Education News Update » 03-31-26
OTHER STORIES
Urged to Speak Out, Ed Researchers Face a HighStakes Choice
How Educators Can Help Students Learn to Navigate Polarizing Issues
Keeping English Learners in Science and Social Studies Classrooms
Mamdani Ordered Hundreds of Millions in Cuts to NYC Ed Dept.
Social Media Companies Negligent
A jury found that Meta and Google were to blame for the depression and anxiety of a woman who compulsively used social media as a small child, awarding her $6 million in a rare verdict holding Silicon Valley accountable for its role in fueling a youth mental health crisis. The trial is a test case tied to about 2,000 other pending lawsuits brought by parents and school districts arguing that companies should be considered manufacturers of defective products for hooking a generation of young people to social media feeds. This verdict came a day after a jury in a separate trial in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $375 million for failing to protect young users from child predators.
The AI Hivemind
A research team asked large language models open-ended questions intended to spark creativity, such as, “Compose a short poem about the feeling of watching a sunset;” and “Write a 30-word essay on global warming.” The researchers posed 100 of these questions to 70 different LLMs and had each model answer them 50 times. The answers were frequently indistinguishable across different models by different companies that have different architectures and use different training data. The metaphors, imagery, word choices, sentence structures — even punctuation — often converged. The researchers say this is likely because the training for LLMs favors safe, consensus-based responses and penalizes risky, unconventional ones.
Teacher Working Conditions
The COVID-19 pandemic wreaked havoc on our schools. Academic and engagement challenges continue to plague educators. Public trust in our schools is at its lowest point in recent history. Not surprisingly, teachers have struggled, too. Using data from an annual survey in Illinois, researchers have documented a decline in teacher working conditions. Teachers report worsening conditions along most dimensions, but there has been a particular increase in defiance, inappropriate language, threats, and serious disruptions. Something since the pandemic has fundamentally altered the classroom environment.
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