EdSurge Articles

Why AI Made Me a Better Principal

Monika Vereb — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

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 meaningful work – instructional leadership, relationship building and strategic systems thinking.

As a principal in a large Virginia school division (district), I have found that AI’s greatest benefit is not writing emails faster or summarizing meetings. It is reducing cognitive load so I can be more present in classrooms, coach leaders more intentionally and make better decisions when they matter most.

My Commute as a Sounding Board

Every morning, I commute approximately one hour each way to and from school. Before I began using AI, that time was divided between listening to a streaming service, mentally replaying difficult conversations and trying to remember the priorities waiting for me when I arrived. The drive was full, but it was not always reflective or productive.

Now, when conditions allow and I can use hands-free technology safely, I use ChatGPT’s voice conversation feature to turn part of my commute into a structured space for reflection and preparation. On the way to school, I might talk through the day’s priorities, anticipate a challenging conversation or identify questions to consider before a meeting. On the way home, I might process a difficult interaction, examine what went well and identify one next step for the following day.

To get the most out of these conversations, I prompt ChatGPT to draw on key leadership frameworks such as Courageous Conversations, Cognitive Coaching and Deloitte’s Courageous Principals — acting as a thought partner to refine my approach. For example, before a sensitive staff discussion, I might prompt: “Act as a cognitive coach grounded in Courageous Conversations principles. Help me outline open-ended questions to address performance concerns while maintaining trust.”

On the return drive, I might ask: “Help me process today's leadership meeting using Deloitte's Courageous Principals lens. What blind spots should I reflect on, and what key follow-up action should I prioritize for tomorrow?”

The value is not that ChatGPT gives me a perfect answer. Speaking aloud to a responsive thought partner helps me slow down and organize my thinking before I walk through the school doors. During the school day, I use ChatGPT selectively to synthesize information, process experiences and coach my thinking between competing responsibilities. After a meeting or classroom visit, I can drop in a few nonconfidential notes to identify patterns in teacher or student behavior, clarify next steps or prepare for a follow-up conversation.

I also use Gemini for image creation and custom Gems to streamline walk-through feedback. Because my school is under a Comprehensive Support and Improvement order, providing immediate, actionable insights following daily classroom and grade-level visits is essential.

These AI tools do not replace the human coaching relationships I am fortunate to have; they supplement them. Trusted colleagues and coaches offer professional judgment, context, challenge and care. Conversational AI simply provides a low-stakes sounding board between formal coaching sessions, helping me return to those human relationships more centered.

To be clear, I never input confidential student or personnel information into AI. I use these tools strictly in ways that protect privacy, ensure accuracy and maintain human accountability. Establishing these guardrails helped me transition from using AI merely as a personal productivity aid to leveraging it to support stronger routines and shared learning across our leadership team.

From Weekly Execution to Universal Design

As I became more comfortable using AI every day as a principal, I moved from one-time prompts to repeatable workflows. In leadership, those tasks include drafting communications, synthesizing evidence, organizing meeting notes, preparing feedback and differentiating messages for different audiences. Instead of asking AI to complete an isolated task, I am building systems around the work that takes a significant cognitive load.

For my weekly work, I rely on custom AI projects to organize recurring materials, think through priorities and create first-pass summaries that I can review and refine.

One of the most transformative shifts has been how I approach communication using tools such as Gemini Notebook. Weekly principal messages can become text-heavy and hard for busy staff members to digest. To practice what we teach about Universal Design for Learning, I use Gemini Notebook to transform my messages into podcast-style audio overviews. Instead of receiving only a dense memo, staff members have access to a quick, 90-second to two-minute overview.

This gives staff another way to engage with important information. It also reminds me that communication is not complete simply because information has been sent. Communication is successful when people can access, understand and use what they receive.

Using AI with the evidence and documents in front of me has also been valuable when making leadership decisions. Rather than asking for generic advice, I can ask for work-aligned insight by providing approved materials such as school improvement documents, assessment summaries, staff feedback, observation notes or professional learning resources. AI can help identify patterns, gaps, contradictions and questions that require further investigation.

This helps me show up to leadership meetings with a clearer picture of the evidence and better questions for my team. The decisions about what to do next still belong to me and to the people closest to the work. AI can organize the evidence, but it cannot replace professional knowledge, context or accountability.

From Individual Experimentation to Shared Professional Learning

My school division’s investment in artificial intelligence has moved my use from private experimentation to shared professional learning. Through professional learning, partnerships and access to approved tools, I have developed workflows that prioritize data privacy, protection and responsible use.

During our school’s leadership kickoff session, “AI in Action 201: Custom Gems, Projects, and Powerful Learning Design,” I learned workflows that I have adapted to improve my day-to-day messaging, communication and leadership routines. I have also shared these workflows with my principal peers so they can consider how similar tools might support their own practice and leadership.

As a lead learner, I am working to model thoughtful and responsible AI use for my assistant principals and leadership team, with the goal of eventually helping teachers and students use AI as a tool for reflection, creativity and learning. The division’s approach has helped me think more clearly about guardrails: using division-supported tools and approved environments, protecting confidential information, verifying AI-generated content and centering professional judgment and human accountability.

The value of these AI workflows is not that they make leadership less demanding. Schools are still complex, human organizations, and the most important work cannot be automated. The difference is that they bring me greater clarity. When AI helps me organize competing priorities, synthesize information or prepare for a difficult conversation, I can listen more carefully, notice who has not spoken in a discussion and respond with greater patience.

That additional capacity changes what people experience from me as their school leader. Staff members see a leader who is more prepared and present in meetings. Students see a principal who can focus more fully during walk-throughs, classroom visits and school events. Families see a leader who has more patience and attention for their questions and concerns.

Making Space for More Human Leadership

As I have grown in my AI journey, my perspective has shifted. I am no longer looking at AI to determine how many minutes it can cut from my task list. I am asking: How can I use it so I can invest more deeply in relationships, empowerment and presence?

Using AI requires discipline. Responsible AI use is not about surrendering judgment to a tool. It is about using the tool to create more space for judgment.

When AI helps offload low-value administrative friction, we reclaim the mental bandwidth required to notice the small human elements. We regain the energy to lean into empathy, walk the hallways with our eyes up and truly listen to the staff, students and families we serve.

The next time we evaluate a new tool or workflow, let us do more than ask what administrative task it can automate. Let us also ask what relationship it can protect, what decision it can help us consider more carefully and what kind of leadership it makes possible.

The scarce resource in school leadership is not simply time; it is attention. It is the ability to be fully present for the people and decisions that matter most.

If AI can help us make better use of our time and reduce the cognitive load that competes for our attention, then its greatest contribution is not greater efficiency; it is more present, human leadership.

The Cost of Unchecked Assumptions: Fewer Male Teachers, More Baby Slop

EdSurge Staff — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

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 Teachers

Ed 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 be before they said a word. Finkel wanted to know what is pulling men away from the classroom, and what a school might do differently to keep them there.

When AI Gets the Basics Wrong

Adam Stone went looking at what is now called baby slop, the wave of AI generated videos aimed at toddlers and preschoolers. He found channels posting thousands of these videos in a matter of months, and some of that content shows scenes that do not line up with how the world actually works. Stone wanted to know what that content is doing to kids who are still learning to tell the difference between what is real and what is not.

Listen to the Episode:

Stories Mentioned in This Episode

As Male Teachers Vanish From the Classroom, Schools Look for Ways to Bring Them Back by Ed Finkel

AI Videos Are Warping Early Learning, Teachers Say. Here's How They're Responding by Adam Stone

This Week with EdSurge is a weekly podcast from EdSurge. Subscribe to the EdSurge newsletters for more news and analysis on education and technology.

Learning Commons Launches Open Platform for K-12 Edtech

Ira Apfel — Tue, 22 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

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 into edtech tools is time-consuming, costly and prone to error. By offering free datasets, curricula and evaluation tools from states and many respected industry providers, the initiative helps developers and K-12 schools create evidence-based materials and assessments aligned with state standards. The datasets include academic standards from all 50 states, breakdowns of concepts and foundational skills underlying specific standards, learning progressions mapping prerequisite and successor skills as well as curricula and course materials from prominent providers.

In addition to the open platform, Learning Commons announced integration partnerships with Canva Education, Level, MagicSchool, OKO Labs, Really Great Reading and TalkingPoints.

“What I’m really excited about is the number of partners we’ve been able to collaborate with,” says Sandra Liu Huang, president of Learning Commons. “It’s not just our work — it really feels like the beginning, or maybe the beginning of the beginning.”

According to Huang, Learning Commons has more than 70 partners contributing datasets or integrating its tools, including OpenAI and Anthropic. Since its launch in 2025, Learning Commons’ datasets have been downloaded approximately 20,000 times.

“That foundation didn’t exist before in an open way, and now it does,” Huang says. “I think it sparks people’s imagination: ‘Now I can connect this to curriculum and standards and map it to my context’ — to do things that weren’t quite so doable in the past.”

The platform arrives as lawmakers, educators and parents push to ensure edtech offers evidence and outcomes to support its claims. Educators and industry observers believe the platform could help scale evidence-based research and high-quality instructional materials.

“Trying to make sense of messy, scattered state standards and academic research is exhausting,” says Tambra Clark, technology integration facilitator for Birmingham City Schools in Alabama. “Someone has to do the heavy lifting of turning all that data into clean, machine-readable formats. If a well-funded philanthropy steps up to build these foundational tools openly, it saves cash-strapped school districts and small developers from reinventing the wheel, ultimately making AI in the classroom safer and higher quality for everyone.”

Michael Hernandez, a consultant and former Los Angeles County teacher of the year who specializes in helping educators use AI, also likes the idea of surfacing and vetting high-quality resources and best practices in one place. “There are many respected institutions that offer similar services for science, medicine, and the arts, so I don’t see why this wouldn’t work for education,” he says.

Helen Crompton, executive director of the Research Institute of Digital Innovation in Learning at Old Dominion University, is “cautiously optimistic” about the platform.

“One of the problems we have in education is that excellent research and evidence-based practices often do not make their way into the technologies educators actually use,” she says. “If Learning Commons can help bridge that gap, that could be very beneficial.”

Inside the Platform

The platform consists of two main components: the Knowledge Graph and Evaluators.

The Knowledge Graph offers K-12 education data published on GitHub under an open license, including state academic standards, learning progressions, curricula and durable skills that can integrate into AI tools. The Evaluators measure whether AI-generated content created by schools and vendors is accurate, grade-appropriate, evidence-based and adheres to state academic standards. A third component, Agent Skills, are designed to designed to support teacher planning. Four skills are already available, and additional skills will go live later this year.

Karl Rectanus, CEO of Really Great Reading, says the company used the Knowledge Graph as it developed its new Literacy Outcome System, incorporating documented learning science, evidence, existing standards and progressions, rather than stitching data together from a range of sources. He says it would have taken months for his organization to build its own infrastructure and devote resources to ongoing maintenance.

“We’ve tested [the Knowledge Graph] and integrated it,” he says. “It lets us move faster, together with like-minded organizations, in ways that reflect what educators already know is right — while helping the broader sector succeed, not just us.”

The platform could greatly help vendors as the trend toward outcomes-based contracts grows, says Lawrence Holt, co-founder of OKO Labs and an adviser to Learning Commons.

“A developer can use Learning Commons and find out whether generated material is on grade level and on standard before a student sees it, rather than discovering the problem later, when 40% of the fee is riding on the result,” he says.

Eedi, an 11-year-old company that researches why students struggle to learn math, contributed its data to the platform. “Partnering with Learning Commons goes straight to Eedi’s mission, which is to reach a billion kids by 2030,” says George Mu, president and chief growth officer of Eedi. “We’re a company of about 40 people, so partnering makes sense for us.”

Mu explains that before ChatGPT arrived, it was hard for anyone to use something so structured, descriptive and granular as its math research. “Now, with these tools from Learning Commons, teachers, students and edtech organizations can actually use it,” he says.

How One District Uses the Platform

Jason Markey, assistant superintendent of Lisle District 202 in Illinois, used the beta version of the platform to create a formative math assessment app that simulates questions students see on the Illinois Assessment of Readiness.

“We just hadn’t found a provider that does math assessment that well,” Markey explains. “By connecting it to the Knowledge Graph, we can inform the reports on student progress with a lot more nuance than if we’d built it with AI alone.”

Vincent Slowiak, a teacher at Lisle Junior High School, says the Knowledge Graph included prerequisite state standards that can flag what a student may be lacking or need reteaching on to meet a given standard. “That gives teachers another layer of information about what needs to be covered again,” he says.

In addition to state standards, the Knowledge Graph includes learning materials that the Lisle district already uses. “One resource we use a lot at the elementary level, as we unpack our Common Core standards and look at instructional shifts, is Student Achievement Partners. Seeing that inside Learning Commons was reassuring,” says Meredith McCormick, assistant principal of curriculum and instruction at Lisle Elementary School.

Advice from Educators

Markey and his team of educator-coders only got so far with the Knowledge Graph before they had to rely on outside help. “As [Slowiak] likes to say, ‘You can get to 97% pretty fast,’ but it’s hard to make something fully scalable when none of us have a computer science background,” Markey admits. “Getting it to a point where it’s launchable — single sign-on for students, a dashboard for each teacher — is a lot more complex.”

This past summer, Markey hired two interns — recent computer science college graduates — to finalize the in-house tool. One intern remains on staff. Most school districts lack internal tech teams or college interns to inspect or implement complex datasets safely.

“We’ve also engaged a third party, Upstart Education, to work with us on data analysis and hosting,” Markey says, adding that he and his team made sure to adhere to state and federal student data-privacy rules.

McCormick advises anyone interested in using the Knowledge Graph to make sure the resulting tool is age-appropriate. “Feedback has to be specific enough for, say, a third grader to understand where they are in the learning progression, and that looks very different than it would for a seventh or eighth grader,” she explains.

Is Learning Commons Right for the Job?

Educators and outside observers agree that Learning Commons’ platform could help scale evidence-based instruction and assessment. Their concerns are whether a private organization — especially one based in Silicon Valley — should lead the way on something as important as AI infrastructure.

“I’ve seen this happen so many times before in relation to state- or school-mandated assessments,” says Clark. “We already know how tricky it is when outside entities get to establish the standards for testing. But this time, we’re talking about tech. When a multibillionaire-backed organization starts laying down the ‘plumbing’ for the entire education system, it naturally raises a few eyebrows.”

The optics of an organization based in Silicon Valley may give some people pause, but others want proof to back up concerns. To these observers, a tool that saves time and money and is open to all is cause for celebration.

“A shared learning infrastructure, with shared experience and evidence of growth, is the next step in maturing our sector to the level other industries have already reached,” says Rectanus, a former teacher.

Holt says there are additional organizations trying to raise the bar for edtech by conducting independent reviews or gathering best practices: EdReports reviews K-12 curricula while Evidence for ESSA at Johns Hopkins University and the federal What Works Clearinghouse grade studies.

Hernandez points out that educators already convey a great deal of trust in organizations, whether they are textbook companies or learning management systems. Still, he wishes edtech would not have to rely on one source for AI infrastructure. “If this is to truly work, it should be a coalition of respected organizations who curate and manage this program, not a single corporation,” he says.

“If a nonprofit is willing to step up and do the work, I think it could be beneficial in the short term, but problematic in the long term,” Hernandez continues. “Do we want private industry playing a large role in policy, pedagogy and practice, or do we want our educators and civic institutions to manage this?”

Huang points out that Learning Commons is a nonprofit, private operating foundation. “We operate in the philanthropic interest, and we’re accountable to serving the public good as a result of that structure,” she says.

“I do think our structure and capabilities let us move fast,” she continues. “We can bring the cutting edge of technology to the education sector in a public-good way that I don’t think would otherwise be happening.”

Crompton is concerned about Learning Commons’ goal to be the AI infrastructure for edtech. “Infrastructure is different from simply providing another educational technology tool,” she says. “Once a platform becomes part of the underlying infrastructure upon which many other products are built, it can begin to shape what information is available, what is considered authoritative, what gets measured and ultimately what kinds of educational experiences are created.”

Clark notes, “Whoever controls those underlying knowledge graphs and evaluators holds a massive amount of sway over what the system considers a ‘valid’ approach.”

Huang says she doesn’t think Learning Commons is the only infrastructure. “There’s outcome-based contracting, for example — that’s an important piece of the ecosystem,” she notes.

Crompton does give Learning Commons high marks for making its work open to the public. “It has also published principles around data governance, responsible AI and transparency,” she adds. “But we should not assume that being a nonprofit automatically removes concerns about power or influence.”

“I would also want transparency around how decisions are made about which curricula, research, standards and definitions of high-quality learning are included,” she adds. “Those decisions are pedagogical decisions. They can ultimately influence what millions of teachers and students encounter.”

“The opportunity here is significant, but so is the responsibility,” Crompton says.

Editor’s note: Learning Commons is a financial supporter of EdSurge. This article was produced independently by our newsroom and Learning Commons had no editorial role or influence over its reporting, writing or editing.

Navigating the Future of Work: A Conversation with JFF’s Maria Flynn

Sarah McKibben — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

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 Flourishing,” Maria Flynn, president and CEO of Jobs for the Future, zeroed in on the importance of aligning what students learn in school with what the workforce will require in the next five, 10 and 15 years.

EdSurge caught up with Flynn after her session to discuss school-to-workforce connections, career awareness over prescriptive readiness and what it really looks like to prepare students for an uncertain future.

EdSurge: A new Gallup poll shows that while 51% of parents trust K-12 schools to prepare students for new technology, far fewer parents feel confident in schools’ ability to prepare them for the current world of work (27%), critical thinking and problem solving (29%), or effective AI use (34%). Is this a warning sign that our priorities are misaligned?

Maria Flynn: Yes, I do think we are not doing enough to get students ready for an unpredictable future. That gap has existed for a while, but with the rapid acceleration of AI and changing business practices, it’s becoming even more apparent. It’s interesting that parents are picking up on this, and it raises a critical question: How do we address this systemic problem at scale?

Regarding that low confidence in AI preparation, parents are learning at the same pace — or even slower — than students, so educating parents needs to happen in parallel as all of this continues to roll out.

At the same time, that AI finding doesn’t surprise me. My sense, from what I’m hearing anecdotally, is that schools are lagging behind. Systems across K-12 and higher education are scrambling to support teachers, while states and districts are trying to chart the right path forward.

It’s a telling sign that this conversation has moved from a policy debate straight to the kitchen table.

What understanding of AI should every high school graduate possess before entering college or the workforce?

By graduation, every student should have basic AI literacy — much like learning to type used to be a class we all took. Whether that is in the form of a credential or built into the classroom experience over time, employers increasingly expect these foundational skills. Beyond checking a box, the real goal is building fluency so students can apply AI to day-to-day tasks.

Where are you seeing promising models of AI education?

We see a lot of pockets of progress across different sectors, especially in higher education. For example, Ohio State is intentionally embedding AI horizontally across its majors. Miami Dade College is doing groundbreaking work in applied AI education through NSF-funded initiatives. In K-12, groups like InnovateEDU are pioneering creative approaches. There are a lot of good things happening; the priority now is being really clear on the roles of states, districts and communities in putting these practices together.

When we talk about preparing students for the future, where are the biggest misalignments between current school practices and what employers demand?

The skills of the future will continue to evolve quickly, so we shouldn’t be teaching young people about a specific job with a specific employer. The baseline needs to be strong core academics paired with durable, human skills — adaptability, resilience and the capacity to learn and relearn.

Where a misalignment exists is in how early and how broadly we expose students to different career possibilities. Maybe high schools are too focused on college admissions. If we introduce career exploration earlier — embedding it in middle school — students can make far more informed choices by 11th grade.

How can we better equip K-12 schools to help students connect their interests and passions to career pathways?

It comes down to providing better structural tools and resources. For example, expanding summer teacher externships can give educators access to real-world work experiences that then inform classroom learning.

We also need to give school counselors the resources to showcase opportunities beyond the traditional four-year degree. Free exploration tools designed specifically for teenagers — like Britebound’s GoZig platform, developed in partnership with JFF — help students match their interests to varied pathways, including community college programs and apprenticeships.

Beyond education, how are employers adjusting to these shifts?

There is a lot shifting on the early rungs of the labor market that we need to pay attention to. With headlines of AI altering entry-level roles and recent graduates facing underemployment, we have to start getting ahead of these changes so we’re not eliminating that first rung of the ladder.

Employers are beginning to reevaluate entry-level requirements. Initiatives like Opportunity@Work’s “Tear the Paper Ceiling” campaign have encouraged companies to remove unnecessary degree requirements for jobs that don’t really need them. At the same time, young people are increasingly seeking “earn-and-learn” models like structured apprenticeships, where they don't have to choose between working and going to school.

Progress has been made. I think it comes down, again, to helping young people understand their options.

Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Schools Scramble as Budget Cuts Force Reset of Free Lunch Programs

Adam Stone — Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

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. But things are changing nationwide.

Federal cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) under the 2025 congressional budget resolution (H.R. 1) have been shrinking the pool of families automatically certified for free school meals over the past year. Starting Oct. 1, states will be responsible for 75% of SNAP administrative costs, up from the current 50%.

These changes to families’ SNAP status and state budgets can threaten districts’ CEP eligibility. In non-CEP schools, families that previously qualified for free lunch will have to reapply. That worries Nauman.

“Sometimes parents aren’t there, or are too proud to fill out the paperwork,” she says. The shift in free lunch policies has forced schools to navigate the administrative logistics.

The Impact of Program Changes

The cuts in H.R. 1 mean fewer families are “directly certified” for free meals — the automatic process where schools don’t need paperwork since the state knows the family receives SNAP. This is already having an impact.

“We are just beginning to hear concerns from members about drops in direct certification,” says Diane Pratt-Heavner, a spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association.

In place of direct certification, families are filling out applications, and that is going to complicate things. At Leonardtown Middle School in St. Mary’s County, Maryland, Principal Deborah Dennie says the paperwork is onerous.

“There’s a parent letter, that’s the front, and the back gives the federal income eligibility guidelines,” she says. Then there are four pages of instructions, and only then do parents get to the application, with its multiple sections and numbered subsections.

“The families who qualify for these things, they don’t want to spend the time to go through all of this paperwork,” Dennie says. That could mean kids who need a free lunch aren’t going to get one.

CEP eligibility is based on Identified Student Percentage (ISP) — the share of kids directly certified through SNAP and other programs. Cuts to SNAP risk shrinking ISP, which could mean schools’ reimbursement rate drops so low that CEP becomes financially unfeasible.

That concerns Sommer Purvis, the child nutrition director at Livingston Parish Public Schools in Louisiana, where kids get free lunch through CEP. From 2021-2024, direct certification percentages in the district increased. For the past two years, the percentage has dropped, putting CEP at risk.

“We have started to be very proactive with monitoring those numbers to see where we are, how they’re changing,” Purvis says. “We want to make sure that we’re prepared.”

How Schools Are Responding

With all these changes to free lunch, school leaders are getting proactive, and teachers are getting prepared. In West Virginia, nearly 183,000 students may be at risk of losing CEP. If it looks like that might really happen, McClintock thinks teachers will step up.

“Teachers are always going to support a free and reduced lunch,” she says. “They’re going to talk to their legislators. They’re going to talk to board members to make sure that is heard loud and clear. There’s going to be a lot of grassroots movement.”

Purvis is already preparing for the worst. If CEP collapses, she wants to be ready to help parents through the paperwork of individual applications.

“We are monitoring our lists and trying to make sure that we are capturing as many of those students as we can,” she says. Loss of CEP would be “a fundamental change for families.”

Purvis has already laid the groundwork, knowing the current situation might arise. “We’re very transparent each year,” she says. That means telling parents: “The paperwork is not required, but that is a year-to-year decision and things can change.”

Meanwhile, after 10 years with CEP, the district needs to start asking questions internally, says Purvis.

“How would schools handle those applications? Because after 10 years, a majority of our cafeteria managers have never processed applications,” she notes. “A majority of our principals have not had to deal with meal collection and meal debt.”

With that in mind, Purvis is already being “very honest and transparent with those individuals about what might be coming,” she says. She’s also looking at what training would be needed. She’s making lists of which principals and cafeteria managers may need a refresher or an introduction to the free lunch process, and hoping the state’s department of education will help foot the bill if training is needed.

At Leonardtown Middle, meanwhile, Dennie is thinking about the role that teachers will play. If paperwork becomes a hurdle for families, classroom educators will likely be the canary in the coal mine. “My teachers tend to have their ears to the ground and if they hear something, then they bring it to our attention,” she says.

A student’s father came in to see a teacher recently, and Dennie suspected he was dealing with financial distress. Dennie gave the teacher a heads-up, “and lo and behold, when she spoke to him, that was indeed the problem,” she says. “We ended up doing something as a school for the family.”

Teachers will need to be even more attuned to such situations going forward. Families may not apply for free lunch “either because of pride, or because of the packet itself and how cumbersome it can be,” Dennie says.

A Proactive Approach

At Bartlett Academy, an alternative high school in Oklahoma that serves many students experiencing poverty and homelessness, Principal Amy Sanders is betting that a proactive approach will help her team weather the coming storm.

The district never went to automatic certification, and instead has always had families fill out applications for free lunch, whether or not the family thought it was needed. “That way we have an accurate count every year,” she says.

The application is part of the school’s orientation packet, along with standards for discipline, behavior, dress code and so on. This way, applying for free lunch becomes … ordinary.

“We have a lot of Native Americans [families], and there’s a pride about not letting everybody know your business,” Sanders observes. “We’ve tried to make it where this isn’t ‘everybody knows your business.’ This is just routine.”

Dennie is also trying to be proactive. She has lists of students who got free lunch or incurred food debt last year, and makes sure they all get applications to take home. When parents come for an open house, the application is right there on the table for them to pick up and fill out later. And she includes information about free lunch in her weekly newsletter, all year long.

“We let them know that it’s there,” she says. “We want to make sure that everybody gets what they need.”

Dennie notes that teachers and administrators alike have to tread a fine line here. In the past she’s encouraged kids to apply for free lunch, but as a result, one parent reported her to the board. “He said I have no right to talk to his kid,” she recalls. “So I make them aware, but at some point, I have to back off.”

Inside Alabama’s Next-Generation Cybersecurity Classroom

Kim Richards — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In Huntsville, Alabama, home to one of the nation's largest cybersecurity hubs, educators and industry professionals are rethinking what cybersecurity education can look like.

Rather than separating classroom instruction from workplace experience, they are co-designing learning environments where students build cyber ranges, develop industry-informed capstone projects and secure internships that connect learning directly to future careers.

At the Madison County Schools Career Technical Center, cybersecurity instructor Kala Jo Grice-Dobbins is showing what that looks like in practice. Working alongside industry professionals, she is creating a classroom where students learn not only technical skills, but also how cybersecurity professionals think, collaborate and solve problems.

Expanding What is Possible in the Classroom

The Alabama Technology Education and Career Pathways Accelerator, created by the STEM Foundation with district pathway implementation support from Digital Promise, helps districts ensure technology pathways lead to an industry credential of value by connecting educators with industry partners, work-based learning opportunities and resources aligned with workforce needs. For Grice-Dobbins, participating in the Accelerator became an opportunity to deepen those partnerships and rethink how students experience cybersecurity in the classroom.

Working alongside industry mentors, Grice-Dobbins built a classroom that looks and feels more like the environments students will encounter after graduation. Students work in a private cyber range across Windows and Linux environments, troubleshoot unfamiliar problems and prepare for senior capstone projects modeled after real cybersecurity work.

“Cybersecurity isn’t about memorizing answers,” Grice-Dobbins explained. “It’s about learning how to think through problems.”

Beyond the school year, Grice-Dobbins collaborates with industry partners and students to continue improving the program based on industry needs and learner goals.

During her four years teaching cybersecurity in Madison County, Grice-Dobbins’ students have secured internships with regional defense contractors and accepted positions that require security clearances. Eight students have completed internships through the program, creating a growing network of alums whose success after graduation is showing younger students what is possible.

Industry Brings the Workplace Into the Classroom

For industry professionals, this collaboration is an opportunity to share expertise, shape authentic learning experiences and mentor students at a deeper level.

David Hoover, a customer success manager at Canvas and an active member of Cyber Huntsville, helped design a government-style restricted network that gives students experience working in environments similar to those used by public-sector employers. He also advises senior capstone projects, helping students experience how cybersecurity teams solve problems, collaborate and communicate in professional settings.

Dr. Ian Clark, a technology leader at Science Applications International Corporation and cybersecurity mentor, has seen the long-term value of these collaborations throughout his career. Dr. Clark believes a simple shift has fundamentally changed how students learn: “There is no workbook.”

Rather than visiting the classroom for a single presentation, Hoover and Dr. Clark are involved throughout the learning process. They help shape projects, advise students as they work through challenges and provide feedback informed by current industry practice.

That sustained engagement gives students access to technical expertise and to professional expectations, communication styles and problem-solving approaches that are difficult to replicate through curriculum alone.

Seeing a Future in Cybersecurity

Jaxton first discovered cybersecurity during a freshman visit to the Madison County Career Technical Center. His father had sparked his interest in computers, and he immediately knew he wanted to join the program.

Over the next three years, that curiosity became a career path. Through industry-recognized certifications, increasingly complex projects and his senior capstone, Jaxton developed the technical skills and confidence to pursue cybersecurity after graduation. Along the way, he learned to think critically, leverage emerging technology to create solutions and work alongside industry mentors.

Experiences like internships, capstone projects and mentorship do more than build technical skills. They help students begin to imagine themselves as part of the profession. Rather than viewing cybersecurity as an abstract career, students understand where they fit, what they contribute and what opportunities are available after graduation.

Today, Jaxton plans to continue studying cybersecurity after graduation. More importantly, he no longer sees the field as something other people do. He sees himself in it.

Looking Ahead

The work taking shape through Alabama's Technology Education and Career Pathways Accelerator demonstrates what's possible when educators and industry professionals co-design learning together. As classrooms evolve alongside one of the nation’s fastest-changing industries, students gain more than technical knowledge. They gain confidence, professional connections and a clearer vision of where they belong.

For school systems looking to strengthen career-connected learning, the lesson extends beyond cybersecurity. When educators, employers and students collaborate to shape authentic learning experiences, classrooms become places where young people go beyond preparing for future careers and begin participating in the work those careers involve.

The Missing Middle: Why Kids Still Struggle to Read After Third Grade

EdSurge Staff — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

This week, two guests look at the same problem from opposite ends. One has the data on how far struggling middle school readers have fallen. The other has watched it happen in real time, in a classroom, one comprehension question at a time. Reading recovery has largely worked in this country, except for this one group, and neither guest thinks that's a coincidence. Both point to the same root cause: the fixes that worked for younger readers were never designed to reach kids once they're already behind in middle school.

The Recovery That Left Some Kids Behind

Post-pandemic reading scores have mostly been trending up, but Megan Kuhfeld's research at NWEA found one exception: the lowest-performing middle school readers, who are losing ground every year instead of catching up. She explains why the literacy reforms that worked so well in the early grades stop helping right when these students need them most, and what a handful of states are doing differently. Kuhfeld also lays out just how long real recovery takes, and why she thinks of it as a multi-year effort rather than a single fix.

