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The 10 Most Significant Education Studies of 2021

From reframing our notion of “good” schools to mining the magic of expert teachers, here’s a curated list of must-read research from 2021.

It was a year of unprecedented hardship for teachers and school leaders. We pored through hundreds of studies to see if we could follow the trail of exactly what happened: The research revealed a complex portrait of a grueling year during which persistent issues of burnout and mental and physical health impacted millions of educators. Meanwhile, many of the old debates continued: Does paper beat digital? Is project-based learning as effective as direct instruction? How do you define what a “good” school is?

Other studies grabbed our attention, and in a few cases, made headlines. Researchers from the University of Chicago and Columbia University turned artificial intelligence loose on some 1,130 award-winning children’s books in search of invisible patterns of bias. (Spoiler alert: They found some.) Another study revealed why many parents are reluctant to support social and emotional learning in schools—and provided hints about how educators can flip the script.

1. What Parents Fear About SEL (and How to Change Their Minds)

When researchers at the Fordham Institute asked parents to rank phrases associated with social and emotional learning , nothing seemed to add up. The term “social-emotional learning” was very unpopular; parents wanted to steer their kids clear of it. But when the researchers added a simple clause, forming a new phrase—”social-emotional & academic learning”—the program shot all the way up to No. 2 in the rankings.

What gives?

Parents were picking up subtle cues in the list of SEL-related terms that irked or worried them, the researchers suggest. Phrases like “soft skills” and “growth mindset” felt “nebulous” and devoid of academic content. For some, the language felt suspiciously like “code for liberal indoctrination.”

But the study suggests that parents might need the simplest of reassurances to break through the political noise. Removing the jargon, focusing on productive phrases like “life skills,” and relentlessly connecting SEL to academic progress puts parents at ease—and seems to save social and emotional learning in the process.

2. The Secret Management Techniques of Expert Teachers

In the hands of experienced teachers, classroom management can seem almost invisible: Subtle techniques are quietly at work behind the scenes, with students falling into orderly routines and engaging in rigorous academic tasks almost as if by magic. 

That’s no accident, according to new research . While outbursts are inevitable in school settings, expert teachers seed their classrooms with proactive, relationship-building strategies that often prevent misbehavior before it erupts. They also approach discipline more holistically than their less-experienced counterparts, consistently reframing misbehavior in the broader context of how lessons can be more engaging, or how clearly they communicate expectations.

Focusing on the underlying dynamics of classroom behavior—and not on surface-level disruptions—means that expert teachers often look the other way at all the right times, too. Rather than rise to the bait of a minor breach in etiquette, a common mistake of new teachers, they tend to play the long game, asking questions about the origins of misbehavior, deftly navigating the terrain between discipline and student autonomy, and opting to confront misconduct privately when possible.

3. The Surprising Power of Pretesting

Asking students to take a practice test before they’ve even encountered the material may seem like a waste of time—after all, they’d just be guessing.

But new research concludes that the approach, called pretesting, is actually more effective than other typical study strategies. Surprisingly, pretesting even beat out taking practice tests after learning the material, a proven strategy endorsed by cognitive scientists and educators alike. In the study, students who took a practice test before learning the material outperformed their peers who studied more traditionally by 49 percent on a follow-up test, while outperforming students who took practice tests after studying the material by 27 percent.

The researchers hypothesize that the “generation of errors” was a key to the strategy’s success, spurring student curiosity and priming them to “search for the correct answers” when they finally explored the new material—and adding grist to a 2018 study that found that making educated guesses helped students connect background knowledge to new material.

Learning is more durable when students do the hard work of correcting misconceptions, the research suggests, reminding us yet again that being wrong is an important milestone on the road to being right.

4. Confronting an Old Myth About Immigrant Students

Immigrant students are sometimes portrayed as a costly expense to the education system, but new research is systematically dismantling that myth.

In a 2021 study , researchers analyzed over 1.3 million academic and birth records for students in Florida communities, and concluded that the presence of immigrant students actually has “a positive effect on the academic achievement of U.S.-born students,” raising test scores as the size of the immigrant school population increases. The benefits were especially powerful for low-income students.

While immigrants initially “face challenges in assimilation that may require additional school resources,” the researchers concluded, hard work and resilience may allow them to excel and thus “positively affect exposed U.S.-born students’ attitudes and behavior.” But according to teacher Larry Ferlazzo, the improvements might stem from the fact that having English language learners in classes improves pedagogy , pushing teachers to consider “issues like prior knowledge, scaffolding, and maximizing accessibility.”

5. A Fuller Picture of What a ‘Good’ School Is

It’s time to rethink our definition of what a “good school” is, researchers assert in a study published in late 2020.⁣ That’s because typical measures of school quality like test scores often provide an incomplete and misleading picture, the researchers found.

The study looked at over 150,000 ninth-grade students who attended Chicago public schools and concluded that emphasizing the social and emotional dimensions of learning—relationship-building, a sense of belonging, and resilience, for example—improves high school graduation and college matriculation rates for both high- and low-income students, beating out schools that focus primarily on improving test scores.⁣

“Schools that promote socio-emotional development actually have a really big positive impact on kids,” said lead researcher C. Kirabo Jackson in an interview with Edutopia . “And these impacts are particularly large for vulnerable student populations who don’t tend to do very well in the education system.”

The findings reinforce the importance of a holistic approach to measuring student progress, and are a reminder that schools—and teachers—can influence students in ways that are difficult to measure, and may only materialize well into the future.⁣

6. Teaching Is Learning

One of the best ways to learn a concept is to teach it to someone else. But do you actually have to step into the shoes of a teacher, or does the mere expectation of teaching do the trick?

In a 2021 study , researchers split students into two groups and gave them each a science passage about the Doppler effect—a phenomenon associated with sound and light waves that explains the gradual change in tone and pitch as a car races off into the distance, for example. One group studied the text as preparation for a test; the other was told that they’d be teaching the material to another student.

The researchers never carried out the second half of the activity—students read the passages but never taught the lesson. All of the participants were then tested on their factual recall of the Doppler effect, and their ability to draw deeper conclusions from the reading.

The upshot? Students who prepared to teach outperformed their counterparts in both duration and depth of learning, scoring 9 percent higher on factual recall a week after the lessons concluded, and 24 percent higher on their ability to make inferences. The research suggests that asking students to prepare to teach something—or encouraging them to think “could I teach this to someone else?”—can significantly alter their learning trajectories.

7. A Disturbing Strain of Bias in Kids’ Books

Some of the most popular and well-regarded children’s books—Caldecott and Newbery honorees among them—persistently depict Black, Asian, and Hispanic characters with lighter skin, according to new research .

Using artificial intelligence, researchers combed through 1,130 children’s books written in the last century, comparing two sets of diverse children’s books—one a collection of popular books that garnered major literary awards, the other favored by identity-based awards. The software analyzed data on skin tone, race, age, and gender.

Among the findings: While more characters with darker skin color begin to appear over time, the most popular books—those most frequently checked out of libraries and lining classroom bookshelves—continue to depict people of color in lighter skin tones. More insidiously, when adult characters are “moral or upstanding,” their skin color tends to appear lighter, the study’s lead author, Anjali Aduki,  told The 74 , with some books converting “Martin Luther King Jr.’s chocolate complexion to a light brown or beige.” Female characters, meanwhile, are often seen but not heard.

Cultural representations are a reflection of our values, the researchers conclude: “Inequality in representation, therefore, constitutes an explicit statement of inequality of value.”

8. The Never-Ending ‘Paper Versus Digital’ War

The argument goes like this: Digital screens turn reading into a cold and impersonal task; they’re good for information foraging, and not much more. “Real” books, meanwhile, have a heft and “tactility”  that make them intimate, enchanting—and irreplaceable.

But researchers have often found weak or equivocal evidence for the superiority of reading on paper. While a recent study concluded that paper books yielded better comprehension than e-books when many of the digital tools had been removed, the effect sizes were small. A 2021 meta-analysis further muddies the water: When digital and paper books are “mostly similar,” kids comprehend the print version more readily—but when enhancements like motion and sound “target the story content,” e-books generally have the edge.

Nostalgia is a force that every new technology must eventually confront. There’s plenty of evidence that writing with pen and paper encodes learning more deeply than typing. But new digital book formats come preloaded with powerful tools that allow readers to annotate, look up words, answer embedded questions, and share their thinking with other readers.

We may not be ready to admit it, but these are precisely the kinds of activities that drive deeper engagement, enhance comprehension, and leave us with a lasting memory of what we’ve read. The future of e-reading, despite the naysayers, remains promising.

9. New Research Makes a Powerful Case for PBL

Many classrooms today still look like they did 100 years ago, when students were preparing for factory jobs. But the world’s moved on: Modern careers demand a more sophisticated set of skills—collaboration, advanced problem-solving, and creativity, for example—and those can be difficult to teach in classrooms that rarely give students the time and space to develop those competencies.

Project-based learning (PBL) would seem like an ideal solution. But critics say PBL places too much responsibility on novice learners, ignoring the evidence about the effectiveness of direct instruction and ultimately undermining subject fluency. Advocates counter that student-centered learning and direct instruction can and should coexist in classrooms.

Now two new large-scale studies —encompassing over 6,000 students in 114 diverse schools across the nation—provide evidence that a well-structured, project-based approach boosts learning for a wide range of students.

In the studies, which were funded by Lucas Education Research, a sister division of Edutopia , elementary and high school students engaged in challenging projects that had them designing water systems for local farms, or creating toys using simple household objects to learn about gravity, friction, and force. Subsequent testing revealed notable learning gains—well above those experienced by students in traditional classrooms—and those gains seemed to raise all boats, persisting across socioeconomic class, race, and reading levels.

