EdSurge

I want to share a story of struggle. Actually, two kinds of struggle. My father completed his doctorate at the University of Utah in the early 1970s. For his dissertation, he ran a statistical analysis on genealogical records to determine the impact of certain economic conditions on family size. He accomplished this on one of the most advanced computers of the time. His method? Literally punching out little rectangles in dozens of stiff paper cards, and feeding the stack into the computer. My fa

On a recent evening in suburban Chicago, a group of parents, teachers and administrators gathered to talk about something that, until recently, rarely drew this level of public scrutiny: the role of technology in their schools.The meeting was part of a three-session tech and learning focus group organized by Mary Jane (MJ) Warden, chief technology officer of Community Consolidated School District 15, in conjunction with the Teaching, Learning and Assessments Department. The district, which serve

My life has changed so much since my time as a Voices of Change fellow during the 2023 school year. As I wrote in my final essay of the fellowship, the beautiful, imperfect school I loved and helped build had closed. With the support of my fellowship editor, Cobretti Williams, I applied and was admitted to the Creative Writing Workshop at the University of New Orleans, where I am taking graduate classes and teaching a freshman English composition course. In deciding what to write as a reflection

This article is part of the collection: Teaching Tech: Navigating Learning and AI in the Industrial Revolution.A little over a decade ago, schools were swept into what many described as a movement to prepare students for the future of work. That work was coding — “Hello, world!”Districts introduced new courses, nonprofits expanded access to computer science education and a growing ecosystem of programs promised to teach students the skills needed to enter the tech workforce. For many, it felt li

This article is part of the collection: Teaching Tech: Navigating Learning and AI in the Industrial Revolution.A fourth-grade teacher asked a simple question:“What can I actually use this for in math?”This teacher captured the broader moment in education. Over the past several years, schools have been urged to respond to the rapid emergence of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT with limited information and a lot of hype and horror stories. Some have framed the technology as potentially transfor

The approach of a new school year conjures images of teachers preparing their classrooms and principals greeting students as they walk through the doors on the first day of classes. Parsing education data into snack-sized servings.But federal data shows that the education jobs that will see the most growth over a decade are supporting roles like substitute teachers, therapists and technologists. The findings are bracketed by changes in student enrollment and the ending of federal school emergenc

In addition to screen time, the type of school to attend, the content children consume and the food they eat, a new concern cropped up for parents over the last few years: Whether to keep their children back a year from entering kindergarten. “Redshirting,” a reference to collegiate sports in which the athlete sits out a year to boost their skills, has crept into the decision making process for parents with children on the cusp of the age cut-off in kindergarten, usually age 6 in most states. Pa

A new survey shows households with children under age 18 are experiencing economic strain, with parents suffering from depression, burnout and hopelessness. Capita launched the new national survey, Quarterly Insights from American Families, in partnership with YouGov. The survey will be conducted quarterly.“This is the baseline,” said Elliot Haspel, a senior fellow with Capita. “We really want to be able to ask questions that serve as an early warning system for family well-being.”Haspel said wh

The screen-time debate is no longer confined to parenting advice. As states introduce legislation limiting devices in schools, and pediatric researchers rethink how digital environments affect development, educators are confronting a difficult question: when does technology support learning, and when does it undermine it?In the first part of this series, I examined the American Academy of Pediatrics’ updated guidance on children’s digital ecosystems and how screens can shape early development at

When high school students step into a cybersecurity internship, they enter a field where the stakes are real. The tools, threats and responsibilities extend well beyond the classroom. In rural communities, such opportunities can be transformative — for both learners and the regions working to build a future-ready workforce.In eastern Alabama, cybersecurity pathways are creating new opportunities for collaboration between educators and employers, reflecting a broader lesson: Workforce development

When a water-treatment plant outside Denver discovered an algae problem in its pipes, it did not call an engineering firm. It called the students.The aquatic robotics team at the Innovation Center at St. Vrain Valley Schools in Longmont, Colorado, sent underwater robots into the facility, collected data, identified the algae species and helped eradicate it. The plant now contracts with the student team for quarterly checkups. Neighboring towns have started calling, too.This is not a simulation o

Recently I placed an empty cardboard box in the center of my preschool classroom of 4-year-olds. No label. No instructions. No purpose given. A few years ago, that simple box would have instantly transformed into something magical — a castle, a race car, a pirate ship, a cozy home for tiny animals. Instead, my students stood around it, waiting. One finally asked, “What is it supposed to be?”In that moment, I realized something deeper than a simple change in play had occurred. When a box is no lo

In a system serving nearly 1 million students across more than 1,800 schools, the distance between a central office cubicle and a second grade classroom in New York City Public Schools can feel immense — yet they are inextricably linked. When the central office works, schools get the resources and support they need. When it does not, the friction and challenges can ripple directly into classrooms.Supporting that system requires thousands of central office staff whose work rarely makes headlines

Within the first 24 hours of my daughter’s life, I put a screen in her face.I know. That’s the opposite of all the research I had highlighted and annotated while my wife was pregnant. But it wasn’t by choice. That screen was the only way my wife could meet our newborn.As soon as our daughter was born, she was rushed to the NICU, tubes and cords draped across her swaddle while clinicians moved quickly around her. My wife was rolled out of the operating room in the opposite direction to receive in

When Kim Whitman’s son was in kindergarten in 2015, it was the first time their school district rolled out a one-to-one device program, assigning an electronic device to every child. Beyond using it in the classroom, the children were required to bring it home each night to charge it — but with that came the temptation to use the device after hours. “My children never had a device and suddenly they had these iPads at home I had to manage,” Whitman, now the co-lead for the Distraction-Free School

Educators have seen wave after wave of “innovative” solutions promise to address long-standing challenges — from personalization and engagement to college- and career-readiness — yet many issues remain stubbornly unresolved. Too often, solutions are developed and scaled without a clear understanding of how challenges show up in daily classroom experiences or how students, families and educators define the problems.Understanding the everyday barriers that students, families, practitioners and adm

The alert came around 7 p.m. Brittani Phillips checked her phone. A middle school counselor in Putnam County, Florida, Phillips receives messages from an artificial intelligence-enabled therapy platform that students use during nonschool hours. It flags when a student may be at risk for harming themself or others based on what the student types into a chat. This story also appeared in The Guardian.Phillips saw that this was a “severe” alert for an eighth grader. So, Phillips spent her evening on

Several years ago, Jared Cooney Horvath’s interest in teaching took a scientific turn.He entered teaching during a period he calls “the decade of the brain” — when much of the buzz around education and learning covered new theories about brain activity and information processing. Horvath believed that if he learned more about the brain, he’d become a better teacher.Jared Cooney HorvathBut the education ideas that captured the popular imagination in the early 2000s had to do with catering to so-c

Even casual observers of the early childhood space likely noticed the massive push for expanding access to care and education programs over the last year, most notably with universal preschool options. But a less splashy effort has been quietly underway for years: making kindergarten mandatory, enrolling the small percent of children holding out from the entry-level grade in order to boost their academic and emotional success. Enrolling children in kindergarten is only legally required for famil

This article is part of the collection: Teaching Tech: Navigating Learning and AI in the Industrial Revolution.During our research project on teaching and learning with AI, Mi Aniefuna talked to a lawyer-turned-teacher-turned AI ethicist. Masheika Allgood, founder of AllAI Consulting (pronounced “ally”), shared a story with me about her most transformative year as a teacher. What she did to help her seventh grade ELA students is something that generative AI, as we know it, can’t do. As the numbe