Where Comprehension Breaks Down

Dacia Toll spent years running schools before co-founding Coursemojo, an AI literacy platform. She explains why so many kids who read fluently in fourth grade suddenly can't answer a basic comprehension question by sixth, tracing it to two forces that hit at the same time: texts get harder, and the background knowledge needed to make sense of them gets more specialized. She also draws a sharp line between AI tools that just hand students an answer and ones built to send a struggling reader back into the text to work it out for themselves, and makes the case for why that distinction matters more than most classroom AI policies currently account for. Neither guest thinks this gap closes by accident, and neither do we.

Listen to the episode:

Stories Mentioned in This Episode Reading Scores Continue to Drop for Many Middle Schoolers by David Weldon AI Can Help One of K-12's Biggest Challenges: Middle School Reading by Dacia Toll

This Week with EdSurge is a weekly podcast from EdSurge. Subscribe to the EdSurge newsletters for more news and analysis on education and technology.

What Yellowstone, Rwanda and AI Taught Me About Change

Nathan Kraai — Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

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 long, they drift somewhere deeper. They become conversations about thinking. About curiosity. About judgment. About what learning is actually for when a machine can generate an essay, solve a problem, or summarize a chapter in seconds.

Oddly enough, the most helpful answers I’ve found didn’t come from AI research. They came from Rwanda and Yellowstone National Park.

For years, those two experiences occupied completely different parts of my life. One was a trip that changed me. The other was an ecological story I couldn’t stop thinking about. It took me much longer to realize they were helping me answer the very questions I was now asking about artificial intelligence in schools.

A Dusty Road in Rwanda

That realization began on a dusty road, on an otherwise ordinary day in Rwanda.

I went to Rwanda as part of a group helping schools transition from French to English in the classroom. That day, I happened to be carrying a yellow jerrycan of water from the watering hole back to the village alongside people who make that miles-long journey every day. Before long, my hands ached and my shoulders tightened. The hard plastic handle dug into my fingers as I wondered how much further we had to walk. The people beside me never seemed to notice the weight. For me, carrying water was extraordinary. For them, it was simply another walk home.

That contrast stayed with me long after I returned home. The walk answered very little. Instead, it left me with a question that has followed me ever since: How do we help students understand realities they have never lived?

That question would resurface years later in a sixth-grade classroom. Our teaching team designed an interdisciplinary unit around Linda Sue Park's novel “A Long Walk to Water,” hoping literature, conversations with a friend of mine from Sudan, and local field experiences would help students move beyond learning about water insecurity and begin to care about the people living it.

By most measures, the lesson was a success. Then we sat down to debrief.

“I don’t think it worked,” one teacher said.

Almost immediately, heads began nodding around the table.

“I was thinking the same thing.”

“Me too.”

No one defended the lesson. No one blamed the students. Instead, we realized we had been measuring engagement when what we really cared about was understanding.

Looking back, I think that meeting changed our teaching far more than the lesson itself. Years of working together had built enough trust for one honest observation to give everyone else permission to be honest too. We stopped trying to protect the lesson and started asking a different question.

Not, How do we make this activity better? But, How does understanding actually grow?

We’ve been refining that project ever since, and that conversation forced us to confront a much larger question: If meaningful change doesn’t happen because of a single lesson, how does it happen?

A Wild System in Yellowstone

To understand how meaningful change happens, consider what happened in Yellowstone National Park.

When scientists reintroduced gray wolves to Yellowstone National Park in 1995, they expected the elk population to change. They didn’t expect rivers to change as well. As elk altered where they grazed, willow and aspen trees recovered. Beavers returned. Wetlands expanded. Vegetation stabilized riverbanks. An entire ecosystem began reorganizing itself in ways few people had anticipated.

The wolves didn’t directly reshape Yellowstone. They changed the relationships within the ecosystem. And everything else followed.

Learning about Yellowstone changed the way I thought about change itself. It made me realize that the most meaningful transformations rarely begin by fixing one thing. They begin by changing the relationships within a system. Once I saw that pattern, I couldn’t stop seeing it in schools.

We often assume meaningful change happens by improving the thing right in front of us. We redesign a lesson. We adopt a new curriculum. We write a new AI policy. We expect better outcomes because we’ve improved one part of the system.

The wolves didn’t change the rivers directly. They changed how elk moved through the landscape. That altered where trees could grow, which brought back beavers, reshaped wetlands, stabilized riverbanks, and eventually changed the rivers themselves. One dramatic intervention didn’t drive the transformation. It emerged because relationships within the ecosystem had changed.

I’m beginning to think schools work the same way.

Looking back, our sixth-grade project didn’t improve because we discovered a better activity. It improved because the relationships around the project changed. Teachers trusted one another enough to challenge assumptions. Students were invited to wrestle with ideas instead of simply completing assignments. Learning became less about delivering an experience and more about cultivating understanding.

The Relational Impact of AI

Once I began seeing schools that way, I couldn’t think about artificial intelligence in quite the same way anymore.

AI isn’t simply introducing another tool into classrooms. It’s changing relationships: The relationship between students and thinking. Between effort and accomplishment. Between teachers and expertise. Between knowing something and finding it instantly.

Those may prove to be the relationships that shape the future of learning far more than any particular AI model or school policy.

That’s why my conversations about AI are almost never about the technology itself. They’re about what we choose to value.

Parents wonder whether students will gradually stop wrestling with difficult ideas if a chatbot can do the work for them. Teachers ask how to preserve productive struggle when every answer is just a prompt away. School leaders wrestle with an even deeper question: If AI can do more of the thinking, what kinds of thinking should remain unmistakably human?

I don’t think there’s a simple answer. What I do know is that answering those questions has required me to revisit experiences that had nothing to do with artificial intelligence — at least not at first.

I keep finding myself returning to that dusty road in Rwanda.

Carrying a jerrycan didn’t help me understand what it means to live with water insecurity. It wasn’t meant to. What it changed was my relationship to the people carrying it beside me.

Our sixth-grade project taught me something similar. We eventually realized our goal wasn’t to create a memorable activity. It was to create the conditions where students might begin asking deeper questions about lives very different from their own.

Increasingly, I think AI presents schools with that same choice. We can use it to remove every obstacle from learning, making every task faster and easier. Or we can become even more intentional about preserving the kinds of thinking that develop judgment, curiosity, empathy and discernment.

Looking back, I don’t think Rwanda, Yellowstone, and AI were ever separate stories.

Rwanda changed my relationship to people whose lives I couldn’t fully understand. Our faculty meeting changed the relationships among teachers. AI is changing the relationship students have with thinking itself.

Rwanda taught me that understanding begins with humility. Our sixth-grade team taught me that meaningful change begins with the courage to question our own assumptions. And Yellowstone taught me that lasting change happens by changing relationships within a system.

Technology will continue to change. Our responsibility as educators won’t.

We still have to create experiences that ask students to think, question, struggle, and understand in ways no technology can do for them. Those were the questions before AI. I suspect they’ll still be the questions long after today’s technology has been replaced by something none of us can yet imagine.

The “October Blues” Are Coming. Here’s How Teachers Can Beat Them.

Ira Apfel — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

It’s not uncommon for teachers to experience what Ellen Moir, founder of the New Teacher Center, calls a “disillusionment phase” shortly after the start of the school year. Other educators call this phenomenon by a different name — the “October Blues.”

The October Blues affect teachers who find themselves in an emotional trough only a few weeks after the excitement of the new school year wears off. When they do catch a case of the October Blues, they often find it hard to focus and their energy saps.

The October Blues are particularly hard on first-year teachers, says Mike Anderson, author of “Rekindle Your Professional Fire: Powerful Habits for Becoming a More Well-Balanced Teacher” and “Hugging Porcupines.” Many new teachers have never heard of the October Blues and are ill-prepared to cope with this dip in enthusiasm. Unexpected bumps in the road like the October Blues are partly why teachers are 2.5 times more likely to quit after their first year.

An educational consultant and former teacher and swim coach, Mike Anderson has seen teachers grapple with the October Blues many times over the course of his career. He also experienced a bout of the October Blues himself.

EdSurge spoke with Anderson about the October Blues and how teachers and administrators can keep them at bay.

EdSurge: How would you define the “October Blues”? Is there an actual definition or research?

Mike Anderson: If you talk to any [veteran] teacher, they’ll tell you there’s a predictable slump in energy that follows the first few weeks of school. When I was mentoring new teachers in my district, we used a graph showing the predictable energy curve of a teacher’s first year — it starts off high with anticipation and joy, then plummets early in the fall.

I think that happens for a couple of reasons. There’s so much energy and anticipation at the start of the year, and there’s only so long your brain can stay in that high place. When we get a real surge of joy, that’s fantastic — but the brain wants to return to a level playing field, and it often dips below baseline before it settles back to normal. It’s the hangover after the high.

The reverse happens, too. I’m about to go for a hard run right after this interview, and afterward I’ll get a runner’s high — a surge of positive emotion that follows pain or discomfort. I think something analogous happens with the October Blues: all the positive energy and anticipation of the first few weeks of school is exhausting. You’re “on” all the time. So there’s a predictable crash once that wears off, and both physical and emotional energy drop — but fortunately it’s not permanent and their energy will increase again.

Do we see the October Blues more in newer teachers or do veteran teachers get it too?

That’s a great question — I don’t know for certain. My guess is that once you’ve experienced it a few times, you start to recognize it as just a thing that happens. One of the scary parts of the October Blues in your first year is that if you don’t know it’s a known phenomenon, you start to question whether you should even be in the profession. Once you’ve been through it a few times, you can say, “Right, October’s a rough month, but I know I’ll have an upswing again.” So my guess is veteran teachers are more aware of the cycle and less panicked by it.

How does it show up in the classroom — for teachers and for students?

That’s such a multifaceted question. When I was writing “The Well-Balanced Teacher” — which I later rewrote into “Rekindle Your Professional Fire” — I looked at a study on how teachers’ emotional states are directly reflected in their students. It wasn’t specifically about the October Blues, but roughly 400 elementary students, mostly 4th and 5th graders, had their cortisol measured through saliva samples. Their teachers were surveyed on health, balance, and energy, and teachers who reported higher workplace stress had students with elevated cortisol levels.

So when teachers get stressed, kids get stressed too — and it goes the other way as well. In “Hugging Porcupines,” one chapter is called “The Honeymoon Is Over,” which is really about October. Kids and teachers both work hard to be their best selves for the first few weeks of school, and there’s only so long you can keep that up.

The work also gets harder in October, especially for students who struggle with learning — they can start to feel more overwhelmed, just as teachers start to feel the semester piling up. I’ll admit I’m speculating here, but I wouldn’t be surprised if decreasing daylight plays a role, too. By October in the Northern Hemisphere we’re getting more dark than light, and that’s got to have some influence.

What does it actually look like for a teacher who has the Blues while teaching?

Their fuse gets shorter — it’s harder to be patient with students who are struggling. It’s also harder to keep up with the planning that great teaching requires, so you might start winging it more, which is more stressful once you’re in it. Overall energy is lower. I remember trying to hold reading and writing conferences with students in the late morning and feeling blurry, almost like being hungover — everything felt a little fuzzy. It’s harder to stay sharp, harder to be patient, harder to keep your energy up for engaging lessons.

What was the October Blues like for you personally?

Early in my career, I was also a swim coach, and swim season started in October. So, I wasn’t just a month into the school year and feeling the regular fatigue that comes with that — I was also coaching an age-group team and a high school team, three or four hours of practice after school every day, on top of all the lesson planning. That extra load tends to hit right when the first few “easy” weeks of the school year — before committee meetings and most extracurriculars ramp up — give way to everything piling in at once, unless you’re coaching something like football that starts in late summer.

Have the October Blues gotten harder or easier over the years?

(Laughing) What hasn’t changed in the last 10 years on this planet? I think we’re all a little more on edge than we were 10 years ago — and honestly, we were already in social chaos back then, too. We’re more dysregulated now than we were 10 or 15 years ago. Politics is chaotic, the social and online environment is chaotic. You rarely hear anyone say, “I feel so much more relaxed and healthy than I did 10 years ago.” If we’re all more dysregulated, it makes sense our kids are, too — and the number and severity of behavior problems in schools is going through the roof. There’s a lot we could point to, and I think we need to stop blaming COVID — that was real and it was hard on all of us, but the rise in dysregulated kids has been especially pronounced over the last decade, and that takes a huge physical and emotional toll on teachers.

Do you think AI is affecting this at all? I’m not sure it’s even measurable yet, but I do wonder if there is some residual effect from using AI in the classroom and out.

Maybe. My take is that for teachers, AI is one more new thing they have to learn, manage, and figure out — both what’s OK in their own teaching and planning, and how to manage students’ AI use. That’s part of what’s accelerated over the last 10 years: teachers almost always feel like they’re on the steep end of the learning curve. Something I talked about in 2017 was how a sense of competence is critical to wellness and happiness at work — not just in teaching, but in any profession. If you don’t think you’re good at what you do, it’s hard to stay positive and energized. That’s especially tough for teachers, who rarely get the chance to feel like they’ve finally got it down. AI is just another learning curve on top of that.

Is there any way to avoid the October Blues, or do you just have to get good at recognizing it?

There’s probably no way to avoid it entirely — the same way you can’t run a marathon and avoid being tired. But recognizing that it’s a normal, shared experience and not a personal flaw really helps. Beyond that, it’s not rocket science: sleeping, eating healthy food, a healthy exercise routine — even something as simple as putting on your sneakers for a brisk 20-minute walk as soon as the last kid leaves. Small, sustainable habits that keep your energy up over the long run were a big theme in “Rekindle Your Professional Fire,” which is all about supporting teacher health and balance. Don’t look for major changes — those are almost impossible to sustain. Look for small ways to get a bit more sleep, a bit more movement, and some healthier food. Those things help not just in October, but all year long.

How can administrators and principals help? I wonder if their experience can be of help here.

Acknowledging the reality of October Blues with faculty can help, especially for new teachers who might not know to watch for it. Beyond that, school leaders can look for small ways to help teachers stay healthier and happier — providing healthy snacks instead of the highly processed junk food that’s often the easiest option at faculty meetings (fresh fruit or cheese and crackers instead of candy), making sure hydration stations are available, and paying attention to workload. There are almost always a few teachers in a school doing way too much — running committees, leading the union, and so on. Finding ways to take a few things off those teachers’ plates is another way leaders can support them.

Are there resources to prepare first-year teachers about the October Blues?

I certainly didn’t know it was a thing my first year. Some mentoring programs do train mentors to understand the common energy cycles new teachers go through, so teachers lucky enough to have well-trained mentors may get more information. But for a lot of new teachers, it’s just not on their radar — they’re too consumed with the day-to-day work of running a classroom. One of my daughter’s close friends, practically a second daughter to me, is a first-year 4th grade teacher in San Francisco. She’s smart, well-prepared, and both her parents are teachers, so she had a real head start. But I know from talking with her parents that she’s already overwhelmed just a couple weeks in, because there’s so much new to learn all at once. She doesn’t have the headspace to think about her own emotional energy — she’s just trying to manage the class and get through the day.

When do the October Blues stop being just the October Blues? How long does it typically take to recover?

I honestly don’t know if there’s a documented answer — whether it’s one week, two weeks, or four. As a teacher, I didn’t experience the whole month as a slog, but I think every teacher is a little different. There’s often another predictable energy dip later in the year, too — late winter or early spring, around the start of the second semester on a high school schedule — when it’s cold, dark, and everyone’s tired. So there are cycles of energy through the year, but I don’t know of a specific documented recovery timeline.

Should it ideally ease up so teachers can rebound?

If it’s lasting more than a couple of weeks, I’d tell a new teacher to talk to a colleague, a mentor, or an administrator — say, “I’m having a hard time right now,” and get some help. It can’t last all year. Our students need us to have good, positive energy.

How do the October Blues relate to teachers’ feelings of competence?

When we feel incompetent, our energy for work drops. It's hard to be motivated when you feel like you're not good at what you're doing.

I once worked with a group of teachers for a couple of years. I remembered how hard that first October had been for them — they were down in the dumps. By the next October, after we'd done a lot of work together on classroom management and student engagement, their energy was noticeably brighter and they were laughing more. When I pointed that out and asked if their classes were just easier that year, they said no — if anything, their classes were harder! But this time, they felt like they knew what to do; they had strategies to try. The year before, their classes had felt like they were falling apart, and they didn't know what to do — that's what had made them feel so defeated. Having practical strategies for management and engagement meant they didn't experience the October Blues the same way the second time around.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

EdSurge is an editorially independent digital news site of the International Society for Transforming Education.

New York and Los Angeles Ban Student-Facing AI (For Now). Should Other Schools Follow?

Sebastian Oliveira — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Within the first three days of September, three announcements regarding young students’ access to generative artificial intelligence (AI) made national headlines.

On Sept. 2, New York City announced a one-year moratorium on student-facing generative AI use for public elementary and middle school students. Later that day, Los Angeles Unified School District announced the implementation of a moratorium of its own, restricting access to generative AI tools on all student-issued devices across all grades for the 2026-27 school year.

The next day, the American Psychological Association (APA) released a report recommending thorough analysis of edtech tools to ensure they help students learn, citing generative AI as a particular risk.

The flurry of caution underscores the education field’s attempts at taking a thoughtful approach when choosing AI tools. With the academic year just starting, educators are balancing the popularity of AI among students and the cautious approach to adopting classroom tools.

The Case for Caution

Nicole Barnes, APA’s executive lead psychologist for education and lead author of the report, decided to pursue the issue after mistaking her son’s kindergarten homework for a video game during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It was at that point where I realized that psychology, and the learning sciences in particular, had a lot to contribute to the development of edtech apps,” she says.

Barnes worries that too many edtech apps mislead the public on their effectiveness in helping students learn by using engagement and usage data as a proxy. “While there is a relationship between these two constructs, one does not equal the other,” she says.

Barnes sees the same issues with the current AI tools, as reflected in the report, which comes as AI’s presence in classrooms continues to grow.

In a recent IBM survey, 76% of middle school teachers and 73% of high school teachers reported using AI in their classrooms on a weekly basis.

The moratoriums from the two largest school districts in the country seem to represent a departure from this trend. The rest of the five largest districts encourage thoughtful AI use:

Chicago Public Schools allows use of district-approved, age-appropriate tools in all schools, with guidance tailored to students, staff, families and vendors.
Clark County School District in Nevada similarly allows district-approved tools across all schools, with more general district-wide guidelines.
Miami-Dade County Public Schools approved a measure to develop AI use guidelines after implementing one of the largest district rollouts of student-facing AI in the country.

Barnes thinks New York City and Los Angeles could set an example for other districts.

“I am viewing what New York and Los Angeles are doing as a pause. And to me, this pause is a reminder that schools do not need to let the market or outside forces set the speed of childhood,” she says. “They can slow down enough to ask, what does this tool do? What learning does it protect? What is the risk that it might introduce?”

Turning Restrictions into Lessons

With the NY and LA decisions making such big waves, teachers may be left wondering if their districts will adopt similar restrictions or wait to see what happens.

“I have the gut feeling that they will probably follow suit,” says Dan Clark, a middle school teacher at Lafayette Preparatory School in St. Louis, Missouri, and a Voices of Change Fellow.

Rather than shutting down conversation, Clark argues that AI restrictions force an essential dialogue. When his district recently locked the use of the AI overview in web searches on school-issued devices, it opened the door for students to critically analyze the tool and its outputs.

“My kids have asked, ‘Why did you do this? Why did you get rid of it?’ And to me, that’s an educational opportunity,” Clark says. “I love that they’re asking us so that we can sit down and talk about why.”

He believes that structured discussion about the positives and negatives of AI is the key to getting buy-in for any decision.

“[Kids are] going to find ways around [restrictions]. They’re way smarter than us,” Clark says. “If we’re not involving them in the process of their own learning, I feel like that is a missed opportunity.”

What Happens Now

As districts deliberate their own next steps, Barnes recommends that before decisions are made, those involved should evaluate AI tools for evidence that they help students learn. From there, if they do decide to allow AI in classrooms, she says it takes a full community effort to craft AI policies.

“The responsibility can’t just sit with one teacher or one parent or with one child,” Barnes says. “Even teachers certainly need classroom guidance. School leaders need procurement and implementation standards. Districts are going to need evidence requirements and data protections, and policymakers need to set clear expectations for claims about children's learning and development.”

Whether districts opt for temporary moratoriums or cautious rollouts, most educators agree on one thing: a blanket ban without critical dialogue is a missed opportunity. The real work lies in interrogating tech alongside students.

Clark agrees that openness is essential.

“When we just say, ‘There’s a ban. Don’t ask. Let’s not talk about it. Let’s pretend it doesn’t exist…’ It’s not really helping anybody,” he says. “That’s a Band-Aid on a much bigger problem.”

Parents Are Bringing AI to the IEP Meeting. How Should Teachers Respond?

Adam Stone — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article has been updated to clarify language about educator response.

The individualized education program (IEP) process generates a big stack of papers, full of terminology that parents may not understand. In response, some parents have begun using artificial intelligence to better understand IEPs and prepare for teacher meetings. Kimberly Morris, who taught pre-K through the 2025-26 school year, saw this firsthand.

Morris would set school goals in the IEP, “and some parents would then utilize AI as a way to create a home goal,” she says.

Morris, who is now a curriculum and instruction specialist supporting early childhood learning at Unlocking Children’s Potential of Central Florida, didn’t mind that parents were using AI to align home efforts with school goals. But as the conversation around AI use transparency grows in classrooms, some wonder whether parents should disclose if they used AI to prepare for an IEP meeting.

How Parents Use AI

Concerned parents might use AI in several ways during the IEP process, says Elizabeth Laird, director of equity and civic technology at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “A parent might turn to AI to learn more about the process and what their rights are, what their child’s rights are,” she notes.

Laird thinks that’s not necessarily a bad thing. “AI can play a role in democratizing access to information about the process itself, as well as being a starting point for thinking about what types of accommodations parents may want to ask about,” she reasons.

For many parents, “just because you’re a parent of a child with a disability doesn’t mean you automatically understand all of these things related to your child’s IEP,” says Olivia Coleman, an assistant professor in the School of Teacher Education at theUniversity of Central Florida. “They’re using it to translate the jargon, any acronyms. It’s helping them to draft questions.”

Parents are putting their child’s IEP into AI models “and then having it put it into plain language, like, ’What is this thing and what does it mean?’” says Coleman, who is also a co-principal investigator at the Center for Innovation, Design, and Digital Learning.

Morris, the curriculum and instruction specialist, sees an upside to parents using AI in IEP meetings. “They can become more of a team member alongside the teacher, occupational therapist, physical therapist and speech therapist,” she says.

But there are risks. For example, when a parent’s AI-generated contribution to the meeting sprawls to 20 or 30 pages, “it’s going to take a teacher the majority of their day just to read through a request,” says Phyllis Wolfram, executive director of the Council of Administrators of Special Education. “It will slow down the process.”

“AI is not an IEP expert,” Laird adds, noting that the AI’s outputs can be inaccurate. With that in mind, she counsels teachers and parents to reflect together on the AI’s findings. A key aspect of the IEP process, she notes, “is its emphasis on bringing different subject matters together to collaborate, to identify what is the best path forward for an individual child.”

Here’s where federal law enters the picture. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) provides privacy protections for parents regarding their children’s education while the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) offers additional privacy protections for students receiving special education.

With FERPA and IDEA as the legal backdrop, parents should not put identifiable personal data like medical diagnoses and legal documents into AI. The tool could potentially train on that data, which risks that information becoming publicly visible. The data also may be at risk of being exposed in a security breach, if the AI provider gets hacked.

Should Parents Disclose?

Some argue that parents need to be candid about their AI use for that collaboration to be effective. Some parents were upfront about AI when meeting with Morris. “When I would report on a goal, they also had input and would say, ‘Hey, I created something at home and I used AI for that.’ I thought that was really cool, that parents stepped out of their own mindset to think about how to incorporate those goals at home,” she says.

Even if parents don’t disclose, teachers and others could spot AI-generated text. “Right now, the information that parents are providing to school districts regarding their IEP meetings is much lengthier, and it carries some legal jargon that doesn’t typically come from parents,” Wolfram says. “Most educators will know when they’ve received something written by AI.”

If teachers do want parents to disclose AI usage, they can make a strong case for that, Laird believes. After all, in schools across the country, “parents are demanding from their school to know whether and how AI is being used,” she says.

The key is to avoid being defensive if AI is being used in the IEP meeting, says Coleman. “We don’t want to pit anyone in the IEP team against each other. We want to work together.” For the IEP process to meet its intent, she adds, participants need to trust each other, and “transparency builds trust.”

Parents might consider using AI for a number of reasons as they prep for an IEP meeting:

To summarize IEP documents
To verify their rights against local state guidelines
To translate unfamiliar jargon or bridge a language gap
To formulate proposed goals
To generate questions to help guide the process

In all these cases, educators say they’d prefer parents disclose their AI use, so that everyone can align in what is supposed to be a collaborative process. Parents should also double-check with local and state rules to make sure they are allowed to use AI with their IEPs.

Crafting a Response

Morris counsels teachers to assume that some parents will use AI. “I have created the IEP and I know my role and goals as well as those for the student and parents,” she says. How the family responds is up to them, “and I’ve always kept an open relationship with the parents that I have worked with,” she adds.

In the spirit of collaboration, teachers can model appropriate transparency and disclosure etiquette with parents. “We can’t make disclosure mandatory, but we can practice it and set an example,” Coleman argues. “Teachers can say up front, ‘We’re not against AI use, but we’d really appreciate you also being transparent, and this is why.’ We want to make sure we’re all on the same page,” she says.

With trust in place, Wolfram notes, the teacher can talk openly about the AI outputs a parent brings to a meeting. “The educator can say, ‘Let’s talk about those recommendations. Do you see those as different from what we’re already doing? And if so, let’s talk about why you think that’s needed,’” she says.

The AI discussion requires some finesse, but Morris thinks it’s worth the effort. “I want parents to be advocates, and to understand exactly what is being told to them on their child’s IEP,” she says.

Two Students, Two Questions They Wouldn’t Let Go

EdSurge Staff — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

This week, two educators trace what happened after a student said something that could have been dismissed as attitude but turned out to be something else entirely. One teacher heard it in the middle of a lesson on irony. The other heard it in a planning meeting for a brand new program. Neither could shake it, and both went looking for what it actually meant.

Skipping the Struggle: What “I Used ChatGPT” Really Meant

Melinda Medina has taught English and special education in Brooklyn for over a decade, and she knows what it sounds like when a student is struggling with a text. What she heard instead was a student who wasn’t struggling at all, just skipping the struggle altogether. She explains why that distinction matters more to her than plagiarism ever did, and what she now asks her students to do to counter the seemingly simpler path offered by AI.

Looking for Answers at a Coding Summit

An eighth grader’s question about the point of learning didn’t have an easy answer, so Beth Yirga went looking for one somewhere she didn’t expect, a room full of software engineers and tech executives who had never met a K-12 teacher. What she found there reshaped how she thinks about equity, identity, and what her students actually need heading into an AI-driven future.

Listen to the episode:

Stories Mentioned in This Episode

Protecting Student Cognition in the Age of AI by Melinda Medina

The K-12 Silo Won’t Survive AI, But Our Relationships Might by Beth Yirga

This Week with EdSurge is a weekly podcast from EdSurge. Subscribe to the EdSurge newsletters for more news and analysis on education and technology.

Stitching the Future: Technology as a Sacred Trust

Pattie Morales — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In an era where artificial intelligence promises to archive human culture at the touch of a button, Indigenous communities face a vital question: Who has the right to own, shape and digitize sacred knowledge?

Long before AI became a headline in education, this question fundamentally reshaped my work as the instructional technology coordinator at Indian Community School. But understanding how to protect our community’s digital future didn’t start in a computer lab; it began in a quiet valley in Wisconsin, with my grandmother’s unfinished quilt and a ribbon skirt workshop that changed everything I knew about knowledge itself.

I grew up in a small rural village tucked into Wisconsin’s Driftless Area, where winding roads disappear between steep bluffs and deep valleys, and every hill seems to reveal another breathtaking view. It was a place shaped not by glaciers, but by time. A landscape as rugged as it was beautiful.

It was also home to my grandmother — a strong cheesemaker’s wife who was, in some ways, the quintessential grandmother figure. She hosted Sunday family dinners, baked fresh bread, volunteered at the local food pantry and quilted with the other ladies from church twice a week. She also cursed like a sailor and wasn’t stingy with her love or hugs.

In my teen years, she became my shelter — a quiet refuge from a chaotic home and a reminder that love exists even in the hardest seasons. When I went away to college, she sent me away with a quilt made just for me, a special gift we all only receive once. As an adult, she became the reason we visited the Driftless Area and was the glue that kept our families together. During that time, she showed that love to my children, who adored her.

After a long stay in a nursing home and years of declining health, my grandmother passed away last year. After her passing, my twin sister and I discovered her last unfinished quilt tucked away in a forgotten storage bin. Her hands hadn’t been able to hold the material or work the sewing machine for a long time, and we thought all the quilts had been claimed. Finding one more, even unfinished, felt like a blessing.

Around the same time, my twin sister and I both signed up for a staff ribbon skirt class where members of the Indigenous community would teach us not only how to make ribbon skirts, but also share teachings about how to wear them respectfully and as true allies. Carrying pieces of our grandmother’s unfinished quilt with us, we set out to create ribbon skirts in her honor.

Before that class, I knew very little about ribbon skirts beyond seeing them worn at school celebrations and community events. I quickly learned they are not tied to a single tribe, but are worn by Indigenous women across many Nations, each with their own traditions, teachings and stories. I also learned that a ribbon skirt is much more than a beautiful piece of clothing. It represents identity, resilience, and the enduring strength of Indigenous women.

Today, communities across North America celebrate Ribbon Skirt Day each January, recognizing not only the skirts themselves, but the right of Indigenous people to wear them with pride after generations of policies that sought to erase their cultures.

What surprised me most was that our class wasn’t really about making skirts. It was about learning the responsibility that comes with them. We learned when it was appropriate to wear a ribbon skirt, what it meant to wear one as an ally, and why those teachings mattered as much as the sewing itself. Anyone can buy a ribbon skirt online, but creating one alongside community members who generously shared their knowledge transformed it into something entirely different. Every stitch became part of a relationship built on trust, respect and a willingness to learn.

That experience changed the way I thought about knowledge itself. I realized that some things are valuable not because they can be owned, bought, or preserved, but because they carry stories, relationships and responsibilities that extend far beyond any one individual. They belong to the communities that shaped them and to the generations who will inherit them.

The tension between owning knowledge and stewarding it sits at the very heart of my work as the instructional technology coordinator at Indian Community School. If knowledge is built on trust and community relationships, then technology cannot simply be an instrument to extract, scale, or monetize data. That conviction was tested in 2021, well before generative AI became a household conversation, when a company approached our language and culture department with an extraordinary proposal.

They offered innovation. A way to immortalize language and culture through “virtual ancestors” — artificial intelligence trained on the stories, voices, and wisdom of living tribal elders. As the instructional technology coordinator, I was initially excited about what an extraordinary opportunity it would be to place our school at the forefront of modern technology!

