The AI ‘Hivemind’: Why So Many Student Essays Sound Alike
Bruce Maxwell, professor of computer science at Northeastern University, was grading exams for his online master’s course in computer vision, a subfield in artificial intelligence that deals with images, when he first noticed that something felt … off. “I’d see the same phrases, the same commas, even the same word choices. I would say, ‘Man, […]
Cursive Is Back. But Should Students Be Learning the Skill?
“I prefer writing in cursive,” Halle said. The pair are proud members of the Holmes Middle School cursive club in Virginia. Cursive has been on the upswing for years now. More than two dozen states now require cursive instruction in schools after the 2010 Common Core standards omitted the skill. Kenerson, a multilingual teacher at […]
Retirees Are Helping Child Care Centers While Connecting with Community
The shortage of child care teachers is a well-known problem, but a lack of qualified substitute teachers doesn’t always get as much attention. Legally, centers are required to maintain a certain number of adults for the children they have in care. Without reliable substitutes, full-time teachers can barely step out of the room for a […]
Southern States Boost Early Reading, But Gains Stall in Middle School
Alabama, Louisiana and Tennessee started reforms later and may need more time. But McGrath’s question remains. Researchers and literacy advocates point to a common answer: early reading reforms focused on phonics, which helped students decode words, but decoding alone is not enough for proficient middle school reading, where the words are longer and the sentences […]
Key Oversight Helping Keep Student Loan Records Accurate Has stopped, Watchdog Says
“Instead of providing relief to 43 million Americans who are drowning in student debt,” Sanders said in a statement to NPR, “the Trump administration has made it harder for them to understand how much they owe and how long it will take to pay back.” What the administration has to say about GAO’s findings The […]
How Finnish Education Inspires U.S. Schools, Still
The parent community also wanted more skilled trades and culinary arts in the day-to-day curriculum, Laho said. For example, parents noted the slow decline in shop classes offered in public schools, so Copper Island made a concerted effort to bring them back. The group considered many education models, Laho said, including Montessori and hybrid models, […]
How Can Character Count in Sports When Winning is Everything?
“Most sports are about motor skills, not moral skills,” Stoll told me. “It doesn’t magically happen because you are walking or biking or jogging,” she added. The central dilemma for coaches is this: what are you willing to do to win? Some schools take deliberate steps to include character education in their sports programs. At […]
Why the Focus on Willpower Backfires with Kids
And in the process, they’ve found easier and more effective ways for parents to handle the tsunami of temptations in children’s lives. Focusing on willpower can backfire Willpower is the ability to resist a temptation right in front of you, Milyavskaya says. “It’s the idea of effortful resistance of temptation.” For example, your ability to […]
The Effort to Rebuild Education Research After DOGE Cuts
“For all the reorganizing that’s going on, there is an awareness that IES is performing a unique service to the country, and we need to be thoughtful about its next steps,” Northern said. Northern said she met with 400 people last year and read through more than 200 public comments on reforming IES, many of […]
College Students, Professors are Making Their Own AI Rules. They Don’t Always Agree
“It’s not fair to them,” Cryer says. More than three years after ChatGPT debuted, generative AI has become a part of everyday life, and professors and students are still figuring out how or whether they should use it, especially in humanities courses. A recent survey suggests many students are diving right in: According to a […]