10. Tracking a Tumultuous Year for Teachers

The Covid-19 pandemic cast a long shadow over the lives of educators in 2021, according to a year’s worth of research.

The average teacher’s workload suddenly “spiked last spring,” wrote the Center for Reinventing Public Education in its January 2021 report, and then—in defiance of the laws of motion—simply never let up. By the fall, a RAND study recorded an astonishing shift in work habits: 24 percent of teachers reported that they were working 56 hours or more per week, compared to 5 percent pre-pandemic.

The vaccine was the promised land, but when it arrived nothing seemed to change. In an April 2021 survey  conducted four months after the first vaccine was administered in New York City, 92 percent of teachers said their jobs were more stressful than prior to the pandemic, up from 81 percent in an earlier survey.

It wasn’t just the length of the work days; a close look at the research reveals that the school system’s failure to adjust expectations was ruinous. It seemed to start with the obligations of hybrid teaching, which surfaced in Edutopia ’s coverage of overseas school reopenings. In June 2020, well before many U.S. schools reopened, we reported that hybrid teaching was an emerging problem internationally, and warned that if the “model is to work well for any period of time,” schools must “recognize and seek to reduce the workload for teachers.” Almost eight months later, a 2021 RAND study identified hybrid teaching as a primary source of teacher stress in the U.S., easily outpacing factors like the health of a high-risk loved one.

New and ever-increasing demands for tech solutions put teachers on a knife’s edge. In several important 2021 studies, researchers concluded that teachers were being pushed to adopt new technology without the “resources and equipment necessary for its correct didactic use.” Consequently, they were spending more than 20 hours a week adapting lessons for online use, and experiencing an unprecedented erosion of the boundaries between their work and home lives, leading to an unsustainable “always on” mentality. When it seemed like nothing more could be piled on—when all of the lights were blinking red—the federal government restarted standardized testing .

Change will be hard; many of the pathologies that exist in the system now predate the pandemic. But creating strict school policies that separate work from rest, eliminating the adoption of new tech tools without proper supports, distributing surveys regularly to gauge teacher well-being, and above all listening to educators to identify and confront emerging problems might be a good place to start, if the research can be believed.

The pandemic has had devastating impacts on learning. What will it take to help students catch up?

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, megan kuhfeld , megan kuhfeld senior research scientist - nwea @megankuhfeld jim soland , jim soland assistant professor, school of education and human development - university of virginia, affiliated research fellow - nwea @jsoland karyn lewis , and karyn lewis director, center for school and student progress - nwea @karynlew emily morton emily morton research scientist - nwea @emily_r_morton.

March 3, 2022

As we reach the two-year mark of the initial wave of pandemic-induced school shutdowns, academic normalcy remains out of reach for many students, educators, and parents. In addition to surging COVID-19 cases at the end of 2021, schools have faced severe staff shortages , high rates of absenteeism and quarantines , and rolling school closures . Furthermore, students and educators continue to struggle with mental health challenges , higher rates of violence and misbehavior , and concerns about lost instructional time .

As we outline in our new research study released in January, the cumulative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ academic achievement has been large. We tracked changes in math and reading test scores across the first two years of the pandemic using data from 5.4 million U.S. students in grades 3-8. We focused on test scores from immediately before the pandemic (fall 2019), following the initial onset (fall 2020), and more than one year into pandemic disruptions (fall 2021).

Average fall 2021 math test scores in grades 3-8 were 0.20-0.27 standard deviations (SDs) lower relative to same-grade peers in fall 2019, while reading test scores were 0.09-0.18 SDs lower. This is a sizable drop. For context, the math drops are significantly larger than estimated impacts from other large-scale school disruptions, such as after Hurricane Katrina—math scores dropped 0.17 SDs in one year for New Orleans evacuees .

Even more concerning, test-score gaps between students in low-poverty and high-poverty elementary schools grew by approximately 20% in math (corresponding to 0.20 SDs) and 15% in reading (0.13 SDs), primarily during the 2020-21 school year. Further, achievement tended to drop more between fall 2020 and 2021 than between fall 2019 and 2020 (both overall and differentially by school poverty), indicating that disruptions to learning have continued to negatively impact students well past the initial hits following the spring 2020 school closures.

These numbers are alarming and potentially demoralizing, especially given the heroic efforts of students to learn and educators to teach in incredibly trying times. From our perspective, these test-score drops in no way indicate that these students represent a “ lost generation ” or that we should give up hope. Most of us have never lived through a pandemic, and there is so much we don’t know about students’ capacity for resiliency in these circumstances and what a timeline for recovery will look like. Nor are we suggesting that teachers are somehow at fault given the achievement drops that occurred between 2020 and 2021; rather, educators had difficult jobs before the pandemic, and now are contending with huge new challenges, many outside their control.

Clearly, however, there’s work to do. School districts and states are currently making important decisions about which interventions and strategies to implement to mitigate the learning declines during the last two years. Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) investments from the American Rescue Plan provided nearly $200 billion to public schools to spend on COVID-19-related needs. Of that sum, $22 billion is dedicated specifically to addressing learning loss using “evidence-based interventions” focused on the “ disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on underrepresented student subgroups. ” Reviews of district and state spending plans (see Future Ed , EduRecoveryHub , and RAND’s American School District Panel for more details) indicate that districts are spending their ESSER dollars designated for academic recovery on a wide variety of strategies, with summer learning, tutoring, after-school programs, and extended school-day and school-year initiatives rising to the top.

Comparing the negative impacts from learning disruptions to the positive impacts from interventions

To help contextualize the magnitude of the impacts of COVID-19, we situate test-score drops during the pandemic relative to the test-score gains associated with common interventions being employed by districts as part of pandemic recovery efforts. If we assume that such interventions will continue to be as successful in a COVID-19 school environment, can we expect that these strategies will be effective enough to help students catch up? To answer this question, we draw from recent reviews of research on high-dosage tutoring , summer learning programs , reductions in class size , and extending the school day (specifically for literacy instruction) . We report effect sizes for each intervention specific to a grade span and subject wherever possible (e.g., tutoring has been found to have larger effects in elementary math than in reading).

Figure 1 shows the standardized drops in math test scores between students testing in fall 2019 and fall 2021 (separately by elementary and middle school grades) relative to the average effect size of various educational interventions. The average effect size for math tutoring matches or exceeds the average COVID-19 score drop in math. Research on tutoring indicates that it often works best in younger grades, and when provided by a teacher rather than, say, a parent. Further, some of the tutoring programs that produce the biggest effects can be quite intensive (and likely expensive), including having full-time tutors supporting all students (not just those needing remediation) in one-on-one settings during the school day. Meanwhile, the average effect of reducing class size is negative but not significant, with high variability in the impact across different studies. Summer programs in math have been found to be effective (average effect size of .10 SDs), though these programs in isolation likely would not eliminate the COVID-19 test-score drops.

Figure 1: Math COVID-19 test-score drops compared to the effect sizes of various educational interventions

Source: COVID-19 score drops are pulled from Kuhfeld et al. (2022) Table 5; reduction-in-class-size results are from pg. 10 of Figles et al. (2018) Table 2; summer program results are pulled from Lynch et al (2021) Table 2; and tutoring estimates are pulled from Nictow et al (2020) Table 3B. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals are shown with vertical lines on each bar.

Notes: Kuhfeld et al. and Nictow et al. reported effect sizes separately by grade span; Figles et al. and Lynch et al. report an overall effect size across elementary and middle grades. We were unable to find a rigorous study that reported effect sizes for extending the school day/year on math performance. Nictow et al. and Kraft & Falken (2021) also note large variations in tutoring effects depending on the type of tutor, with larger effects for teacher and paraprofessional tutoring programs than for nonprofessional and parent tutoring. Class-size reductions included in the Figles meta-analysis ranged from a minimum of one to minimum of eight students per class.

Figure 2 displays a similar comparison using effect sizes from reading interventions. The average effect of tutoring programs on reading achievement is larger than the effects found for the other interventions, though summer reading programs and class size reduction both produced average effect sizes in the ballpark of the COVID-19 reading score drops.

Figure 2: Reading COVID-19 test-score drops compared to the effect sizes of various educational interventions

Source: COVID-19 score drops are pulled from Kuhfeld et al. (2022) Table 5; extended-school-day results are from Figlio et al. (2018) Table 2; reduction-in-class-size results are from pg. 10 of Figles et al. (2018) ; summer program results are pulled from Kim & Quinn (2013) Table 3; and tutoring estimates are pulled from Nictow et al (2020) Table 3B. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals are shown with vertical lines on each bar.

Notes: While Kuhfeld et al. and Nictow et al. reported effect sizes separately by grade span, Figlio et al. and Kim & Quinn report an overall effect size across elementary and middle grades. Class-size reductions included in the Figles meta-analysis ranged from a minimum of one to minimum of eight students per class.

There are some limitations of drawing on research conducted prior to the pandemic to understand our ability to address the COVID-19 test-score drops. First, these studies were conducted under conditions that are very different from what schools currently face, and it is an open question whether the effectiveness of these interventions during the pandemic will be as consistent as they were before the pandemic. Second, we have little evidence and guidance about the efficacy of these interventions at the unprecedented scale that they are now being considered. For example, many school districts are expanding summer learning programs, but school districts have struggled to find staff interested in teaching summer school to meet the increased demand. Finally, given the widening test-score gaps between low- and high-poverty schools, it’s uncertain whether these interventions can actually combat the range of new challenges educators are facing in order to narrow these gaps. That is, students could catch up overall, yet the pandemic might still have lasting, negative effects on educational equality in this country.