However, the more my colleagues and I analyzed the pitch, the more our excitement gave way to deep alarm. The offer was riddled with deep red flags: vague promises around intellectual property, zero accountability for data privacy and a predatory push to extract sacred community knowledge. But recognizing those red flags was only half the battle.

Facing a tool this complex also exposed the gaps in my own understanding of artificial intelligence at the time. I realized that properly vetting this proposal and ensuring our school’s technology program moved forward in a good, grounded way required more than just caution. It demanded that I build my own AI literacy so I could stand as an informed guardian for our community’s data.

That 2021 proposal became the catalyst for a journey that has defined my work ever since. Recognizing gaps in my own understanding, I immersed myself in AI literacy, digital ethics and Indigenous data sovereignty frameworks. As we start the 2026-27 school year, AI is no longer a distant possibility; it is actively shaping how stories are told, how knowledge is created and how data is harvested.

In response, my role has evolved from simply managing technology infrastructure to helping our school build an ethical digital sanctuary. We began facilitating professional development sessions that empower our teachers to critically evaluate AI tools through a lens of cultural safety and data privacy. In the classroom, we reaffirmed our dedication to active digital stewardship over passive consumption.

Rather than allowing third-party algorithms to dictate or summarize Native experiences, our students now engage in hands-on digital storytelling, learning how to protect their personal and cultural data while using modern tools to amplify their authentic voices on their own terms.

The core lesson I learned in that ribbon skirt class remains my guiding principle: technology, like knowledge, is only as valuable as the relationships and trust behind it. For educators, leaders, and communities navigating this fast-shifting landscape, maintaining agency over our stories requires asking hard questions before we ever sign a contract or adopt a tool:

Who owns the data being used to train this system? In my school, we actively reject software platforms that do not explicitly provide full intellectual property rights to the school.
Does this tool respect the sovereignty and living culture of the community it serves? I work with stakeholders to ensure that software and platforms do not train on student or staff data, and I prioritize tools with the least environmental impact.
Are we adopting technology to enhance human relationships, or replace them? We prioritize tools that bring elders, teachers and students together in real-world dialogue, using technology as a bridge for connection rather than a substitute for human presence.

When my sister and I stitched pieces of our grandmother’s unfinished quilt into our ribbon skirts, we weren’t just preserving her memory; we were continuing a relationship rooted in love, honor and continuity. That is the true essence of stewardship. When we approach technological innovation not as a rush to extract the future, but as a solemn duty to protect what was handed down to us, we ensure that modern tools honor where we came from. In the age of AI, our responsibility remains unchanged: to stitch technology into the living fabric of our communities in a good way, ensuring our stories remain whole, authentic and undeniably our own.

AI Videos Are Warping Early Learning, Teachers Say

Adam Stone — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The internet is increasingly awash with videos generated by artificial intelligence aimed directly at preschoolers and kindergartners. With literally hundreds of thousands of AI-generated videos to watch and plenty of lights and action to grab the attention of children under age 5, critics say the videos usually have little if any substance. They also have a name for these videos: “baby slop.”

“It’s easy to make an eight-second AI video, and we wind up with these very quick, colorful, fun things that don’t really have any meaning,” says Allison Bacon, coordinator of instructional technology at the Ossining Union Free School District in New York.

More than mere distraction, some critics worry AI-generated content on YouTube and YouTube Kids may cause actual harm. But there are ways early childhood educators can help children navigate these videos.

Inaccurate and Biased Content

Problematic AI-generated videos come in many forms. Some are just seconds in length but include inappropriate content. In one video about counting and colors, for example, a school bus inexplicably bursts into flames at the 13-second mark. In other videos, inaccurate information or visuals are hallucinated by low-grade AI. Sometimes, it’s just the sheer volume of unvetted AI videos populating feeds that can be concerning. One YouTube channel, Bright Tunes, has existed for less than a year but has nearly 5,500 AI-generated videos. In effect, one person can prompt AI to generate thousands of videos that young children can watch in an endless loop — none of which are educational. While some creators have good intentions, they often just want views (cue cute AI animals diving into pools).

“Some of the content may look educational and engaging,” says Jennifer Chen, a professor of early childhood education at Kean University in Union, New Jersey. “You might not realize it unless you really look at it closely.”

When the words aren’t quite right or when the images don’t reflect reality, “that cognitive disparity is causing children to learn inaccurately,” explains Keri Ewart, an associate professor of education at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario. “It is having detrimental effects on children being able to understand the difference between real and fake.”

Repeated viewing may also damage kids’ attention spans and lead to cognitive overload. With preschool and kindergarten learners, “they’re still building neurological processes. They’re learning how to experience the world,” instructional technology coordinator Allison Bacon says. “Entertainment generated through AI to mindlessly babysit small people is inherently problematic.”

Navigating the Content

Teachers can address the problem by becoming ad hoc media critics, vetting everything their young students watch in the classroom. Beyond previewing videos, teachers should research the creator to gain more context. One sure sign that a YouTube channel is populated with AI-generated content is if it has a recent launch date and an outsize number of videos. Another telltale sign of AI slop: jumbled text and misspelled words.

Relying on trusted resources like Common Sense Media can help educators vet content. Also, the American Academy of Pediatrics recently released a guide for parents with a “Stop, Wait, Go” framework that can be adapted to the classroom.

If students do encounter suspect content, in ads for example, “conversation needs to follow,” Bacon explains. “What did we see? What did we think? The human connection and conversation should be the main focus.”

Even with very young kids, teachers can build decoding skills to recognize AI-generated content. “Really push the fact that we have to be thinkers and we have to be looking with that critical lens. Ask kids, ‘What did we notice? What’s good? What’s different?’” Bacon says.

“Be the person who helps them understand what they are seeing,” Bacon adds. “If they see an AI-generated giraffe, show them pictures of a real giraffe and ask them to describe the differences.”

Finally, even if one video is educationally sound or age appropriate, the algorithms may bring up more videos that could be inappropriate. “Never rely on autoplay, which can be easy to do, especially if you’re in the class and you’re already playing something that’s educational,” Bacon cautions.

Supporting Parents’ Efforts

As a preschool language teacher at the Park School in the Ossining Union Free School District and as a parent herself, Josefa Martinez understands that parents need guidance, too.

She sends home weekly and monthly communications to families with best practices. “I try to find websites and resources they can use at home, videos that I have personally watched and that are interactive, engaging,” she says. “These sites are not just promoting a child to sit and just mindlessly watch. It’s something that I can vouch for.”

Beyond video suggestions, Martinez provides parents with follow-up questions for their kids. If the child is watching a video about a firefighter, parents can ask, “How can a firefighter support our community?” or “What are other community helpers who have similar roles to a firefighter?” If the child is watching a video about numbers, on a channel like Numberblocks, parents may ask, “How do you know that five is bigger than two? Can you show me by using some of your toys?” or “How many ways can we make the number five?”

“These questions make sure the child is actually engaged and not just sitting there mindlessly watching,” Martinez says. “It all pertains to the content that I’m teaching either that week or that month.”

Some school leaders are stepping up as well, convening parents for frank discussions about AI-generated videos. “More schools are starting to have social media nights and AI evenings where they’re inviting parents to really learn how to vet these videos,” education professor Keri Ewart explains.

“This is all fairly recent for everyone,” Ewart adds. “If we’re expecting our children to have digital fluency and digital literacy, particularly in the age of AI, we’re going to have to expect teachers and parents to be digitally literate too.”

Are Schools Inadvertently Making Students More Stressed?

Laura Ascione — Fri, 04 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Students are facing a well-documented mental health crisis that was on the rise even before the pandemic, and schools have responded with social-emotional learning (SEL) and wellness programs. But what if some of these very practices are contributing to students’ stress?

In “The Teens Are Not Alright: School and Classroom Practices to Support Student Well-Being,” education researcher Cathy Vatterott argues that to truly support adolescent mental health, schools must look beyond programs and interventions and examine the environments they create for students.

Grades, tests, homework and heavy workloads are top among high school students’ sources of school-related stress. Vatterott, professor emerita of education at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, posits that traditional approaches to grading, scheduling, classroom management and instruction often work against adolescents’ developmental needs.

This doesn’t mean schools should lower academic expectations or rigor. Instead, Vatterott calls for a shift toward a “wellness paradigm” — one that treats mental health as part of overall health and recognizes that every adult in a school has a role in supporting student well-being.

That can include giving students greater autonomy in their learning, reconsidering grading and homework practices, creating more consistent schoolwide policies, strengthening relationships with trusted adults and providing students with opportunities to manage stress and develop self-regulation skills.

EdSurge spoke with Vatterott about her latest book and how to create stress-free schools where students feel valued and heard while having autonomy over their learning.

EdSurge: In “The Teens Are Not Alright,” you argue that schools can’t just “teach their way out” of today’s teen mental health crisis with SEL, mindfulness and other interventions. Instead, schools must examine the practices contributing to student stress. What are some of the most harmful practices and why are they so difficult for schools to change?

Cathy Vatterott: The first practice is this crazy schedule. In a seven-period high school schedule, kids are supposed to have seven different classes and are supposed to switch their mental state to a different subject with three minutes in between and 20 minutes for lunch. Is this for the convenience of the teachers or for the administration? Or is it just tradition that we’ve done this?

The second big practice is the homework load; it’s just absolutely insane in a lot of secondary schools. There are three reasons why that’s so hard to change. I think we confuse load with rigor: If some is good, more is better. I think we confuse compliance with responsibility: We want these kids to be taught responsibility, but what we’re really teaching them is compliance. In middle schools and high schools, I think we confuse replication with preparation: “Well, they’re going to get a bunch of homework in high school, so we need to do that in middle school. And in college, they’re going to get even more,” so that’s how we need to prepare kids, when instead, what we need to do is to prepare kids to be independent learners.

How can schools reduce that stress without also lowering academic expectations and rigor?

Here, again, we have to be able to hold both ideas in our hands at the same time — that we can change things to make this less stressful, without compromising that learning. What we do know is that student well-being is a necessary foundation for academic learning. We know from trauma research that kids can’t learn when they’re hungry or when they’re super stressed out about something. I like the idea of Maslow before Bloom — students’ basic needs must be met before they can engage in higher-level learning.

Another misconception is that we don’t have to do less assessing, we have to do different. When we look at what we’re doing with grades, how we’re weighting our grades, can we stop counting homework in the grade? If there’s ever been a time where we now understand that counting homework in the grades is unfair, given all the access kids have to AI, it’s now. It’s not that we’re going to stop giving homework, but we’re going to start making kids aware of the goals they have to reach, what the assessment’s going to look like, and then figure out what you need to do in order to pass that assessment.

The other thing we can look at is how we can de-stress our in-class assessments. We can start by making sure everybody has enough time to finish the assessment. We can also look at how we are preparing kids. Do they know what they need to know?

A major theme in the book is adolescents’ need for autonomy. What does meaningful autonomy actually look like in middle or high school? How can teachers provide autonomy while still meeting standards and maintaining classroom structure?

It’s a false dichotomy for people to think that if we give students any autonomy, we’re not going to have structure or meet standards. That’s the first misconception we have to get out of our heads. What I think we fail to understand is adolescents need autonomy, they need independence. But it’s not all-or-nothing. Use the analogy of driving, because what we really want is for our kids to drive their own learning. You wouldn’t put a teenager in a car and tell them to drive without any training or instruction or supervision, right? At the same time, you wouldn’t dream of never letting a teenager drive. At some point, you have to give them the keys. At some point, you have to give them that freedom.

When you give kids more autonomy in their learning, you move gradually from a teacher-directed environment to giving kids more choices, and then you move into more collaborative decision-making with kids. Teachers can start small.

But let’s go beyond the learning — what does it look like in the classroom? You co-create your rules and routines with your kids. Is there any reason why they can’t have a water bottle? What are our rules going to be for when you can talk or when you can use the restroom? When you put kids in charge of that, that is autonomy as well.

If we look at adolescence, autonomy is how they become independent adults. And I think we forget about that. This is a developmental need for adolescents.

You note that achievement culture is especially damaging to teenagers. In your opinion, how much of the stress students experience today is actually created by adults — parents, educators, college admissions — and how can we change that culture?

How much of that is coming from adults? Well, a lot. But it depends on the community, and in some communities, it’s just insane. And the college admissions process is a huge part of it, but parents don’t have to buy into this “Harvard or homeless” mindset.

One of the most important things to me is thinking about our messaging, and that goes for teachers, administrators and parents. Can we broaden what we showcase as achievement in our schools? If you’ve got a kid doing incredible volunteer work in the community, does that get showcased in school? If you have a student doing something artistic or creative, but it’s not within the school extracurriculars, does that count?

The other thing is this “group think” message coming from many adults — that if you make one false move, your future is doomed. You need to commit and make that decision about the whole rest of your life when you’re 15. When we do that, we’re not valuing the freedom that a teenager should have to explore their interests and to think about paths for their life. I think we’re also failing to dignify other choices. Everybody says, “Well, you either go to college or you go to the military,” but how many paths have we explored? I think career education and exploration is a huge thing we need to work on right now.

Schools have limited resources and many struggle to address growing student stress and mental health needs. If a school principal asked you for two or three things their school could change tomorrow that don’t require hiring more counselors or launching a new program, what would you suggest?

The first thing they need to do is start listening to students. Kids have to look out for kids; teachers have to look out for kids. This is no longer a problem that can be pushed off to counselors. If you have some kind of tool already, an SEL screener that shows what your kids need to work on, that is a great way to look at potential red flags. Find a way to do a once-a-week check-in for kids. If every kid identifies one trusted adult, and that adult takes even five minutes in the hallway, or a few minutes in class to talk to kids — that’s been really beneficial in the buildings I’ve looked at.

Second, empower kids. Students just need to feel like they’ve got some control over things. Let’s give students some real representative power. What are your concerns as kids? Then take those to your principal or assistant principal.

Third, if you’re in a big building, schedule a staggered class release in different parts of your building or different classrooms within a hallway. You want to identify stress? Look at the stress that comes with having five minutes to get to your next class when there are 1,000 people in the hall.

How might schools approach problem-solving differently if they’re thinking about it from the whole child perspective?

Our approach to problem-solving in schools is behavior-based, and we’re not really whole-child when we’re asking how we get students to show up, do the work, behave.

When we focus on issues such as attendance or behavior, we want to move to a more proactive approach. Do we have to wait until there’s a problem? “How do we get them to…” is the wrong question. We ought to be looking at other things that might be going on with this student that are contributing to their behavior. I think we started to do this with attendance and started to look at it more through a mental health lens or a wellness lens. But this is a whole shift in our mindset that really needs to happen in terms of how we approach problems. We’ve got to show that mental health and wellness are as important as achievement, that student well-being is as important as achievement.

I was hoping, after COVID-19, that people would get this message that there are more important things than the test scores and the standards — that we want kids to be mentally healthy. I get a little aggravated because everybody seems to think if we just get the phones out of the schools, that that’s all we need to do. That’s not the only boogeyman out there. Absolutely, it’s a big thing. But it’s not the only thing.

If schools adopted the wellness paradigm you describe in the book, what would feel different about a typical school day, from a student’s perspective? What do you think students would notice first?

The first thing I think kids would notice is the vibe. It feels like a relaxed work environment. People are happy and calm. They don’t seem so rushed and so frantic. I talked to students in schools focusing on mental health and lowering stress, and they said that they feel respected. They feel valued. They feel that their work is meaningful. They feel in control of their learning. And therefore, they’re engaged.

I would want kids to see that there’s a balance between academics and social time, and that relationships and interests are important. When we start letting kids explore their own interests, when we start dignifying their choices, it makes them feel like the present is as important as the future. And that’s really where calm comes into the picture.

We’re not doing these kids any favors by tightly controlling them. I think schools don’t know what else to do, so they’re doing all this SEL and mindfulness stuff, and it’s treating the symptoms instead of looking at the problem — and we are part of the problem.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

EdSurge is an editorially independent digital news site of the International Society for Transforming Education.

Hundreds of Thousands of Eligible Kids Are Waiting for Childcare Assistance

Moriah Balingit — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

INDIANAPOLIS — There’s the mother of two who needs a full-time job to keep up with the bills, but can’t afford full-time childcare. There’s the medical technician who stopped buying groceries and turned to food banks so she could pay for her infant’s care.

There’s the baby who remained in foster care, even after his mother completed the steps to bring him home. She had found a job, as the state required, but couldn’t afford his childcare.

It’s hardly news that childcare is expensive, straining the budget of even middle-class parents. But these families all qualify for government-funded childcare assistance, intended to drastically reduce the childcare bills of needy parents so they can work or go to school. Instead, Indiana’s program, which had run short on funds, waitlisted them.

Hundreds of thousands of children were sitting on childcare assistance waitlists in 23 states and the District of Columbia as of this spring, according to an analysis by The Associated Press. In three more states, many eligible families who applied were simply turned away.

Childcare assistance, funded by the federal government with help from states, is supposed to aid working parents who are low-income, homeless or caring for foster children. But waitlists have ballooned since 2023, when eight states had them, according to the AP analysis. Reporters collected waitlist and enrollment data from 47 states and the District of Columbia.

Many of the waitlists first started after $28 billion in pandemic aid expired in the fall of 2024. The Republican-led Congress declined to extend the extra money. Some states have increased funding to try to fill the gap, but families’ need for childcare assistance has only grown, as they’ve faced mounting costs for food and gas.

While eligible families sit on waitlists, untold numbers of adults are sidelined from education or the workforce because they can’t afford childcare. Those parents who remain in school or keep working make difficult tradeoffs. In interviews, parents described forgoing necessities, falling behind on bills or relying on acquaintances to watch their children. Unable to find viable childcare, some have resorted to bringing their children with them to work or class.

For Meygan Maloney’s family in rural Indiana, waiting for childcare assistance means month after month of falling short financially. Maloney was working as a caregiver for disabled adults before she had her second child in 2023. Around the same time, the family took emergency custody of a close relative’s newborn daughter.

The next three years were marked by deepening financial struggles. Maloney only received $300 a month to care for her foster daughter, and both toddlers were put on a waitlist when she applied for childcare vouchers for 2025.

While the girl returned to her family in the fall, Maloney and her husband are still behind on bills. They recently refinanced their home, and her husband is working seven days a week as a tire technician and delivery driver. A local childcare provider gave her a steep discount, allowing her to leave her son four mornings a week to clean at a local hospital.

“I felt useless as a stay-at-home mom. I felt like I wasn’t contributing to our household,” Maloney said, her voice cracking. “We’re trying to get out. But for us to get out, we need the assistance.”

Foster parents left to pay for childcare in Indiana

Indiana started its waitlist in December 2024, a few months after pandemic aid ran out and it became clear the state would struggle to support families already in the program. Until May of this year, it put virtually everyone who applied on the waitlist, including foster parents. By spring 2026, nearly 37,000 children were waiting for assistance.

Maloney and other foster families feel like they were misled by the state, which had for many years paid for childcare for foster children. Malinda Cox, an Indianapolis mom who took in a newborn last year, said she was forced to dip into her family’s savings to pay for the baby boy’s childcare so she could return to work. At one point, she considered giving up custody of the boy because her family could not afford his childcare bill.

In the meantime, the boy’s biological mother was completing the requirements she had to satisfy to take him home. She had taken parenting classes and gotten a job. But she could not afford daycare, and because the boy could not get childcare assistance, he had to remain with Cox.

“We started to feel, like, guilty. He should be home with his mom, but (because of) this massive system upset, he’s not,” Cox said.

In April, Indiana Gov. Mike Braun, a Republican, announced the state would send $200 million in surplus funds to the state’s childcare assistance program. So far, the money has allowed it to move roughly 8,000 children off the waitlist. The state says it plans to use the funds to give assistance to an additional 6,000 children.

Even before the recent growth in waitlists, federal funding for childcare assistance has always fallen short of providing for every needy family, only providing enough money to serve a fraction of those eligible. Experts say waitlists represent the tip of the iceberg, because many eligible families who need the help don’t know about the program or haven’t applied, daunted by tales of long waitlists.

The origins of the funding shortfall are cultural, said Ruth Friedman, who headed the Office of Child Care under Democratic President Joe Biden. For decades, “childcare was the responsibility of the family,” she said. “The system is fundamentally broken, and if the government doesn’t help fix the system … it will not be affordable for families.”

There are stark differences of opinion on whether the government should provide help — or how much. This year, 40 congressional Republicans called for “robust” funding of the federal program that underwrites childcare assistance. Instead, it received the same money as the year before. President Donald Trump said during his campaign that he could make childcare more affordable by using tariff revenue, but this spring he told a White House audience that paying for childcare should be up to states.

“We’re fighting wars. We can’t take care of daycare. You got to let a state take care of daycare, and they should pay for it, too,” Trump told people gathered for an Easter luncheon.

His administration has largely focused on allegations of fraud in the program, at one point halting funding to five Democratic-led states. After a lawsuit, a judge ordered Trump’s administration to restart the funding.

Moms bring babies to college or work

Without affordable childcare options, parents have resorted to bringing their children with them to work or school.

In Minnesota, Deaira Gresham’s 1-year-old daughter Seaira has been on the waitlist for childcare assistance since birth, one of 9,000 children in her state awaiting aid as of this spring. Gresham, who works as an in-home health aide and takes a full load of classes at a chiropractor school, had some help with Seaira from her mother. But oftentimes, she was forced to take Seaira with her to class and to the homes of her clients. It took a toll — Gresham failed several classes juggling school and caring for a baby.

This fall, she lucked out, getting a childcare grant for parenting students, allowing her to put Seaira in full-time care.

“Parents are in desperate need,” Gresham said. “We need that break. We need to be able to go to school, go to work and know that our kids are in good hands.”

It’s not just their work or college classes that parents worry about. Research has shown that high-quality childcare can boost a child’s social-emotional and academic development.

Carmen Perez, who lives north of San Francisco, has applied for childcare help for all four of her children. Her eldest son never received it before aging out of the program. He struggled academically in ways that his sisters, who attended subsidized preschool, did not.

Now her two-year-old son is on a waitlist. She fears he will face the same challenges as his older brother. “It makes me sick.”

On a rainy May day in Indianapolis, Cox bundled up her foster son and delivered him to a social worker. She packed up her own car with the boy’s things — clothes, diapers and a small changing table. The boy’s biological mother still had not gotten childcare assistance, but Cox had negotiated a deal with a childcare provider to offer a massive discount. When even that was out of the mother’s reach, Cox agreed to pay half.

She arrived at the boy’s new home to watch him reunite with his mother. She felt a mix of grief over parting with him and elation over seeing his delight with his mother.

Three weeks later, the mother got notice: He had finally been approved for a voucher.

This story has been updated to correct the total number of children being helped by Indiana’s childcare subsidies. An estimated 8,000 children have come off the waitlist and 6,000 more are projected to move off the list, bringing the total to 14,000, not 8,000.

Putting Edtech Guidance to Work in the Classroom

EdSurge Staff — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

This week, two stories look at what happens when rules written far from a classroom land on a teacher’s desk. One guest found guidance that barely mentions the youngest students. The other found a law that took away the exact tool his students needed most. Both raise a question that will sound familiar to any educator: When the rules do not fit, who is responsible for making them work?

Where the Screen Time Guidance Runs Out

A longtime education and technology journalist went looking for what happens once new federal guidance meets an actual pre-K classroom. He found teachers working from advice written for teenagers, not four-year-olds, and building their own approach out of whatever was on hand. Adam Stone talks about what he heard from the people closest to the problem.

One Law, One Classroom, One Missing Tool

A Missouri civics teacher ran a yearlong civic engagement program with his students, right as a new state law changed what they were allowed to carry into class. Dan Clark explains what his students lost access to, and why he thinks the fix lawmakers chose missed the point entirely.

Listen to the episode:

Stories Mentioned in This Episode

Early Childhood Education Teachers Grapple with Screen Time by Adam Stone

The Case Against the Classroom Cellphone Crackdown by Dan Clark

This Week with EdSurge is a weekly podcast from EdSurge. Subscribe to the EdSurge newsletters for more news and analysis on education and technology.

How AI Taught Me to Embrace Vulnerability in the Classroom

Sofia Gonzalez — Wed, 02 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Like so many educators, I was balancing more than a typical routine. I was teaching full-time in a Title I high school while writing, speaking, advocating, mentoring and trying to create learning experiences that honored students who often navigate systems not designed with them in mind. I was often somewhere between grading essays, responding to emails, and figuring out why half the class couldn’t log into Microsoft Teams because the Wi-Fi was acting up again. I wasn’t looking for a tech revolution; if anything, I needed a lifeline. When I stumbled upon GenerationAI, I saw a path to reclaim some of that lost time.

In 2025, I applied to GenerationAI and was one of the fortunate educators chosen to participate in an AI-driven cohort of educators and communities of practice. During the program, we had to create a problem of practice and identify which AI tools could mitigate, alleviate, and elevate our content and student success. My problem of practice was how to leverage AI tools to advance writing skills among English learners (ELs) in the high school English classroom.

I’ll admit it: At first, I wasn’t fully convinced these tools would actually help me become a better teacher. Research on AI transformation in the classroom promised a total revolution in teaching and learning. However, the verbiage from the opening sessions at Google Headquarters in Chicago swung between salvation and complete catastrophe for me. Meanwhile, I thought, I am just trying to get my students through another Tuesday navigating Padlet and NoRedInk without disruption.

Still, I stayed curious and genuinely wanted to lean in to the opportunity. What did I have to lose? Experts leading the program kept reassuring me that the right exposure to AI could make marginalized communities more competitive against their privileged counterparts, and that was enough to draw me in.

With each session, my imagination grew about what AI could become, not only in my classroom, but across the landscape of education as we know it. Not only did we receive helpful AI resources and tools, but the program also provided opportunities for us to share what worked in the classroom and what needed to be revamped to support stronger student outcomes.

I often felt like I was running alongside a moving vehicle that would not stop for me. There was so much to learn, so many platforms to explore, and so many possibilities. There was also so little time.

Yet, somewhere between the overwhelm and the inspiration I gained from fellow educators in my cohort, something shifted within me.

I stopped believing I needed to master AI before I could use it well. Instead, I started treating it like a thought partner. Not a replacement, not a shortcut, but a collaborator; something I so desperately needed with full rosters of ELs, IEPs, and 504s to manage.

Once the program ended, I began brainstorming lesson ideas when my own creativity felt out of reach. I was surprised by how AI helped elevate my big ideas. I gathered discussion questions before testing them in class. I redesigned assignments to make them more culturally responsive and more accessible for multilingual learners. When difficult conversations around immigration, ICE and identity became impossible to ignore, AI helped me think through instructional pathways that were academically rigorous while remaining deeply connected to my desire to create a safe space of belonging.

It helped me see possibilities I hadn’t considered before. AI didn’t diminish my role; it amplified it.

From Gatekeeper to Collaborator

One of the most transformative tools I encountered from the program was Class Companion. For my English learners, immediate writing feedback became a game changer. Instead of waiting several days for my comments on an essay, students could revise while their thinking was still fresh. They received another opportunity to practice, rethink, and improve without waiting for me to finish grading another stack of digital papers.

That mattered.

Not because technology became the teacher, but because it gave students another chance to become stronger writers and gave me space to provide the meaningful instruction they deserved. I no longer felt pressured to offer rushed or watered-down feedback simply because there were not enough hours in the day.

ChatGPT also proved useful for brainstorming and generating ideas for essay topics, project concepts, and research question frameworks for the students. It relieved a lot of unnecessary pressure for both of us, and we were productive and grateful.

The students were also pleasantly surprised that I welcomed AI the way I did. As educators, we often carry the impossible expectation that we have to know everything before we try it. But to be honest, classrooms have never worked that way, and they shouldn't.

Teaching has always been an act of experimentation. Robert Marzano once said, “In effect, a good part of effective teaching is an art.” It’s an art form. We adjust. We pivot. We learn in real time alongside our students.

AI became another place for that real-time experimentation. I had to be willing to crash and burn in front of them while experimenting with Canva AI-generated images that didn’t work at all because of slow internet and our inability to guide the AI tool properly.

Yet, these experiments were vital in schools like mine. Schools where innovation isn’t limited by imagination, but by fair access. Schools where broken laptops join a list of devices needing repair. Schools where slow internet can derail an entire lesson, and I have receipts for this. Schools where conversations about equity cannot stop at access to premium platforms because some students are still waiting for access to functioning devices and suitable chargers.

Those realities never disappeared simply because AI entered the conversation. On the contrary, they became even more visible.

The Equity Gap in the Age of AI

I didn’t join GenerationAI to become an artificial intelligence expert. I joined because I was trying to persevere and find as many resources as possible to make magic in an environment challenged by barriers to access, resources, and injustice outside the classroom.

Looking back, I honestly wish I could have absorbed more from my GenerationAI cohort. The learning was incredibly rich, but almost too rich, given the barriers my students and I faced every day around time and access to functioning technology.

Still, I don’t see that as a failure. I didn’t leave as an AI expert. I left as a teacher who wasn’t afraid to experiment. That may be the most important lesson of all.

We don’t need educators who know every tool. We need educators who are willing to ask better questions, willing to take instructional risks, and willing to discover how technology can support, rather than replace, authentic teaching and sincere moments of connection.

AI never became the star of my classroom. My students remained at the center as mis estrellas – my stars.

Sometimes innovation isn’t about having all the answers. Sometimes it’s about having the courage to try something new. AI didn’t replace the heart of my teaching; it gave me more time to use it in the way I felt would resonate with both me and my students.

A Principal and a Student Reviewed the New ChatGPT for Teens. They Had Plenty to Say

David Weldon — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

OpenAI launched ChatGPT for Teens on Aug. 18 as its new artificial intelligence (AI) platform for users ages 13 to 17.

According to the firm, teens will be automatically placed into the new platform based on their estimated age, where they will encounter “an experience designed to help [them] learn, think critically, deepen understanding, and use AI with confidence,” OpenAI said in its product announcement.

ChatGPT for Teens offers safety measures for its younger users, with tools designed to encourage balanced usage habits while giving parents more oversight.

“We have been guided by four commitments," OpenAI wrote. "Put teen safety first, encourage real-world support, treat teens like teens, and be transparent about how our systems should behave."

The new product specifically targets students with several features:

Study Mode, which uses guiding questions and step-by-step support to help teens understand the material they’re learning.
Homework Reminders, which can recognize when a teen appears to be trying to shortcut an assignment and will redirect them to Study Mode for collaborative problem solving.
Quizzes and Learning Visualizations, which give teens more ways to practice, gauge their knowledge, and see difficult concepts more clearly.
Study Hours, which lets teens or parents choose times when Study Mode is on by default.

An Educator’s View of ChatGPT for Teens

Laura Yeager, an elementary school principal in Oklahoma's Frederick School District, says there are several reasons to like ChatGPT for Teens, theoretically. “To start, this technology places a large burden on both parents and teachers to be as well-informed about the tool, or better than, the teens using it. Off the bat, they’re at a disadvantage compared to a native user,” Yeager explains.

While managing this oversight may be challenging, Yeager sees one advantage to ChatGPT for Teens. She says it could serve as a resource for students struggling with difficult concepts who might not have access to help at home due to circumstances like working parents or family members being less familiar with the materials a teen brings home from school.

