CHEERS
Schools are finally pulling back on Chromebooks and other ed tech in the classroom. Natasha Singer shows how one Kansas middle school shifted to “intentional tech use” and reports on the growing push to limit screen time in schools nationwide. —The New York Times
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“The Georgia Early Literacy Act approved by the General Assembly Tuesday would hire more teachers and overhaul curricula and training, with a focus on the phonics-based teaching methods credited with accelerating reading apprehension in other Southern states.” —Ty Tagami, RoughDraft Atlanta
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Dan Fitzpatrick interviews Google’s Head of Learning, who tells him that the most important problem in learning is motivation and that AI is no silver bullet. Still, he’s excited about ways ed tech can improve the teaching profession: “It can save time, translate languages in real time, turn curricula into podcasts, and let a special education teacher build a music app for a student who communicates through blinks. What it cannot do is make a student feel like they matter.” That, according to Ben Gomes, “remains the work of people.” —Forbes
JEERS
New York handed $10 million to the teachers union to retrain teachers on the science of reading, yet “the course doesn’t reflect the latest research and in fact promotes a teaching strategy that’s been found ineffective and could actually impede students’ progress,” reports Steven Yoder. —Hechinger Report
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“Columbus City Schools has spent over $20 million in improvements since 2020 on four buildings it plans to demolish.” This despite a state law requiring districts to sell unused buildings to charter schools. —Cole Behrens, Columbus Dispatch
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No surprise: AI makes cheating easier. Kyla Scanlon breaks down the implications of a new Pew survey showing that 59 percent of U.S. teens believe students at their schools cheat at least somewhat often. “The impulse to cheat hasn’t changed—students have always wanted easier paths. But now, for nearly every type of assignment, cheating is almost always easier.” —The Argument
Editor's note: This was first published on Mike Petrilli's Substack, SCHOOLED, a twice-weekly free Substack and email newsletter restarting the education-reform conversation.
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Sharp analysis of the week’s biggest K–12 debates
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Curated commentary from across the ed-policy world
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Lively discussion—including reader reactions and pushback