Given that the current initiatives are unlikely to be implemented consistently across (and sometimes within) districts, timely feedback on the effects of initiatives and any needed adjustments will be crucial to districts’ success. The Road to COVID Recovery project and the National Student Support Accelerator are two such large-scale evaluation studies that aim to produce this type of evidence while providing resources for districts to track and evaluate their own programming. Additionally, a growing number of resources have been produced with recommendations on how to best implement recovery programs, including scaling up tutoring , summer learning programs , and expanded learning time .

Ultimately, there is much work to be done, and the challenges for students, educators, and parents are considerable. But this may be a moment when decades of educational reform, intervention, and research pay off. Relying on what we have learned could show the way forward.

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The Top 20 Education Next Articles of 2021

Education Next

Our annual look back at the year’s most popular Education Next articles is itself a popular article with readers. It’s useful as an indicator of what issues are at the top of the education policy conversation.

When we crafted the introduction to this list a year ago, for the top articles of 2020 , we observed, “This year, as our list indicates, race and the Covid-19 pandemic dominated the discussion.” Since then, a new president has been inaugurated, but our list signals that the public hasn’t entirely turned the page: both the pandemic and race-related issues attracted high reader interest in 2021, just as they did the year before.

Several articles directly or indirectly related to the pandemic and its effect made the top-20 list. The no. 1 article, “ Pandemic Parent Survey Finds Perverse Pattern: Students Are More Likely to Be Attending School in Person Where Covid Is Spreading More Rapidly ,” by Michael B. Henderson, Paul E. Peterson, and Martin R. West, reported on what the article called “a troubling pattern: students are most likely to be attending school fully in person in school districts where the virus is spreading most rapidly.” The article explained “To be clear, this pattern does not constitute evidence that greater use of in-person instruction has contributed to the spread of the virus across the United States. It is equally plausible that counties where in-person schooling is most common are places where there are fewer measures and practices in the wider community designed to mitigate Covid spread.”

Other articles whose findings related to the pandemic or had implications for education amid or after the pandemic included “ A Test for the Test-Makers ,” “ The Shrinking School Week ,” “ The Covid-19 Pandemic Is a Lousy Natural Experiment for Studying the Effects of Online Learning ” “ The Politics of Closing Schools ,” “ Addressing Significant Learning Loss in Mathematics During Covid-19 and Beyond ,” and “ Move To Trash: Five pandemic-era education practices that deserve to be dumped in the dustbin .”

Articles about race-related education issues also did well with readers. “ Critical Race Theory Collides with the Law ,” “ Teaching About Slavery ,” “ Ethnic Studies in California ,” and “ Segregation and Racial Gaps in Special Education ” all dealt with those topics.

Perhaps the conflicts over pandemic policies and Critical Race Theory helped provide a push for school choice. Choice—whether in the form of vouchers, scholarships, or charter schools—was the subject of several other articles that made the top 20 list, including “ School Choice Advances in the States ,” “ School Choice and the ‘Truly Disadvantaged,’ ” “ What’s Next in New Orleans ,” and “ Betsy DeVos and the Future of Education Reform .”

Who knows what 2022 will bring? We hope for our readers the year ahead is one of good health and of continued learning. We look forward to a time when pandemic-related articles no longer dominate our list.

The full Top 20 Education Next articles of 2021 list follows:

1. Pandemic Parent Survey Finds Perverse Pattern: Students Are More Likely to Be Attending School in Person Where Covid Is Spreading More Rapidly Majority of students receiving fully remote instruction; Private-school students more likely to be in person full time By Michael B. Henderson, Paul E. Peterson, and Martin R. West

2. Critical Race Theory Collides with the Law Can a school require students to “confess their privilege” in class? By Joshua Dunn

3. Teaching about Slavery “Asking how to teach about slavery is a little like asking why we teach at all” By Danielle Allen, Daina Ramey Berry, David W. Blight, Allen C. Guelzo, Robert Maranto, Ian V. Rowe, and Adrienne Stang

4. Ethnic Studies in California An unsteady jump from college campuses to K-12 classrooms By Miriam Pawel

5. Segregation and Racial Gaps in Special Education New evidence on the debate over disproportionality By Todd E. Elder, David Figlio, Scott Imberman, and Claudia Persico

6. Making Education Research Relevant How researchers can give teachers more choices By Daniel T. Willingham and David B. Daniel

7. Proving the School-to-Prison Pipeline Stricter middle schools raise the risk of adult arrests By Andrew Bacher-Hicks, Stephen B. Billings, and David J. Deming

8. What I Learned in 23 Years Ranking America’s Most Challenging High Schools Most students are capable of much more learning than they are asked to do By Jay Mathews

9. A Test for the Test Makers College Board and ACT move to grow and diversify as the pandemic fuels test-optional admissions trend By Jon Marcus

10. Addressing Significant Learning Loss in Mathematics During Covid-19 and Beyond The pandemic has amplified existing skill gaps, but new strategies and new tech could help By Joel Rose

11. The Shrinking School Week Effects of a four-day schedule on student achievement By Paul N. Thompson

12. Computer Science for All? As a new subject spreads, debates flare about precisely what is taught, to whom, and for what purpose By Jennifer Oldham

13. The Covid-19 Pandemic Is a Lousy Natural Experiment for Studying the Effects of Online Learning Focus, instead, on measuring the overall effects of the pandemic itself By Andrew Bacher-Hicks and Joshua Goodman

14. School Choice Advances in the States Advocates describe “breakthrough year” By Alan Greenblatt

15. The Politics of Closing Schools Teachers unions and the Covid-19 pandemic in Europe By Susanne Wiborg

16. Move to Trash Five pandemic-era education practices that deserve to be dumped in the dustbin By Michael J. Petrilli

17. School Choice and “The Truly Disadvantaged” Vouchers boost college going, but not for students in greatest need By Albert Cheng and Paul E. Peterson

18. The Orchid and the Dandelion New research uncovers a link between a genetic variation and how students respond to teaching. The potential implications for schools—and society—are vast. By Laurence Holt

19. What’s Next in New Orleans The Louisiana city has the most unusual school system in America. But can the new board of a radically decentralized district handle the latest challenges? By Danielle Dreilinger

20. Betsy DeVos and the Future of Education Reform My years as assistant secretary of education gave me a firsthand look at how infighting among education reformers is hampering progress toward change. By Jim Blew

Congratulations to all of our authors!

— Education Next

P.S. You can find the Top 20 Education Next articles of 2020 here , 2019 here , 2018 here , 2017 here , 2016 here , 2015 here , 2014 here and 2013 here .

P.P.S. You can find the Top 10 Education Next blog posts of 2021 here.

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Spring 2024.

Vol. 24, No. 2

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How technology is reinventing education

Stanford Graduate School of Education Dean Dan Schwartz and other education scholars weigh in on what's next for some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom.

Image credit: Claire Scully

New advances in technology are upending education, from the recent debut of new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots like ChatGPT to the growing accessibility of virtual-reality tools that expand the boundaries of the classroom. For educators, at the heart of it all is the hope that every learner gets an equal chance to develop the skills they need to succeed. But that promise is not without its pitfalls.

“Technology is a game-changer for education – it offers the prospect of universal access to high-quality learning experiences, and it creates fundamentally new ways of teaching,” said Dan Schwartz, dean of Stanford Graduate School of Education (GSE), who is also a professor of educational technology at the GSE and faculty director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning . “But there are a lot of ways we teach that aren’t great, and a big fear with AI in particular is that we just get more efficient at teaching badly. This is a moment to pay attention, to do things differently.”

For K-12 schools, this year also marks the end of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding program, which has provided pandemic recovery funds that many districts used to invest in educational software and systems. With these funds running out in September 2024, schools are trying to determine their best use of technology as they face the prospect of diminishing resources.

Here, Schwartz and other Stanford education scholars weigh in on some of the technology trends taking center stage in the classroom this year.

AI in the classroom

In 2023, the big story in technology and education was generative AI, following the introduction of ChatGPT and other chatbots that produce text seemingly written by a human in response to a question or prompt. Educators immediately worried that students would use the chatbot to cheat by trying to pass its writing off as their own. As schools move to adopt policies around students’ use of the tool, many are also beginning to explore potential opportunities – for example, to generate reading assignments or coach students during the writing process.

AI can also help automate tasks like grading and lesson planning, freeing teachers to do the human work that drew them into the profession in the first place, said Victor Lee, an associate professor at the GSE and faculty lead for the AI + Education initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning. “I’m heartened to see some movement toward creating AI tools that make teachers’ lives better – not to replace them, but to give them the time to do the work that only teachers are able to do,” he said. “I hope to see more on that front.”

He also emphasized the need to teach students now to begin questioning and critiquing the development and use of AI. “AI is not going away,” said Lee, who is also director of CRAFT (Classroom-Ready Resources about AI for Teaching), which provides free resources to help teach AI literacy to high school students across subject areas. “We need to teach students how to understand and think critically about this technology.”

Immersive environments

The use of immersive technologies like augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality is also expected to surge in the classroom, especially as new high-profile devices integrating these realities hit the marketplace in 2024.

The educational possibilities now go beyond putting on a headset and experiencing life in a distant location. With new technologies, students can create their own local interactive 360-degree scenarios, using just a cell phone or inexpensive camera and simple online tools.

“This is an area that’s really going to explode over the next couple of years,” said Kristen Pilner Blair, director of research for the Digital Learning initiative at the Stanford Accelerator for Learning, which runs a program exploring the use of virtual field trips to promote learning. “Students can learn about the effects of climate change, say, by virtually experiencing the impact on a particular environment. But they can also become creators, documenting and sharing immersive media that shows the effects where they live.”

