EdSurge

For generations, schools have rewarded the correct answer, the polished essay and other finished products of learning. Now that artificial intelligence (AI) can effortlessly write the papers and produce the results that used to come only from high achievers, what does “high achievement” mean? And which student behaviors should be rewarded?As someone who became a high achiever after years of low academic effort, my own school experiences remind me that it’s critical to consider how AI is affectin

Pandemic relief money paid for a big expansion of high-impact tutoring in schools. That money is gone, and districts now face a hard question: how to keep a tool proven to help students. Some districts have already cut back. Others have found ways to keep tutoring in place, but the school day is not getting any longer, and every change to a program has a cost.Is Tutoring Quietly Getting Weaker?David Blazar, associate professor of education policy at the University of Maryland College of Educatio

The transition from pre-K to kindergarten can be overwhelming for many children, as they face longer school days, more structured learning and trickier social dynamics. In one study from Ohio State University, kindergarten teachers reported that more than 70% of their students experienced transition challenges in at least one area — making friends, following schedules, meeting academic demands, working within groups or being organized — and more than 30% had difficulty in all five areas.Much of

For several years, federal pandemic relief funds helped school districts across the U.S. expand “high-impact” (or “high-dosage”) tutoring programs that improved student learning. Now that the main source of funding has expired, many education leaders are scrambling to keep those programs afloat. Between March 2020 and March 2021, Congress allocated nearly $190.5 billion to public education through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) fund, the largest one-time federal inv

AI tools can now generate a lesson in seconds, and the result usually sounds convincing. But teachers and district leaders still lack a reliable way to confirm that generated content aligns with state standards or what research says about how students learn. Learning Commons, a nonprofit backed by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, believes it has built that missing foundation through a newly launched open platform. More than 70 partners, including OpenAI and Anthropic, have joined the effort. But

A few years ago, I had a student in my seventh-grade homeroom named Billie who was bright, funny and a talented artist. But over the course of the school year, I noticed Billie became increasingly distracted and sullen whenever they were away from their Chromebook. When they were on the device, their ability to self-regulate and stay focused on the task at hand was nearly nonexistent. Almost as if led by an unseen force, Billie would regularly switch tabs, search for nonschool-related topics, pl

​Students who have had contact with Child Protective Services (CPS) by age 15 are at greater risk of missing school for both excused (health-related) and unexcused (truancy) reasons than students with no CPS contact, according to research published last month in Children and Youth Services Review. Some estimates suggest that over one-third of children in the U.S. undergo a CPS investigation by the age of 18. The study did not conclude why youth with CPS contact accumulated more absences, saying

Every fall, teachers ride a wave of opening day energy into the new school year, and then that wave breaks. Educators have a name for the slump that follows: the October Blues. It can hit new teachers hard enough to make them question whether they belong in the profession at all. The harder question is whether anything can soften the landing, or whether every teacher simply has to wait it out.A Rookie Who Never Saw It ComingMike Anderson is an educational consultant, a former classroom teacher a

Growing up in Joliet, Illinois, my understanding of history was largely shaped by recurrent classroom materials and historical figures I’ve only read about in textbooks. Back then, my education felt like a passive process of memorizing facts rather than connecting with living stories. Classroom technology also felt abstract and disconnected from what I learned about culture and history.Moving to Alabama in 2002 to attend Miles College, a historically Black college, building a life in Birmingham

Schools across the nation are trying to reduce chronic absentee levels. A recent study from The GRAD Partnership, Everyone Graduates Center and the Partnership for Student Success, finds that small and rural districts are recovering attendance rates faster than larger, more urban and suburban districts. The study reported that rural districts with fewer than 1,000 students brought their chronic absenteeism back to within 2% of their pre-pandemic baseline by the 2024-25 school year at about twice

This year, the United States hit a milestone nobody asked for: more measles cases than any year since 1991, six decades after a vaccine was first developed. Fear and misinformation convinced families to walk away from settled science. Children paid the price.I bring this up not to talk about vaccines, but to talk about literacy.On July 15, Lynn Vasquez of the New Mexico Public Education Department met with lawmakers alongside Mark Angel, CEO of Amira Learning, to defend the use of the company’s

The new school year is underway, and like educators across the country, I have been engaging in my annual dose of professional development (PD) sessions.Unfortunately, over the years, I’ve found that traditional PD can sometimes feel repetitive, with facilitators covering reviews and strategies teachers have already mastered, and approaches to curricular analysis that often leave much be desired. While well-intentioned, these workshops can miss the mark when they focus too much on compliance rat

Can Schools Trust AI Add-Ons?Edtech vendors are swiftly integrating AI features into new and existing instructional materials, often claiming that the features are educationally effective. EdReports, an independent nonprofit that reviews K-12 curriculum, recently went looking for the evidence behind those claims. What it found raises hard questions for any district leader weighing an edtech purchase this fall.What Happens When the Teacher Doesn’t Have a Say?Some AI tools let a teacher review con

Curriculum and edtech providers are rapidly incorporating artificial intelligence (AI) into instructional materials with little or no evidence that the AI add-ons improve student learning, according to a new brief from EdReports, a nonprofit that reviews pre-K-12 instructional materials. Only one of the 10 vendors in the study included third-party evidence that the AI features they embedded improved educational outcomes. “I knew that there wasn’t going to be much evidence, but I was surprised at

A monkey plays a keyboard with a drumstick, and nobody stops to ask if that is really how one works. A male teacher walks into a school and someone decides he must be the gym coach before he says a word. A Shrinking Share of Male TeachersEd Finkel spoke with men across the country about why they went into teaching, and why so many eventually leave. He looked at a new survey of the profession and heard from teachers who described walking into a building and facing assumptions about who they must

Artificial intelligence (AI) is often framed solely as a productivity tool for education leaders. While it does help in that capacity, I believe we are measuring AI’s value against the wrong metric.School leaders do not simply face a shortage of time. We are facing a shortage of uninterrupted attention to our tasks at hand. Each day brings a relentless cycle of fragmented focus, decision fatigue, compliance demands and communication priorities that quietly erode the mental space needed for meani

Learning Commons, a nonprofit backed by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, launched an open platform for educators and edtech developers today, alongside six new partner organizations. The platform represents one of the most ambitious attempts by a single organization to solve a major edtech headache: easily accessing and incorporating state academic standards and proven teaching methods into edtech products and services. Developers and educators say incorporating evidence-based materials and data

At the ninth annual Reagan Institute Summit on Education (RISE) in Washington, D.C., policymakers, business leaders and education advocates from across the political spectrum gathered to address a single question: What is the purpose of education in America?Discussions ranged from rising college costs and “cognitive surrender” fueled by artificial intelligence (AI) to the broader goal of fostering an educated citizenry. During the panel, “Beyond Achievement: Knowledge, Skills, and Human Flourish

As baking and pastry instructors at Musselman High School in West Virginia, Rachel Nauman and Allison McClintock understand how nutrition affects learning.“I remember being young and hungry, and I couldn’t imagine going out the whole day without eating,” Nauman says. At her school, that’s not an issue. Thanks to the Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) program, schools and districts in low-income areas can serve students breakfast and lunch at no cost without requiring household applications. B

Over the past two years, I’ve spent countless hours talking with teachers, parents, students and school leaders about artificial intelligence. The questions that arise are remarkably consistent: How should schools respond? When should students use AI? How do we preserve authentic learning in a world where answers have become nearly instantaneous?They’re important questions, but I’ve noticed something interesting about them. Our conversations rarely stay focused on the technology itself. Before l