“In a perfect world, students could access sample problems or quizzes or be prompted with thoughtful questions intended to promote higher-order thinking and independent learning,” Yeager says. “Highly motivated students could benefit greatly from using this tool to further their reasoning skills by analyzing the answers, verifying sources, and challenging their own thinking.”

Yeager appreciates how ChatGPT for Teens steers teens away from potentially harmful situations. For example, posing as a 15-year-old, she entered a prompt about making money quickly in an attempt to see how the technology would respond. “It answered with age-appropriate odd jobs, babysitting, and the like,” she says. The tool offered a plan to save money, and issued repeated warnings to avoid people enticing teens with quick cash for illegal things (without naming them).

ChatGPT for Teens also earned high marks from Yeager for steering prompts about studying toward critical thinking rather than creating a document of facts to memorize. For example, when she asked it to create a study guide on “Of Mice and Men,” instead of creating the study guide, “I was prompted to consider the relationships among the characters and the meanings of certain events,” Yeager says.

A Student’s Perspective

Interestingly, high school student Annie (last name withheld), an 11th grader from Auburn High School in Alabama, likes ChatGPT for Teens for some of the same reasons as Principal Yeager.

“I think it can be very useful, especially for students who do not have a tutor or someone available to help them with a subject,” Annie explains. “ChatGPT is particularly good at teaching foundational material in subjects such as math, physics, and languages. For example, it can explain grammar rules in much more detail if a student does not understand the first explanation.”

Annie likes that Study Mode teaches the user systematically, step-by-step. When she used ChatGPT to study Spanish, it started with the most basic concepts to gauge her level of knowledge, such as how to conjugate verbs, before moving on to more difficult material. It also provided practice problems and revealed patterns to help her remember the rules.

“I especially liked the encouraging tone, which made studying feel less intimidating and allowed me to make mistakes without being afraid of getting something wrong,” Annie says.

One thing that Annie says she does not like: “ChatGPT sometimes seems to forget how I asked it to teach me as a conversation gets longer. At the beginning, I might ask it to teach me in a certain way or format, with different sections and a specific style of explanation. However, after a long conversation, the responses can become shorter or stop following the same teaching style.”

A Fan of the Product — to a Point

Despite her approval of some features, Yeager says she is not totally on board with ChatGPT for Teens.

“I understand the intention of this platform is to teach students to use AI responsibly and to leverage technology effectively as a skill, which is noble, but it is also to reduce liability and to attempt to place some responsibility back on the parents and guardians,” Yeager explains.

“The brutal truth is: there are many AI programs out there, and if students want to find information, they will. ChatGPT for Teens has some merit, but teens who want to will still find ways to plagiarize and take shortcuts in schoolwork, rather than develop and use critical thinking skills.”

If she were still teaching in the classroom, Yeager says she would not use it. Test scores across the nation reveal that students are struggling in critical reading and writing skills. “Worksheets don’t teach. Teachers do,” Yeager argues.

“It is the same with any tool,” Yeager adds. “Nothing replaces the mental modeling of a skilled classroom teacher delivering explicit instruction. Students need to hear another person verbally work through difficult concepts and scaffold ideas. They need evidence that it can be done without a computer program and that they are capable of hard things.”

Areas Where ChatGPT for Teens Is Helpful

Annie sees that struggle a bit differently.

“I would especially use it for studying Spanish, because no one in my family speaks Spanish, so I do not always have someone available to practice with,” Annie explains. “ChatGPT gives me a way to practice writing and speaking and to ask questions when I do not understand a grammar rule.”

Annie does not think ChatGPT for Teens necessarily discourages creative thinking. She says it is most useful for establishing a strong foundation in a subject, which can eventually help students develop their own ideas.

“It is difficult to think creatively about a subject without first understanding its basic concepts,” Annie says. “However, students still need to use what they learn to develop their own conclusions and ideas rather than relying on ChatGPT to do all of their thinking for them.”

Ultimately, ChatGPT for Teens illustrates the promise and the limits of AI in education. Tools like Study Mode can fill a genuine gap for students who lack resources. But as both Yeager and Annie point out, the technology is not a substitute for teachers. ChatGPT’s true value may depend less on its safety measures than on how teens and teachers choose to use it.

AI Can Help One of K-12’s Biggest Challenges: Middle School Reading

Dacia Toll — Fri, 28 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For years, the United States has treated its reading crisis as an early grades problem. This narrow focus misses the bigger challenge: the “comprehension wall” that many students hit in middle school.

As students move into middle school, they no longer focus on learning to read. They must understand what they are reading. Right now, they struggle to do so: Only 30% of eighth graders were proficient in reading in 2024, the lowest level in 30 years.

I witnessed this problem firsthand as a principal and school network leader. We invested significant time in the early grades teaching and reinforcing phonics, phonemic awareness and fluency. The work paid off, as students made strong gains through fourth grade. Then, in fifth grade, performance dropped as texts became more complex and writing demands increased.

That is when many students hit the “comprehension wall.” They can decode the words on the page, but meaning breaks down when a passage uses complex sentences, sophisticated vocabulary, old-fashioned language, hidden meaning or unfamiliar subject matter.

The consequences are hard to miss. Students who cannot deeply engage with text can fall behind not only in English language arts, but science, social studies, math and every subject that depends on reading to learn. Their confidence can erode, with many choosing to hide their confusion rather than ask for help.

The diverse needs that exist in almost every middle school classroom make the challenge harder. Some students struggle to decode, some can read the words but lack the vocabulary or background knowledge to understand the meaning, and some read far above grade level and need to be challenged.

The problem is not a lack of educator commitment. It is a lack of scalable support.

Opportunities and Challenges

I am generally skeptical of the artificial intelligence (AI) hype in education, especially of suggestions that technology can replace teachers, strong curriculum or the critical relationships that often power learning. But middle school reading is one area where carefully designed AI-supported tools can help if they are built to strengthen instruction rather than shortcut it.

The opportunity lies in custom-built literacy tools, based on the science of reading, that use AI to diagnose student needs precisely, provide timely feedback and help teachers differentiate support without lowering expectations.

The opportunity is not to hand students a generic chatbot and hope comprehension improves. The Brookings Institution found that AI can either enrich or diminish student learning depending on how it is used, and recommended schools use tools that “teach, not tell.”

Schools can use AI to create better support for the reading work educators already know students need: a higher volume of reading, more precise diagnosis, timely feedback, opportunities to revise their thinking and ways to access grade-level texts when the work is difficult.

One of the biggest challenges for teachers is reading assessment. In middle school, assessment often focuses on whether students have mastered a standard. But reading comprehension is not a simple sequence of discrete skills. A student may understand the main idea in one unit and struggle with that same standard in the next because the texts are more complex, the vocabulary is less familiar or the background knowledge demands are higher.

Educators need a more nuanced picture of what students need. Instead of relying only on stand-alone assessments, well-designed AI tools can analyze students’ everyday work, identify text-specific and longitudinal patterns and give teachers clearer visibility into where comprehension is breaking down.

AI can also help with differentiation. For example, students could read a complex nonfiction article in class and work in pairs to unpack its meaning; but if they struggle, AI asks a just-right follow-up question. They are redirected to a specific sentence or paragraph to reread. They can access a vocabulary definition or brief background knowledge. They have a chance to revise after feedback that pushes them back into the text rather than away from it.

One teacher often cannot provide this level of individual support in real time to 26 students with different needs. There can be a greater impact on struggling readers, who are too often removed from rigorous learning and complex texts altogether, and are given watered-down materials instead of better access points. Over time, the achievement gap becomes not just a reading gap, but also a knowledge gap.

Early results are promising. In one large urban district in Texas and another very diverse district in Tennessee, middle schools using an AI-supported literacy model saw significantly stronger year-over-year growth on state reading assessments than comparable schools that did not use the model.

These examples suggest AI-supported literacy intervention can help educators provide more responsive support at-scale when aligned with strong instruction, grade-level content, teacher support and consistent implementation.

If AI becomes a shortcut, novelty, or substitute for high-quality instruction, it will fail students. If it is used mainly to help students complete assignments faster, it will weaken the habits students need to build: reading closely, asking questions, explaining their thinking and revising their ideas.

Ask Before You Act

The best way to improve student reading achievement is still to read a lot, and we should look for tools that support a higher volume of reading with increasingly complex texts.

In the last decade, schools have taken a crucial step and replaced incoherent, homegrown materials with vetted curricula that systematically build knowledge and vocabulary, expose students to complex grade-level texts and spiral essential reading habits.

Before adopting AI-supported reading tools, educators and district leaders should ask hard questions, such as:

Does the tool reinforce or detract from high-quality curricular materials? Does the tool keep students engaged with grade-level text or does it lower the bar?
Does it require students to return to the text, explain their thinking and revise their responses?
Does it give teachers visibility into where students are struggling?
Does it support discussion, writing and teacher-led instruction or does it isolate students on screens? Does the tool lead to more students doing more reading, writing and thinking?
Does it help students build reading stamina and a love of reading?

These questions matter because the goal is not to make reading easier by removing the cognitive work. The goal is to make rigorous reading more accessible so more students can participate in that work.

We cannot continue treating middle school reading challenges as an inevitable byproduct of earlier gaps. Nor can we assume that students who reached adolescence without strong literacy foundations are beyond meaningful intervention.

For middle school students who have spent too long being told that reading is something they should have already mastered, that support could make all the difference.

Student Artists Wrestle with AI’s Promise and Peril

David Weldon — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

With the launch of ChatGPT four years ago, the graduating class of 2026 is the first to have full exposure to generative artificial intelligence. Many high school students in the United States have considerable experience using AI — and mixed feelings about its growing role in everyday life. They may take advantage of AI benefits, but some fear where the technology could take us in the future.

That concern was on clear display at the Me, Myself, and AI art show at the America’s Youth AI Festival, which took place last month in Boston. The three-day event gathered student leaders, educators and school system leaders from across the country to discuss acceptable AI use in the classroom and how it is influencing students' lives. The festival was hosted by Day of AI, MIT RAISE, The School Superintendents Association and the Edward M. Kennedy Institute.

The event featured two contests: AI for a Better World and an art competition. Four students (last names withheld) shared the spotlight as winners of the 2026 Me, Myself, and AI art competition. Their work reflected AI’s influence in their communities today and what they think AI may look like in 50 years. Annie, an 11th grader from the Barbara Keel Art School and Auburn High School in Alabama, exemplified the worry on the minds of many students with her two-part winning entry titled “Which Way We Run.”

Depicting AI’s Evolving Influence

Annie’s two pieces illustrate how AI is already affecting human life and what could happen to humans if we continue to rely on it for trivial needs every day. “The first piece represents my current community and focuses on how AI is beginning to integrate into everyday life,” she says. “The buildings are bright and colorful, symbolizing liveliness, creativity and emotion — all human qualities. In the center, two people are running, representing different stages of human interaction with AI-driven technology.”

In addition to Annie, the competition winners included 11th-grader Evangelina from the Essex County Newark Tech school in Newark, New Jersey, for “A Free Venezuela”; 11th-grader Juliette from the Rye Country Day School in Rye, New York, for “A Self-Portrait Across Time”; and 9th-grader Wendi from the Atlanta Contemporary Chinese Academy in Decatur, Georgia, for “Community Today as Meandering in Divide, Community in 50 Years as Yearning into Time.”

The Me, Myself, and AI art competition grew out of a curriculum developed by the MIT Responsible AI for Social Empowerment and Education (RAISE) initiative, explains Jeffrey Riley, executive director of Day of AI. The ideas debuted in a high school summer program in 2024 and later expanded into Day of AI’s five-lesson AI and the Creative Arts Curriculum, which was released in January 2025 for students ages 8 and up.

The lessons invite students to examine the relationship between AI and creativity by analyzing AI-generated artwork, discussing questions of authorship and originality and creating art of their own. Winning entries were selected through a multi-reviewer evaluation process similar to those used in college admissions or scholarship competitions, Riley says.

“Judges evaluated submissions holistically, considering creativity, originality, evidence of process, thoughtful use of AI and the authenticity of each student’s personal voice,” Riley explains. “The emphasis was never on creating the most impressive AI-generated image but on how effectively students used creativity and, where appropriate, AI, to communicate their ideas.”

The Growing Impact of AI on Art and Media

Riley predicts AI will become a standard part of many artists’ creative workflows, much like digital design software, cameras or animation tools are today. It has the potential to make creative exploration more accessible, he says, helping people prototype ideas, explore new styles and bring concepts to life more quickly.

“AI will shape how young people live, learn, create and connect,” explains Cynthia Breazeal, director of MIT RAISE and co-founder of Day of AI. “What is so powerful about Me, Myself, and AI is that it gives students the opportunity to reflect on that future in a deeply personal and imaginative way.”

Annie says she was attracted to this competition because of its themes in connecting art, AI and humanity. She saw it as a forum to share and learn what her generation thinks of AI, its ethical concerns and the implications it has for art, especially with the current contention surrounding AI-generated images.

“The use of AI to create media is not appropriate in corporate models that exploit the work of artists without consent,” Annie says. “Instead, if any artist believes that AI is integral to a project they want to create, they should look toward models that are trained on open-source data or ethically sourced media. Additionally, even with ethical models, AI’s large environmental footprint means we should be mindful of what we ask it to do.”

Encouraging Lessons from the Competition

Riley says that what impressed the judging team most was how thoughtful students were in their decision-making and how candid they were about their feelings toward AI. Rather than simply using AI because it was available, many carefully considered when it strengthened their creative vision and when it did not. Some intentionally limited or even chose not to use AI for portions of their projects because they wanted certain elements to remain entirely their own.

“One of the biggest lessons we took away was that young people are far more thoughtful about AI than they’re often given credit for,” Riley says. “Students didn’t see AI as simply ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ Instead, they expressed a wide range of perspectives based on their own experiences using the technology.”

The competition also reinforced the importance of giving students authentic, hands-on opportunities to wrestle with these questions rather than simply teaching them about AI in the abstract.

“These insights will continue to shape curricula and learning experiences as we help students develop the critical thinking, creativity and ethical decision-making skills they’ll need in an AI-driven world,” Riley explains. “Our goal has never been to encourage or discourage AI use but rather to empower young people to make informed, intentional choices about how they use these technologies.”

Can a Letter From Washington Actually Change How Schools Buy Technology?

EdSurge Staff — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Department of Education has just released its first major guidance on classroom technology in years, urging states and districts to focus on outcomes rather than logins or screen time. The letter draws a firm line between recreational and instructional screen use, and it leaves the actual rulemaking entirely up to states and districts. On this episode of This Week with EdSurge, Ira Apfel sits down with Digital Promise president and CEO Jean-Claude Brizard and outcomes-based contracting expert Brittany Miller to unpack what the guidance actually changes and what it still leaves unresolved. Both guests welcome the letter, but neither is convinced it accomplishes enough.

Jean-Claude Brizard

As president and CEO of Digital Promise, Jean-Claude Brizard has watched federal guidance play out across hundreds of school systems, and he does not think this letter goes far enough. He welcomes the emphasis on outcomes, but he argues the guidance leaves practitioners without enough direct support and worries that state by state inconsistency could widen gaps between districts. He also draws an unexpected comparison between the pushback edtech is getting and a very different public health debate.

Brittany Miller

Brittany Miller spends her days inside the contracts this guidance is speaking to. As a leader at the Center for Outcomes Based Contracting, she sees the letter as validation of work already underway in ten states, and she is far less concerned about the lack of federal specifics than Brizard is. Her focus is on what actually changes once a district and a vendor sit down to write the fine print, and on who ends up carrying the risk when that fine print gets tested.

Listen to the episode:

Stories Mentioned in This Episode:

Department of Education Issues Long-Awaited Edtech Guidance for States and Districts

This Week with EdSurge is a weekly podcast from EdSurge. Subscribe to the EdSurge newsletters for more news and analysis on education and technology.

Protecting Student Cognition in the Age of AI

Melinda Medina — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Have you considered that the greatest risk of artificial intelligence might not be plagiarism, but the quiet erosion of students’ ability to think for themselves?

“How does Kate Chopin use irony to challenge the reader’s understanding of freedom?” I ask while standing in front of my 11th-grade English class.

Normally, this is the point where students flip through the text, underline a few lines, exchange ideas with classmates and slowly begin constructing an answer. Instead, their eyes stare back at me. Shoulders shrug.

“I don’t know,” one student says.

Then another follows with a response I’ve begun hearing more frequently.

“I use ChatGPT. How am I supposed to know that?”

The room becomes quiet again. Not because students are thinking; many aren’t even trying to. And that’s the problem.

I’ve taught English and special education in New York City for 13 years. Throughout my career, I’ve worked with students whose disabilities affect their reading and writing ability, executive functioning, attention span and language processing. I’ve spent years designing lessons that help students access learning without taking away the cognitive work required to truly engage in the learning.

My role has never been to lower expectations but to remove barriers while preserving rigor. Students have always struggled. That’s part of learning. But lately, I’m seeing something different. They aren’t just struggling with literature. They’re struggling with thinking itself.

This isn’t because artificial intelligence suddenly makes students less capable. National reading data show persistent declines in literacy achievement, while writing research consistently finds that adolescents struggle most with analytical and evidence-based writing, which are essential tasks that cultivate critical thinking. AI didn’t create those challenges, but it happened to arrive at exactly the moment those foundational skills became even more fragile.

If we’re not intentional about encouraging students to think, AI risks becoming a substitute for the very cognitive work students most need to practice.

When AI Becomes the Brain Instead of the Thought Partner

A student is absent. I send the assignment home. The next morning, it comes back looking nothing like the work I watched that same student produce in class. The vocabulary is sophisticated. The literary analysis flows effortlessly. Complex symbolism appears, even though the student struggled the day before to identify the protagonist’s motivation.

Then, I administer an in-class assessment.

With pencil and paper, many of those same students struggle to organize ideas, support claims with textual evidence, or sustain a multi-paragraph response. The discrepancy isn’t simply about cheating. It raises a more fundamental question: Whose thinking is actually being measured?

Researchers describe this phenomenon as cognitive offloading, the tendency to rely on external tools to reduce mental effort. To be fair, humans have always done this. We use calculators for arithmetic, GPS for navigation, and calendars to remember appointments because those tools free cognitive space for more complex tasks.

Reading, writing and critical thinking, however, serve a different purpose. The assignment isn’t merely the product; it is the practice. Every annotation, rough draft, revision and discussion strengthens the cognitive muscles students rely on to analyze, reason and synthesize information and make judgments independently.

Researchers are beginning to examine what happens when generative AI assumes more of those “human” responsibilities. A 2024 study by Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon University found that workers who relied more heavily on generative AI reported less critical evaluation and independent reasoning at work. Although the study focused on adults rather than K-12 students, it raises important questions for education. If adults become less likely to critically evaluate information when AI consistently performs the thinking for them, what might that mean for adolescents whose reasoning skills are still developing?

I use AI almost every day. It helps me brainstorm, challenge my thinking, locate research and consider perspectives I might have overlooked. But AI never replaces my judgment. I still evaluate the evidence, make the decisions, and write the final product.

That’s the difference between AI as a learning partner and AI as a learning replacement.

The Evidence Extends Beyond My Classroom

What I’m observing in my classroom isn’t happening in isolation.

According to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, only 30% of eighth graders performed at or above the “Proficient” level in reading, while one-third scored “Below Basic.” Reading achievement remains below pre-pandemic levels, meaning many students are entering high school with diminished comprehension, vocabulary, and analytical reading skills.

Those numbers matter because reading comprehension underpins every academic discipline. When students struggle to interpret complex texts, evaluate evidence, or construct meaning independently, the temptation to let AI do that cognitive work becomes even greater.

Higher education is reporting similar concerns. Faculty increasingly describe incoming students as less prepared to read complex texts independently, construct evidence-based arguments, and sustain analytical writing.

This summer, Brown University economics professor Roberto Serrano made headlines after noticing students earned an average score of nearly 96% on a take-home midterm, far above the course’s historical averages. Suspecting that many students had relied on generative AI rather than demonstrating their own understanding, Serrano replaced the traditional take-home final with a proctored, in-person exam. The average score fell to under 49%. This exposed an uncomfortable reality: Polished work completed outside the classroom does not always reflect what students can independently explain, analyze, or apply.

While this happened in a college, it is not far from what K-12 educators are experiencing in their own classrooms. This incident at Brown should signal to K-12 teachers and leaders that we are responsible for ensuring students succeed beyond graduation in postsecondary settings like college, career training programs, military service, or the workforce.

If our students arrive at their postsecondary environments unable to think critically, independently explain, or defend their own thinking, we must engage in introspective work and ask ourselves a difficult question: Did we, as K-12 educators, properly prepare our students for the next phases of their lives and the intellectual demands that await them?

AI is not responsible for this; we are. And we should welcome the challenge to push ourselves as educators to be intentional in our teaching and designing of learning experiences that will help develop our students’ ability to engage in higher-order thinking, resilience, and cognitive stamina before they step onto a college campus or other postsecondary environments.

Schools themselves are beginning to recalibrate their relationship with technology.

Across the country, districts have expanded handwritten assignments, paper-based assessments, technology-free instructional blocks, and restrictions on personal devices after educators reported improvements in attention, discussion quality, and independent reasoning. Even within my own school community, students are expected to put their phones into locked pouches for the school day.

Ironically, while many schools have implemented phone-free policies to reduce distractions, students often spend the remainder of the day learning almost exclusively through laptops and tablets.

Perhaps the issue isn’t technology itself, but how much thinking we ask students to surrender to it. And maybe a question to consider: Did we move too fast integrating AI technology into our school communities, and are we still learning about it?

What This Looks Like in My Classroom

Over the past year, I have realized it is imperative that my students learn about artificial intelligence alongside digital citizenship, including the importance of using AI safely and ethically. As their educator, I want them to understand that AI is meant to support their learning and become their thought partner, not be the primary thinker and creator.

Before opening a computer, let alone an AI tool, they annotate texts independently, discuss ideas with classmates, gather evidence, and develop an original claim. They wrestle with uncertainty because productive struggle isn’t a barrier to learning; it’s the mechanism through which learning occurs. Only after students have established their own thinking do I invite AI into the conversation.

Instead of asking AI to complete an assignment, students use it to generate counterarguments, identify gaps in reasoning, suggest additional textual evidence, or offer alternative interpretations. They compare AI-generated responses with their own, critique each response’s strengths and limitations, and decide what strengthens their work. The final decision always belongs to the student, as does the ability to think critically about the information they are assessing.

I’ve also begun intentionally reintroducing practices many classrooms have quietly abandoned, not because they’re nostalgic, but because they build cognitive endurance. Students complete handwritten brainstorming, annotate printed texts, participate in technology-free discussions, and periodically write entirely without devices. These are pro-thinking activities, not anti-AI activities.

I also establish intentional boundaries around technology. Not every lesson requires AI or needs a screen. Some learning experiences that I develop are technology-free because students deserve opportunities to wrestle with ideas before technology enters the conversation.

So far, the transition hasn’t been seamless.

Students initially resisted and became frustrated when I would say “no” to them getting a laptop to engage in the assignment and instead required handwritten planning before digital drafting. I often ask them to develop an argument in my ELA class before consulting AI. They had become accustomed to immediate answers and gratification, where productive struggle felt uncomfortable for them.

That feeling of discomfort isn’t always evidence that learning isn’t happening. Often, it’s evidence that it is. It’s what I often felt as I struggled with my math classes in high school and spent hours looking at formulas that my brain couldn’t compute. But the harder I studied, the easier things became.

Over time, I watched the same experience occur with my students. They became more willing to defend their reasoning because they knew those ideas belonged to them. They asked deeper questions. They worked with their peers and revised more thoughtfully. They self-assessed before they jumped to AI to evaluate their thinking. But most importantly, they began trusting their own thinking again.

From Digital Citizenship to Cognitive Citizenship

Digital citizenship should also include what I think of as cognitive citizenship: understanding when technology strengthens their thinking and when it quietly replaces it. That means teaching students to interrogate AI rather than accept its responses at face value.

I encourage students to ask:

Is this response accurate?
What evidence supports this claim?
What perspectives are missing?
Does this actually answer my question?
Would I have reached the same conclusion on my own?

These questions shift students from passive consumers to active evaluators. AI becomes another perspective instead of an unquestioned authority.

The Future Depends on What We Choose to Preserve

It’s important to keep in mind that education exists to cultivate thinkers and develop growing minds capable of questioning, evaluating and creating answers.

The future of education isn’t choosing between old-school instruction and new-school innovation. It’s knowing when each best serves students. Some of our oldest instructional practices, like handwritten drafting, discussion, annotation, sustained reading, and productive struggle remain some of the strongest builders of cognition. Rather than abandoning them, we should pair them with AI in ways that amplify, rather than replace, human learning.

Because while AI can generate an essay, it cannot wrestle with uncertainty, defend an argument to its peers, or discover an idea through persistence. Those moments remain uniquely and beautifully human. And those are exactly the moments educators must continue to protect.

As Male Teachers Vanish From the Classroom, Schools Look for Ways to Bring Them Back

Ed Finkel — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Men account for about 23% of elementary and secondary teachers in public schools, down from 30% in 1988, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. This statistic prompted the Male Educator Network & Policy Institute (MEN), the American Institute for Boys and Men and the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago to survey male teachers about what attracts them to the profession — and what keeps them there.

Why Men Become Teachers

MEN recently released the results of an online survey of 145 practicing male teachers, which precedes a more comprehensive report to be released in the fall. The survey revealed that 78% of participants went into the profession to make a difference in children’s lives, and 74% said education can make the world a better place. Among men who worked with children when they were teenagers, 75% agreed that experience influenced them to become a teacher.

Many survey participants said others encouraged them to join the profession: 86% said a former teacher encouraged them, and 60% had a male teacher encourage them. Of those who were encouraged by a male teacher, 69% found this to be a “very” or “extremely” effective recruitment strategy. Although only 25% encountered recruitment specifically targeted toward men, 72% said it helped to convince them to join the profession.

Curtis Valentine, founder and president of MEN, says these results underscore the importance of male mentorship. “We see men in the profession as a good place to start [recruiting] — to speak highly of education to your students, to speak firsthand about what it means to be a teacher,” he explains. “[It’s also important] for communities and families to give young boys opportunities to get involved in the lives of those younger than them as camp counselors or as babysitters.”

Jeffrey Bradbury, a middle school digital media educator in Connecticut who began his career as a music teacher and orchestra leader, says that his elementary and high school orchestra teachers were major influences. “I always say I wouldn’t have the life I have without those two,” he notes. And he hopes to pay it forward to his male students. “I try to find a couple from the herd each year and push them in the right direction,” he adds.

More than half of the survey participants agreed that financial aid or loan forgiveness specific to the major (55%) and mentorship from other men during student teaching (52%) was or would have been helpful during the recruitment process. Many also cited various job perks as reasons for entering the profession: 72% valued a work schedule compatible with their family and personal life, 68% cited reliable income and benefits, and 60% expected job security and a steady career path.

How Male Teachers Are Treated

When men enter the teaching profession, many don’t feel welcomed or like they can be their authentic selves, Valentine says. “Those who do push through feel left out or feel like they’re marginalized,” he adds. “How do we build brotherhood around teachers, especially men, who are underrepresented in many districts? How do we build community across districts, across states and across the country?”

MEN has launched chapters on college campuses to help build that community of male education students. Some say they’re the only male education students in their schools, Valentine notes. That minority status continues once they get their degrees and head out into the working world, he says. “When you get into a school building, stereotypes abound that men have to push up against,” he explains. “Do you teach gym? Are you more disciplinary and less nurturing? Can you teach early childhood?”

Tim Needles, a technology integration specialist at Smithtown Central School in New York and a former art and STEAM teacher, says that he is used to female-dominated environments but hadn’t realized how much the percentage of male teachers has declined. “There’s obviously a general teacher shortage,” he says. “The occupation is just not as secure as it once was.... The job has also become way more politicized than it used to be.”

From early in his 27-year career, Needles, winner of a 2024 ISTE “Making It Happen” award, recalls an “old boys’ club” in which many men were recruited upward into leadership, which he theorizes might have been “one of the alluring factors” in past decades that kept some males in the profession. But he doesn’t want to resurrect that dynamic.

“I was never included in that, but I did see it,” he admits. “Now, things have become more democratic. I celebrate female leadership, but it’s interesting, when you look at the data, how many fewer men there are.”

Why Recruiting and Retaining Male Teachers Is Difficult

Economic factors make some young teachers hesitant to remain in the profession, observes Bradbury, whose wife is also a teacher. “In many households, one person is a teacher, but not both,” he notes.

Cole Turner, director of teaching and learning at Concordia International School in Hanoi, Vietnam, has known men who left the profession for higher pay or prestige. He says having men involved in districts’ recruiting processes would help.

“[It could help] to show better pathways for advancement, if that’s something that would potentially hold somebody back — if they’re not seeing the big payoff further down the line,” he reasons. “If there’s a little more intentionality around recruiting online in places where males tend to go more, whether it’s sports-oriented or something like that, it could be a way to attract more men.”

As someone who helped set up the new teacher orientation in a previous district, Bradbury also believes proper welcoming is vital for any teacher, but especially those in the minority. “Whenever [new male] teachers walk into the building, I’ll always say, ‘Hey, how are you doing?’ Setting up a system with a buddy or a mentor is vitally important,” he believes.

The ability to serve and be recognized as professionals is important to male teachers, argues Michael Harvey, director of artificial intelligence in teaching and learning at Lytton High School in Gisborne, New Zealand.

“It’s definitely not the money. The money is OK in New Zealand, but it’s not amazing,” he says. “The idea of serving my community, I see that as being important. . . . And also, it’s the professionalism: the idea of keeping teacher agency at the heart. You’re in control of your classroom rather than government edicts around how to teach.”

Benefits of Male Teachers

According to research analyzed by The Hechinger Report, a teacher's gender does not meaningfully alter academic or behavioral outcomes for young students. But many believe male teachers provide students vital mentorship — a role that is deeply rewarding for the men themselves. Atlanta-based education consultant James Campbell, who taught history for nearly 20 years, remembers a coach and math teacher who had a particularly positive influence on his life. “I wanted to be that person who filled the gap for students who might be struggling, as people did for me,” he recalls.

Campbell felt a calling to be a role model for the boys in his classes, and says parents appreciated “that this person cares about my child, and they’re going to help my child be successful.” He recalls parents over the years who expressed gratitude to him, saying, “It’s good to have a man in the classroom space.”

At one school, Campbell was the only Black male teaching a core subject area, and one colleague said to him, “It’s important that our students see a Black man in a position of authority, as a teacher,” he notes. “Schools need to make sure they’re generating some type of belonging, and you’re not just hiring someone so you’ve ‘got one of them,’” Campbell adds. But he advises male teachers to make sure they’re not fitting the “drill sergeant” stereotype.

“We’re not going to get respect just because we’re men,” he says.

EdSurge Welcomes Top Journalists and Educators to Advisory Board

EdSurge Staff — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

EdSurge announced six new members to its Advisory Board, among them a mix of experienced journalists and education leaders.