Integrating AI into virtual simulations could also soon take the experience to another level, Schwartz said. “If your VR experience brings me to a redwood tree, you could have a window pop up that allows me to ask questions about the tree, and AI can deliver the answers.”

Gamification

Another trend expected to intensify this year is the gamification of learning activities, often featuring dynamic videos with interactive elements to engage and hold students’ attention.

“Gamification is a good motivator, because one key aspect is reward, which is very powerful,” said Schwartz. The downside? Rewards are specific to the activity at hand, which may not extend to learning more generally. “If I get rewarded for doing math in a space-age video game, it doesn’t mean I’m going to be motivated to do math anywhere else.”

Gamification sometimes tries to make “chocolate-covered broccoli,” Schwartz said, by adding art and rewards to make speeded response tasks involving single-answer, factual questions more fun. He hopes to see more creative play patterns that give students points for rethinking an approach or adapting their strategy, rather than only rewarding them for quickly producing a correct response.

Data-gathering and analysis

The growing use of technology in schools is producing massive amounts of data on students’ activities in the classroom and online. “We’re now able to capture moment-to-moment data, every keystroke a kid makes,” said Schwartz – data that can reveal areas of struggle and different learning opportunities, from solving a math problem to approaching a writing assignment.

But outside of research settings, he said, that type of granular data – now owned by tech companies – is more likely used to refine the design of the software than to provide teachers with actionable information.

The promise of personalized learning is being able to generate content aligned with students’ interests and skill levels, and making lessons more accessible for multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Realizing that promise requires that educators can make sense of the data that’s being collected, said Schwartz – and while advances in AI are making it easier to identify patterns and findings, the data also needs to be in a system and form educators can access and analyze for decision-making. Developing a usable infrastructure for that data, Schwartz said, is an important next step.

With the accumulation of student data comes privacy concerns: How is the data being collected? Are there regulations or guidelines around its use in decision-making? What steps are being taken to prevent unauthorized access? In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data.

Technology is “requiring people to check their assumptions about education,” said Schwartz, noting that AI in particular is very efficient at replicating biases and automating the way things have been done in the past, including poor models of instruction. “But it’s also opening up new possibilities for students producing material, and for being able to identify children who are not average so we can customize toward them. It’s an opportunity to think of entirely new ways of teaching – this is the path I hope to see.”

Short articles

Nov 03,2022

"Apart from developing literacy, it has also had a positive impact on students who have had a pleasant experience while going through the pandemic." In this reader submission, Anisah Khoridatul, Grade 6 Teacher SD Ar-Ridha Al Salaam, Depok, shares the details of a student diary project in place at the school.

Sep 28,2022

In this reader submission, teacher at SMA Lokon St. Nikolaus Tomohon in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, Martha Goni, shares the details of a Retreat Program the school has implemented, and the positive impact it is having on Year 12 students.

Aug 31,2022

A recent longitudinal study in the Philippines has followed a cohort of 4,500 public elementary school students for 5 years. The study found that children who attended preschool consistently outperformed those who did not in literacy, mathematics and social-emotional skills.

Jul 20,2022

New research has shown that while the use of immersive virtual reality (IVR) increases student enjoyment and presence in a task, when used on its own it does not improve procedural or declarative knowledge when compared to the more traditional learning activity of watching a video.

Jul 18,2022

Education systems across the world have taken different approaches to addressing the challenges of the pandemic. Jaylene S Miravel – a teacher at Lal-lo North Central School in the Philippines – shares how she is supporting students who are falling behind in reading during this prolonged period of remote learning.

May 18,2022

Satyam Mishra was one of two educators from India to make it into the prestigious Global Teacher Prize Top 50 for 2021. In today’s article, he shares practical examples for making mathematics more engaging and relevant for students.

May 04,2022

A new framework for learning through play has been developed to support teachers in the classroom and help guide policy and practice in the early years of schooling. The Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) and the LEGO Foundation have worked together to develop the framework.

Apr 20,2022

Students have a diverse range of personal and contextual factors that influence their access to and achievement in their education. A new global study calls for a re-evaluation of education systems to promote personalised education.

Apr 05,2022

After investing a lot of time and emotion into applying for a new job or promotion, finding out the position is not yours can have a negative impact on your confidence. In this reader submission, Dr Poppy Gibson and Dr Robert Morgan from the UK share their three steps for moving forward after being an unsuccessful candidate for a new position.

Mar 16,2022

How can you and your colleagues help students better prepare for the challenges and opportunities they’ll face in the future? A major new report looks at the global ‘megatrends’ shaping education. We’ve picked out 10 discussion points and suggestions for possible learning activities to inspire you and your colleagues, and get the conversation started.

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The 50 best short articles & essays to read for students, the capital t truth by david foster wallace, this is the life by annie dillard, things we think we know by chuck klosterman, why does it feel like everyone has more money than you by jen doll, phoning it in by stanley bing, the fringe benefits of failure, and the importance of imagination by j.k. rowling, 50 more articles about life, love and relationships, crazy love by steven pinker, no labels, no drama, right by jordana narin, the limits of friendship by maria konnikova, 50 more articles about love and relationships, words and writing, writing, briefly by paul graham, write like a mofo by cheryl strayed, 20 more articles about writing, the same river twice by david quammen, you can't kill the rooster by david sedaris, scars by david owen, 100 more short memoirs, a brief history of forever by tavi gevinson, school for girls by jasmin aviva sandelson, 50 more articles about growing up, why we play by eva holland, why sports are for losers by matt taibbi, 50 more articles about sports, keep your identity small by paul graham, the muggle problem by ross douthat, 75 more articles about politics, notes of a native son by james baldwin, a letter to my nephew by james baldwin, a place where we are everything by roxane gay, 30 more articles about race, what no one else will tell you about feminism by lindy west, bad feminist by roxane gay, 10 more articles about feminism, holy water by joan didion, how to disagree by paul graham, so what if mountain dew can melt mice by chuck klosterman, 150 great articles and essays.

What Is Math? by Dan Falk

Life with purpose by philip ball, what is everything made of by charles sebens, small, yes, but mighty by natalie angier, your handy postcard-sized guide to statistics by tim harford, 100 more articles about science, the internet, the attention economy by tom chatfield, user behaviour by michael schulson, escape the matrix by virginia heffernan, instagram is over by kate lindsay, 50 more articles about the internet, the environment, we should fix climate change — but we should not regret it by thomas r. wells, is humanity suicidal by edward o. wilson, 50 more articles about the environment, what is the monkeysphere by david wong, how life became an endless, terrible competition by daniel markovits, your lifestyle has already been designed by david cain, 100 more articles about psychology, mental health, adventures in depression by allie brosh, the most dangerous idea in mental health by ed cara, the acceleration of addictiveness by paul graham, 50 more articles about mental health, why you are unhappy by tim urban, buy experiences, not things by james hamblin, 20 more articles about happiness, a few words about breasts by nora ephron, hello, i am fat by lindy west, the onset by my ngoc to, 25 more articles about body image.

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Best Education Articles of 2020: Our 20 Most Popular Stories About Students, Remote Schooling & COVID Learning Loss This Year

This is the latest roundup in our “Best Of” series, spotlighting top highlights from this year’s coverage as well as the most popular articles we’ve published each month. See more of the standouts from across 2020 right here .

A ny student will forever remember 2020 as the year that the classrooms and campuses closed down. As coronavirus cases surged in the spring — and then again in the autumn — educators, families and district leaders did their best to pivot to a socially-distanced Plan B, building a new system of remote instruction overnight in hopes of maintaining learning and community.

Any education journalist will remember 2020 as the year that all the planned student profiles, school spotlights and policy investigations got thrown out the window as we scrambled to capture and process the disorienting new normal of virtual classrooms. Here at The 74, our top stories from the past nine months were dominated by our reporting in this area, by features that framed the challenges and opportunities of distance learning, that surfaced solutions and innovations that were working for some districts, and that pointed to the bigger questions of how disrupted back-to-back school years may lead to long-term consequences for this generation of students.

As we approach the new year, we’re continuing to report on America’s evolving, patchwork education system via our coronavirus education reporting project at The74Million.org/PANDEMIC . With school campuses open in some states and not others, with some families preferring in-person classes or remote learning alternatives, and with some individual classrooms being forced to close in rolling 14-day increments with new coronavirus breakouts, it’s clear that our education system will begin 2021 in a similar state of turmoil. (Get our latest reporting on schools and the pandemic delivered straight to your inbox by signing up for The 74 Newsletter )

But with the first vaccines being administered this month, we’re seeing our first glimpse of a light at the end of this chaotic tunnel — hope that the virus will quickly dissipate, that schools will fully reopen, and that we’ll then find a way to help all of America’s 74 million children catch up. Here are our 20 most read and shared articles of the year:

New Research Predicts Steep COVID Learning Losses Will Widen Already Dramatic Achievement Gaps Within Classrooms / By Beth Hawkins

Learning Loss: In the days immediately following the pandemic-related closure of schools throughout the country this past spring, researchers at the nonprofit assessment organization NWEA predicted that whatever school looks like in the fall, students will start the year with significant gaps. In June, they also began warning that the already wide array of student achievement present in individual classrooms in a normal year is likely to swell dramatically . In 2016, researchers at NWEA and four universities determined that on average, the range of academic abilities within a single classroom spans five to seven grades, with one-fourth on grade level in math and just 14 percent in reading. “All of this is in a typical year,” one of the researchers, Texas A&M University Professor Karen Rambo-Hernandez, told Beth Hawkins. “Next year is not going to look like a typical year.” Read the full story .

