OTHER STORIES

School Groups Sue to Stop Dismantling of the Education Department
NYTimes, K-12 Dive

A Critique of State School Rankings

BlogSpot

Teacher Shortages Hinder Special Ed. Progress - What Are the Solutions?
K-12 Dive

When Older Students Can’t Read: How This Middle School is Tackling Literacy
EdWeek

Trump Wants to ‘Return Education to the States.’ Is That What He’s Doing?
WPost

Education Statistics

In the field of education research, the federal system is designed for the slow, unglamorous work of establishing baseline data in reading and math, conducting large-scale evaluations, and studying interventions that schools actually adopt. Trump’s second term has seen heavy damage to this infrastructure. Some consequences are already evident. Public confidence in federal data faltered as publications arrived late, abbreviated or not at all. Almost no new grants or contracts for research were awarded in 2025. But the true damage will unfold over years. Longitudinal studies were cut off midstream, multiyear research programs collapsed; promising lines of inquiry vanished before they could mature. The deepest loss belongs to the children and teachers who will never benefit from the knowledge that would have been generated. Hechinger

Phone Bans and Burnout

School cellphone bans may improve teacher well-being and stress levels, according to preliminary results from a new study. Teachers have reported in recent years that the classroom dynamic has changed. Students are disengaged and distracted. Researchers found that 9 in 10 teachers said the ban had helped them manage their classrooms and build stronger connections with students. More than 8 in 10 reported that they found teaching to be more rewarding. However, an effective cell phone ban must be carefully planned and supported by administrators, so that teachers are not burdened by the implementation. EdWeek

Building Critical Literacy

Today, students can find answers faster than ever before, but access to information isn’t the same as understanding it. The challenge for educators is helping students move from consuming information to questioning it. AI demands that we extend the blueprint for teaching decoding, fluency, and comprehension into the domain of critical literacy. This is the capacity to analyze, evaluate, and discern truth across formats, platforms, and perspectives. The article recommends five strategies to use with students. These include: lateral reading, deepfake image analysis, and multimodal text sets. Edutopia