Trump’s College Admissions Data Collection Strains School Administrators
After the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision banning affirmative action in college admissions, the Trump administration suspected that colleges might covertly continue to give racial preferences. To police compliance, the White House directed the Department of Education to collect detailed admissions data from colleges nationwide. The data collection was unusual not only in its scope, but […]
The Risks of AI in Schools Outweigh the Benefits, Report Says
Teachers reported that AI can also help improve students’ writing, so long as it is used to support students’ efforts and not to do the work for them: “Teachers report that AI can ‘spark creativity’ and help students overcome writer’s block. … At the drafting stage, it can help with organization, coherence, syntax, semantics, and […]
More Students Are Going to College. Affordability and Workforce Training Are Factors
“Confidence in college is coming back, but it is conditional,” says Courtney Brown, who studies public opinion on colleges for the Lumina Foundation, an Indianapolis-based nonprofit aimed at improving higher education. “The public’s been telling us that cost, flexibility and career relevance shape their view of college’s worth,” Brown says. “So people aren’t turning away […]
To Boost Math, Schools Try Having Young Children Change Classes for the Subject
As schools contend with a decades-long slump in math scores — exacerbated by the pandemic — some are turning to this classroom strategy even for very young students. In recent years, more elementary schools have opted to departmentalize some grade levels in an attempt to boost academic achievement. The share of fourth and fifth grade […]
Gen Z Financial Literacy in The Digital Age With Lillian Zhang
I think that’s something that it’s really difficult for people to understand if they’re not growing up in Gen Z or younger. We’ll lump millennials in there too. So what does that mean that the rules of the games have changed in practical terms for Gen Z and older generations trying to understand today’s financial […]
Conservatives See Two-parent Households as a Solution to Student Achievement. It’s Not That Simple
I wanted to look at the relationship between family structure and student achievement by family income. Single-parent families are far more common in low-income communities and I didn’t want to conflate achievement gaps by income with achievement gaps by family structure. For example, 43 percent of low-income eighth graders live with only one parent compared […]
Advocates Warn of Risks to Higher Ed Data if Education Department is Shuttered
“If those data are split across multiple federal agencies,” Cheng said, “there would likely be more bureaucratic hurdles required to combine the data.” Information sharing across federal agencies is notoriously cumbersome, the very problem that led to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11. Hiring and $4.5 million in fresh research grants […]
Deborah Farmer Kris: How Awe Helps Us Flourish
Episode Transcript Ki Sung: Welcome to the MindShift Podcast where we explore the future of learning and how we raise our kids. I’m Ki Sung. Today I’m speaking to longtime MindShift contributor Debra Farmer Kris. She’s a child development expert and author of the book, “Raising Awe Seekers: How The Science of Wonder Helps our […]
Does Having a Male Teacher Make a Difference? Not as Much as Some Think
Middle and high school students might see more benefits. Earlier research is mixed and inconclusive. A 2007 analysis by Stanford professor Thomas Dee found academic benefits for eighth-grade boys and girls when taught by teachers of their same gender. And studies where researchers observe and interview a small number of students often show how students […]
How Trump 2.0 Upended Education Research and Statistics in One Year
Even core federal datasets were not spared. The termination of a contract for EDFacts, which collects demographic data about students, was inconceivable. The data is essential for administering the highly regarded National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), the federal test that tracks reading and math achievement. It is also critical for allocating $18 billion for […]