The issues of ‘COVID Slide’, learning loss and classroom inequity appeared regularly on the site through 2020. A few other notable examples from the year:

— Even Further Ahead: New data suggest pandemic may not just be leaving low-income students behind; it may be propelling wealthier ones even further ahead ( Read the full story )

— Teaching Time: How much learning time are students getting? In 7 of America’s largest school districts, less than normal — and in 3, they’re getting more ( Read the full story )

— Missing Students: Lost learning, lost students — COVID slide is not as steep as predicted, NWEA study finds, but 1 in 4 kids was missing from fall exams ( Read the full story )

— Learning Loss Research: Students could have lost as much as 232 days of learning in math during first four months of largely virtual schooling ( Read the full story )

— What History Tells Us: What lasting academic (and economic) effects could coronavirus shutdowns have on this generation of students? Some alarming data points from research on previous disasters ( Read the full analysis )

Parents (and Lawyers) Say Distance Learning Failed Too Many Special Education Students. As Fall Approaches, Families Wonder If Their Children Will Lose Another School Year / By Linda Jacobson

Special Education: A number of special education parents said their children didn’t receive services during school closures in the spring. That’s why, as Linda Jacobson reported over the summer, organizations such as the School Superintendents Association believed lawsuits and due process complaints were on the horizon, and that’s why they asked Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to waive federal special education laws as long as schools are trying to teach students remotely . But experts warned The 74 that there’s no proof districts are facing more complaints than usual and that as long as districts communicate frequently with families they’re more likely to avoid complaints — even if schools remain closed. Boston University’s Nathan Jones, an expert on special education, also stressed that going into this fall, it was important to focus on strong academic interventions to help students regain what they’ve lost. Read the full story .

— From March: ‘Absolutely, I’m worried’ — For children with special needs, unprecedented coronavirus school closures bring confusion, uncertainty ( Read the full story )

When the Point of the Pod Is Equity: How Small Grants Are Empowering Parents of Underserved Students to Form Pandemic Microschools / By Beth Hawkins

Remote Learning: A six-child school with a focus on Black girl magic. Bilingual materials for a living-room preschool in an English-only state. Lessons rich with art and self-expression for six foster kids. A curriculum built for kids affected by incarceration. The first round of microschool grants announced by the National Parents Union are nothing like the pandemic pods described in one news story after another last summer: Wealthy parents banding together to hire a teacher or take turns overseeing distance learning. The young organization’s inaugural grants were intended to support families often failed by traditional schools , so perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that many of the winning proposals center on celebrating underserved students’ heritage or meeting specific, frequently overlooked needs. Beth Hawkins talks to several grantees about their kids and their plans. Read the full story .

— Case Study — Pods to Augment Remote Learning: In parks, backyards and old storefronts across Los Angeles, small groups offer children some of what they’ve lost in months of online instruction ( Read the full feature )

How Missing Zoom Classes Could Funnel Kids into the Juvenile Justice System — And Why Some Experts Say Now is the Time to Reform Truancy Rules / By Mark Keierleber

Discipline: In communities across the country, social workers are walking door to door in search of millions of students their schools have deemed “missing” — a stark reality as districts combat an absenteeism crisis amid the coronavirus pandemic. Despite longstanding “compulsory education” laws that require students to attend school or face punishment — including fines and incarceration in some states — many districts have avoided pushing students into the juvenile justice system for truancy during the pandemic. But as growing evidence suggest that such an approach is counterproductive, some experts worry about what could come next . “Pretty soon, I think that folks are going to start relying on the stick more than they have been,” said Rey Saldaña, CEO of the nonprofit Communities in Schools. “That’ll be the completely wrong conversation to have because these students don’t need truancy court, they don’t need fines.” Rather than being willfully defiant, truant students are often suffering from homelessness or violence, he said. “They need interventions, they don’t need to be seen by a judge.” Read the full report . 

— Related: Research shows changing schools can make or break a student, but the wave of post-COVID mobility may challenge the systems in ways we’ve never seen ( Read the full report ) 

— School Finance: Phantom students, very real red ink — Why efforts to keep student disenrollment from busting school budgets can backfire ( Read the full story )

— Disenrollment: As families face evictions & closed classrooms, data shows ‘dramatic’ spike in mid-year school moves ( Read the full story ) 

— Catholic Schools: A glimmer of hope in pandemic for nation’s ailing Catholic schools, but long-term worries persist ( Read the full story )

DeVos on the Docket: With 455 Lawsuits Against Her Department and Counting, Education Secretary is Left to Defend Much of Her Agenda in Court / By Linda Jacobson

Department of Education: No education secretary has ever been sued as much as Betsy DeVos. In four years, over 455 lawsuits have been filed against either DeVos or the U.S. Department of Education, according to The 74’s analysis of court filings and opinions. Many of the cases, involving multiple states and advocacy organizations, were filed in response to Trump administration moves to reverse Obama-era rules in the areas of civil rights and protections for student loan borrowers. DeVos has always been outspoken about lightening Washington’s footprint in education. But in her department’s effort to grab what one education attorney called “quick political wins,” judges — even Trump appointees — are finding flaws in its approach. One exception might be the revised Title IX policy, which has already sparked four lawsuits, but might be hard for a future administration to tear down. Linda Jacobson has the story .

A 2020 EDlection Cheat Sheet: Recapping the 48 Key Races, Winners and Campaign Issues That Could Reshape America’s Schools and Education Policy / By The 74 Staff

EDlection: A first-ever ballot proposition on sex education in Washington state that critics decried as “school porn” but voters approved. A school board election in New Orleans, in part a referendum on closing failing schools, that remained largely undecided the week after Election Day. A victory by former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, whose education background runs deep and who is one of the few Democrats to unseat a GOP incumbent for U.S. Senate. While a historic presidential race — and a test of our democracy — fixated the nation, education was on the ballot this unprecedented election cycle . Elected officials, particularly at the state level, will play a pivotal role in steering schools through the public health and economic crises of the pandemic. That’s why we’ve curated 48 federal, state and local races with key implications for students, teachers and families. Here’s the full rundown of the 2020 votes that mattered most to education, plus a full archive of our Election Week livechat, which included rolling updates on candidates, votes and the national conversation. Read the full roundup .

As COVID Creeps into Schools, Surveillance Tech Follows / By Mark Keierleber

Student Privacy: When an Ohio school district saw a “significant increase” in COVID-19 cases among students and staff, officials made the difficult call of reverting to remote learning. But when kids return to class, they’ll be wearing badges that will track their every move — part of a pilot program in contact tracing that allows the Wickliffe district to follow students for up to a month and identify who comes into contact with infected classmates. The badges and other high-tech gizmos, including UV light air purifiers and thermal-imaging cameras that purport to detect fevers, have come under fire from student privacy advocates. But company executives and school leaders made clear they’re not likely to go away anytime soon — even after the pandemic subsides . “After the initial pushback, people are going to adapt and deal with it,” Superintendent Joseph Spiccia told The 74’s Mark Keierleber. “Some people would be angry, and after that anger dissipates, I think people generally will end up complying and falling in line.” Read the full story .

— Case Study: ‘Don’t get gaggled’ — Minneapolis school district spends big on student surveillance tool, raising ire after terminating its police contract ( Read the full story )

An Education System, Divided: How Internet Inequity Persisted Through 4 Presidents and Left Schools Unprepared for the Pandemic / By Kevin Mahnken

Student Access: When the COVID-19 pandemic spread into American communities, schools adapted by switching to online classes. But millions of families with no or limited home internet can’t manage that transition, drastically diminishing educational opportunities for the students who need them most. Local leaders have embraced creative solutions, loaning out thousands of devices and dispatching Wi-Fi-equipped school buses into low-connectivity neighborhoods. But the question remains: Three decades after the internet’s emergence as a boundary-breaking technology, how are vast swaths of the United States still walled off from the social, economic and educational blessings that the internet provides ? The answer, told to The 74 by experts and policymakers who have worked around communications access since the birth of the internet, implicate both the public and private sectors in a prolonged failure to extend the benefits of modern technology to countless Americans. “I think the large-scale tolerance for inequity in this country gave rise to an inequitable telecommunications system,” said one. Read Kevin Mahnken’s report .

New Poll Reveals Parents Want One-on-One Distance Learning Support From Teachers — but Aren’t Getting Much of It / By Beth Hawkins

Parent Priorities: Polling data released this past May from the national nonprofit Learning Heroes found parents were engaged in their kids’ distance learning but wanted more contact with teachers, both for their kids and for themselves as at-home learning coaches. Nearly half of more than 3,600 parents surveyed said personal guidance would be extremely helpful, but just 15 percent have gotten it . Only 39 percent said they had a clear understanding of teachers’ expectations, and few were getting the texts and phone calls they said are the most effective means of communication. The poll illustrated new implications of a longstanding, fundamental lack of information, which previous Learning Heroes surveys have found feeds parents’ near-universal belief that their children are doing far better in school than they really are. As schools plan for eventual reopening, Learning Heroes President Bibb Hubbard told Beth Hawkins, they should carefully consider what parents say is working for them — because while families are giving schools and teachers the benefit of the doubt now, that may not last. “There’s a lot of grace right now,” Hubbard says. “But I think that’s going to change next fall.” Read the full report .

