OTHER STORIES

What’s Driving the ‘Southern Surge?’ Report Examines Reading Gains

EdWeek

Middle School Student Mediators Help Drive Down Suspensions

The74

5 ‘Good’ AI Use Cases That Are Actually Bad for Student

Edutopia

Help Students Get Comfortable with Taking Risks

K12Dive

How States Actually Responded To The Ed Tech Backlash Of 2026

LearnAgency

Democrats’ Win and Education

Democrats swept key midterm races across the country, potentially setting the stage for a harder line against President Trump’s education agenda in Congress and more voucher oversight in the states. Democrats have pledged to do more to protect the Education Department and hold Education Secretary McMahon responsible for deep cuts to the agency. But it’s not clear where education will rank in the priorities of newly elected leaders whose agendas also include reining in healthcare costs and gas prices and fighting the Trump administration on multiple fronts. We may see more changes on a state level in places where Democrats now lead the state government. Chalkbeat, EdWeek

Audit of AI Meta-Analyses

There are 39 meta-analyses of whether AI helps students learn. However, a forensic audit of these meta-analyses found serious conceptual and statistical flaws. The author of the audit described a constellation of “impossible statistics,” “hallucinated references” and “overstated conclusions.” Some of the underlying studies even cited references to papers published about generative AI before that technology was released to the public. Links to the citations sometimes led to unrelated studies. Susanna Loeb, a Stanford professor of education, said it’s still too early to conduct a meta-analysis that would be useful to school leaders or teachers. Very few studies of AI in education are high quality, and few of the high-quality studies take place in U.S. K-12 schools. Hechinger

U.S. Ranks Last in Teacher Pay

This report says that American teachers’ pay, relative to other occupations, is the lowest estimated ratio among all OECD countries. The median teacher earnings in the U.S. earns is equivalent to the 30th percentile in earnings among college-educated non-teachers. In addition, retirement and other payroll benefits don’t make up for low salaries because they’re about the same share of total pay for teachers as for other professionals. The authors of the report claim that schools have more money than ever but spend a shrinking share of it on teacher salaries. Brookings How can there be more money with less spent on teacher salaries? This 2019 report breaks down where schools’ costs have increased: EdWeek.