OTHER STORIES

3 Simple Strategies to Help Students Build Attention Stamina

Edutopia

With Federal Cuts, Family Partnerships Even More Important to Schools

Brookings

States Picked Diploma Pathways Over High School Exit Exams. Did Students Benefit?

Chalkbeat

Districts Are Streamlining Their Digital Ecosystems

EdSurge

Trump’s Ed. Budget Calls for Billions in Cuts, Major Policy Changes

EdWeek

Skills Predict Algebra 1 Success

Many students fail Algebra 1 on their first attempt. These failures may be rooted in foundational gaps that begin earlier in math, encountered in middle school and even elementary school. A new study found that certain skills from prior grades seemed to unlock success in Algebra I—those that undergirded the concepts that students would learn in Algebra 1. Students who had mastered that specific set of skills were more successful in the course than students who didn’t have them, even if they had a similar level of general math knowledge. The findings suggest that helping kids who are behind succeed in this class requires “fine-tuned” support to learn specific, underlying skills. EdWeek

Rethinking Education

This article is actually an edited transcript of an episode of “The Ezra Klein Show.” The episode asks, When it comes to the intellectual faculties that we once thought were at the core of education, how are modern kids doing? They’re not doing well. But, if you have this technology that not only can but will be doing so much of this for you, for us, for the economy, why are we doing any of this work at all? Why are we reading these books ourselves when they can just be summarized for us? Why are we doing this math ourselves when a computer can just do it for us? Most of all, what are children actually going to need to know in a future world changed by technology? NYTimes

Educational Choice for Children Act

The Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA) continues to move, quietly, towards becoming one of America’s costliest, most significant federal education programs. Now part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, ECCA would create a federal tax-credit scholarship program that’s unprecedented in scope and scale. Tax-credit scholarship programs like ECCA aren’t quite private school voucher programs, but they’re first cousins. The bill would provide minimally regulated scholarship-granting organizations with a great deal of discretion over how federal education funds are spent. ECCA is poised to redistribute funds from poor and rural communities to wealthy and non-rural communities. A hypothetical scenario illustrates the possibility of waste, fraud, and discriminatory behaviors. Brookings