Displaced: The Faces of American Education in Crisis / By Laura Fay, Bekah McNeel, Patrick O’Donnell & Taylor Swaak

Displaced: No two experiences of this pandemic have been the same, particularly when it comes to school communities. When we launched this project in late May, it had been several months since COVID-19 shuttered districts across the country. In what would have been the final months of the 2019-20 academic year, tens of millions of students, educators and parents saw their lives upended overnight. Still half of America’s school employees aren’t teachers. When the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States, millions of other workers integral to the American education system were similarly uprooted . As the country (and its school communities) continued to navigate its way through a disaster for which it was grossly unprepared, a team from The 74 set out to track how life and work has changed for the diverse universe of characters who make our classrooms work. From parents to teachers, counselors and even district warehouse managers, the pandemic has been a time of unprecedented hardships and challenges. Here: Eight faces and unforgettable stories from across the country that begin to capture the real story of the pandemic’s impact on the wider community. See all eight profiles .

New Report Estimates School Closures’ Long-Term Impact on the U.S. Economy at More Than $14 Trillion / By Linda Jacobson

Skills Gap: A paper from economists Eric Hanushek of Stanford University and Ludger Woessmann of the University of Munich presents a sobering prediction of how school closures could impact the U.S. economy for the next 80 years. The paper estimates that the shutdowns could ultimately lead to losses ranging from $14.2 trillion for a third of the school year to almost $28 trillion for two-thirds . That’s because “learning loss will lead to skill loss, and the skills people have relate to their productivity,” writes international education expert Andreas Schleicher, of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The U.S., Schleicher said, was actually better positioned than many other nations to make the transition to remote learning. But looking ahead, he said the country could do a better job of directing education spending toward quality instruction and the students who need resources the most. Read our full report .

Exclusive: NYC Teachers Union Launches Its Own Investigation of School Building Air Quality Amid COVID Threat, UFT President Says / By Zoë Kirsch

School Safety: Looking to spur the New York City Department of Education to take preventative action on airborne COVID transmission in schools, the United Federation of Teachers announced this past summer that it was taking the longstanding issue of poor ventilation into its own hands. President Michael Mulgrew told The 74’s Zoë Kirsch in an exclusive interview this past August that the union was sending its own health and safety workers into 30 “red flag” schools with the worst ventilation systems to do their own air quality testing. The move came as the UFT escalated its criticism of the city’s school reopening plan, saying it failed to meet student and staff safety standards on several fronts. Less than half of New York City’s roughly 1,400 school buildings are equipped with heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems, which maintain indoor air quality. “One of the biggest risk factors is time spent in underventilated spaces indoors. You want to control the emissions and removal,”said Joseph Allen, who runs the Healthy Buildings program at Harvard’s Chan School of Public Health and estimates that 90 percent of U.S. schools are underventilated. A 2000 NYC report said, “The UFT receives more complaints from its members about poor indoor air quality in schools than about any other health and safety issue.” Read the full report .

Texas’s Missing Students: Weeks After Closures, Schools in San Antonio Still Couldn’t Locate Thousands of Kids. How One Band Director Finally Tracked Down His Musicians / By Bekah McNeel

Absenteeism: In its race to locate every student before school adjourned for summer, San Antonio Independent School District relied on faculty members like high school band director Alejandro Jaime Salazar to track them down. It became a daily task for Salazar, as he used every tool at his disposal and relied on relationships forged before coronavirus shut the schools . That included asking student section leaders to make contact with other kids. Once located, Salazar said, “my main priority was to keep in contact with these kids every day.” He and other educators told The 74’s Bekah McNeel that the hunt for “missing” students revealed the increasing importance of student-teacher connection, engagement and relationships. Read the full profile .

The Achievement Gap Has Driven Education Reform for Decades. Now Some Are Calling It a Racist Idea / By Kevin Mahnken

Equity: For decades, education policy has been shaped largely by an extended discussion of racial achievement gaps, and the lingua franca of that discourse is testing data. A reform coalition of educators, politicians and activists has labored to narrow the academic disparity between white students and students of color, placing the goal at the heart of media debates and state accountability plans alike. But in recent years, influential figures have begun to shift away from the achievement gap. Some say it’s more responsible to focus on resource disparities between student groups, even if standardized testing is still a necessary component in school improvement efforts; others go even further, arguing that the notion of an achievement gap is a racist throwback to the age of eugenics . As reformers choose whether to preserve or abandon the idea, some in the Democratic Party — including former educator and soon-to-be-congressman Jamaal Bowman — have grown louder in their calls to abolish high-stakes testing. Read the full report .

New Data: College Enrollment for Low-Income High School Grads Plunged by 29% During the Pandemic / By Richard Whitmire

Higher Education: Author and 74 contributor Richard Whitmire describes the cratering of college enrollment rates among 2020 high school graduates as a tragedy whose outline is just becoming visible. That picture grew clearer and more distressing in December with the release of new data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center showing college enrollment declined for low-income students at nearly double the rate of higher-income students — 29.2 percent versus 16.9 percent. The decrease for all 2020 high school grads, measured for the first time since COVID-19 wreaked havoc on the nation’s schools, is also alarming: a nearly 22 percent drop this year versus a 2.8 percent drop for the class of 2019. The crucial difference, Whitmire writes, is that those from more affluent and middle-class backgrounds will likely make their way back to college once the pandemic subsides, while the trajectory for low-income students may have changed forever. Read the full report .

A Time of Reckoning for Race & Education in America: 5 Case Studies in How Students and School Leaders Are Pushing for Culturally Relevant Curriculum Amid the Pandemic / By Emmeline Zhao

Curriculum: The American education system was not designed to operate — much less thrive — without physical, in-person interaction. And when the novel coronavirus forced indefinite emergency school closures this spring, concern ballooned over how to educate America’s 74 million school-age children from afar. That, coupled with this summer’s protests demanding social justice, led The 74’s Pandemic Reporting Initiative to dispatch correspondents across the country to take a hard look at how existing curricula may not be conducive to closing the achievement gap , particularly from afar; how some schools are addressing these issues to adapt to changing times and challenging learning circumstances; and how educators are tackling these tough but critical issues. Read our full series that dives into curriculum in light of the pandemic and social justice movement, with reports out of New York, New Orleans, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, D.C. See the full series here .

Youth Suicide: The Other Public Health Crisis / By Mark Keierleber

Mental Health: Brad Hunstable believes his son died of the coronavirus — just not in the way one might expect. As COVID-19 shuttered schools nationwide and put students’ social lives on pause, Hayden committed suicide just days before his 13th birthday. His father blames that pandemic-induced social isolation — and a fit of rage — for his son’s death. Though the national youth suicide rate has been on the rise for years, students say the unprecedented disruption of the last few months has taken a toll on their emotional well-being . Researchers worry that a surge in depression and anxiety could drive a spike in youth suicide. Sandy Hook Promise, which runs an anonymous reporting tool, has seen a 12 percent increase in suicide-related reports since March. The issue became a political football ahead of this year’s election, with President Donald Trump and others citing rising rates of depression and suicide as reasons to relax COVID-19-related restrictions on in-person classes. Read the full report .

Using Tutors to Combat COVID Learning Loss: New Research Shows That Even Lightly Trained Volunteers Drive Academic Gains / By Kevin Mahnken

Personalized Learning: With a return to full-time, in-person schooling still weeks away in many areas, families are searching for any solution to deal with their children’s COVID-related learning losses. Now, a working paper circulated by the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that tutoring programs — whether led by certified teachers, paraprofessionals, even parents — could play a significant role in getting students back on track . It’s a strategy that has already been embraced by parents blessed with the money and bandwidth to create small-scale learning pods, but experts suggest that supplementary instruction could be scaled up dramatically through the use of lightly trained volunteers and virtual learning platforms. Still, both the cost and the organizational challenges of expanding tutoring are great. “The logistics of setting this up on the kind of scale we need to to address the problem is more complicated than we initially realized,” said co-author Philip Oreopoulos of the University of Toronto. Read the full report .

Cleveland Schools Considering Bold Plan to Confront Coronavirus Learning Loss: A ‘Mastery’ Learning Initiative That Would Scrap Grade Levels, Let Kids Learn at Own Pace / By Patrick O’Donnell

Mastery Education: At the beginning of the summer, educators were grappling with the fact that when students come back to school, they will be at vastly different academic levels. So how can schools fairly decide which grade kids should be in? They can’t, said Cleveland school district CEO Eric Gordon — and maybe they shouldn’t try. His draft plan for reopening the district’s schools would instead put students in multi-age “grade bands,” under a mastery approach that lets them work at their own speed. Students would then have time to relearn skills they have lost and catch up without feeling like failures or being held back a grade. “We’ve got opportunities here to really test, challenge and maybe abandon some of these time-bound structures of education that have never really conformed to what we know about good child development,” Gordon said. Read the full report .

When Siblings Become Teachers: It’s Not Just Parents Who Find Themselves Thrust Into the Demanding Role of At-Home Educators / By Zoë Kirsch

Homeschooling: When the pandemic shuttered New York City schools, 22-year-old Lillian Acosta of Queens found herself suddenly relating to the experiences of her co-workers with kids, as they talked about the challenges inherent in remote learning. Lillian isn’t a parent, but for the last few weeks, she’s been assuming the responsibilities of one , spending hours a day — and paying $90 a day to a tutor — to make sure her 14-year-old brother gets through school. She isn’t alone: In Brooklyn, 17-year-old Melisa Cabascango coaches her little brother, and in the Bronx, Sarshevack “Sar” Mnahsheh sets up a makeshift classroom in his family’s apartment every morning. “I try to wake up early enough to check up on the little things,” says Sar, who works the night shift at a local grocery store. “I don’t try to be overbearing because I’m not a parent, but I have to make sure they’re up to par on the things they’re doing.” Lillian, Melisa and Sar are working overtime to fill the gap between what their siblings need and what the district is providing in this moment of crisis. They’re three of thousands of young people who are shouldering that burden in cities and towns across the country — and those in low-income communities of color are getting hit the hardest. Read the full feature .