Todd Frankel, Patrick Harris II, Nneka McGee, Ramona Schindelheim, Avery Thrush and Manoush Zomorodi have joined the board, each bringing a wealth of experience and expertise. The board will serve as a vital resource for the EdSurge newsroom, offering strategic insights and industry perspectives across all areas of coverage.

“Partnering with such a talented, versatile group of journalists and educators is a huge win for EdSurge and our readers,” says Sarah McKibben, EdSurge Editor-in-Chief. “With their unmatched expertise, this board brings both national perspective and deep classroom understanding to our newsroom. They will help us tackle pressing challenges like AI policy while ensuring our early childhood and K-12 coverage remains relevant, cutting-edge, and grounded in real-world impact.”

Designed to maximize impact while respecting members’ time, the board acts as a strategic, high-level advisory body. In accordance with the Institute for Nonprofit News standards, board members provide strategic guidance while holding no editorial influence or veto power on published content.

Meet the Advisory Board

Todd Frankel is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter at The Washington Post. The D.C. native has previously worked at newspapers in Missouri, Washington, West Virginia, Kentucky.

Frankel brings award-winning journalism experience to the board, particularly in the role of business and economics in all areas of life. He anchored the lead story in a series that won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for coverage of the AR-15 rifle's role in mass shootings and American culture.

Patrick Harris II is a storyteller and educator on a mission to ensure humanity is centered in the future of education. A former middle school teacher and dean of students in metro Detroit, Harris was named a 30 under 30 Honoree from the International Literacy Association in 2021 and an EdSurge Voices for Change Fellow in 2022-23. His book focusing on new educators, “The First Five: A Love Letter to Teachers,” was named a finalist for Best Professional Audiobook by the Audies. Harris is currently a doctoral student studying popular culture at Michigan State University.

Having previously written for EdSurge, Harris hopes to use his new involvement as a board member to support EdSurge’s efforts to highlight student and teacher innovation.

“I deeply respect the work of EdSurge and its commitment to editorial independence,” Harris says. “I deeply appreciate the care EdSurge has for teachers and educators and how it comes through the compelling stories they report on and uplift.”

Nneka McGee is an educator and researcher who taught middle school mathematics and served as a district administrator. As part of her doctoral studies, McGee completed research on the impact of artificial intelligence in K-12 learning environments.

Most recently, McGee served as project lead and principal co-author of “Responsible Assessment in the AI Era” and “AI + Learning Differences: Designing for a Future with No Boundaries,” published by Stanford Accelerator for Learning. Her latest work, “AI for Young Learners: Balancing Tech Use with Authentic, Off-Screen Experiences,” was released as a jump start guide by the International Society for Transforming Education in early 2026.

“I understand the importance of offering informative content that helps create a better understanding of an ever-changing landscape. The EdSurge Advisory Board provides an opportunity to be part of the conversation,” McGee says.

Ramona Schindelheim is an award-winning journalist and storyteller covering the future of work and pathways to economic mobility. She is a Top Voice on LinkedIn and her monthly newsletter, The Future of Work(ers), features reporting and interviews on the programs, initiatives and people helping American workers prepare for and find quality jobs and economic mobility. Ramona has worked in national and local news, including at ABC, CBS, NBC, CNBC and The Wall Street Journal.

Schindelheim brings unique perspective and expertise on work readiness and the need for educators to meet the moment. She decided to join the board “to help shape the narrative around the future of work and the role education must play in preparing learners and workers for the changing economy.”

Avery Thrush is an education policy analyst and writer, currently working as a LEE Fellow at the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. After spending her early career as a sixth-grade science teacher, Thrush has led community organizing efforts and contributed to state-level policy initiatives related to artificial intelligence in education, school funding and strengthening career-connected education. She was selected as a 2022-23 EdSurge Voices of Change Fellow.

Thrush brings versatile expertise in the education field, from rural and Appalachian education to public schools as engines of democracy. She joins the board with the hope of elevating the voices and expertise of students and teachers, since they are the closest to the challenges facing education today.

Manoush Zomorodi is an award-winning journalist, author, and host of NPR’s “TED Radio Hour,” whose work explores how technology is changing the way we think, work, learn and live. Her latest book, “Body Electric: The Hidden Health Costs of the Digital Age and New Science to Reclaim Your Well-Being,” grew out of a groundbreaking NPR–Columbia University public health project involving more than 20,000 participants.

She is also the author of “Bored and Brilliant: How Spacing Out Can Unlock Your Most Productive and Creative Self,” and her TED talks on the attention economy and the physical effects of technology on our bodies have been viewed more than 7 million times. Zomorodi hosts NPR’s “Body Electric” podcast, a six-part series on the physical toll of digital life and how to reclaim our bodies. A 2025 Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center resident, Zomorodi has won two Gracie Awards and a Webby Award and was named one of Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business.”

Zomorodi brings her expertise in the effect of media and tech on behavior and health to EdSurge’s edtech coverage.

“I respect the work of the group and its readers immensely and want to support them [as they] figure out this next chapter for education and tech,” Zomorodi says.

Department of Education Issues Long-Awaited Edtech Guidance for States and Districts

Ira Apfel — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The U.S. Department of Education today issued new guidance about educational technology usage in the classroom but left rulemaking to states and school districts.

Edtech should ensure that “technology use is purposeful, instructionally sound, and contributing to measurable student outcomes,” writes Assistant Secretary of Elementary and Secondary Education Kirsten Baesler in the Dear Colleague Letter. “Responsible design is the floor. Not only do we need to know if the tool works, but if it works; why does it work, for whom does it work, and under what conditions.”

Industry observers welcomed the guidance, noting that it addresses a growing concern among educators that edtech too often fails to include verifiable evidence around learning outcomes.

“It is heartening to see the Department of Education emphasize that responsible design and product certification is merely the ‘floor,’” says Jean-Claude Brizard, president and chief executive officer of Digital Promise.

“For too long, successful edtech adoption has sometimes been measured by access, log-ins, or frequency of use,” adds Helen Crompton, executive director for the Research Institute of Digital Innovation in Learning.

Guidance for States and Districts

The letter encourages states and districts to:

Distinguish between “recreational” and “instructional” technology
Evaluate edtech on outcomes and instructional value, not just screen time
Incorporate evidence of effectiveness into procurement, especially products that have conducted randomized controlled trials (RCTs)
Establish edtech implementation and outcome reviews
Support efforts to help educators “integrate technology effectively into instruction”

The department’s guidance praised Arkansas, Indiana, Louisiana, Michigan and Texas for “exploring contracting models” that rely more on “performance measures” and less on “product adoption or usage metrics.”

“The key to effectively implementing the guidance is to avoid defining ‘evidence’ too narrowly,” explains Crompton. “Independent evaluation is important, but an RCT is not the only meaningful form of evidence. The same technology can produce very different results depending on the teacher, subject, age group, amount of training, and how it is integrated into instruction.”

Guidance for Edtech Vendors

Meanwhile, the department encourages edtech providers to:

Design products that support “high-quality instruction and meaningful student engagement with teacher and parent input”
Incorporate evidence of effectiveness through independent evaluation and RCTs
Minimize unnecessary screen exposure while maximizing instructional value in design
Support educators with implementation resources and professional learning
Continuously improve products using classroom evidence, parent feedback, and student academic outcomes

“Vendors should view this guidance as both a clear call to raise standards and an invitation to partner with the field in a deeper way,” says Brizard. “Moving beyond basic engagement or usage metrics gives developers a real opportunity to demonstrate meaningful learning outcomes.”

In addition, states and school districts should expect edtech providers to:

Publish independent evaluations of student learning outcomes “whenever feasible”
Share effective classroom practice lessons
Provide information about product capabilities, limitations, and performance

Screen Time in Focus

The guidance pays special attention to device screen time and draws a distinction between “educational value rather than screen exposure alone.” Noting that edtech increases learning opportunities for rural students, students with disabilities, and home-bound students, Baesler writes that edtech “should not be evaluated solely by the amount of time students spend using it.”

“The guidance rightly shifts the national conversation away from a reductive debate over screen time and puts the focus where it belongs: instructional value, real classroom and school context, and evidence of impact,” Brizard says.

Adds Crompton, “This distinction is particularly important for rural students, students with disabilities, and others for whom technology may provide access to learning opportunities that would otherwise not be available.”

Laissez-Faire Federal Approach

Notably, the education department’s guidance declined to offer new rules; instead, it expressly delegated implementation to states and districts – an approach that not everyone agrees with. “I would like to see a national floor, but not necessarily a national ceiling,” Crompton says. “There are some expectations that should not depend on which state a student happens to live in. Student privacy, accessibility, transparency, responsible use of student data, and basic protections around the use of educational technologies are examples where greater national consistency is valuable.”

“When technology rules vary wildly, we inadvertently widen equity gaps — leaving some students prepared for college and modern careers while others fall behind,” adds Brizard.

Ultimately, schools should start with the learning need and the outcomes when evaluating edtech. “Educators should feel validated in demanding that technology serve their pedagogical goals, not the other way around,” says Brizard.

Read the full guidance.

Assignments, Invoices, and the AI Fix

EdSurge Staff — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On This Week with EdSurge, two guests look past the classroom to find where artificial intelligence quietly adds up. One traces the cost of AI to the assignment page, the other to the electricity bill. Together they raise a question few schools have fully worked through, what an AI-first future actually costs, and who ends up paying for it.

Could Rethinking the Assignment Outsmart AI?

Michael Hernandez had spent years teaching educators how to redesign their assignments through his book, his workshops, and his conference sessions. He wanted to reach more teachers than he could ever sit with in person, so he decided to build something that could do some of that work for him. There was one problem. Michael had not written a line of code since high school, so he turned to a method called vibe coding, describing what he wanted in plain language and letting AI build it. What came out of that process, and what it taught him about the traits every assignment needs, is where the conversation starts.

What Is the Real Price Tag on School AI?

Mi Aniefuna took a different route into the AI conversation, one that starts far from the classroom. His reporting follows the technology back to the data centers that power it and the costs that come with them. Districts weighing an AI rollout are often thinking about curriculum and instruction. Mi wanted to know whether they were also thinking about the invoice, and what happens to a budget once the bill starts to grow with every use.

Listen to the episode:

Stories Mentioned in This Episode

I Used AI to Build AI-Resistant Assignments by Michael Hernandez

Can Schools Afford an AI-First Future? by Mi Aniefuna

This Week with EdSurge is a weekly podcast from EdSurge. Subscribe to the EdSurge newsletters for more news and analysis on education and technology.

The Case Against the Classroom Cellphone Crackdown

Dan Clark — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 2025, my home state of Missouri passed a law, Senate Bill 68, that prohibits students from possessing any electronic communication device from the start of the school day until the end of the school day.

“It’s simple — cell phones have no place in Missouri classrooms,” Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe posted on X, formerly Twitter.

It has become a concerning cycle in education: When any new technology becomes prevalent in our kids’ world — from TV to video games, and computers to the rise of AI — policymakers’ first instinct is to ban the technology rather than attempt to understand it.

A complete cellphone ban is a missed opportunity. Educators have heard and can easily understand many of the reasons a ban on cellphones makes sense in our classrooms. But as a middle school civics teacher in Missouri looking to engage students in real-life stories concerning media literacy, politics, and advocacy, the recent laws enacted to completely ban smartphones from school buildings are concerning. We may just be taking a tool away from our students instead of using it to help them connect with the broader world around them.

I believe there is room, and perhaps even benefits, in thinking more critically about how and when these new tools, including smartphones, could be used in the classroom to provide real and relatable learning opportunities.

Hanging on the Telephone

I first want to admit that my opinion here may be unpopular, especially among my fellow teachers. It is very easy to understand the reasoning behind the bans and crackdowns on phones in classrooms.

The first and most obvious reason is the potential for distraction phones provide. I will be the first to admit that I become distracted by an errant notification, a social media post, or even the same clip from a favorite TV show for the millionth time on my phone. Many of the apps on our phones are designed to hijack our attention, and children and teenagers are the most vulnerable to this.

Second, a phone is, by definition, a communication device. The rise of issues such as cyberbullying and inappropriate digital content makes using these devices more complicated in the classroom than, say, using a Chromebook or an iPad.

Growing up, as I did, in a time when the best cellphone could play the super-simple game Snake, I admit the sheer power and scope of what smartphones can do today is shocking. This is especially true for those writing technology policy. Our media also presents the theory that the proliferation of smartphones among young people has negatively affected mental health and attention spans.

However, one thing missing from many of these conclusions is the idea that it is not the tool itself, but the content consumed, that has an impact. What if we took the time to show students how this tool could be used to build positive connections, create new and exciting ways to express themselves, and connect with information in ways never seen before? This past year, I got to experience how the absence of this technology could affect the authenticity of learning.

Living in the Real World

Like every Missouri school after the new cellphone ban law passed, my school immediately clamped down on phones in the building. We already had our own general school rule about no phones, but this year, the consequences and enforcement were more intense and closely monitored.

We told the students, “Sorry, it’s against the law now,” and went on with our lives. However, at the beginning of this past year, I began teaching a new, yearlong program called Youth 2 Lead. In this program, my eighth-grade students were tasked with identifying and selecting a problem in their community; conducting outreach to community members, citizens, elected officials, and policymakers; and ultimately taking action to address the issue.

When I asked students how they thought they could best reach people and make their voices heard, they invariably said the best way was through social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram.

Here is where I first felt that the full-on phone ban in my state maybe wasn’t as simple as I first believed. I now had to teach students to “be authentic, use your voice and your resources to make a change in your community,” while simultaneously telling them, “don’t use the tool you are most comfortable with — which would likely be the most powerful tool in your arsenal.”

As our project progressed, we identified an issue and wanted to survey our community. Again, I asked, “How do we collect the opinions of those in our community we don’t know?”

We came up with two options: create a social media account, or create a survey and either spread it online or use public data to mail postcards and wait for replies. We went with option No. 2 — not because we thought it was the best, but because the limitations of our classroom technology made the first choice impossible. Again, we were forced to concede authenticity in our learning for policy.

Finally, toward the end of our project, after working all year to develop a plan, two very determined students said, “Mr. Clark, none of this matters if no one knows we are doing it. We have to have a social media presence.” I shared their concern.

Yes, we could put it on our school’s Facebook page and newsletter, but that is only seen by our own small community. These kids had worked hard, and they wanted everyone to see their passion and results. So I said, “Well, what if I make my own Instagram account, you tell me what you want on it, and I will upload things in my free time?” They were deflated.

Sure, that would work — and is what we ended up doing — but they wanted to own it, wanted to make it work, and had a much better sense of how to do it than I ever would.

Because of a policy made by non-educators in government, my students and I were not able to have the flexibility and tools to show off our best creativity. Why can’t I, as a teacher, choose when and how technology is used in my classroom, especially if I believe it will enhance learning?

Doom or Destiny

So if I am arguing that a phone ban is not the best solution, what should be done? There are many other ideas that could be implemented to provide both students and teachers with flexibility and to refute the one-size-fits-all solution of a statewide ban.

We have seen companies such as Yondr step in to create products that students can use to store their phones when not needed. These protective pouches can be unlocked by the teacher when needed and locked again at other times, helping eliminate distractions.

Schools can implement turn-in systems where students turn in their phones at the start of class and retrieve them after. Most importantly, in my opinion, schools can and should take a more active role in teaching digital citizenship and literacy — not just from an academic standpoint, but as a key learning standard for kids growing up in a digital world.

Many people argue that we should go back to teaching cursive to all students. I’d argue that our kids will be using smartphones a million times more often than writing in cursive.

Like it or not, our students are part of a technological system more advanced and connected than we would have dreamed of at their age. The very device we are so afraid of is also the one they will most likely do a vast amount of their future work on.

Yet, we are telling them in school that it has no value. However, when our students have the freedom and trust to engage with the world and especially technology authentically, we can be a part of showing them how to use these tools for good. For instance, our Youth 2 Lead campaign eventually led to interactions with our city council member, who interviewed our students for social media.

Do phones cause distraction? Yes, absolutely. But I’ve also had to tell many students to stop reading during class because it distracted them from learning, and I’m not banning books anytime soon. Kids are kids; they will find a way to distract themselves no matter what.

I think the bigger issue is our fear of a changing world getting in the way of our duty to help guide our students into that world. We can use digital citizenship lessons, technology classes, and creative behavior management to uplift and encourage students to use technology appropriately. If we constantly downplay the importance of the powerful technological tools that are central to their experience, we aren’t helping — we are becoming a distraction.

Early Childhood Educators Are Leveling Up at Community Colleges

Jamaal Abdul-Alim — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When the Washington State Department of Children, Youth, and Families (DCYF) revamped its childcare rules in 2019 to require educators to earn more credentials, Aida Rodriguez decided to pursue her bachelor’s degree in early childhood education. When it was time to choose a school, she chose the less common path.

Rodriguez earned her bachelor’s degree in 2022 from North Seattle College, becoming one of about 16,000 students who earn a bachelor’s degree from a community college each year, according to the Community College Baccalaureate Association (CCBA). That makes up less than 1% of all bachelor’s degree recipients.

With help from the DCYF’s Early Achievers scholarship, which covers up to $9,000 in tuition and books for bachelor’s degrees in early childhood education, Rodriguez feels the payoff for her community college-issued bachelor’s degree was “for sure” worth it.

“I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for my bachelor’s degree and the connections that I made networking in the early childhood education field,” Rodriguez says. She is currently a professional development specialist at The Imagine Institute, a nonprofit in Washington that helps people start their own family home childcare business.

Later this fall, Rodriguez is slated to serve as an adjunct at her college alma mater, leading a cohort of early care providers who are pursuing their education in Spanish.

Employers See Little Difference

Rodriguez may not be the only one who sees the value in community college degrees. A new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that employers view job candidates who get bachelor’s degrees in early childhood education from a community college about the same as those who hold traditional baccalaureate degrees.

The researchers compared callbacks for fictitious job applications from early childhood educators who earned their bachelor's degrees at community colleges and traditional four-year institutions. When reviewing the warmth of the messages that employers left, the researchers found that employers “generally” view community college bachelor’s degree applicants “similarly” to traditional four-year institution bachelor’s degree holders.

“We find no evidence that employers systematically discount [community college baccalaureate] degrees relative to traditional bachelor’s degrees,” the study states.

The researchers explained that this finding could represent community college baccalaureate degrees as a more accessible and affordable way for students to earn those four-year degrees without having to transfer to a four-year university.

Since 2024, the number of community colleges that offer a baccalaureate has increased from 187 to 214, according to a report that the CCBA issued in May. Likewise, the report found that the number of community college baccalaureate programs rose from 678 to 763.

Establishing which route is less expensive — community college or a four-year college — can be difficult, the researchers noted, because “sticker-price comparisons substantially overstate the affordability advantage” of community college baccalaureate programs.

The cost of earning the degrees affects students through both personal expense and earning potential. This is especially the case, the researchers wrote, in a labor market that is “both extremely tight and highly constrained by salary budgets,” in which employers may prefer candidates with community college baccalaureate degrees because they have “comparable credentials at a lower expected cost.”

Julie Ferin, executive director at the National Association of Community College Teacher Education Programs, says the findings raise important questions about how employers understand credentials within a field shaped by persistent shortages, low wages, high turnover and varied educational requirements.

“For the field, the study reinforces the importance of helping employers understand community college bachelor’s degrees, the preparation behind them, and the workforce needs they address,” Ferin says. “It also points to the value of studying outcomes beyond initial employer contact, including hiring, compensation, advancement, and retention.”

Despite questions about the costs and payoffs, proponents of community college bachelor’s degree programs say the findings bolster their cause.

“Part of the philosophy or mission behind the community college baccalaureate degree is it gives students the opportunity to get additional education often times at the same institution where they started their educational journey and located close to where they live,” says Cheryl Calhoun, president and CEO of the CCBA. The association supports community colleges that “build and sustain high-value, career-focused baccalaureate degrees.”

“It’s a more accessible opportunity for them,” Calhoun says.

Leveling Up for Early Childhood Educators

For early childhood educators, Calhoun says, the bachelor’s degree is a way to “level up” and become master teachers or directors.

“They need more than just a two-year degree or just a certificate,” Calhoun says. “They need the additional skills that they gain from that degree,” she says, listing supervisory and management skills as skills students would acquire with a bachelor’s versus an associate degree.

Rodriguez says she chose to get her early childhood education degree at North Seattle Community College because the school’s cohort model — in which students go through the program together rather than individually — “really resonated” with her.

“A lot of the time you learn more from your peers than you do from the actual content,” Rodriguez says, noting that “people actually working in the field” enriches the learning experience.

Now that Rodriguez is on the teaching side, she uses the insight she gathered from her peers to educate the childcare teachers of the future.

“One of the things I tell my students in class is, I learn from them as much as they might be learning from my content, and they will learn from one another based on their lived experiences [and] their cultural perspective[s],” she says.

College Admissions Testing is Returning to Mixed Reactions

David Weldon — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Several leading colleges and universities are reinstating SAT or ACT scores as part of their admissions requirements after years of being "test blind" (not looking at standardized test scores, even if submitted). The move has revived the debate over the fairness and value of such testing.

Institutions initially removed the test score requirements during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since testing centers were shutting down, many students didn’t have access to testing or test preparation, so dropping the requirement seemed only fair. When schools eliminated their standardized testing requirement, they either went “test optional” or “test blind” (also called “test free”).

Dartmouth College, Yale University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are leading the reinstatement trend, each arguing that requiring test scores helps them spot deserving hidden talent in underfunded high schools. These schools also say they can better assess student readiness with standardized test scores than with grade point averages alone.

Columbia University will become the final Ivy League school to bring back testing requirements for the 2027–28 admissions cycle. Meanwhile, more than 1,300 faculty at the University of California have signed letters asking that test requirements be reinstated in that system.

College Board is tracking the full list of colleges and universities now requiring SAT or ACT test scores with student applications.

Impacts of Dropping Test Score Requirements

Schools have often complained about the impact of dropping test score requirements on admissions quality.

College faculty members have expressed concern that an increasing number of students are arriving on campus unprepared for college-level coursework. They have to teach the basics to some students who, they believe, should never have been admitted, says independent educational consultant Laurie Kopp Weingarten, president of One-Stop College Counseling.

“We’ve seen too many students enroll without the foundational skills needed to succeed in college-level coursework,” explains Kevin Krebs, founder of the college admissions consulting firm HelloCollege, who has over 20 years of experience advising students on what they can do to improve their chances of college acceptance. “That’s difficult for students, who can quickly become overwhelmed, and for faculty, who are often forced to spend more time filling academic gaps while still trying to deliver the curriculum. Ultimately, it can contribute to lower retention as students struggle to keep up.”

Immediate Impacts of Closing Testing Centers

After dropping test score requirements, many schools discovered that going “test optional” made their applicant pools bigger and their admission rates lower.

“That looks great on a press release. Once you’ve enjoyed that, going back is a hard sell internally,” says John Morganelli Jr., director of college admissions at Ivy Tutors Network and former director of admissions at Cornell University.

Application volume rose sharply at selective schools, Morganelli says. But removing test scores added more weight to the other parts of the application: essays, activities, letters of recommendation, course rigor. While that sounds democratic, the parts of the application that replaced the test score are the parts most sensitive to who has access to good resources. “I don’t think that trade was as equitable as it was advertised to be,” he explains.

Rising application rates and falling admission rates made highly selective schools look more competitive than ever. In addition, the average SAT or ACT scores for each school soared with the “test optional” choice because only high scorers submitted, discouraging many students from submitting applications.

“From the college point of view, without test scores, colleges had one less common measure for comparing applicants from schools with different grading scales, course offerings, and levels of grade inflation,” Weingarten explains. “Some were more comfortable with that than others. That’s why some colleges will remain 'test free' or 'test optional' while others will return to requiring test scores.”

The Value of Standardized Tests

Reinstating SAT and ACT test score requirements aids student applicants in another important area — securing scholarships.

That is a hope of Annie Bao, a high school senior at Auburn High School in Auburn, Alabama. Bao has taken the ACT test and plans to apply to several colleges and universities. Alabama allows every student to take the ACT test for free, ensuring that college-bound students have at least one test score to include with their application.

Still, Bao understands the debate over the full value of such testing.

“I do not believe standardized tests completely represent a student’s readiness for college,” Bao says. “However, they do provide useful information as part of a student’s academic profile, such as their ability to reason quickly, solve problems, and adapt under time constraints while responding to a variety of questions.”

Svetlana Kekutiia agrees. As regional director of admissions at online high school Crimson Global Academy, she says highly selective universities have an enormous amount of information to evaluate, and more credible academic data generally allows them to make better-informed decisions. A standardized test can provide useful evidence of academic readiness, particularly when interpreted alongside school context, curriculum rigor and grades.

Asking the Right Question

According to Marsha Familaro Enright, president and program director at Reliance College in Chicago, the “test optional” debate has been framed poorly.

“The question isn’t ‘are these tests predictive?’ They predict first-year grades reasonably well. The question is ‘predictive of what?’” Enright asks. “They don’t predict whether someone can think independently, hold an argument together or change their mind when the evidence shifts. Those are the capacities employers and graduate programs keep saying are missing, and no bubble sheet has ever measured them.”

Enright says an SAT score tells her how a student performs alone, against a clock, on questions with exactly one right answer. Almost nothing she asks of a student resembles that. She believes that schools reinstating the test score requirement are optimizing for a metric they can defend publicly — not necessarily for the students they say they want.

“I’d add that, for a small institution, the tradeoff looks completely different than for a large one,” Enright explains. “When you admit a small cohort, you can afford to actually get to know applicants. A score is a rationing device for schools with more applications than they can read. That’s a legitimate operational problem, but we should be honest that it’s an administrative solution, not a pedagogical one.”

Benefits of Reinstating Test Score Requirements

Reinstatement of test score requirements, supporters argue, should pay immediate dividends. Krebs says standardized tests provide admissions offices with a common benchmark across thousands of high schools and can help identify high-achieving students whose transcripts alone may not tell the full story. Strong scores also remain an important factor in merit scholarship decisions at many institutions and third-party scholarship providers.

Testing has never been a completely level playing field, Krebs says. Students from under-resourced schools often have less access to quality preparation, so scores should be considered alongside coursework, essays recommendations and personal context.

In addition, Krebs says the biggest mistake he sees students and families make is assuming that “test optional” means test irrelevant.

“Many selective colleges have remained test optional in name, while a majority of admitted students still submit scores,” Krebs notes. “Families should pay attention to enrollment data rather than the label alone.”

Reinstating the test score requirement can also address the stress among students who couldn’t decide if they should submit their scores in a test optional scenario.

“As an IECA member [Independent Educational Consultants Association], I had to spend time with each applicant deciding whether to submit,” Weingarten explains. “When students asked admission officers directly, they would often receive a response such as, ‘If you feel your score represents your ability, then submit.’ Students didn’t know what to do with that answer. With ‘test required,’ that stress, and how to possibly ‘game’ the system, disappears.”

Test Scores as a Part, Not the Whole

As schools reinstate SAT and ACT test requirements, they are focused on treating test scores as one piece of a holistic admissions process rather than a sole measurement for admission. The goal is to use both testing and holistic review together in a way that provides meaningful context.

“It’s important that colleges continue to use a standardized test as one data point among many, and not make decisions solely based on test scores — which they don’t do,” Weingarten explains. “It should never outweigh four years of classroom performance, but it can help confirm that a student’s transcript accurately reflects their academic preparation.”

This is where holistic reviews are important, where colleges consider test scores as one part of the application while also considering grades, extracurricular activities, community service, essays, and other accomplishments, student Bao says.

“The objective should not be to identify students who are simply good at taking the SAT. It should be to build the clearest possible picture of a student’s academic potential,” Kekutiia explains.

On AI Policy, Students Have Plenty to Say

David Weldon — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Adults from seemingly every corner of society are weighing in on artificial intelligence policies in the classroom. But what do students have to say about it?

A recent event offered some clues, as student leaders from around the nation proposed a set of national guidelines for the use of AI in schools at the America’s Youth AI Festival in Boston. The three-day event brought together student leaders, educators, and school system leaders from across the country to discuss acceptable AI use in schools.

The event was hosted by Day of AI, MIT RAISE, The School Superintendents Association (AASA) and the Edward M. Kennedy Institute. The festival concluded with “student senators” from across the country debating a first-of-its-kind national AI policy for K-12 classrooms.

At the end of three hours of lively debate, student senators framed a multi-faceted bill that will be presented to the 10,000 member-districts in the AASA for further discussion and debate. Transparency, literacy and security were among its key provisions, and the goal is that the student-created regulations will inspire adult leaders to act in similar fashion.

“We hope the STUDENTS First Act becomes a practical starting point for policymakers, school systems, educators and families, rather than a finished piece of legislation to be adopted word for word,” says Dan Rae, head of business development and strategy for Day of AI. “In the coming weeks and months, our combined team plans to share the policy with school leaders nationwide, gathering feedback through webinars and other discussions, and giving students opportunities to continue refining and advocating for their recommendations.”

Jeffrey C. Riley, executive director of Day of AI and former Massachusetts commissioner of elementary and secondary education, and Sarah Yezzi, chief education officer at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute, were the facilitators of the debate. Student and educator representatives from Alaska, Florida, Hawaii, Kansas, Maine and Massachusetts participated, offering perspectives on both the opportunities and challenges artificial intelligence presents in today’s classrooms.

The Need for Student Involvement

The students identified a number of areas of concern for young people using AI: academic integrity and cheating; compromised learning and critical thinking; and threats to privacy, security and mental health. Students were concerned about AI being used to create false images or deepfakes of themselves or classmates that could then circulate rapidly online or within the school community. They agreed these are areas that need regulation.

“Several emphasized the importance of expanding equitable access to AI tools and resources, particularly for students who may lack support outside of school,” Yezzi explains. “Others raised concerns about overreliance on AI, the need to preserve critical thinking skills, and the importance of teaching students how to use AI effectively through strong prompting and digital literacy. Participants also discussed the need for thoughtful policies and infrastructure to support responsible implementation in schools.”

As federal and state lawmakers address the call for tighter regulations around artificial intelligence, the student leaders hope that their policy adoptions will help shape clear and consistent AI policies that reflect the experiences and priorities of students themselves.

Experiencing the Wide Range of AI Policies

Among the school leaders participating was Molly Kensy, principal of Tech High School, in St. Cloud, Minnesota. She attended with two student leaders: senior Jiech Jeich and junior Bihmanji Acho. All three were looking to learn how AI policies are developed in other communities and share their recommendations.

“Our students were able to represent our state and school district. We were able to share our current district and state work around AI,” Kensy explains. “As an administrator, I have been able to network and learn from other states about what they are focusing on regarding AI literacy and supporting educators through this rapid change.”

Acho says he wished he had more time to speak with fellow senators, as everyone had unique perspectives on the task at hand. His role on this committee was to amend, strike, and debate policies throughout the bill, especially with his fellow administrative senators.

“Everyone I spoke to was essentially on the same page; we need AI policy now,” Acho says. “We all just had different ways we wanted to go about it. Some knew more about how it affected children. Some looked more into the environmental impact. Some even had knowledge on AI accuracy rates. We all had our vast knowledge, but throughout the conference we were able to conjoin our knowledge from different scopes to aid one another in our policymaking.”

