WHAT WE’RE READING
Alyson Klein shows how a school district outside Seattle is using AI to provide personalized feedback to its teachers. James Cantonwine, director of research and assessment for Peninsula school district, used Claude Code to develop the optional tool that provides support without the pressure that can come from a human instructional coach. I’ve been a fan of this sort of thing for years and am thrilled to see more schools experiment with it.
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In The Atlantic, David Brooks explains how different types of people will likely use AI—calling them Productive Passengers, Reluctant Optimizers, and Mental Marathoners. He also calls on schools to figure out how to turn more kids into Mental Marathoners who seek out rather than shirk complexity. “In our current culture,” he writes, “everybody tells you to find your passion, but nobody tells you how. Schools and organizations are going to have to teach that.”
EXTRA CREDIT:
David Bobb, “America at 250: Our Classrooms Are Too Quiet”
Daniel Buck, “Teaching Students to Love America Again”
Tim Daly, “The Declaration at 250: A Report Card”
Checker Finn, “Civics, citizenship, and America 250”
Aimee Guidera, “250 Reasons This Is the Time for a Renaissance in Civic Education”
Frederick Hess, “What Is a Democratic Education, Anyway?”
Bruno V. Manno, “‘Only in America’: Civic Memory at 250”
Joshua C. Robertson, “What, to the Black Student, is the Fourth of July?”
Stefanie Sanford, Michael J. Petrilli, and Amber M. Northern, “Beyond Fireworks: America 250 and Civic Renewal (Episode 1024 of The Education Gadfly Show)”
Matthew Yglesias, “They Should Teach Patriotism in Schools”
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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