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Why PE matters for student academics and wellness right now

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This story about PE teachers was produced by The Hechinger Report , a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter .

Amanda Amtmanis, an elementary physical education instructor in Middletown, Connecticut, handed out cards with QR codes to a class of third graders, and told them to start running.

The kids sprinted off around the baseball field in a light drizzle, but by the end of the first lap, a fifth of a mile, many were winded and walking. They paused to scan the cards, which track their mileage, on their teacher’s iPad and got some encouragement from an electronic coach — “Way to run your socks off!” or “Leave it all on the track!”

A boy in a red Nike shirt surged ahead, telling Amtmanis his goal was to run 5 miles. “Whoa, look at Dominic!” another boy exclaimed.

“We don’t need to compare ourselves to others,” Amtmanis reminded him.

The third graders finished a third lap, alternating running and walking, and were about to start on a scavenger hunt when the rain picked up, forcing them inside. Amtmanis thanked her students for their willingness to adjust — a skill many of them have practiced far more often than running these past 18 months.

The full impact of the pandemic on kids’ health and fitness won’t be known for some time. But it’s already caused at least a short-term spike in childhood obesity Rates of overweight and obesity in 5- through 11-year-olds rose nearly 10 percentage points in the first few months of 2020.

Amtmanis’ “mileage club,” which tracks students’ running, both in and out of school, and rewards them with Pokémon cards when they hit certain targets, is an example of how PE teachers around the country are trying to get kids back in shape.

But inclement weather isn’t the only thing PE teachers are up against as they confront what might be called “physical learning loss.” Physical education as a discipline has long fought to be taken as seriously as its academic counterparts. Even before the pandemic, fewer than half the states set any minimum amount of time for students to participate in physical education, according to the Society of Health and Physical Educators (SHAPE), which represents PE and health instructors.

Now, as schools scramble to help kids catch up academically, there are signs that PE is taking a back seat to the core subjects yet again. In some California schools, administrators are shifting instructional minutes from PE to academic subjects — or canceling class altogether so PE teachers can sub for classroom teachers; in others, they’re growing class sizes in the gym, so they can shrink them in the classroom.

Meanwhile, innovative instructors like Amtmanis, who has worked in her district for more than 20 years, are struggling to get their ideas off the ground. Over the summer, the principal of Macdonough Elementary, one of two schools where Amtmanis teaches, approved her request to participate in another running program called The Daily Mile, in which kids walk or run 15 minutes a day during school hours.

Daily running breaks “boost attentiveness, which has positive effects on academics,” Amtmanis argued.

But two weeks into the school year, not a single teacher had bought into the idea.

“The issue is their packed schedule,” Amtmanis said.

Last year, many schools conducted gym class remotely, with students joining in from their bedrooms and living rooms.

The online format presented several challenges. Many students lacked the equipment, space, or parental support to participate fully. And many instructors grappled with how to teach and assess motor skills and teamwork online.

Though instructors found creative ways to keep students moving — substituting rolled-up socks for balls, and “disguising fitness” in scavenger hunts and beat-the-teacher challenges — they still fretted that online gym wasn’t giving students the same benefits as in-person classes.

Compounding their concern was the fact that many students were also missing out on recess and extracurricular sports.

In a March 2021 survey conducted by the Cooper Institute, maker of the popular FitnessGram assessments, close to half the PE teachers and school and district administrators responding said their students were “significantly less” physically active during their schools’ closure than before it.

Schools that reopened last year faced their own set of challenges, including bans on shared equipment that made even a simple game of catch impossible. Schools that were open for in-person learning were also much more likely to cut back on PE instructional time, or eliminate it altogether, the survey found.

The consequences of these reductions in physical activity are hard to quantify, especially since many schools suspended fitness testing during the pandemic and have yet to resume it, but some PE teachers say they’re seeing more kids with locomotor delays and weaker stamina than normal.

“The second graders are like first graders, and some are even like kindergarteners,” said Robin Richardson, an elementary PE instructor in Kentucky. They can jump and hop, she said, but they can’t leap. They’re exhausted after 20 seconds of jumping jacks.

An unusually high number of Richardson’s first graders can’t skip or do windmills. Some lack the spatial awareness that’s essential to group games.

“They don’t know how to move without running into each other,” she said.

Other instructors are seeing an increase in cognitive issues, such as difficulty paying attention or following directions, particularly among kids who remained remote for most or all of last year.

Kyle Bragg, an elementary PE instructor in Arizona, has seen kids sitting with their backs to him, staring off into space when he’s talking. “I say ‘Knees, please,’ so they spin around to face me,” he said.

And some PE teachers say their students’ social-emotional skills have suffered more than their gross motor skills. “They forgot how to share; how to be nice to each other; how to relate to each other,” said Donn Tobin, an elementary PE instructor in New York.

PE has a key role to play in boosting those skills, which affect how kids interact in other classes, said Will Potter, an elementary PE teacher in California.

“We’re uniquely situated to handle the social-emotional needs that came out of the pandemic, in a way classroom teachers are not,” Potter said.

Amtmanis, for her part, worries about her students’ mental health. She sees the little signs of strain daily — the kid who got upset because he couldn’t pick his group, for example, and the one who was distressed that his Mileage Club card had gotten mixed up in the front office.

“Their emotional reserves are low,” she said.

Yet not all instructors are reporting drops in their students’ fitness and skill development. Teachers in some middle- and upper-income districts said they haven’t noticed much of a change at all. In some communities, families seemed to spend more time outdoors.

“We saw the skyrocketing sale of bicycles, we saw families going for walks,” said Dianne Wilson-Graham, executive director of the California Physical Education and Health Project.

But in Title I schools like Macdonough, where more than half the students are low-income, some kids didn’t even have access to a safe place to exercise or play during school closures.

“Not only are they not in soccer leagues, but sometimes they don’t even have a park,” Amtmanis said.

Amtmanis came up with the idea of doing the Daily Mile after spring fitness tests revealed drops in her students’ strength, flexibility and endurance.

But many schools still aren’t sure how much physical learning loss their students have experienced as a result of the pandemic. Most schools pressed pause on fitness testing last year, and some elementary-school instructors are reluctant to restart it. They say the tests aren’t valid with young children, even in ordinary times, and argue the time they take could be better spent on Covid catch-up.

Andjelka Pavlovic, director of research and education for the Cooper Institute, said its tests are scientifically proven to be valid for students who are 10 and up, or roughly starting in fourth grade.

Fitness testing requirements vary by state, county or even district. Some states specify how often students must be tested; others leave it largely to the teacher.

Bragg, the Arizona teacher, said he has put testing “on the backburner” because “right now it’s not at the forefront of what’s important.”

Richardson said she is avoiding testing because she doesn’t want to use up precious instructional time or demoralize her students. “I want my kids to enjoy movement,” she said. If they perform poorly on the tests, “they may not feel as strong.”

In Connecticut, where schools are required to test fourth graders’ fitness annually, Amtmanis approached testing cautiously last year. She didn’t want to embarrass her students, so she made it into a series of games.

Instead of Sit-and-Reach, they had a “flexibility contest,” in which kids broke into teams for tag then had to perform stretches if they were tagged. She measured the distances stretched with curling ribbon, tied the ribbons together, and attached a balloon to the end. The team whose balloon soared the highest won fidget putty.

Pushups became a Bingo game, with the center space representing pushups.

“My goal was to get through it without ever using the words ‘fitness” or ‘testing,’” she said.

As the pandemic drags on, some instructors are taking a similar approach to fitness remediation and acceleration.

Bragg likes a warmup called “ Touch Spots ,” in which first graders listen as the instructor reads off the name of a color, then run and touch a corresponding dot on the floor. It works on reaction time, cardiovascular endurance, spatial awareness and sequencing — but the kids don’t know that.

“Students are having so much fun that they don’t realize how much fitness they are doing,” Bragg said.

Differentiation — tailoring instruction to meet individual students’ needs — has become even more essential, with former remote learners often lagging behind their in-person peers, Bragg said.

When playing catch, for example, he offers his students different sized balls — the smaller ones are more challenging.

Potter, the California teacher, spent the first two weeks of school teaching his students how to connect with their partners, stressing the importance of eye contact and body language.

“When you’re on Zoom, you look at the camera to make eye contact,” he said. “It’s a very different environment.”

Bragg reminds his students how to include kids who are standing on the sidelines, modeling excited body language and tone of voice. Lately, he’s noticed that kids who were remote last year are being excluded from groups.

“Social interaction needs to be practiced, just like how to throw a ball,” he said.

Richardson, the Kentucky PE teacher, is trying to build up her students’ stamina gradually, through progressively longer intervals of exercise.

But she works in a school with pods, so she sees each group of kids for five consecutive days, every third week. The two weeks in between, she has to hope that teachers will provide recess and “movement breaks.” She’s trying to get them to give kids breaks “when they get glassy-eyed and frustrated.”

Recently, Richardson was at a staff training session at which depleted teachers were “popping candy in the back.” When she raised her hand and requested a break in the training, her colleagues cheered. She told them to remember how they felt when their students return to the building.

“I always say, ‘If your bum is numb, your brain is the same,’” she said.

Convincing classroom teachers to set aside more time for movement can be challenging, though. As students return from months of online learning, teachers are under enormous pressure to get them caught up academically.

Kate Cox, an elementary and middle-school PE teacher in California, wishes schools would “realize what they’re missing when they cut PE because of learning loss in other areas.” Physical education is “readying their minds and bodies to be more successful in other areas,” Cox said.

Terri Drain, the president of SHAPE, argued that schools fail students when they treat physical learning loss as less serious than its academic counterpart.