Using a Senate Format for Effective Exchanges

The Kennedy Institute team designed the AI policy debate program to resemble a Senate session, allowing students to discuss, debate and vote on their policy proposals for the use of AI in K-12 schools. Students worked in subcommittees, produced and voted on amendments, and engaged in floor debate. The final debate on Sunday was followed by a roll call vote.

The students brought their own experiences with AI usage to the debate and discussed a range of ways in which their schools are approaching policy. Some communities are drafting or have adopted policies, many have uneven access to AI tools and unclear guidance, and some schools have banned the use of AI altogether.

A majority of student senators acknowledged that the bill is not perfect, but it is an important first step in AI regulation, Yezzi explains. The conversation was less about the pros and cons of AI itself, and more about the pros and cons of different methods of regulation and how far to go.

Riley emphasized that students should play a leading role in shaping how AI is used in education, describing the initiative as an opportunity to better understand how young people view AI and how it can be implemented responsibly.

“For decades, we’ve treated technology in education like a silver bullet, believing that if we just put a laptop in every student’s hands, learning would transform. It never did,” Riley says. “AI is different. It gives us the ability to personalize and differentiate learning for every student in ways that were never before possible.”

Recommendations That Garnered Strong Support

Acho and Jiech say some debated proposals got especially strong support among student senators.

“The first recommendation that caught my ear was proportional funding for every district, with a baseline minimum to limit economic disparities with AI. This amendment got a lot of my support,” Jiech says.

In the student section of the bill, student senators were tasked with finding the age at which schools should start integrating AI into classrooms. They decided that students should not use AI independently before ninth grade.

In a third recommendation, it was decided that students should also begin AI literacy in grades K-5. That was a point that Kensy also stressed, saying schools must learn to be adaptive as they develop thoughtful ways to educate young people and support educators as rapid change is happening.

“The last recommendation that stood out to me was a provision outlining federal funding,” Acho says. “This was one of the rare moments throughout the debating and brainstorming where I saw other senators thinking about accessibility. Their provision made various clauses in the bill a real possibility for underfunded and underprivileged communities.”

A ‘Not Perfect’ Bill Emerges

At the end of the debate, the bill was passed through the student senate, which Jiech calls “a really great stepping stone as we continue to navigate our way through this very new technology.”

The majority of the students acknowledged the need for more guidelines for the use of AI, citing personal safety, data privacy and environmental impact as areas that need to be regulated. Several students focused on the potential of AI tools and the need for the U.S. to be competitive in the global economy, though there was a sense that there should be guardrails.

They also saw the potential benefits of AI for brainstorming, research and self-directed learning, Yezzi explains. Most of the students did not want to prohibit AI usage as a whole or inhibit technological innovation. But they want to see AI responsibly incorporated into education for themselves and future students as the technology develops.

Rae explains that one of the biggest surprises was how strongly the students emphasized protecting authentic learning while still allowing thoughtful uses of AI. The bill would prohibit students from using AI to produce written or artistic assignments, while allowing older students to use it — with teacher permission and disclosure — for activities such as brainstorming, studying and editing their own work.

The students also notably emphasized fairness and due process: schools should not rely solely on AI-detection software, and students accused of misuse should have access to human review and an appeals process.

“We weren’t necessarily surprised by the students’ thoughtfulness and level of nuance, but we definitely appreciated their ability to adroitly navigate difficult tensions inherent in these questions,” Rae says.

The K-12 Silo Won’t Survive AI — But Our Relationships Might

Beth Yirga — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Have you ever been in a room where the energy was palpable, only to have the air leave the room in an instant? I found myself in that type of room this year, right when AI entered a conversation about designing a program focused on career exploration and social-emotional learning.

Last August, our community was happy to learn that we won the Delaware Pathways Middle Grades Grant (DPMG) for $150,000. Our team’s objective was clear: to create an equity-centered bridge between middle school and high school that would guide our students to explore careers, ground themselves in a sense of belonging, and develop the academic and social-emotional skills they will need to envision their future. Yet the mission before us was vastly different for this generation of students, as AI drastically changes modern industries and workforces in real time.

Over the next two months, my task was to lead the charge in gathering teachers, students, family members, administrators, board members and community partners. We knew that if we were to succeed, we had to be guided by the spirit of our school, even in the face of uncertainty.

The Question That Changed Everything

It was a rainy October morning when we convened at Freire Charter School, an inclusive social justice school based in Wilmington, Delaware, that serves students in grades 8 through 12 and is named after Paulo Freire, the Brazilian education philosopher.

Freire’s belief that education is a choice between maintaining conformity or acting as “the practice of freedom” guides our school’s core value that people, especially students, can critically transform their world. But first, we had to figure out how to do that in the face of such rapid technological change.

I was sitting at the long table in our conference room alongside a diverse team of lifelong learners, ranging from Generation Z to Baby Boomers and everyone in between. We all held unique vantage points — from former superintendent to eighth-grade class president to mompreneur — that were valuable to the discussion. Yet our lively conversation came to a halt when a student asked, “If AI will do everything, then what’s the point of learning for us?”

The room instantly went silent, and that silence became our catalyst for change.

Looking Beyond the Silo

The consensus following our first meeting in October was that we had to learn for ourselves what various industries were facing from the rise of AI, and that if we stayed inside the traditional K-12 education silo, we would never find the answers we needed. So, I left the building — not physically forever, but intellectually and professionally — to seek conversations with people working in sectors already grappling with AI’s impact through technology, higher education, science, workforce development and entrepreneurship.

That journey led me to the Women Who Code Summit in New York. Surrounded by hundreds of women and gender-diverse professionals working at the forefront of technological innovation, I was the only educator in all of the conversations I entered.

Standing in a room filled with software engineers, executives and founders, I asked a simple question: “What should schools be doing right now to prepare students for an AI-centered future?” The responses surprised me.

Technology executives, engineers and innovators shared the same concerns educators were voicing back in Wilmington. They worried about workforce shifts, ethical implications and what it means to be human in an increasingly automated world. Most importantly, they wanted to help.

The reality is that the challenges facing today’s students are too complex for any single sector to solve independently. This reality is especially true for students from historically under-resourced communities.

Examining Access to Relationships

Research consistently shows that access to social capital, mentorship networks, and career exposure plays a significant role in educational and economic outcomes. A study in the Journal of Youth & Adolescence cited that “strong relationships are critical for emerging adults’ postsecondary success, and that strong workforce and education support programs that provide access to this type of social capital are one avenue for facilitating success.”

Yet these opportunities are often distributed inequitably. Students from economically developed communities frequently benefit from professional networks and career-connected learning experiences that are unavailable to many low-income students, students of color and first-generation college-bound students. Under the eligibility criteria for federal programs such as Title I, Title IV, and Title V, more than 47% of our student body is classified as economically disadvantaged.

As a first-generation college graduate raised in America by working-class Ethiopian immigrants, I experienced the educational inequities my students currently face in a pre-AI world. In either era, when educational inequity is discussed, the focus is often on curriculum, assessment and funding. Those conversations matter; however, we must also examine access to relationships.

Who gets exposure to professionals? Who sees themselves reflected in future careers? Who has opportunities to imagine possibilities beyond what they currently know? These questions are at the heart of the work we are building through Freire Wilmington’s eighth-grade academy.

Designing for Human Connection

As a DPMG grant recipient, our program must align with Delaware’s Middle Grades Career and Technical Education exploration standards, which build upon essential human skills: empathy, belonging, identity development, culturally responsive instruction and career exploration. We asked students what it looks like for us to practice being human every day, and they shared: being outside more, connecting with nature, using their hands to create, helping others in real time and teaching each other.

As a planning team, we began to envision school days with daily outdoor hikes and morning meetings, incorporating Teen CERT (Community Emergency Response Team) certifications, visiting various high schools and colleges, attending an opera, heading down to Legislative Hall at the Delaware State Capitol and more. The goal is not simply to prepare students for jobs. It is to help students develop healthy self-images, meaningful community connections and confidence in their ability to navigate future opportunities.

Our students, alongside our educators, parents, board members and school administrators, are creating opportunities to explore who they are becoming before they are asked to make critical decisions about high school pathways and postsecondary plans in an AI-driven world.

Preparing students for this AI-driven future is not primarily about teaching them to use tools. It’s about incorporating AI into our everyday lives while strengthening the human capacities that technology will never be able to replace:

Curiosity.

Collaboration.

Critical thinking.

Ethical decision-making.

Empathy.

Adaptability.

Community-building.

These are the durable skills that will matter regardless of how technology evolves.

Radical Possibility in the Classroom

Black feminist traditions have long taught that collective liberation depends on community, imagination and shared responsibility. This is not abstract theory; rather, it is a practice rooted in how people survive, resist and build futures together.

As Charlene Carruthers argues in “Unapologetic,” movements for liberation are sustained through disciplined collective care and the ongoing work of building relationships grounded in shared struggle and mutual responsibility. Author bell hooks extends this idea into educational spaces, reminding us that “the classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy,” where learning can become a practice of freedom rather than compliance.

Both authors inform us that survival and progress emerge through connection, not isolation. The educational challenge before us is not simply how to teach students about AI. It is how to build ecosystems of support that help young people navigate uncertainty with confidence.

I am guiding our eighth-grade academy team to build stronger partnerships with employers, higher education institutions, community organizations and emerging industries so they show up in our classrooms to create pathways for connection. We need students engaged in authentic conversations, grappling with current problems and using their voices to contribute to the changes occurring in rapidly shifting fields. From CEOs to electricians to realtors to welders, our students will be able to ask real questions of the current workforce navigating this AI shift, and problem-solve alongside them.

Navigating Uncertainty Together

As we wrap up this summer learning from leaders in technology, science, higher education and workforce development, I am reminded that uncertainty does not have to produce fear. In our community, uncertainty inspired collaboration.

The future our students will inherit is still being written. Our responsibility is not to predict every technological change ahead, but to ensure that every young person — especially those historically excluded from opportunity — has the relationships, confidence, skills and sense of belonging necessary to shape that future themselves.

Whatever the future holds, our students and this work remind us that the most important technology in the classroom isn’t AI; it’s the human connection we build to navigate these uncertain times.

Supporting Early Childhood Educators

EdSurge Staff — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Every early educator was once new to the field, and every young child will eventually encounter artificial intelligence somewhere in their life. On This Week with EdSurge, two guests examine what the adults responsible for those youngest learners actually need in order to do their jobs well. Nicol Russell, chief academic officer at Teaching Strategies, has spent 20 years watching where that support breaks down. Dr. Nneka McGee, founder of Muon Global, has spent her time studying what happens when the newest technology meets the youngest students.

Treating Early Educators Like Professionals

Russell built her career as a teacher, a center director, and a state administrator in Arizona, and she has watched talented educators leave the field for reasons that had little to do with the children in front of them. Her latest piece for EdSurge opens with a teacher who stayed for fifteen years, and through that story asks a harder question about who gets treated as disposable and who gets treated as a professional making a career choice. She also points to new research connecting teacher retention to how curriculum, assessment, and coaching work together, or fail to.

AI Literacy That Starts With a Conversation

McGee caught up with our team at ISTELive in Orlando, fresh off a session where she asked a room full of educators to sculpt Play-Doh robots. She has spent years studying how artificial intelligence shows up, or does not show up, in early childhood classrooms, and she argues that adults are not quite having the right conversation about screens. Her approach treats five year olds as capable of understanding the tools already sitting in their homes, as long as the introduction starts with people instead of devices.

Listen to the Episode:

Stories Mentioned in This Episode

We Talk About Whole Children. What About Whole Educators? by Nicol Russell

AI for Young Learners (Jump Start Guide) by Nneka McGee

This Week with EdSurge is a weekly podcast from EdSurge. Subscribe to EdSurge newsletters for more news and analysis on education and technology.

Reading Scores Continue to Drop for Many Middle Schoolers

David Weldon — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For the most part, public school students have made significant strides in returning to subject proficiency levels from before the pandemic, according to a new study by NWEA. But a disturbing exception is the lowest-achieving students in middle school, whose reading scores have suffered greatly.

The NWEA study finds that, not only have reading scores not stabilized for this group in the six years since the start of the pandemic, they continue to decline significantly. The study draws on data from the MAP Growth National Dashboard and contains test scores from more than 20 million K-8 students from 30,000 schools. NWEA looked at sixth grade reading scores from 2017 to 2025.

This trend is nothing short of “alarming,” says Megan Kuhfeld, director of growth modeling and data analytics at NWEA. It raises a significant challenge to educators and state lawmakers on how to reverse the trend.

“The evidence presented here suggests that existing early-literacy reforms, though essential, are not sufficient to support students whose reading difficulties persist in upper elementary and middle school,” the NWEA study says. “Addressing these widening gaps will require state leaders to shift from isolated interventions toward coherent system-level approaches that align curriculum, assessment, instruction, and professional learning across the K-8 continuum.”

But while the NWEA study places emphasis on what lawmakers should do to ease the problem, a true fix ultimately comes down to curriculum, assessment, and intervention measures adopted at the district and individual school level.

Why Many Middle Schoolers Struggle

The lowest-achieving middle schoolers are still showing pandemic-era losses because the interventions that are driving recovery elsewhere — such as strong K-3 literacy reforms — were built to work at those specific ages, says Deanna Fogarty, vice president and head of reading science at structured literacy provider Wilson Language Training. Those gains are real and worth celebrating. But for students who reach fourth grade still needing support with such foundational skills as decoding and morphology, there isn’t yet an equivalent system waiting for them.

Standards, screening, and educator preparation for grades 4-8 haven’t caught up to what most schools have built for K-3, Fogarty says. So this isn’t a story about a new problem. It’s a reminder that the next stage of literacy reform needs to extend the same coherent approach into the middle grades.

Agreeing with that assessment is Gemar Mills, chief academic officer at College Achieve Public Schools, a public charter school network headquartered in Tinton Falls, New Jersey. He says the lowest-achieving students often keep slipping because their unfinished skills accumulate, while academic demands continue to rise.

“A student who enters middle school with weak decoding or fluency not only struggles in English. The student struggles to access science, history, mathematics word problems, and other subjects that rely on text,” Mills explains.

Schools often respond to low scores without diagnosing the source of the problem, Mills says. A student with weak decoding receives general comprehension practice. A student with a limited vocabulary receives more independent reading without enough direct instruction. The intervention does not match the need, and the gap grows.

“Students who need the strongest instruction also often experience the most fragmented instruction,” Mills adds. “They lose grade-level learning to attend remediation, move between disconnected programs, or receive intervention only after failure becomes severe. The issue is not a lack of ability. The issue is whether schools identify needs early, respond precisely, protect instructional time and maintain high expectations.”

Unique Middle School Intervention Challenges

Middle school reading intervention is uniquely hard because the gaps are longer term, the texts are more complex and responsibility becomes less clear, Mills explains. Students move through several classrooms, and each teacher might assume someone else is responsible for teaching reading.

In the early grades, schools build the foundation for reading. Students learn how sounds connect to letters and words as they develop fluency, vocabulary, knowledge and comprehension. In middle school, educators often have to repair parts of the foundation while students are already expected to read complex grade-level material. Mills says middle school intervention must therefore accomplish two goals at once: addressing unfinished skills, and preserving access to the knowledge and intellectual work that students need now.

Scheduling creates another challenge, Mills explains. Schools need protected intervention time without removing students from science, social studies, electives or other experiences contributing to their knowledge and engagement. They also need teachers trained to determine whether a student struggles with decoding, fluency, vocabulary, language comprehension, background knowledge or several areas at once.

Elementary-Level Foundations Are Key

One such school that builds a strong elementary foundation is Frederick Elementary in Frederick, Oklahoma. As a former seventh-grade English teacher, several factors contribute to the drop in reading proficiency for struggling students in middle school, according to Laura Yeager, principal at Frederick Elementary.

“First, students who struggle with basic decoding skills cannot create meaning from the more challenging texts that are required as students move into middle school,” Yeager explains. “Second, limited vocabulary creates a situation where students either skip words entirely, infer the wrong meaning, or break the flow of the reading if they choose to look up a word, which they usually do not.”

Students then lose pertinent information from the reading, whether it is informational text or narrative. This also leads to a third factor, which is that critical reading skills are lacking, says Yeager. Students are so used to instant information that they often accept it at face value. Critical reading requires stamina for reading and the ability to use higher-order thinking, which is not easily developed, and is hindered by instant information.

Students who are already behind going into middle school are no longer getting extra help in decoding words, phrases, and sentences, adds Danna Akin, reading specialist at Frederick Elementary. The work becomes more challenging, and these students begin to shut down with the struggles they encounter. They tend to get more and more behind because of the high frustration level they are experiencing.

Common ‘Get it Right’ Elements Among Schools

Getting school literacy right has many common elements regardless of the population or location of an individual school. Common elements in a reading program include instruction built around rich texts, complete books, vocabulary, knowledge, discussion and evidence-based writing.

Schools should use diagnostic assessments to identify why individual students may struggle, Mills says. Intervention should match each identified need, and occur during protected time. And it should supplement rigorous instruction, not replace it.

Teachers should receive ongoing training and coaching, Mills says. Leaders should visit classrooms, examine student work, review progress data, and respond when instruction fails to produce results.

The most common thread is disciplined execution, Mills explains. Schools close literacy gaps when every educator understands the plan, possesses the skills to execute the plan, and accepts responsibility for the results. Strong literacy outcomes do not happen by accident. Schools build them deliberately.

Steps Schools Can Take

Educators should also understand that, while technology has created valuable opportunities to support learners, it has also made it easier for students to rely on text-to-speech tools and other features that can unintentionally reduce reading proficiency, says Jennifer Nakamoto, science chair at online high school Crimson Global Academy.

“These tools have an important place, particularly as accommodations, but they should complement—not replace—the cognitive process of reading,” Nakamoto explains. “Students develop stronger comprehension when they actively decode, question, annotate, and reflect on what they are reading.”

First, for the most challenged students, Yeager says middle schools must screen for issues with basic decoding and multi-syllabic words and address them. Students who cannot decode accurately will consistently struggle with reading to find meaning and give up.

Second, structured vocabulary programs that explicitly teach Greek and Latin roots, affixes, and suffixes are needed and will help students with vocabulary, Yeager explains.

Third, educators should teach students how to engage with text. All students would benefit from direct instruction on how to use graphic organizers to help track information, ideas, and their own questions about what they are reading.

Yeager says one additional step would be to ensure students build their reading stamina. Giving students the opportunity for reading aloud, paired reading, and silent reading with appropriate grade-level texts will help build student attention and stamina which are necessary for the long passages used on state tests.

“Policy alone does not change outcomes — implementation does,” the NWEA study concludes. “Improving adolescent literacy will require transferring policy into classroom practice through high-quality instruction, targeted interventions, professional learning, and sustained support for educators. State initiatives … demonstrate a growing awareness of the adolescent literacy challenge and an increasing willingness among policymakers to act. These efforts represent important steps toward building the conditions necessary for meaningful and lasting improvement in literacy outcomes for older students.”

What Happens When AI Policy Meets a Real Classroom?

EdSurge Staff — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Every school district writing AI policy right now is making a bet about the future, often without much data behind it. On This Week with EdSurge, we look at that bet from two very different vantage points: one guest who spent a year studying policy from a distance, and another who helped write it from the inside.

Studying Policy From a Distance

Jody Britten spent the last year coding AI policy from more than 100 school districts across the country into a five-level framework, ranging from active promotion to outright prohibition. Her findings point to a system that leans cautious, and is often disconnected from the state guidance meant to inform it. What the numbers reveal about where most schools land might surprise you.

Building Policy From the Inside

Tambra Clark helped write her own district's AI governance policy in Birmingham from scratch, sitting on the very kind of committee Britten's research describes. What her committee discovered when they first sat down together says a lot about why so much AI policy in this country still has a long way to go.

Listen to the episode:

Stories Mentioned in This Episode

Study: The National AI Policy Landscape in K-12 Education by Jody Britten

Voices of Change Fellowship featuring Tambra Clark

This Week with EdSurge is a weekly podcast from EdSurge. Subscribe to EdSurge newsletters for more news and analysis on education and technology.

The Library That Sparked a STEM Revolution for Our Students

Tambra Clark — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For years, as a library media specialist, I took great pride in my role as guardian of the 20,000 books in our library, meticulously cataloging and protecting our collection. But after dedicating nearly two decades to education, I came to a vital realization: The most important chapters in our school’s history weren’t on our bookshelves; they were waiting to be written by the students themselves.

I’ve seen firsthand how easily innovation can get reduced to a one-time event: a quick photo-op, a splashy press release, or the arrival of a new shipment of shiny devices. It’s frustrating because that approach never lasts; it’s a temporary buzz that leaves the core of our instructional ecosystem fundamentally unchanged. The real problem is that our students deserve more than a “device drop.” They need and deserve a long-term commitment that actually reshapes how they learn.

That shift in perspective is what drives my work today. I’ve moved from being a gatekeeper of static resources to someone who actively creates a dynamic, student-centered environment. It is no longer just about having resources; it’s about ensuring they become the backbone of a sustainable, future-ready classroom experience.

The Quiet Before the Storm

For the first 10 years of my career, my roles ranged from teaching third and fifth graders to serving as a school technology teacher and a sixth-grade pre-AP reading and math instructor. Following 10 years across multiple grade levels and content areas, I transitioned into the role of a library media specialist, which soon became my entire world. My days were defined by the ebb and flow of students coming in to check out books and learn the literacy skills necessary to develop knowledge.

Parents, community members, and even fellow educators often referred to me as “just a librarian,” and while I wore that title with pride, I was acutely aware of the silent burden we carried. The library was viewed as a traditional hub for books and nothing else, leaving our students tethered to the past while the world raced forward in technology and innovation. Our students possessed inherent brilliance, yet they were consistently overlooked by a STEM narrative that rarely considered our zip code.

Society often operates on an unspoken assumption that technological breakthroughs belong exclusively to affluent districts or established tech hubs. Because our community didn't fit that traditional mold, the narrative bypassed us, systematically starving our students of the advanced tools and platforms required to translate their raw potential into tangible innovation.

Everything changed for us when I had a conversation with Beth Sanders, then vice president of Ed Farm. The nonprofit organization, headquartered right here in Birmingham, launched a strategic partnership with Birmingham City Schools (BCS). Their goal was clear: to boost educational equity by closing digital skills gaps across our district and region. While the strategic partnership between Ed Farm and BCS had already been established since 2020, I learned that my space, the South Hampton K-8 library, had recently been chosen for a complete renovation.

Beth Sanders approached me with this incredible opportunity, knowing that this project would be the first of its kind in the state of Alabama. Our discussion became the catalyst for completely reimagining the space. In addition to the physical Ed Farm spaces, educators and students benefited from specialized fellowships. Together, these initiatives pushed us beyond the status quo, ensuring we prioritized sustainable, future-ready learning over superficial technology adoption.

Students were also invited into the design process, and for the most part, they led the way. I sat back and watched as they traded ideas about robotics, green screens, and iPads. Witnessing them design their own future before a single wire was plugged in proved we were creating something much bigger than a state-of-the-art library — we were creating the library of innovation.

Becoming an Architect of Possibility

In 2022, we finally cut the ribbon on the first official Ed Farm space at South Hampton K-8 School, “The Library of Innovation.” Balloons were tethered to the doorways, camera crews maneuvered for the perfect angle, and city officials were buzzing with the promise of a new era. It was one of those “pinch-me” moments, seeing the last couple of years of dreaming and planning finally take physical shape for our kids. But when the local city council members, edtech partners, and school board officials headed home, the real, gritty, unglamorous labor of building capacity began. My mission shifted from being a keeper of books to an architect of possibility.

By moving past traditional keyboarding to teach coding, website architecture, and engineering principles, I equipped students to interrogate their environment and engineer solutions to the challenges they encounter in their own neighborhoods. Instead of just learning how to use software, they began leveraging creative programming workflows to design AI and Internet of Things-driven systems, such as functional tornado warning models, to address severe weather threats right here at home. Seeing them build these concepts proved that this space was doing exactly what it was meant to do: transforming students from passive digital consumers into true architects of possibility.

Over the course of the next year, the library had transformed into a dynamic laboratory. The hum of 3D printers bringing custom keychains and game remote holders to life became our soundtrack. The sharp whir of drone propellers slicing through the air replaced the static silence of the past. The intense, focused chatter of a student-led podcast recording of “Bulldog Talk on the Edge” became the new student voice. We purposefully curated this environment to break the traditional mold, challenging the students to completely redefine their expectations of the space and of themselves.

Defying the Narrative: From Participation to Mastery

In an urban environment, the STEM narrative is often restricted and expectations are frequently capped. This cap does not exist because of a lack of student capability but rather because of a systemic failure in how society views innovation. The narrative feels capped because the broader educational system frequently assumes urban students only need to learn how to participate in the digital world as consumers, rather than being equipped with the sophisticated coding environments and engineering principles required to master it as creators.

From the first day the library reopened, I watched the confidence of our students bloom. As they mastered the new tools, this newfound confidence translated into tangible success, resulting in a series of competition wins and vital funding for our school. They took that confidence and applied it to real-world problems.

During the 2024-2025 school year, they won the ALTEC Challenge for the “Hygiene Hub,” a vending machine solution for personal care products paired with a custom community app they coded.

Next, we won $12,000 in Samsung technology representing the state of Alabama in the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow competition with an upcycling machine designed to turn old clothes into hygiene products.

The momentum continued when three of our seventh-grade students won the Alabama state title in the eCYBERMISSION competition, earning $500 in savings bonds each for their innovation. This all happened in the span of one school year, cementing the fact that our students weren't just playing with STEM. They had become experts in their domain.

However, the ultimate validation of our shift came this past school year. In April, our students rose to become national finalists in Samsung Solve for Tomorrow, standing out as one of only 10 schools in the entire nation. They secured $50,000 in Samsung technology. The experience offered so much more: My students flew to Washington, D.C., and stayed on Capitol Hill to pitch an early-warning system for tornadoes they created for The Washington Post. Their presence on that stage, pitching for the $100,000 grand prize, was proof that their innovation belonged in the highest arenas of influence.

Redefining Excellence

How does a library, once defined by shelves of paper, become an incubator for national-stage innovation? It happens when you stop viewing technology as a product and start viewing it as a catalyst for human agency.

The gap between buying tech and building capacity is bridged by leadership that refuses to let the innovation end when the ribbon is cut. It is bridged by mentors who show students that their zip code does not dictate their capacity to lead. When you provide students with the right tools, these students don’t just keep up; they excel.

In the span of one year, my students transformed what it means to be a student in Birmingham City Schools. We proved that when students in urban, underserved neighborhoods are given the resources to match their ingenuity, the results are world-changing.

This library is no longer just a place to check out books; it is where students can rewrite their own narratives. The ribbons may be gone, but the ecosystem we built remains a living, breathing playground of innovation. We didn’t just join the STEM conversation; we changed it.

Teachers Forge Ahead on Integrating AI

Ed Finkel — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

New findings from Turnitin highlight the growing leadership role of teachers integrating artificial intelligence into the classroom, the demand for education-specific AI solutions, and the importance of guiding students toward using AI as a tool for learning rather than a substitute for thinking.

Based on data gathered during the first half of 2026 and an analysis of how students use the Turnitin Clarity AI writing transparency tool, the “Learning Integrity Insights Report Q2” revealed 48% of respondents reported that teachers and administrators take primary responsibility for AI implementation at their schools and districts, far more than do technology leaders (17%) and cross-functional committees (16%).

Educators say they found parallels from the data with their schools’ and districts’ initiatives and results to date. “We are always having to respond to determine, when new technologies come out, what are we going to implement, what are we not going to implement, and how and what will work well,” says Matt Moyer, principal at Rupert Elementary School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. “Schools are in different places. How do we respond? How do we best position ourselves? How do we work with our staff to get them up to speed?”

The findings were “heartening” to Antero Garcia, president of the National Council of Teachers of English, which earlier this year released an “ELA AI Framework and Feedback Form” to provide guidance on integrating AI into the classroom and when and how to opt out. “Some [teachers] are excited and want to explore the possibilities,” he says. “Some are not and rightfully have concerns. Students get the best learning opportunities when teachers are in control of what’s happening in their classrooms.”

Tim Needles, technology integration specialist at Smithtown (New York) Central School District, says he’s observed that administrators are more cautious with AI due to the social and political pitfalls, whereas teachers and department heads understand the need in a more direct way. As an adjunct professor at a couple of colleges, he wasn’t surprised at the finding that usage is more disparate in higher education because “the higher ed world, with AI, is a little bit like the Wild West now,” he says. “The policy is never the same anywhere.”

Moyer cautions that while teachers taking leadership is not a bad thing in and of itself, if school leadership is completely hands-off, that could lead to “disjointed implementation for a district,” he says. “You’d better get on top of this and have a plan as to what you’re doing and not doing with this. That’s an important point for people in my position as principals to understand.”

Education-Specific AI Needs

The Turnitin report also revealed that educators don’t see AI as worth the investment unless it has the flexibility to meet teaching needs, reflects how they design assignments by providing customization, provides transparency into how students are using it, and either saves them time or provides concrete benefits such as the ability to scaffold various types of assignments in a way that supports student learning.

Needles says AI tools have come a long way but still have a great distance to travel, and he takes new training nearly every year to understand their evolution and be able to lead his district in implementing the tools. In 2 or 3 years, “You’ll see a bit of a more consistent usage,” he predicts. “We haven’t even reached the tipping point with AI yet. It’s interesting to see the really high usage in secondary. The big through line is that teachers need education-specific AI.”

Perla Lujan, head of the social science department at the Prepa Anahuac private high school network in Mexico City, says her school uses Turnitin’s products, integrated into Schoology. But it’s challenging to keep up with the content of curriculum and preparing students for end-of-semester testing while also keeping up with AI tools and technology. “We do have these tools,” she says. “As was mentioned in the report — and I totally agree — all of us are worried about the use of AI, and how we can accurately detect that in our students.”

Bellwether Education Partners has heard similar testimony about the need for education-specific tools in conversations with principals, says senior analyst Marisa Mission, noting that her organization has published research on how AI is changing learning and AI use in schools.

“They typically produce better outputs,” Mission says of education-specific AI tools. “They align with better teaching practices that are simpler for educators to use. Not everyone has the time, capacity and training to take advantage of the most advanced AI models and frontier platforms. Meeting educators where they’re at matters.”

U.S. Students Offloading More Brainpower

The Turnitin data showed that higher education students in the U.S. were turning over their writing to AI — with 19% of submissions measured as more than 80% AI-generated — at roughly double the rate of peers in the United Kingdom (10%) and Australia (10%). But at the K-12 level, only 5% to 6% of papers reached that threshold in all three countries.

Michael Harvey, director of teaching and learning at Lytton High School in Gisborne, New Zealand, finds the international comparisons useful, although he notes that New Zealand’s results are likely very different from Australia’s given that the latter makes decisions at the state level, like the U.S., while New Zealand has a national education ministry. “I quite like the idea that the report has moved on to when and why students are using [AI], not whether,” he says. “It seems like a lot of students are using it for feedback.”

