A November 2023 report debunking “The Myth of the Quick Learner” prompted an outcry of disbelief online and led to a closer look at the original paper, “An Astonishing Regularity in Student Learning Rate,” published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed journal. The March 2023 paper asserted: We found students...

The woman who was arguably one of the most influential U.S. educators in decades died on Christmas day in her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the age of 81, with her fingernails freshly painted bright red — as always. That would be Linda Brown, who tried very hard to remain private, and succeeded. To date, there...

The future of education has never looked more creative and promising. Since making its public debut last year, ChatGPT has profoundly impacted my perspective on generative AI in education. As a writer and former high school English teacher, I experienced an existential crisis watching the chatbot effortlessly generate lesson plans and rubrics — tasks that...

I’m a math guy. I love math, and I teach it to my preschooler every day. At a recent parent-teacher conference, his teachers told me he didn’t recognize numbers and was having a hard time counting. I pointed to the number 20, and he said, “That’s 20.” I pointed at the number 7, and he...

California always seems to be ahead of the curve. Huge numbers of you are reading this column on Apple devices designed in Cupertino — and you got here by clicking a link on one of the social media companies with headquarters just down the road from there in Silicon Valley. The Golden State: it’s where...

The American education system is stuck in an out-moded design for learning. The change the world is going through is accelerating, and we need to radically redesign how we support children and youth. Whether it’s the infusion of artificial intelligence into our world, or the need to solve the existential problems facing our society, our...

Too often, the things that get kids most excited about learning have been stripped out of the school curriculum. No wonder when asked: “how was school”, so many students kids respond “boring.”  It shouldn’t be that way, and wouldn’t be if arts and music education were more widely available. However, over the past few decades,...

Ever since the Soviet Union launched Sputnik into orbit on Oct. 4, 1957, America has been struggling to recruit and retain STEM teachers in its public middle and high schools. In the 2017-2018 school year, approximately 100,000 teacher jobs in STEM – or science, technology, engineering and mathematics – went unfilled at the high school...

The world is dependent on innovations, systems and equipment that are designed and sustained using science, engineering, technology and mathematics. This means the nurturing of STEM talent cannot be reserved for a slice of our student population but, instead, an essential component of every student’s educational journey. It turns out, industry agrees. Our colleagues in...

COVID-19 impacted every aspect of life, and schools are still dealing with its residual effects. Many teachers blame the pandemic for low achievement and isolation from peers as the root cause of student conflicts in schools. But are there more positive narratives to tell? In doing research for my Ph.D. program, I sought out the...