuses. No surprise there, considering that just about […]

As we look back at the K-12 stories that resonated the most with our readers last year, a trend quickly emerges: 2024 was the year of the personal essay. Columnists and EdSurge Voices of Change fellows clearly captivated our audience with their reflections both technical and emotional. They gave their takes on innovating in math […]

In 2024, EdSurge published several dozen stories about early care and education, up from just a handful when we first began covering the early years five years ago. Conditions of the field continue to be extremely challenging, with crisis-centered headlines filling our digital pages just as they do in other news outlets. But as the […]

In affinity, we find kinship. Our shared interests move us toward one another and give us opportunities for connection, deep empathy and shared experiences. Our worldviews collide, and we are no longer alone; we are in a community. One of the first times I felt like I was in community was in my high school […]

Teachers and professors can make adjustments in how they teach that will greatly reduce incidents of student cheating with AI. It turns out, those changes aren’t much different than what worked to deter previous cheating methods. That’s the argument of Tricia Bertram Gallant, a longtime expert in academic integrity who is director of the Academic […]

Like air, humanities-driven work is everywhere but taken for granted, so much a part of life it’s easy to overlook. A scholarly book or article about history or philosophy counts. So does a local oral-history project, an art exhibit, or a dinner-table conversation about books, movies, or music. A new peer-reviewed, open-access journal, Public Humanities, […]

‘Show your work’ has taken on a new meaning — and importance — in the age of ChatGPT. As teachers and professors look for ways to guard against the use of AI to cheat on homework, many have started asking students to share the history of their online documents to check for signs that a […]

The results are in — and they’re not great. Parsing education data into snack-sized servings. International data on math and science released earlier this month gave the globe its first chance to compare progress since the pandemic. For the United States, it appears that the COVID-19 pandemic reversed more than 20 years of progress in […]

One day, during a quiet afternoon in my classroom, a comment one of my colleagues said lingered in the air: “Just remember your why.” They said the comment with a smirk and an exaggerated shrug, their eyes rolling almost involuntarily. It registered as sarcasm, not encouragement, and I couldn’t help but agree with the sentiment. […]

Several times a week, teachers at Tiny Images, an early learning program in Fairmont, Nebraska, load up babies and toddlers into four- and six-seater carts and take the children on “buggy rides” through the building. They stop first to visit residents in the assisted living wing before continuing on to those in the nursing home. […]

When she moved her daughter into a reputable private school in Washington at the beginning of the pandemic, Ashley Jochim never imagined that she was preparing her daughter for failure. Jochim, a mother of four and an education researcher, thought her second-grader would do better in the smaller, more flexible environment the private school offered. […]

Findings from a recent survey by the Trevor Project, a nonprofit focused on suicide prevention among LGBTQ+ youth, show transgender, gay and nonbinary teens have worse mental health than their peers—and school policies targeting them contribute to their mental health struggles. Parsing education data into snack-sized servings. The data comes from the Trevor Project’s 2024 […]

My favorite part of my job is not actually part of my job. As a public high school teacher in a state and district with a teacher’s union, my contract entitles me to a “duty-free” lunch. Over the years, however, I have willingly and somewhat proudly developed a lunch crew. Many teachers have a lunch […]

Even years later, San Francisco Unified School District casts a shadow over attempts to quash long-standing disparities in math. In 2014, the district pushed algebra to ninth grade from eighth grade, in an attempt to eliminate the tracking, or grouping, of students into lower and upper math paths. The district hoped that scrapping honors math […]

The idea of being “bad at math” or “not a math person” is deeply entrenched in American education — for students and teachers alike. But it doesn’t have to be, says Phonisha Hawkins, director of instructional excellence for secondary math at KIPP Texas Public Schools, a branch of the national KIPP charter network. If we […]

Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing society, workplace and education. To be prepared for the college and career opportunities of today and the future, students must learn to be “AI Ready.” AI readiness ensures that students can thrive in the future as informed users and developers of emerging technologies, including AI. Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS) […]

AI has the potential to transform every aspect of our lives — and it is already doing so. According to Microsoft’s 2024 Work Trend Index, 75 percent of knowledge workers use AI, double the percentage of just six months before. It’s clear that the ways we communicate, make decisions and solve problems are changing as […]

For years educators have been trying to glean lessons about learners and the learning process from the data traces that students leave with every click in a digital textbook, learning management system or other online learning tool. It’s an approach known as “learning analytics.” These days, proponents of learning analytics are exploring how the advent […]

It was early in the school day when a 17-year-old gunman began firing into a classroom in the art complex of Santa Fe High School, roughly 30 miles southeast of Houston, in May 2018. He terrorized fellow students and teachers for about 30 minutes before surrendering to police, killing 10, injuring 13 others and leaving […]

At its core, personalized learning is about recognizing that no two students learn exactly the same way. It moves beyond the one-size-fits-all approach by focusing on each student’s strengths, needs and learning pace. By creating more flexible, student-centered classrooms, personalized learning empowers students to take ownership of their education, developing the skills they need to […]

Only six weeks had passed since the start of this school year, and I was already feeling exhausted. On a Friday during one of those long, exhausting days, two birds flew into my classroom. It was comical and absurd — for sixty minutes, I watched my high schoolers run around the room, trying to catch […]