Student Desire for Feedback

The Turnitin data also reveal that students are most likely to ask for AI feedback during the drafting stage of an assignment (43%) vs. other points along the way such as proofreading (18%), getting started (11%) or researching (6%). Nearly three-quarters of those asking for drafting help (72%) wanted feedback like, “Am I aligned with the rubric?” or “How can I improve my paper?”

Moyer is concerned about whether students fully understand how to ask for feedback. “Prompts like, ‘Is my paper good?,’ aren’t going to help anyone,” he says, because they don’t produce specific enough answers. “Students don’t really know how to use this tool, even though they think they do.”

Meanwhile, Needles wonders whether the best and brightest students are the most afraid to use AI because they’re afraid of appearing like they cheated — and yet they will need to know how to use it to participate in the workforce of the future. “There are responsible ways to use it, especially in organizing your structure, in the early stages of writing,” he says.

Math Terrified Me When I Was a Student. That Made Me a Better Teacher.

Brenna Kirkpatrick — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I was in third grade when I started to fear math. Division and fractions gave me the worst anxiety. Every day when my teacher asked for my math homework, I’d say, “I put it on your desk,” knowing full well I hadn’t done it.

My siblings had no problem with math, but it was so hard for me that I wondered if I had a learning disability.

In college, I decided to become a teacher after discovering my love for working with kids at a daycare center. I began my first year teaching in the fall of 2024. I felt excited to teach fourth grade, but I also worried I wouldn’t understand all the math content I was supposed to teach and that I’d pass on my math anxiety to my students.

Honesty Creates Connection

When the fourth-grade teaching team met prior to the start of the 2024-25 school year, I confessed to my colleagues, who were all math whizzes, that I wasn’t very good at math and that it scared me. Instead of making me feel silly or stupid, they were so gracious and supportive. They said, “We’ve got you,” and they did.

As it turned out, we were all nervous because our district was rolling out a new curriculum. As we looked through the materials, I found it comforting to know that we’d all be learning and finding our way together. For once, I didn’t feel so alone in math. Being honest created a sense of connection with my colleagues. It helped us approach the new school year as a team.

Vulnerability Builds Trust

Fractions were another story. Research shows that many children have trouble with fractions, and my students were no different. I even brought in candy bars and broke them into pieces to make the abstract concept tangible, but I was met with blank stares.

I thought back to what I needed as a student and decided to be completely transparent. I admitted that I had struggled with fractions at their age and that it took me a while to learn them. Hearing that made my students feel so much better. They knew they could ask me questions and admit their confusion without judgment. My openness about my own math struggles made it safe for them to share theirs.

The next morning, one student handed me a note, thanking me for helping her understand fractions. I cried when I read it and realized that I had reached her in a way that not only helped her grasp the math but also helped her believe in herself.

I feel like I have become a more confident teacher through all of this, but I’m still figuring out how to reach kids who struggle (the kind of kid I used to be). Sometimes it does not click for them once in a lesson. It is a challenge because not all students respond the same way. Some kids need one-on-one support when learning a new skill. That’s hard for a teacher who has more than 20 kids in a classroom. My school added an interventionist this past year, and that was truly a blessing. She and I communicated consistently, and she was able to pull those who struggle and reach them in a different way. As a new teacher, I hope to learn and become better on how I can implement extra guidance inside the classroom on my own if there’s ever a day I don’t have the help from an interventionist.

Mistakes Are Part of Learning

I also talked openly with my students about how productive struggle in math is part of the learning process. When I was in school, I was so afraid of making mistakes on my math homework that I didn’t even try. But mistakes can play a powerful role in learning if we are brave enough to make them.

Students’ mistakes also provide a window into their thinking. I like to tell my students, “If I don’t see your mistakes, then I won’t know where to help.”

One day, I found one of my strongest students crying because she couldn’t solve a problem. I told her, “I’m not expecting you to leave here today knowing how to do this. I just need you to try.” She did, and afterward she said, “I thought I couldn’t do this. You told me I could if I kept trying, and I got an A on the test.”

When students feel safe enough to take risks and persevere, it not only builds their skills but also their confidence.

At the end of the school year, I literally gasped when we received our West Virginia General Summative Assessment scores. My class had the highest math scores of all the fourth-grade classes at my school.

I used to be ashamed of my math struggles, but I’ve learned how to turn my biggest weakness into my superpower. I’m now teaching third grade, the same grade where my math fears began. It’s amazing to think that I used to feel so lost, but now I’m the one helping students find their way. My students love learning math, and that has made me love teaching it.

Confidence in Yourself and Your Students

If I could share one piece of advice with other new or aspiring teachers, it would be to have confidence in yourself. Math is not so scary. It’s actually fun when you believe in yourself. Take a deep breath and say, “I can teach this lesson. I can do this.”

It’s equally important to believe in our students and actively encourage them every day. When my students are working through problems, I tell them, “Great job! I love seeing your work.” When they get the correct answer, I say, “Fantastic! You did such a good job.” If I see students struggling, I tell them, “Good work! Let’s try that one again. You’ve got this.”

Those words of encouragement — for our students and ourselves — keep us motivated and excited to do our best every day. Whether we’re teaching or learning math, we all want to feel capable and supported. When we set high expectations and believe we can succeed, amazing things can happen.

I Used AI to Build AI-Resistant Assignments

Michael Hernandez — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Artificial intelligence has wreaked havoc across secondary and higher education classrooms, leaving educators struggling to figure out how to create cheat-resistant assignments and assessments. While everyone is good at diagnosing the problem, no one seems to have a workable solution. So I designed a free tool to help teachers create uncheatable assessments and avoid the headaches of AI and academic dishonesty.

The Cheat Vulnerability Index

Based on the concepts from my book, course and workshops, I built the Cheat Vulnerability Index, a web app that lets teachers analyze their existing assignments to pinpoint strengths and weaknesses when it comes to vulnerability to cheating. Users upload an assignment, then get a custom report and suggestions for how to make improvements.

I came up with the idea when I noticed that educators struggled to take the ideas from my conference sessions and workshops and implement them in their unique learning contexts. Since I can’t always sit with everyone as they plan lessons or write a syllabus, I wondered how I might scale the concepts and strategies from my content leveraging the power of AI.

I needed to create a brand-new tool that didn’t exist before and to do so with no budget. So I learned to "vibe code," the method of using natural language in an AI model to create computer code. I hadn’t done coding since I used BASIC in high school, and it took me a while to figure out how it worked, and how to turn the code into an interface on my website.

I trained the index on concepts from my book Storytelling With Purpose: Digital Projects to Ignite Student Curiosity and a variety of other workshops and articles I’ve published as the pedagogical framework for the assignment analysis. The concepts, processes and strategies it produces are unique to my published work, and create suggestions through that research-based, classroom-tested lens.

Turns out, vibe coding is a lot like teaching: you begin with deep subject-area expertise (in this case, authentic learning and assessment), create a complex set of detailed instructions and processes for the AI agent to follow (a lesson or unit plan), define what “good” looks like (learning outcomes, standards and rubrics), and how to describe the concepts clearly to an audience (a learning artifact). I was stunned by how well the app turned out, and teachers who have tried it find it useful.

But the biggest takeaway for me is how this experiment revealed the ability of AI tools to remove barriers to learning and how they can facilitate deeper learning through the application of knowledge.

Despite what they say, not everyone can code — including me. So why should coding (or the cost to hire a team of coders) get in the way of my ideas and creating a useful tool to help others? In the same way, how does a student’s writing ability, processing speed or facility as a public speaker affect their grades if our assessments are in-class essays, timed tests or presentations and debates? It got me thinking about the obstacles students face expressing their knowledge and how traditional assessments can get in the way of assessing them.

Students may cheat or cut corners for a lot of reasons, not all of which have to do with moral depravity. Designing uncheatable assessments requires more than adjustments to a single assignment — it requires us to expand our definition of success and to rethink what counts as achievement and how we measure it.

Creating Uncheatable Assessments

The Cheat Vulnerability Index is a quick diagnostic that gives teachers and faculty feedback on a single assignment. But to have meaningful, sustained resilience while maintaining rigor and high standards across an entire school year, teachers need to rethink what and how they assess, and foster cultures of integrity that go beyond any one test or unit.

Cheating happens when two conditions are met: when an assignment is cheatable by design and when students have the incentive to cheat.

Assignments like tests, worksheets or essays are all vulnerable to academic dishonesty simply by their design. AI can write essays, and students can share answers, for example. How can the format of an assignment minimize opportunities for cheating or rely on a combination of multiple metrics that make it less possible?

No matter how well an assignment is designed, if a student really wants to cheat, they will. So instead of trying to surveil students and make our job as educators about policing them, we can create assignments that disincentivize cheating before it becomes a problem in the first place.

There are three ways to do this.

Three Uncheatable Assessment Traits

1. Originality. When we expect students to create the same answers at the same time, we’ve set ourselves up for cheating (with or without AI). Authentic learning experiences result in one-of-a-kind learning artifacts that no other student could copy or use AI to complete entirely.

2. Personal connection. To be truly invested in learning, everyone wants to know “why this matters.” Allowing ways for students to connect curriculum to their lives or community helps them personalize an abstract concept and disincentivizes cheating because they care about the outcome and know it will help them or people in their community. Students should also have multiple opportunities for agency throughout the process.

3. Purpose. What’s the point of students’ hard work? If an assignment ends up in the trash, it sends a powerful message about the value of their effort and your curriculum. Instead, have students create learning artifacts that are designed for users or audiences beyond the classroom. Give students a good reason to complete an assignment with integrity and accuracy. Real stakes beat clever rules.

What’s Next

The problem of academic integrity is more fundamental than preventing students from cheating. AI has forced us to recognize that the old proxies we used to assess students are no longer reliable as evidence of learning (if they ever were), and requires us to redefine what counts as evidence of understanding. Like the Cheat Vulnerability Index I designed that didn’t require me to know the vocabulary or grammar of coding, my learning artifact still required me to build subject-area expertise, identify goals and limits, interrogate what good learning means and take responsibility for the outcome of my work.

As mathematician Terence Tao says about AI disrupting mathematics research, it’s like we’ve been trying to drive a car on outdated roads made for horses and pedestrians, and it’s revealed potholes and bumps and cracks. AI is now giving us faster cars that lead to big traffic jams and accidents.

The destination hasn’t changed, just how we get there. What we need isn’t better ways to catch students cheating, but a new pedagogical road forward.

High Schools Need a New Model for a New Economy

Scott Laband — Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

America’s teenagers are struggling to find work as businesses hire at record-low rates for the traditional summer jobs teenagers depend on. But a job scooping ice cream may be just the beginning of teenagers’ struggles with the job market; the outdated secondary education system in the United States is leaving students behind and setting them up for failure after graduation.

Falling Behind in More Ways Than One

The statistics on American education are bleak. Reading and math scores are the lowest they’ve been in 20 years as post-COVID-19 effects continue to reverberate. Chronic absenteeism continues to plague student success, despite improvements in some districts. And the majority of high schoolers say they feel unprepared for life after graduation.

Although conversations about student success often devolve into political games and finger-pointing, the fundamental challenge for high schools isn’t a lack of caring educators or committed communities.

The biggest challenge is that students simply don’t see the point in what they’re learning. In an age where every answer to every test is available in an instant, school begins to feel abstract, performative and detached from adulthood, rather than a pathway into it.

Filling the Skills Gap of the Modern Economy

The rapidly changing nature of entry-level work has exposed the weakness of the traditional education model, which sets students on one of two paths: toward college or not.

But today, it’s not one future that students need to be prepared for; it’s all of them. Career paths are more fluid, and the modern economy increasingly rewards adaptability over routine, skills over seat time and applied learning over passive credit accumulation.

What this means for high schools is that the demands of education need to change — to focus on exposure and engagement rather than just college preparedness.

Colorado has identified these demands as “The Big Three” and is working to ensure that school districts provide opportunities to earn college credit and industry-recognized credentials and engage in meaningful work-based learning that is connected to a broader career pathway.

In addition to helping students identify or rule out potential career paths, meaningful work-based learning helps students connect classroom learning to adult goals. Algebra becomes less abstract when it’s tied to engineering, construction estimating, advanced manufacturing or healthcare analytics. Communication skills can be practiced in realistic settings with supervisors, clients or patients.

School stops feeling like preparation for another level of school and starts feeling connected to life itself.

In many communities, educators report stronger engagement, improved attendance and greater persistence among students who participate in career-connected pathways — not because the work is easier but because it feels consequential.

Employers see another benefit. Durable skills — such as collaboration, reliability, initiative, communication, judgment and problem solving — are difficult to teach through worksheets alone. But they are the skills that matter in the workplace and determine long-term success.

As artificial intelligence plays a larger role in the workplace, these durable skills become what determines whether someone gets hired, promoted or eventually let go. Entry-level jobs (including those summer jobs) are increasingly being eliminated, meaning the opportunity for young people to learn these skills on the job is vanishing.

By integrating these lessons into their curriculum, schools can help the labor market fill the growing gap for workers with the prerequisite skills, despite the lack of entry-level jobs. Students get to learn and develop these skills in real-world situations, and they gain something increasingly essential in today’s labor market: social capital. Students can graduate with networks, exposure, and insights that have historically taken years to unlock.

Learning From Real Examples

States have started to move toward more holistic, real world-focused learning frameworks. According to one analysis, 39 states have adopted some sort of curriculum focused on helping students connect their coursework with their career goals; seven states have made durable skills a part of their graduation requirements; and 25 states clearly distinguish between attending college and pursuing a trade as legitimate postgraduation paths.

What unites the states that have done this effectively — such as Tennessee and Colorado, for example — is the willingness of school leadership to collaborate with businesses and workplaces to understand their job demands. In these states, high school students can earn transferable college credit while participating in apprenticeships, internships and career-connected learning, and schools are not financially penalized for not meeting rigid seat-time requirements. Instead of locking students into just one future or just one measure of success, high schools must focus on preparing students for all of it.

When educators, employers, colleges and state leaders work together, high school education can be more than a checked box; it can support students in a way that feels vital and important to the rest of their lives.

America needs a new approach to preparing students for life after high school. Not one based on sorting students into winners and losers or college-bound and career-bound but one focused on helping every young person discover purpose, build skills and gain momentum toward a meaningful future. The strongest high schools of the next generation will not simply prepare students for tests or graduation. They will prepare them for lives of contribution, opportunity and continued learning in an economy that never stands still.

Why Would Anyone Opt for Virtual Kindergarten?

Mi Aniefuna — Fri, 31 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

This fall, my daughter will attend kindergarten virtually. My theory is that she’ll actually have less screen time. My wife and I have been going back and forth about where to send her for school (and what type of school) for the past couple of years. My wife always envisioned curating our children’s learning environment from the comfort and safety of our home. The first time I heard it, I shrugged it off — happy wife, happy life. Sure, yep. We’ll deal with it when the kid turns five. But the kid has now turned five, and kindergarten has arrived.

I was a latchkey kid. Born and raised in the mean streets of Trenton, New Jersey, I grew up walking to school as early as kindergarten before being shipped from gifted and talented to private school — I got in one little fight and my mom got scared and said, “You’re going to that good private school in Bucks County in Pennsylvania.” Because of this incident, I’ve always been a proponent of social learning. My way of schooling taught me independence, conflict resolution, consistency, and resilience.

Virtual school, especially for early elementary, is still statistically uncommon. But after the COVID-19 pandemic school shutdowns between 2020 and 2021, the numbers of homeschool and virtual school students continue to rise. The National Center for Education Statistics estimates in its 2023 Parent and Family Involvement Survey that the percentage of students who received instruction at home increased from 3.7% before the pandemic to 5.2% during the 2022-23 school year. That’s approximately 1.7 million students between the ages of 5 and 17. The NCES, however, acknowledges that this number is difficult to measure accurately across multiple years.

Anecdotally, I often talk to other parents and friends who are also busy chasing toddlers around grocery stores and playgrounds about how we choose our children’s educational and social environments. Regardless of what type of schooling they choose, most parents I come across significantly weigh the tradeoffs and put a lot of thought into these decisions. Sometimes we end up commiserating over our shared fears and worries that we’re making the right decisions for our children.

I watched my niece attend kindergarten from a screen, saw her social life diminish to a dozen Zoom boxes, and observed her generation’s growing reliance on social media for connection. I remember how hands-on we had to be to keep her learning consistent. She also received direct instruction from multiple adults, so she learned to quickly correct writing the letter “e” backward and to write in a straight line. She also finished up her year of dance classes on Zoom, and I remember the teacher’s frustration of trying to teach six-year-olds a proper pas de bourrée online.

So much of Gen Alpha and Gen Z came of age on a screen. Some of their most important moments of adolescence were facilitated in a virtual environment. There is a flurry of data showing the negative consequences of the generation of COVID kids. Knowing all of this, we still decided on virtual kindergarten anyway.

What convinced me to suspend my judgment and assumptions about homeschooling and virtual schooling is that the difference between then and now is that the world is no longer shut down. Virtual school will be one of several components of my daughter’s academic and social learning environments. But that doesn’t fully alleviate my parental anxiety, especially since it’s difficult to forget concerns of school safety, cultural belonging, and bullying. According to the NCES, these are among the frequently cited concerns of parents who chose home-based instruction.

My first thought about virtual school was that my daughter would be looking at a screen all day. Of my three children, my oldest is the screen monster. The latest American Academy of Pediatrics guidance on quality screen time suggests that its recommendations should be applied in the context of the child’s general reaction to screen time. And she is the one who concerns me most because she seems particularly sensitive to television, edtech, and most screens, in general.

School is Just One Component

One of the first theories I learned in behavioral science was Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory of human development. School is one of several places that facilitates social learning. It’s arguably where children spend the most time throughout their childhood, but it is part of the microsystem in a child’s life. Other components influence who they become.

Being Team Traditional School, I feared that without the brick-and-mortar school as the source of consistency and a cohort of other children she’s matriculating with, my daughter might miss out on what occasional drop-in gymnastics or library read-alouds can’t offer. What was missing from her pre-K homeschool education was the camaraderie growing up within a community, so I worried she might not develop the muscle of navigating evolving friendships over time, and eventually fail to learn to resolve the inevitable adolescent and preteen conflicts as they arise. Few challenges in adolescence show you who you are more than facing friendship breakups and makeups in chattery lunchrooms.

My cinematic imagination has played out so many scenes of my precious baby girl being unbearably socially anxious, curled up in her college dorm twin bed, because she's overstimulated by the campus dining hall. But I’ve had to calm my own anxiety and drop the dramatics and biases.

Trade-offs and Gaps

Consistent with Bronfenbrenner’s theory, we’ve decided on ways to tend to the various trade-offs and potential gaps of virtual school. Careful not to overcorrect, we’ve chosen developmentally appropriate extramural activities for the year, such as dance and other physical activities that she seems drawn to, and a culturally affirming youth auxiliary club. And we’ll continue organizing playdates and building routines and traditions around family, community, and cultural learning.

Am I ignoring the science of learning and the techlash debate? Yes and no, but mostly, no. Like most parenting decisions, there is no perfect answer or choice. There are trade-offs to traditional school, virtual school, and homeschool. There will be high- and low-quality screen time involved with each, because teaching and technology are enmeshed in ways that both aid and challenge learning. As parents, we simply cannot optimize every environment our children inhabit. Instead, we can be intentional about the totality of our children’s experiences and how those memories age as our children do.

Reality Bites: Students Say They Face Stark Challenges After High School

David Weldon — Thu, 30 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Many Gen Z high school graduates say they were not prepared for the realities of the real world — and new research supports their concern.

According to a new Agency study, “Turning the Tassel: What Generation Z Says About Life After High School Graduation,” recent high school graduates are more likely to land jobs in shrinking rather than growing workforce sectors; a majority don’t complete the secondary education or training programs they start; and slightly more than half say their high school did not properly prepare them for the rigors of postsecondary or continuing education.

The study challenges the way a successful high school experience is defined and whether high schools are adequately preparing students for life after graduation, explains report author and Agency CEO Debbie Veney.

“If schools are doing their jobs well, we should be able to see it in the life outcomes of their graduates,” Veney says. “Are they employed? How much money do they make? What type of jobs do they have? Did they complete a postsecondary credential? Are they able to live independently? We basically wanted to know if they feel prepared for adulthood after high school, and whether they are thriving.”

Well-Prepared High School Grads

Well-prepared high school graduates are more than their transcripts or resumes, says Stephanie Simpson, chief executive of the Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA). A well-prepared graduate has genuine self-knowledge — a solid understanding of their strengths, interests and the value they place on learning — and can make an informed decision about their next steps.

Evaluating this generation means looking beyond their transcripts to the core qualities and skills that matter most, such as their curiosity, adaptability, resilience and self-awareness, Simpson explains. These are exactly the areas where students build the confidence and capabilities they need to succeed well beyond high school.

Dan Gonzalez, general manager of Teamship at the College Board, shares that view: “To me, a well-prepared Gen Z high school grad has shifted from a completion mindset to a contribution mindset. A completion mindset is what schools often reward: finish the assignment, move to the next one, advance. A contribution mindset asks a different question: What value can I create for someone else — a teammate, a supervisor, a customer?”

Those are the durable skills — communication, problem-solving, collaboration — that a recent College Board and U.S. Chamber of Commerce survey confirms that employers are looking for, Gonzalez says. Technical skills still matter. But it’s these human skills that will empower a young person to make real contributions, and contribution is what the labor market rewards.

Veney agrees that a well-prepared graduate is not just someone who crosses the stage with a diploma. It is someone who has multiple pathways before them because they are equipped to navigate an ever-changing terrain.

“It looks like a young person who has a plan, knows how to adapt, can communicate clearly, understands their options and has the confidence to advocate for themselves,” Veney says. “They know how to be lifelong learners. They may be headed to college, career training, the military, public service or the workforce, but they should leave high school with both direction and the skills to navigate change.”

Gen Z Satisfaction

In light of the gaps between preparation and expectation, Gen Z graduates have mixed feelings about their current lot in life, explains Jane Swift, chief executive of Education at Work, an educational consultancy nonprofit, and former governor of Massachusetts. “Gen Z is ambitious and values-driven, more focused on purpose and flexibility than generations before them, and that’s a real strength,” she says. “But many are also anxious about their economic prospects and frustrated that their education hasn’t translated into the opportunities they were promised, especially as artificial intelligence reshapes the job market just as they’re entering it.”

At the IECA, Simpson says her members also have mixed views of Gen Z’s plight. “On one hand, this is a purposeful, values-driven generation that wants meaningful work and is thoughtful about well-being and balance,” Simpson explains. “On the other hand, our members consistently note high levels of anxiety and pressure, much of it rooted in admissions culture as well as in economic uncertainty about whether the path they choose will pay off.”

Many Gen Z graduates are navigating an incredibly complicated transition to the labor force, Veney says. Nearly two-thirds of employers say there is a mismatch between the skills they are looking for and the skills job seekers possess. Also, the pace of change is enormously quick. The skills needed for jobs today are expected to change 70% by 2030. College costs are high. Housing is expensive. Mental health pressures are real. And too many students leave high school without enough exposure to the range of career paths available to them.

Understanding Career Realities and Job Opportunities

A significant factor in the skills mismatch is that students often don’t understand what is required in many job roles and, therefore, don’t take the necessary steps to prepare for these roles.

“Students rarely have an idea about the workforce outside of what the family does, what they see on YouTube and what their friends tell them,” says Mike Wysocki, author of Careers By the People. “Students do not understand pay structure either. These subjects are rarely broached in the high school or university settings.”

Career readiness is a major issue, but education and industry are doing little to resolve it, Wysocki says. “I always tell students to talk with workers outside of their family that have been in industry 10-plus years,” he explains. “Ask to shadow the person at their work. Attend a trade show of an industry that interests you. Learn about the [networking] power of LinkedIn.”

At college admissions consultancy Hello College, faculty spends a great deal of time helping students understand career realities and the different paths available to them, says college counselor Raymond Gonzales.

“We educate students about the careers they’re considering, but we also explain the realities of how today’s job market works,” Gonzales says. “Right now, many students are afraid AI is going to replace their jobs. We don’t want them to be afraid of AI; we want them to understand how AI can complement their careers. That approach makes students much more confident as they explore majors and career opportunities.”

How High Schools Can Do Better

High schools clearly need to do a better job connecting academics to life after graduation, Veney explains. For example, dual-enrollment programs and early college programs allow students to graduate high school with an associate degree. That degree can be used to step right into a well-paying job with growth potential. Or it can be used to shorten the time it takes to earn a four-year degree.

Schools must also be committed to stronger college and career advising, providing more exposure to real workplaces; placing more emphasis on writing, speaking and problem-solving; and teaching financial literacy and life skills. It also means creating a school culture where every student is known, challenged and expected to succeed. One of the clearest lessons from this study is that expectations matter, Veney says.

High school leaders must understand that a well-prepared graduate is one who is ready to enter their chosen path, whether it is college, career or military, explains Nicole Alioto, education consultant and author of You Can Measure Anything! An Educator’s Guide to Measuring What is Hard to Define.

“Success means a combination of academic, applied or technical, and interpersonal or soft skills,” Alioto says. “There is no fixed formula for success that fits into every setting, but there is an expectation of basic literacy, numeracy and ability to communicate, both face-to-face and using technology.”

Finally, Gonzales says schools should focus on helping students develop the core skills of curiosity, adaptability, communication and resilience. Those are the qualities that prepare students to navigate change, solve problems and continue learning long after they leave high school.

Grades and academic performance will always matter, but they’re only one piece of the equation, Gonzales notes. Students also need opportunities to build leadership skills and have real-world experiences that prepare them for college, careers and life.

What Should Students Still Have to Do for Themselves?

EdSurge Staff — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In this episode of This Week with EdSurge, two educators grapple with the same question from opposite ends of the classroom. One traced it back to a trip to the record store. The other found it waiting inside a lesson plan. Together, they explore what artificial intelligence changes about learning, and what remains unchanged.

A Trip to the Record Store

Nathan Kraai, Director of Innovation and Design Thinking at The Fenn School in Concord, Massachusetts, did not expect a family outing to a record store to change how he thinks about artificial intelligence in the classroom. Watching his kids puzzle over why anyone would buy a vinyl record when streaming exists led him to a comparison he could not shake. He calls it a signal, borrowing a framework from author Jane McGonigal, and argues it says something important about what people actually want from learning.

A Classroom Already Made Its Choice

Court Shuller teaches middle school English in New Jersey, works as a reading specialist, and recently joined the EdSurge Voices of Change Fellowship. Speaking from ISTELive in Orlando, Court describes a classroom where the response to artificial intelligence has already taken a surprising shape. From a room full of educators picking up pens instead of talking about writing, to a hard line drawn around one particular use of AI, Court makes the case that some choices should stay firmly in human hands.

Listen to the episode:

Stories Mentioned in This Episode

How a Vinyl Record Resurgence Helped Me Understand the Future of AI in Education by Nathan Kraai

Voices of Change Fellowship by EdSurge

This Week with EdSurge is a weekly podcast from EdSurge. Subscribe to the EdSurge newsletters for more news and analysis on education and technology.

Translating Dignity, Not Just Language

Monika Vereb — Wed, 29 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

One evening, while supporting a family after hours, I asked a mother whether she felt more comfortable speaking with me in Spanish or English. My bilingual front office staff had already left for the evening, and I knew this family would likely need direct support navigating a series of complex digital enrollment forms and communication systems before they left.

Although I retained conversational Spanish from years of academic coursework and lived experience, my own speech in the language remains slow and hesitant. I wanted to ensure they felt entirely supported by the school from day one. Yet, before the mother could fully respond, her older son quickly interrupted to clarify that his mother speaks English.

I immediately sensed from his distinct defensiveness that my question had impacted him in a way I had not intended. In his expression, I recognized a familiar, painful look: the exhaustion that comes from feeling judged, categorized, or misunderstood before you have even had the opportunity to introduce yourself.

Later, when we sat down together to work through the school division’s digital portal, I could not let the interaction pass without gently asking about his reaction. The student explained that he was deeply frustrated by the constant assumption that his mother did not speak or understand English. I validated his feelings and clarified that I had asked which language his mother preferred for navigating dense administrative jargon, not which language she was capable of speaking.

Then I shared something with him that I rarely say out loud: As a second-generation Chicana American, I sometimes carry a persistent internal guilt about not feeling “Latina enough” because I did not grow up speaking Spanish with absolute fluency. That tension has followed me throughout my life. Long before I became a principal, it deeply shaped how I understood the concept of belonging: who feels seen, who feels understood, and who feels as though they must constantly defend or explain themselves.

Years later, those exact same questions have resurfaced in my work with multilingual students and families navigating school systems that are not always designed with their lived experiences in mind.

Now serving as a Latina principal in a predominantly Spanish-speaking school community, I find myself translating far more than literal language. Every day, I bridge the gap between human families and the digital frameworks of modern education. I help families navigate educational jargon, intricate online platforms, and digital communication that can easily feel overwhelming without direct, personalized support. Increasingly, that work means helping families slow down and process information that often arrives on their smartphones much faster than genuine, trusting relationships can be built.

I have come to realize that the true promise of educational technology is not simply faster communication, but communication that helps families feel confident, capable, and connected to their children’s school.

Technology Drives Alienation

As school districts rapidly adopt automated communication platforms, mass text alerts, and AI-driven translation tools, we face a critical intersection. Technology is often championed as the ultimate equalizer for equity and access. Yet when implemented without a human-centered lens, these digital tools risk automating the very sense of alienation that multilingual families already experience.

The fundamental question we must ask ourselves as educational leaders is simple yet profound: How do we ensure that people feel genuinely understood, rather than simply informed? For me, this question has become less about whether schools should embrace technology and more about how leaders intentionally shape technology to strengthen relationships instead of replacing them.

Clarity is Key

Recently, I participated in an illuminating listening session with our multilingual families focused specifically on communication, digital access, and school engagement. What struck me most was that families were not asking the school to communicate more frequently. Instead, they were asking the school to communicate more clearly. Parents spoke candidly about wanting critical information delivered in accessible formats, practical support navigating digital opportunities, and flexible ways to participate when demanding work schedules, lack of transportation, or unfamiliar digital systems created barriers.

That listening session fundamentally shifted my own thinking as a school leader. I realized that successful technology implementation cannot be measured solely by how efficiently information is delivered, but by whether families feel empowered to act on that information and engage confidently with their school community.

Many of the solutions raised during our conversation directly involved technology. One parent shared how she used the translated messaging feature through our school’s communication platform to ask specific questions about an advanced academic program — an opportunity she had previously not felt comfortable pursuing due to the language barrier. That interaction was a beautiful reminder of technology’s genuine potential to expand access, democratize information, and open doors that were previously closed.

However, beneath every parent’s comment in that session was a deeper, more urgent request. Families did not just want error-free translated messages; they wanted communication that felt fundamentally empathetic and understandable. They wanted real people they could trust to help them co-navigate increasingly complex, digitized systems. The technology opened the door, but relationships gave families the confidence to walk through it.

