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5 ways to embrace advanced learning programs & make them available to more kids

While debates rage over who should win admission to selective high schools, public education leaves millions of talented young people, many of them students of color and from low-income backgrounds, without access to advanced learning. Vanderbilt University researchers have found that high-achieving students from the wealthiest 20% of U.S. families are six times more likely...
By Peg Tyre | July 11, 2024
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Counselor’s view: Why schools must diversify their post-secondary options and realize that one path does not fit all students

In the realm of high school counseling, the traditional narrative has often centered around the four-year college experience as the sole path to success. However, as demands of the workforce change, it’s time to recognize that there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach to post-secondary education. To ensure equitable support for all students, schools must adopt a...
By Ivonne Polanco | July 2, 2024
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Call to action: This summer, target deepfakes that victimize girls in schools

School’s almost out for summer. But there’s no time for relaxing: Kids, especially girls, are becoming victims of fabricated, nonconsensual, sexually explicit images, often created by peers. These imaginary girls are upending the lives of the real ones. The coming summer break provides the opportunity for coordinated action at the state level to disrupt this...
By Andrew Buher & Elana Sigall | June 24, 2024
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Will AI be your next principal? Probably not. But it’s here to stay

When I was a principal, if you had told me I would be working with artificial intelligence on a daily basis, I would have conjured visions of the Terminator and Skynet in my head. Fortunately, we’re not there (yet?) but the introduction of AI amplifies risks and opportunities attached to school leaders’ decisions. Education leaders...
By Gene Pinkard | June 4, 2024
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Financial literacy is great. Mandating it with a ballot initiative is not

Sometimes when I take a Lyft to LAX, the driver will ask what I do. If I tell the truth and say I’m a professor of education, I almost always regret it, because I’ll immediately get a variety of (usually) uninformed and inaccurate ideas about what’s wrong with schools and how to solve the nation’s...
By Morgan Polikoff | May 21, 2024
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What’s the right goal for student achievement? Is 50% proficiency enough? 63%?

New York City districts with above-average reading scores have asked for flexibility from Chancellor David Banks’s new literacy curriculum mandates. This raises an important question for school leaders nationwide: What’s the right goal for student achievement? Is 50% of students reading and writing proficiently good enough? Is 63%? What is the right number? Edwin Locke...
By David Wakelyn | May 15, 2024
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Can school choice improve civil society? New study shows it can

Looking at our country in 2024, it seems like Americans can barely talk to each other anymore, much less understand and navigate differences to come up with solutions that benefit us all. Heading into another election cycle, everyone from talking heads on television to community leaders are worrying about bringing American adults together. But it’s...
By Denisha Allen | May 7, 2024
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5 questions schools and universities should ask before they purchase AI tech products

Every few years, an emerging technology shows up at the doorstep of schools and universities promising to transform education. The most recent? Technologies and apps that include or are powered by generative artificial intelligence, also known as GenAI. These technologies are sold on the potential they hold for education. For example, Khan Academy’s founder opened...
By George Veletsianos, The Conversation | May 1, 2024
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This Earth Day, make sure every child learns key lessons about the environment

EarthDay.org started the battle for climate education April 22, 1970 — the very first Earth Day — and continues to fight for it 54 years later. Right now, the organization is working in every state in the country to provide free climate literacy resources for students in kindergarten through 12th grade. Every child must be...
By Lilly Howard | April 22, 2024
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Denying education to immigrant children is morally wrong — and practically dumb

These are tough times for parents and caregivers. To raise a child in 2024 is to live with a heightened awareness of school’s social, emotional, and academic value to children’s short- and long-term well-being. As the United States continues to wrestle with the aftermath of pandemic-wrecked school years, as we struggle to respond with something resembling a coherent agenda for improving public education, the...
By Conor Williams and Alejandra Vázquez Baur | April 18, 2024