OTHER STORIES

Big Changes to Federal Grants Are Coming: What They Mean for Schools

EdWeek

Are We Losing the Ability to Discover What We Didn't Know to Ask?

NYTimes

Vests With 'Talk Pedometers' Used to Boost Early Literacy

The74

For Chronic Absenteeism, Recovery Is Possible but Still Uncommon

K12Dive

L.A. Unified School District Faces 'Severe' Signs of Insolvency

EdWeek

School Spending Equity

High-poverty and predominantly non-white districts have actually spent more per pupil than their lower-poverty counterparts for decades. However, higher labor costs offset much of this advantage for predominantly non-white districts. Within states, spending became modestly less progressive during the 1980s and early 1990s but was increasingly targeted to high-poverty districts after the mid-1990s. Differences in average spending between states remains a major driver of spending inequity overall, as high-poverty and non-white districts are disproportionately located in lower-spending states. High-poverty and predominantly non-white districts were the least protected from spending cuts during the Great Recession. Brookings

Special Education Monitoring

Federal teams charged with making sure states are doing right by students with disabilities appear to have visited fewer than half of the states originally scheduled for review in 2025 and 2026. If reviews continue at this pace, each state would be reviewed only once every 25 years. That would mean many students would go their entire school careers without federal oversight of state systems. "The new administration has quietly rolled back their oversight," said one advocate. "We are worried this sends a signal to states and eventually to local schools that this is not important, and they don't need to be concerned about it." Chalkbeat

Cognitive Surrender

According to a large study of how generative AI is changing student behavior and academic skills, many students appear to be completing assignments faster while learning less from them. Researchers compared word problems, which can be quickly pasted into ChatGPT, to graphing problems, which cannot. After ChatGPT's release, students answered more word problems correctly in nonproctored settings, when they could simply use AI, but performed worse on word problems during proctored exams. "What makes me nervous is that it's not only about the word problems," a researcher said. "This cognitive surrender might be going on in writing, science, everything." Hechinger