The Promise of AI

The deeper I listen to multilingual families, the more I realize that truly accessible communication requires far more than literal, word-for-word translation. Translation software often strips away cultural nuances, regional dialects, idioms, and emotional tone. Many of the families I serve also communicate through rich oral traditions and lived experiences that cannot always be captured through written text alone. This is where I see tremendous potential for emerging educational technologies and AI-supported communication tools. Forward-thinking schools have a unique opportunity to move beyond static, text-based translation and toward AI-generated audio and video communication.

Imagine a system where a parent receives a short, personalized video in their native dialect explaining a school policy, or an interactive audio guide that walks them through a complex enrollment form. These tools could remove barriers not only by translating words, but by preserving voice, emotion, and cultural context. In doing so, technology becomes less transactional and more relational.

As Christopher Emdin powerfully reminds us through reality pedagogy, authentic relationships must always come before trust. Technology should be used to help us translate deep human understanding, not simply literal language. The teenage student who fiercely protected his mother from my question wasn’t just reacting to an inquiry about language preferences; he was defending her dignity against an educational system that too often feels cold, rigid, and transactional. His reaction was not ultimately about whether his mother spoke English. It was about her identity, her absolute right to belonging, and the profound exhaustion that comes from constantly feeling misunderstood by authority figures.

As schools continue to aggressively adopt new technologies, automated platforms, and digital communication tools to streamline their daily operations, we must remember that the ultimate goal of education is not simply the efficient dissemination of data.

Culturally responsive leadership in the digital age requires us to practice vulnerability, intentionally build human checkpoints around our software, and foster deep connection long before our technology can ever do its job effectively.

As educational leaders, our responsibility is not simply to implement new technology but to ensure that every digital innovation reflects the values of empathy, dignity, and belonging. Technology can expand access, but authentic understanding, mutual trust, and true belonging will always be built through the irreplaceable power of human connection.

I Went from Rising Senior to Teacher. Here’s What I Learned

Brayden White — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

I’m a high school student in Paramus, New Jersey. I’m also the creator of a free economics program that I teach to middle school students. With each virtual session I lead, I share a link in the chat with my students, and they load the simulation I created — one that puts them in positions like CEO of a sports team or commissioner of a league.

In one simulation, every student runs a team’s payroll and decides whether keeping their star player is worth exceeding their salary cap and crossing into “luxury tax” territory. Nobody tells them about the consequences of going into the luxury tax; they learned the way real general managers do, by paying the additional fee and experiencing the negative impact it can have on a team.

I created the program because I am a huge sports fan and I wanted to share my passion with other kids. I also knew that a lot of kids love professional team sports and almost none of them love economics, even though the two are often linked. A team salary cap is a budget constraint. A trade deadline is linked to supply and demand. A rookie contract is a bet on future value.

Simulations Unveil Concepts

So far, I’ve led two six-week online classes for about 30 middle school students. Each class combines slide lessons explaining economic concepts, open discussions, and simulations I built with artificial intelligence.

My students played a luxury tax game where they managed a roster under real salary cap pressure. They played an NFL draft game where they weighed risk against reward with every draft pick. There were trade negotiations, ticket-pricing challenges, and roster-building hurdles with no clear “right” answers. Hiding inside each simulation were economic concepts that teachers have spent decades trying to get students to care about, like incentives, opportunity cost, scarcity, risk and market value.

I expected the sports fans in my classes to dominate the conversations. In reality, the student who knew every sports statistic wasn’t always the one who made the smartest payroll decision. The student who couldn’t name a single starting team lineup often built the most balanced roster in the class because they understood the trade-offs better than the sports fanatics.

Leading these online classes gave me real insight into what it takes to be a successful teacher. What I realized is that a great lesson is not about the content; it’s about how students interact with the content. I could have lectured for an hour on opportunity cost, watching eyes glaze over. Instead, I gave them a roster and a budget that couldn’t cover everyone they wanted to draft, and the concept of opportunity cost practically taught itself. Instead of being just another “vocabulary word,” the concept became the reason they couldn’t sign Jalen Brunson.

Teaching these middle schoolers and seeing what really motivated them to engage with the material makes me think this can be applied to every subject. It doesn’t have to be done with a video game. It can be accomplished with a worksheet, flashcards or other activities. The idea just has to make students feel like the concepts they’re exploring matter outside of the classroom.

Discussion Fuels Learning

Another observation that surprised me was how much the discussions mattered. I initially thought the simulations would be the main event and the teaching and discussions would be “filler.”

In reality, it was the opposite.

It turns out that the simulations created the basis for discussion and disagreement, and that is where the learning happened. For example, after the luxury tax game, I had students defend their choices to the class. One student explained that they paid the tax because they were “in a championship window,” while another student didn’t pay the tax because their roster was “too young to waste the money.” They were doing real economic reasoning, but they didn’t notice. They were simply having a great time discussing their teams.

Peer-Led Teaching Lowers the Stakes

Peer-led teaching is not a replacement for trained teachers. But I do think that peer-led programs such as the one I led can be a valuable complement to teacher-led classes because they can lower the stakes and make learning less daunting for students. When the person teaching you is closer to your own age and the lesson is built around a game instead of a grade, students are more willing to take risks.

Based on my observations, students in student-led classes seem more likely to guess and debate. Their ideas might be wrong, but they are willing to try and make themselves vulnerable in front of their peers – something that they may not be willing to do inside a formal classroom. That freedom to try, fail, and try again is where a lot of real understanding begins.

Lessons Learned Along the Way

If you are a teacher and I haven’t chased you away with my precociousness, here are three more pieces of advice to help you help your students.

Incorporate what students love. Consider starting with something your students are already interested in and then sneak in the educational subject behind it. I never opened a class by saying, “Today we’re learning about scarcity.” Instead, I opened by saying, “You have $40 million and three players you can’t afford to keep.” The economics lesson arrived after the engagement, not before. Using a topic students already cared about did more to fuel their learning than any creative explanation I could’ve ever written.

An accessible entry point gives students a reason to care before asking them to memorize anything. The students in my classes kept asking for more simulations. Parents told me their children were recommending the class to friends, which is not something I have ever heard a kid do for an economics worksheet.

Let students be wrong. Some of my best sessions came from a student making a terrible trade and the whole class reacting. My first instinct was usually to jump in and explain why the move would not work. But I realized that the better outcome arrived when I waited and let the students teach.

This is the kind of class “mistake” that students remember. Those moments stick with them much longer than any rule or definition written on a slide and help them truly grasp the underlying concepts.

Keep the barrier to entry low. I purposefully made my program free and ran it on Zoom, so students of all backgrounds can join from anywhere in the world. I communicated that they do not need to be great at math, nor do they need to know every player in the NBA or NFL. They do not even need to think of themselves as “economics kids.” They just need to be curious about why things cost what they cost, why teams make the choices that they make, and why every decision has a trade-off.

Making the program easily accessible was particularly beneficial to those students who need a subject taught in a less formal setting. They are often the first ones who are intimidated by traditional classroom learning. If a class feels like it has prerequisites before you even reach the first lesson, you sometimes lose the student as soon as they walk into the classroom.

I started my program because I thought a cool sports simulation could make economics more interesting to students. What I learned is that peer-led discussion in a topic students are invested in – whether it is sports or pop culture – can do something better. It lowers the stress, creates a welcoming environment for all students, and still creates genuine opportunities for learning. I’m looking forward to offering more sessions – teachers can join too.

Early Childhood Education Teachers Grapple with Screen Time

Adam Stone — Fri, 24 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When the American Academy of Pediatrics updated its guidelines around screen time for children and teenagers for the first time in 10 years this past January, many teachers and educators applauded the news. The document focused less on television and more on digital devices. It offered educators, families, pediatricians, and other stakeholders research-backed guidance on using digital devices to support children’s learning, rather than prioritize prolonged engagement.

However, many of the recommendations were not tailored to specific age groups. Recommendations like “create a family media plan” and “protect sleep” were helpful but offered few concrete steps for pre-K students.

That left early childhood educators asking what they could do for their young learners.

The Risks in Pre-K Through K

Unlike the physical world, digital content comes fast, in short bursts, and when kids get used to that, it has negative consequences. “Too much of this screen and things jumping in front of them, it could be damaging overall,” says Latoya Jones, a pre-K through fifth-grade media specialist in Broward County, Florida. “They are developing their cognitive processes, and if we’re teaching them to think in six-second bursts, maybe that’s not what we’re aiming for.”

When kids interact with devices rather than people, their emotional regulation can suffer, says Kristina Turner, a first-grade teacher at the Paterson, New Jersey, campus of College Achieve Public Schools, a network of three K-12 charter schools. “A lot of the students, they are quick-tempered because they’re just used to quick things. If something takes too long, their behavior starts to heighten,” she says.

For the youngest learners in particular, “it is so important that they are learning how to interact, and listen, and even advocate for themselves,” says Colleen Francisco, a kindergarten teacher at Laurel Springs School.

“There’s beauty in students having an issue or a problem, because then an adult can support them in working through it,” she says. When kids are tethered to their screens, those opportunities don’t arise.

Clearly, the AAP guidance is well timed and much needed. But how to put that guidance into practice?

Classroom Strategies for Reducing Screen Time

“I never want my children using screens passively,” says Devon Caldwell, a pre-K and K teacher at Canupawakpa Education in Manitoba, Canada, instructor at Nipissing University Schulich School of Education in Ontario, and SMART Technologies & Lumio Ambassador. “I want to see kids’ bodies moving, their mouths talking, little hands making something.”

To that end, she prioritizes co-viewing and co-creating, using interactive teaching software approved by her and the school. When students are using a screen, “they’re always using it with a partner. Right away they’re negotiating rules, talking to each other, developing those really important skills,” she says.

For her first graders, Turner tries as much as possible to create hands-on activities instead of relying on screens. For example, she uses a whiteboard, but tries to avoid it when giving instructions. “Students have to use their listening skills so they can be able to follow directions without using a screen,” she says. “By end of school year, I’m able to give them different tasks, and they’re able to do that independently, without depending on technology.”

Tyler Brown, an English teacher at Indian River Middle School in Philadelphia, New York who spoke recently at a GoGuardian webinar on screen time in school, encourages teachers to be thoughtful about the digital tools they share with the youngest learners. “Don’t throw [the digital tool] at everything,” he says. “Think about what you’re using it for. Think about what it’s supposed to do. Is this an enhancement of learning or is this a replacement?”

These self-directed questions can drive practical choices in the classroom. “You’re doing AT words: cat, mat, bat. You could easily have a website or a Google slide where they’re dragging those items onto the correct word,” says Brown.

“Or you could do what we’ve done in the past, which is a cut-and-glue activity,” he continues. “Why are we using screen time for something that can easily be a manipulative activity, where kids are doing things hands-on? Little kids are tactile learners, and those hands-on exercises have real value.”

Even as a teacher in an online school, Francisco is finding ways to limit screen time. “One of our assignments is taking a nature walk and writing down what you see. That is something that extends the learning off the screen,” she says.

Even math can be hands-on for early learners, she adds. “You don’t have to have anything fancy. You don’t have to buy the tools: Even just using cereal in order to practice adding and subtracting,” she says.

Jones was a kindergarten teacher before becoming a media specialist. “Anytime I had a word of the week, we used Play-Doh to build a word. Or we did those little sandboxes where they drew the word in the sand,” she says.

Big picture: Active and tactile often are better than passive and screen-based. “Could this be accomplished with blocks or Play-Doh or markers and paper? If it could be, let’s do it that way,” Caldwell says.

But teachers can only do so much in the classroom when kids are immersed in digital media at home. In support of the AAP’s call to prioritize family time over screen time, teachers may need to engage more with parents.

Engaging with Families

Pre-K and K teachers don’t have control over what kids do outside of school. “At home, a lot of my students go straight to their screens,” Turner says. To help steer her own kids and her students when they are at home, she gives parents resources. “I’m able to provide them with index cards, and you can keep them in the back seat,” she says.

When kids get in the car, “instead of reaching for an iPad, they can reach for their index cards, whether it’s math problems or sight words,” she says. “Or you can put that as a magnet on your refrigerator: If you want a snack, you got to read this word.”

When Francisco sends homework through the learning management system, “we have workbooks and other hands-on activities that support the lesson,” she says. And she encourages parents to talk to their kids, as a pedagogic exercise.

“Phonemic awareness is especially important to early-literacy learners. The learner is listening to sounds and how sounds are manipulated,” she says. “I’ve given parents additional resources so that [kids] are not reading or not listening or watching on the video. Instead, they’re doing it with their student, face to face.”

It takes some creativity and extra effort by teachers and parents to pivot kids off of screens, but experts say it’s worth the effort. Too much screen time “can negatively impact executive functioning, socio-emotional and language skills,” says Bryana Casas M.A., master teacher at Pacific Oaks Children’s School in Pasadena, California.

For those honing their interpersonal skills — a main goal in pre-K through K education — “nothing can replace relationships and face-to-face interactions between people,” she says.

We Must Stop Using AI to ‘Level-Down’ Our Students

Court Shuller — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

No one would remember the line, “Keep being good and special, Ponyboy. Don’t change.” It just doesn’t hit the same as S.E. Hinton’s classic line, “Stay gold, Ponyboy, stay gold.”

Many English teachers, myself included, would consider it an atrocity to diminish this canonical line in literary history to such sterile and lifeless simplicity. Students deserve a better reading experience than that. Yet this is just what happens when teachers decide to level a text down to a student’s “instructional level” rather than scaffolding up their access to a complex text.

In my own district, just two years ago, educators raved about a new AI tool that helps teachers level text and encouraged the department to spend thousands of dollars on it. When I first heard about it, I admit, I was dazzled. The most time-consuming and work-intensive part of teaching for me has always been differentiating for the small percentage of kids who just don’t get it the first, second, or even third time you teach something.

This program was going to do it all for me, but the caveat was that it would also do all the thinking for the kids. When we keep kids from actually doing work that requires effortful thinking, they don’t learn anything at all.

While many states are passing legislation that focuses on the Science of Reading, moving districts away from programs that promote text leveling, many edtech companies are promoting this practice through their newest AI models. In our world of quick and snappy AI solutions, the leveled text shortcut is all too easy to take, but we should not give in to temptation.

The History of Text Leveling

The practice of teaching students at their “instructional” level has a long, storied history leading back to the founding colonies. If that sort of history interests you, I highly suggest checking out Timothy Shanahan’s “Leveled Reading: Leveled Lives,” which, for me, was one of the most eye-opening takes on reading education in this country since Natalie Wexler’s “The Knowledge Gap.”

Essentially, the practice of leveling text rests on the belief that we should give students texts that are at their “instructional” level only; for example, if a seventh grader is significantly behind, they may be reading on a third-grade level, so as their teacher, I should teach them using only third-grade-level books. This practice was popularized by elementary programs that assigned students reading levels such as the Fountas and Pinnell levels, Accelerated Reader, and Guided Reading. Eventually, it pervaded secondary intervention spaces and general education classrooms.

The problem with leveling text is that decades of research, more recently popularized by Science of Reading advocates, show that it doesn’t give students much room to grow.

What students need to grow is complex texts, but not only that, complex texts with a teacher modeling how a good reader approaches these texts, while also scaffolding access to them through chunking, discussion, vocabulary practices and all the critical components that we know make up good teaching.

As much as research pointed toward the necessity of complex texts, the pressure to maintain instructional levels was a tension I had to navigate daily, and that tension came to a head when my district adopted a new curriculum.

The Faustian Bargain

“It's too hard and too boring. Our dyslexic and ADHD students will never be able to read Shakespeare, Chaucer, or Remarque.”

I heard comments such as these far too often when my own district in New Jersey switched to complex grade-level texts. As a literacy coach in 2025, I lived in the middle, translating the will of state- and district-level administrators to the classroom and the average teacher.

Surprisingly, I got the most pushback from eighth-grade teachers who were terrified that even the general education students couldn’t handle reading the classic anti-war novel, “All Quiet on the Western Front.” That is when Diffit was first suggested to me. Diffit’s primary function is to level texts; it even promotes itself on Google as “an AI tool teachers use to get ‘just-right’ instructional materials.”

In the midst of this difficult year implementing a new curriculum, our teachers were unfamiliar with evidence-based practices and used to a home-brewed curriculum; students were also not used to the rigor of it all, especially the texts.

One group of teachers who struggled was the special education teachers, who, admittedly, had too many preps and too large a caseload to adequately understand these new mandates. It was then that a well-respected Learning Disabilities Teaching Consultant (LDTC) in the district first suggested I check out Diffit and start putting each chapter of “All Quiet on the Western Front” into this AI program to give eighth-grade special education students a third-grade-level summary.

Initially, I was impressed by the power of this new AI program, but I also felt conflicted because my supervisor had just told me about Shanahan's work. The world didn’t freeze, per se, but in that moment, it certainly felt like I was living in “The Matrix” — the electronic alternative universe popularized in the movie of the same name.

“Isn’t that like…frowned upon? That’s not good practice, right? I thought we don’t level texts,” I asked the LDTC cautiously.

My gut and everything I had learned about teaching reading told me this was wrong, but this was a well-respected educator with decades of experience working with students with disabilities; surely she knew better than I did. I figured that since I was a general education teacher, I was clearly missing something about teaching reading specifically to students with disabilities, so I trusted the veteran educator at the time.

The Fallout

After taking the veteran teacher’s advice, I recommended text leveling to the teachers I coached, and even used the site myself to give a dyslexic, ADHD student I tutored a shortcut. The results were lackluster. My student didn’t show any interest, would wait for me to tell her the answers, and didn’t remember the content of the text from one session to the next. Her special education teacher wasn’t reporting any improvement in class from this resource, either.

It didn’t take me long to shift gears back to what I knew would help. Reading and re-reading a text (yes, the real one); mapping out the sequence and character; discussing the theme; exploring vocabulary; and building background knowledge. All of this is done with intentionally spaced and interleaved retrieval practice to ensure maximum commitment to long-term memory.

Once my student began working to understand the dense text, the payoff was immediate. Our discussions of Paul Bäumer’s psychology and the trauma of war were profound. This dyslexic, eighth-grade student with ADHD, whom many had already given up on, started to join her peers in these discussions back in the general education classroom. My student didn’t need a different text; she just needed a different roadmap and timeframe to get there.

Three years later, those same teachers who doubted this student could meaningfully engage with such a complex text are no longer surprised when “All Quiet on the Western Front” is their students’ favorite read of the year. Why? Because it deals with real-world topics in a mature way that middle schoolers are often shielded from.

Student success with the challenging text, despite the availability of powerful, easy-to-access AI, is part of the larger conversation about the quality of the tech tools we use and how they may or may not contribute to more meaningful learning experiences.

The fault lies not in the tool itself, but in how we train ourselves as educators to misuse it.

The Redemption

Faustus' tragedy was not that he sought power, but that he ultimately lost control of the force meant to do his bidding. Like Mephistopheles, AI usage offers educators both power and convenience, but at what cost?

A recurring theme in the use of AI in education is that it must be used critically and responsibly, especially given its impact on the student experience and its interactions with current pedagogy. In this use case, irresponsible AI use actually leads to inequities; why would we give some students access to the great literary canon, and others a robot-created summary?

The bright side is that there is a path to redemption for those who want to use AI to effectively support student access to complex texts, and for what it's worth, Diffit does an incredible job of providing these resources.

It may seem obvious, but AI tools can be used to create the scaffolds that provide access. Graphic organizers, note-takers, vocabulary reference sheets, and sentence starters are just the beginning. Here are some higher-leverage ways to use AI, in alignment with learning science, to help students access complex texts:

Have AI identify passages from the text that will trip kids up and use those passages as a basis for your syntactical and vocabulary instruction.
Use AI to chunk, not change, the passages. Take it a step further by using “/” to separate phrases and create embedded fluency scaffolds that actually prove comprehension.
Use AI to identify passages that could be suitable for fluency practice.
Not good at think-alouds? Have AI create your think-aloud script to model good reading of a complex text.
Create word sets based on the text for deep morphological or connotative study

To avoid a Faustian tragedy, we must remember that AI is our Mephistopheles: a powerful servant, but a dangerous master. It should support thinking, creation, and access — not replace them.

What Does AI Cost When We Skip the Work?

EdSurge Staff — Wed, 22 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Every few months, another headline declares the college degree dead. This Week with EdSurge examines what still holds up when artificial intelligence moves fast, through two guests who are both defending something slow against something fast.

A Four Year Degree in the Age of AI

Rita Finkel, co-president of the Armory Foundation and director of the Armory College Prep program, argues that a college degree was never just about a technical skill. She says the data tells a different story than the headlines suggest, and that the value of a degree comes from something artificial intelligence cannot replicate.

The Fourth Essay

Cobretti Williams of the EdSurge Voices of Change Fellowship makes a similar case for writing. He talks about the beauty in imperfection, and how a fellow's fourth essay reads nothing like the first, growth that only comes from doing the work yourself.

Listen to the episode.

Stories Mentioned in This Episode

Why College Degrees Matter in the Age of AI

by Rita Finkel

EdSurge Voices of Change Writing Fellowship

by EdSurge

This Week with EdSurge is a weekly podcast from EdSurge. Subscribe to the EdSurge newsletters for more news and analysis on education and technology.

The Language Barrier Is the Real Barrier in Edtech

Marisa Gomez-Garcia — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When I started looking closely at the learning platforms schools ask families to use, I noticed something easy to miss if it doesn’t affect you: almost all of them are built in English first.

For families who speak Spanish at home, that one fact quietly changes everything. A child might be able to follow along in class, but the parent often can’t — and a parent who can’t understand the material can’t sit beside their kid and help them with it. The language barrier becomes an opportunity barrier. And it’s invisible to the people who never have to think about it.

For me, the English-first technology trend was never abstract. My own children use the technology I’ve built, and I built it for families like the ones all around me — so that the opportunity to understand money, technology, and how to build something of your own doesn’t depend on which language gets spoken at the dinner table. I’m tired of watching the same families get left a step behind — not because their kids are any less capable but because no one built the on-ramp in a language they could use.

That language gap is what I set out to close.

It matters now more than ever because a growing number of states are starting to require students to take a personal finance course to graduate. For example, California’s Assembly Bill 2927 requires students to complete a stand-alone personal finance course to graduate high school starting with the class of 2030-31, with schools required to offer it by 2027-28. But if the lessons exist only in English, many households that need that knowledge are also the ones least able to access and reinforce it at home. A mandate built that way doesn’t close the gap. It can widen it.

I’ve spent the past three years building a bilingual K-12 learning platform, and the single most important thing I’ve learned is this: there is a world of difference between a product that has been translated and a product that is bilingual. Most edtech tools that advertise Spanish support only translate the interface — the menus, the buttons, the navigation — but the instruction itself stays in English. To a district evaluating the tool in a demo, it looks bilingual. To a parent sitting down with their child at the kitchen table, it isn’t.

This is the part I think edtech keeps getting wrong. We tend to treat language as the last step: build the English version and then add Spanish later if the budget allows. But a lesson a family can’t understand together hasn’t really been delivered — it’s just a box that got checked.

So, what does taking this seriously actually look like? Having sat on the builder’s side of these conversations, here is the concrete guidance I’d offer.

Five Questions for Edtech Vendors

When a vendor says their product “supports Spanish,” ask the following questions to differentiate true bilingual instruction from a translated menu bar:

Is the instructional content itself available in Spanish — for every lesson and at every grade level — or only the interface? Ask them to open a mid-unit lesson in Spanish during the demo, not the homepage.
Is the audio in Spanish or only the text? Many parents are stronger listeners than readers in either language. Text-only translation still excludes them.
Are parent-facing communications translated? Progress reports, dashboards and notification emails are how parents actually use the platform. If these features are in English, the parent is cut out of the loop no matter what the student sees.
Was the Spanish content written or reviewed by educators or was it machine translated? Machine translation of math word problems and financial terms produces errors that would confuse a struggling reader.
When new content is released, are both languages released together? If Spanish content is released a semester after the English content, Spanish-speaking families are permanently a step behind — by design.

A vendor with a truly bilingual platform will answer these questions in 30 seconds. A vendor with a translated interface will pivot to their roadmap.

Small Changes Keep Parents in the Loop

Teachers can’t rewrite their district’s software, but they can keep Spanish-speaking parents in the learning loop with the tools they already have.

Send the “what we’re learning this week” note home in both languages. Even if the learning platform is only in English, a two-line bilingual summary tells a parent what to ask their child about at dinner. Free translation tools are imperfect, but a two-line note reviewed by parents is achievable weekly.
Show parents the language toggle if one exists. Many families never discover a product’s Spanish mode because nobody walked them through it at back-to-school night. A five-minute demonstration in the fall can change a family’s entire year.
Assign homework with the parent in mind. When assigning homework on an English-only platform, include one question the student must explain to their parent in the family’s home language. This makes the parent a participant instead of a bystander. Plus, explaining a concept in another language is one of the best comprehension checks there is.
Flag the gaps upward. District procurement teams rarely hear which tools are failing bilingual families because the feedback doesn’t travel that far. A teacher noting that “the educational unit has no Spanish audio and my students’ parents can’t understand it” is exactly the evidence a district needs at renewal time.

Requirements Don’t Create Access

Taking access seriously isn’t complicated. It means treating a second language as a design requirement, not a stretch goal. It means making the platform bilingual from the first line of code, in the text and the audio, so a parent and child can move through a lesson together. It means making sure the highest value subjects — the ones tied to a student’s economic future — are the ones that exist in both languages first, not last. None of this is exotic. It’s just a decision about who you’re building for, made early enough to matter.

These Hip-Hop Artists Were Already Teaching

Ellen Ullman — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMT

For decades, hip-hop artists have been invited into schools as guest speakers, workshop leaders and visiting performers. They’ve mentored young people after school; started nonprofits; taught music production, poetry, history and entrepreneurship; and helped generations of students find their voices.

Yet many of these artists lack the one credential schools still value most: a bachelor’s degree.

But what if these artists have been teaching all along?

A new partnership between College Unbound and the Hip-Hop Education Center aims to answer that question, not by teaching artists how to become educators but by recognizing the expertise they’ve developed through decades of community leadership, cultural work and mentorship.

The program — a Bachelor of Arts in organizational leadership and change designed specifically for hip-hop educators and cultural leaders — isn’t a separate degree or a simplified version of one. Students complete the same degree requirements as every other College Unbound student. “It’s the same degree,” says College Unbound President Adam Bush. “It’s simply lived differently.”

The program is about more than hip-hop. It asks a question that reaches far beyond music: Who gets to decide what expertise looks like?

A Degree Years in the Making

Although the bachelor’s degree officially launched this year, its roots stretch back decades.

Hip-hop emerged outside traditional institutions, often in response to systems that excluded Black and Brown communities. As hip-hop education gained legitimacy, educators wrestled with a difficult question: How can we preserve the authenticity of the hip-hop culture while creating pathways that allow practitioners to teach at schools and colleges?

Long before there was a curriculum at College Unbound, there were conversations between Bush, educator and author Sam Seidel, and Martha Diaz, founder of the Hip-Hop Education Center, who has spent nearly three decades helping to build the field of hip-hop education. These conversations focused on this central question.

For Seidel, who has spent much of his career documenting and advancing hip-hop education, the answer required finding the right institution.

“What was always important,” he says, “was making sure the people who created the culture and have been carrying it forward had a central seat at the table teaching the next generation.”

College Unbound proved to be an unusual fit. Rather than asking students to leave their experience at the classroom door, the college builds on it. Students develop projects rooted in the work they’re already doing, making professional experience, leadership and community knowledge part of the curriculum.

“This program opens opportunities for seasoned practitioners,” adds Diaz. “These are people who’ve spent decades mentoring young people, creating art and leading communities but haven’t always had access to the credentials that allow them to teach full-time.”

From the Stage to the Classroom

For Sebastien Elkouby, a hip-hop artist and educator, the degree feels less like a beginning than the fulfillment of a long-awaited opportunity.

Born in France, Elkouby spent years working in music before becoming a U.S. citizen, raising a family and earning a career and technical education credential. Today, he teaches Global Awareness Through Hip Hop Culture and Beatmaking classes at a public charter school in Los Angeles.

“When I found out about the College Unbound program, I thought, ‘Finally,’” he says. “I couldn’t have designed a better opportunity than going to college under the guise of hip-hop culture.”

His years as an emcee prepared him for the classroom in ways a traditional teacher preparation program might not have. Standing in front of students, he continues, isn’t much different from standing in front of an audience. “You have to capture their attention. You have to tell a story. Teaching is a performance.”

He sees similar parallels in curriculum design. The care he once devoted to writing lyrics with a beginning, middle and end now shapes the lessons he designs. His classes trace the historical roots of hip-hop, connecting music to social movements, politics and culture.

Asante Burks reached a similar conclusion while on a different path. Known professionally as Asante Amin, the rapper and member of Soul Science Lab believes that performing and teaching are two sides of the same coin. “On stage, I want to entertain, educate and inspire. In the classroom, I want to do exactly the same thing,” he says.

His teaching centers on the cypher, the circle where rappers, emcees and beatboxers share ideas, stories and experiences while learning from one another. In that setting, everyone becomes both teacher and learner. “It isn’t just me delivering knowledge. The collective mind is where real learning happens,” he adds.

That philosophy reflects one of hip-hop pedagogy’s central ideas: learning is participatory, communal and deeply connected to identity. It also challenges a persistent misconception. “People think hip-hop education is just playing rap music in class,” says Diaz. “It’s a culture, mentorship, history and community. It’s understanding students as whole people.”

Recognizing the Experts Already Among Us

A member of College Unbound’s first graduating class, Anjel Newmann now serves on the college’s faculty, leads the arts organization AS220 and serves on the school board in Providence, Rhode Island. She sees the bachelor’s degree as more than an academic credential.

“It’s helping people who have been teaching in the community move from guest speaker to lead teacher,” she says. “They know how to connect with young people who may have already tuned school out. They understand identity and community.”

College Unbound’s project-based model mirrors the way artists naturally work. “As artists, everything we do is project centered,” says Newmann. “You’re constantly researching, creating, revising and sharing your work. College Unbound allows every subject to connect to that bigger vision.”

For Newmann, the lesson extends beyond hip-hop. “There are experts in our communities who were blocked from credentials because of systemic barriers,” she says. “College Unbound didn’t ask them to become experts. It recognized that they already were.”

Rethinking Expertise

As colleges across the country search for new ways to serve adult learners and employers increasingly question what degrees actually measure, College Unbound offers one possible answer: Instead of asking students to prove they deserve admission, the institution begins by asking what they’ve already built.

Organizing communities, mentoring young people, leading nonprofits, creating art and solving real-world problems are acknowledged as evidence of learning. “We’re recognizing lived experience as the value that it is,” says Diaz.

Seidel hopes the program’s success ultimately will be measured by what graduates build together long after they leave. He imagines meeting them at a future gathering of hip-hop educators — that people who’ve built sustainable careers are supporting their families through education and the arts and remain connected years later. “I want to hear them telling stories about the work they’re doing together,” he adds.

The success of programs like this won’t be measured only by the diplomas students earn. It will be measured by whether colleges begin to recognize that expertise isn’t created the day someone receives a credential.

Burks believes that shift is inevitable.

“I think this educational process is the way of the future,” he says. “In order for education to remain meaningful and relevant, it’s going to have to implement experimental accreditation processes. It should be like music.”