Spill The News

Summary

Schools are racing to write AI policies, but what if the policy is not the first step? This week, we hear from Aleta Margolis , founder and president of the Center for Inspired Teaching, who argues that real progress starts with a…

Summary

Two school days. That’s all it took. In 2024, I chaperoned field trips two days in a row, for two different grade levels, and came back to roughly 450 ungraded assignments. I knew what to do, I’ve done it before, mark them credit or no…

Summary

I am going to start where no good teacher should start, with a $10 word: epistemology. It refers to a branch of philosophy that explores how we know what we know – something scholars like John Dewey argued is deeply tied to experience, not…

Summary

I’m not the first to say this, but it’s a strange and heartbreaking time to be a teacher and parent of young children. As a recent transplant to New Mexico, I admire the ways the state invests in children, regardless of their identities.…

Summary

What Happens to Kids When Schools Take Away Recess and Add More Screens? Schools have been quietly chipping away at recess for nearly a decade, and a sweeping new update from the American Academy of Pediatrics says the consequences are…

Summary

As one fourth grader peers over the top of a 300-foot-tall wind turbine, a classmate stands next to surgeons operating in an emergency room. Nearby, another fourth grader shuffles through an autobody shop. They are not visiting high-risk…

Summary

As one fourth grader peers over the top of a 300-foot-tall wind turbine, a classmate stands next to surgeons operating in an emergency room. Nearby, another fourth grader shuffles through an autobody shop. They are not visiting high-risk…

Summary

Elementary school is tough. There are playground politics, multiplication tables and learning to read. Imagine dealing with all that in a new language — or even a whole new country. That’s the added challenge for kids who are learning…

Summary

Elementary school is tough. There are playground politics, multiplication tables and learning to read. Imagine dealing with all that in a new language — or even a whole new country. That’s the added challenge for kids who are learning…

Summary

School’s (almost) out for summer. When it comes time to throw open campus doors for the new school year in the fall, research tells us one out of every seven teachers won’t be returning — either because they moved schools or left the…

Summary

School’s (almost) out for summer. When it comes time to throw open campus doors for the new school year in the fall, research tells us one out of every seven teachers won’t be returning — either because they moved schools or left the…

Summary

Global data on math achievement is revealing a dismaying trend: Girls are doing worse than boys — and the margins are huge. Parsing education data into snack-sized servings. In 2023, fourth-grade boys outperformed their female peers in a…

Summary

Global data on math achievement is revealing a dismaying trend: Girls are doing worse than boys — and the margins are huge. In 2023, fourth-grade boys outperformed their female peers in a vast majority of schools, growing the gender gap…

Summary

More four-year-olds are enrolled in state-funded preschools than ever before, but the quality and availability of preschool programs have experts concerned about creating a system of haves and have-nots. “If providing high-quality…

Summary

More four-year-olds are enrolled in state-funded preschools than ever before, but the quality and availability of preschool programs have experts concerned about creating a system of haves and have-nots. “If providing high-quality…

Summary

Reading my articles from the fellowship feels like reading diary entries . They’re raw, honest and they reflect how much I was struggling with teaching at the time . Overwhelm is apparent. So is frustration. As a teacher who was impacted…

Summary

When it comes to universal pre-kindergarten, California has made significant progress — 62 percent of 4-year-olds were enrolled in publicly funded early childhood programs in 2024–25, up from 42% in 2019–20, according to a new Learning…

Summary

When it comes to universal pre-kindergarten, California has made significant progress — 62 percent of 4-year-olds were enrolled in publicly funded early childhood programs in 2024–25, up from 42% in 2019–20, according to a new Learning…

Summary

Algorithms. Beauty filters. Endless scrolling. The case over “social media addiction” against Meta and Google in a California courtroom ultimately came down to these elements, legal experts say, and what a jury found was negligence on…

Summary

As federal and state legislation swirls over the usage of cellphones and personal devices in classrooms, there is a renewed push for another form of technology: surveillance cameras. Legislators in Florida, Iowa, Maryland, South Carolina…

Summary

As federal and state legislation swirls over the usage of cellphones and personal devices in classrooms, there is a renewed push for another form of technology: surveillance cameras. Legislators in Florida, Iowa, Maryland, South Carolina…

Summary

The approach of a new school year conjures images of teachers preparing their classrooms and principals greeting students as they walk through the doors on the first day of classes. But federal data shows that the education jobs that will…

Summary

A new survey shows households with children under age 18 are experiencing economic strain, with parents suffering from depression, burnout and hopelessness. Capita launched the new national survey, Quarterly Insights from American Families…

Summary

The screen-time debate is no longer confined to parenting advice. As states introduce legislation limiting devices in schools , and pediatric researchers rethink how digital environments affect development, educators are confronting a…

Summary

When a water-treatment plant outside Denver discovered an algae problem in its pipes, it did not call an engineering firm. It called the students. The aquatic robotics team at the Innovation Center at St. Vrain Valley Schools in Longmont,…

Summary

When Kim Whitman’s son was in kindergarten in 2015, it was the first time their school district rolled out a one-to-one device program, assigning an electronic device to every child. Beyond using it in the classroom, the children were…

Summary

Educators have seen wave after wave of “innovative” solutions promise to address long-standing challenges — from personalization and engagement to college- and career-readiness — yet many issues remain stubbornly unresolved. Too often,…

Summary

Even casual observers of the early childhood space likely noticed the massive push for expanding access to care and education programs over the last year, most notably with universal preschool options . But a less splashy effort has been…

Summary

Even casual observers of the early childhood space likely noticed the massive push for expanding access to care and education programs over the last year, most notably with universal preschool options . But a less splashy effort has been…

Summary

Today, district leaders are being asked to make irreversible budget decisions with fewer dollars and less margin for error than ever before. Yet many districts are making those decisions with limited evidence of what actually works in…

Summary

A high-stakes trial sparked by a California woman who first logged onto social media at age 10. Another lawsuit in Georgia filed by a school district despairing at distracted students. Dozens more legal actions brought by state attorneys…

Summary

As more legislation sweeps the nation limiting children’s phone use in schools, a new report card shows not all laws are created equal. The “ Phone-Free Schools State Report Card ,” released late last month, gave only two states “A” grades…

Summary

As more legislation sweeps the nation limiting children’s phone use in schools, a new report card shows not all laws are created equal. The “ Phone-Free Schools State Report Card ,” released late last month, gave only two states “A” grades…

Summary

I didn’t choose activism. It chose me the moment I realized my students were walking into my classroom carrying entire systems on their backs — systems too heavy for 15-, 16-, 17-year-old shoulders. But suddenly, in the last year,…

Summary

What started off more than five years ago as one-off bans in individual classrooms grew into statewide efforts to curb student cellphone use during school. Now, the idea of limiting children’s tech use has arrived at the Capitol steps in…