OTHER STORIES

Should Boys Start Kindergarten a Year Later Than Girls?

NYTimes

High School Students Find Common Ground on the Debate Stage

Hechinger

Helping Learners Think Deeply In A World Where AI Can Think For Them

LearnAgency

Microsoft Pledges $4 Billion Toward A.I. Education

NYTimes

$6 Billion School Funding Freeze Sparks Outcry Over ‘Cruel Betrayal’

Hechinger

Deaths of Decision-making

The leading causes of death among American teens—suicide, overdose, car crashes, and shootings—often stem from impulsive, in-the-moment decision making. Despite the scale of the U.S. education system, high school health classes rarely teach students how to manage their emotions and think critically in high-stakes situations. Research-backed cognitive behavioral programs have shown that teaching teens decision-making skills can dramatically reduce violence and save lives, often at little or no additional cost. A group of nonprofits has been working on a curriculum for decision making, which will be made available for free later this year. Teachers, coaches, and mentors will be able to incorporate this cognitive skill-building into their work. Brookings

AI Ethics Tool

AI’s rapid ascendence has left behind a lot of ethical gray areas for teachers and students to navigate. This is why a new tool called Graidients from the Center for Digital Thriving— a research lab housed at Project Zero— aims to provide a framework for making these ethically unclear areas of AI visible to educators inside the classroom. The tool helps educators scaffold a conversation with students around how to use AI to support learning for a given classroom assignment. Once students have mapped out their ideas about AI use for this assignment and discussed how they feel, educators can then set their official expectations for what is acceptable use of AI for that project. HGSE

Risks of Universal Private School Choice

Over the last few years, a new breed of private school choice programs has emerged. These are much larger than past voucher programs and less targeted to students in need. Arizona was the first out of the gate with an education savings account (ESA) program, which makes it especially important to monitor. Most of Arizona’s early ESA recipients were already attending private schools. The highest ESA participation rates were in the wealthiest ZIP codes; the lowest participation rates were in the poorest ZIP codes. Other states’ ESA programs share this pattern of participation. The question then is whether these programs are actually helping improve education in the U.S. as a whole. Brookings