“In the primary grades, children develop fundamental motor skills, such as throwing, catching, running, kicking and jumping,” she said. Unless schools commit to helping kids catch up, “the impacts of this ‘missed learning’ will be lifelong.”

In Connecticut, Amtmanis hasn’t given up on convincing teachers to carve out time for the Daily Mile. She recently sent them a list of suggestions on how to fit 15 minutes of running into the day, including by incorporating it as an active transition between academic blocks.

“While it may seem like there aren’t minutes to spare,” she wrote, “the energizing effect of the active transition should result in more on-task behavior and more efficient working.”

In the meantime, Amtmanis plans to keep using the mileage club to motivate her students to run and to monitor their progress.

“I don’t want to call attention to the fact that not everyone is fit,” she said. “This is an unobtrusive way to keep the data.”

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What federal education data shows about students with disabilities in the U.S.

Public K-12 schools in the United States educate about 7.3 million students with disabilities – a number that has grown over the last few decades. Disabled students ages 3 to 21 are served under the federal  Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) , which guarantees them the right to free public education and appropriate special education services.

For Disability Pride Month , here are some key facts about public school students with disabilities, based on the latest data from the  National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) .

July is both Disability Pride Month and the anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. To mark these occasions, Pew Research Center used federal education data from  the National Center for Education Statistics  to learn more about students who receive special education services in U.S. public schools.

In this analysis, students with disabilities include those ages 3 to 21 who are served under the federal  Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) . Through IDEA, children with disabilities are guaranteed a “free appropriate public education,” including special education and related services.

The 7.3 million disabled students in the U.S. made up 15% of national public school enrollment during the 2021-22 school year. The population of students in prekindergarten through 12th grade who are served under IDEA has grown in both number and share over the last few decades. During the 2010-11 school year, for instance, there were 6.4 million students with disabilities in U.S. public schools, accounting for 13% of enrollment.

The number of students receiving special education services temporarily dropped during the coronavirus pandemic – the first decline in a decade. Between the 2019-20 and 2020-21 school years, the number of students receiving special education services decreased by 1%, from 7.3 million to 7.2 million. This was the first year-over-year drop in special education enrollment since 2011-12.

The decline in students receiving special education services was part of a 3% decline in the overall number of students enrolled in public schools between 2019-20 and 2020-21. While special education enrollment bounced back to pre-pandemic levels in the 2021-22 school year, overall public school enrollment remained flat.

These enrollment trends may reflect some of the learning difficulties and health concerns students with disabilities and their families faced during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic , which limited or paused special education services in many school districts.

Many school districts struggle to hire special education professionals. During the 2020-21 school year, 40% of public schools that had a special education teaching vacancy reported that they either found it very difficult to fill the position or were not able to do so.

Foreign languages (43%) and physical sciences (37%) were the only subjects with similarly large shares of hard-to-fill teaching vacancies at public schools that were looking to hire in those fields.

While the COVID-19 pandemic called attention to a nationwide teacher shortage , special education positions have long been among the most difficult for school districts to fill .

The most common type of disability for students in prekindergarten through 12th grade involves “specific learning disabilities,” such as dyslexia.  In 2021-22, about a third of students (32%) receiving services under IDEA had a specific learning disability. Some 19% had a speech or language impairment, while 15% had a chronic or acute health problem that adversely affected their educational performance. Chronic or acute health problems include ailments such as heart conditions, asthma, sickle cell anemia, epilepsy, leukemia and diabetes.

Students with autism made up 12% of the nation’s schoolchildren with disabilities in 2021-22, compared with 1.5% in 2000-01.  During those two decades, the share of disabled students with a specific learning disability, such as dyslexia, declined from 45% to 32%.

The percentage of students receiving special education services varies widely across states. New York serves the largest share of disabled students in the country at 20.5% of its overall public school enrollment. Pennsylvania (20.2%), Maine (20.1%) and Massachusetts (19.3%) serve the next-largest shares. The states serving the lowest shares of disabled students include Texas and Idaho (both 11.7%) and Hawaii (11.3%).

Between the 2000-01 and 2021-22 school years, all but 12 states experienced growth in their disabled student populations. The biggest increase occurred in Utah, where the disabled student population rose by 65%. Rhode Island saw the largest decline of 22%.

These differences by state are likely the result of inconsistencies in how states determine which students are eligible for special education services and challenges in identifying disabled children.

The racial and ethnic makeup of the nation’s special education students is similar to public school students overall, but there are differences by sex.  About two-thirds of disabled students (65%) are male, while 34% are female, according to data from the 2021-22 school year. Overall student enrollment is about evenly split between boys and girls.

Research has shown that decisions about whether to recommend a student for special education may be influenced by their school’s socioeconomic makeup, as well as by the school’s test scores and other academic markers.

Note: This is an update of a post originally published April 23, 2020.

Katherine Schaeffer is a research analyst at Pew Research Center

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Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

Parenting & Family Articles & More

Our best education articles of 2018, readers and editors pick the most interesting and insightful articles from the past year about teaching, learning, and the keys to well-being at school..

Do you want to develop more meaningful relationships and learning experiences in your classroom right now? The articles below provide inspiration for you and your students as you embark on the new year together. Our best articles feature innovative teaching ideas, tips for supporting student well-being, ways to capitalize on students’ strengths and sense of purpose, and exercises to reignite your own passion for teaching in 2019.

The  Greater Good Science Center’s Education Program  aspires to provide education professionals with a deeper scientific understanding of social-emotional learning, mindfulness, ethical development, and other positive practices for adult and student well-being. Our mission is to help teachers and school leaders cultivate kinder, more compassionate, and equitable classrooms and schools—and we hope these articles will help you do just that.

Here are our best articles from 2018, based on a composite ranking of pageviews and editors’ picks.

Five Ways to Help Teens Feel Good about Themselves , by Amy L. Eva: As teens struggle with anxiety and perfectionism, how can we help them like who they are?

How to Help Students Apply SEL to Their Real Life , by Patrick Cook-Deegan: SEL and mindfulness classes do a good job teaching self-awareness and inner development. But how do we help students use these skills to tackle real-world problems?

Five Lessons for Adults from the Movie Eighth Grade , by Amy L. Eva and Megan Wood: A mother and daughter reflect on a young teen’s trials and triumphs at the end of middle school.

Five Ways to Support Students Affected by Trauma , by Lea Waters and Tom Brunzell: Teachers can help students recognize their strengths and build resilience.

How Photography Can Help Cultivate Mindfulness and Gratitude , by Emily Campbell: A new program helps students and teachers notice the good things in life.

Five Ways to Reignite Your Passion for Teaching , by Amy L. Eva: Even the best work can wear us down. How do we find inspiration and purpose again?

How to Talk about Ethical Issues in the Classroom , by Emily Campbell: Research suggests a helpful, three-part framework for discussing issues of right and wrong.

More Education Resources

Apart from our education articles and monthly newsletter , we offer a Summer Institute for Educators , workshops , curricula , other educational resources , and our Greater Good in Education website, which features science-based practices for kinder, happier schools.

Five Ways to Help Teens Think Beyond Themselves , by Amy L. Eva: Part of finding your purpose is connecting and contributing to something larger than yourself.

How These Teens Found Their Sense of Purpose , by Vicki Zakrzewski: Our Purpose Challenge scholarship winners provide insight into how to help adolescents develop meaningful goals.

These Kids Are Learning How to Have Bipartisan Conversations , by Elizabeth Svoboda: A first-of-its-kind workshop trains high school students to have productive disagreements.

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Here are 7 free AI classes you can take online from top tech firms, universities

AI set the tech world on fire last year and it’s not stopping anytime soon.

Almost a quarter of global jobs is expected to change within the next five years thanks to AI , and with only a small percentage of workers with skills in this field, the rush to learn the ins-and-outs of AI is ever more important. 

Embark on an AI revolution with UT Austin. Two course start dates per year. Accessible $10,000 tuition.

“AI is providing people with on-demand learning anywhere they are at any time of day on any day,” says Jared Curham, a professor of work and organizational studies at MIT’s Sloan School of Management . Curhan recently launched two new AI-powered courses focused on the world of strategic negotiation and says that the technology is overall making education more accessible with personalized feedback and coaching.

While there are an increasing number of full-fledged AI degree programs , including within business schools , some students may be looking for a simpler or self-paced route. If you’re interested in learning more about this in-demand field, several top tech firms and universities offer free online courses that serve as an introduction to AI technologies.

AWS Skill Builder

Amazon has more than 100 free and low-cost AI courses and learning resources available through AWS . Learners can obtain the basic skills in machine learning, generative AI, and foundational models. As a whole, the company has a commitment to provide free AI skills training to 2 million people by 2025.

The machine learning plan has nearly seven hours of free content in which individuals can learn the foundations of the technology, including relevant terminology, and decision-making processes. It also teaches users how to utilize Amazon SageMaker , the company’s machine learning platform used by companies like AT&T and LG .

Google: Google AI for Everyone

Google offers a beginner course for anyone who may be interested in how AI is being used in the real world. Google AI for Everyone , which is offered through online education platform edX , is a self-paced course that takes about four weeks to complete, assuming you dedicate two-to-three hours per week to the course. Participants learn about both AI and machine-learning principles and real-world applications of the technologies.

Google also covers what AI programming looks like and the process of teaching a computer how to learn. The course is taught by Laurence Moroney , who leads AI Advocacy at Google as part of the Google Research into Machine Intelligence (RMI) team. Nearly 12,000 people have enrolled in this free online course, according to edX.

Harvard University: Introduction to Artificial Intelligence with Python

If you’re one of the 5.7 million people who has taken Harvard University’s CS50 Introduction to Computer Science course through edX , then the university’s introductory AI class might be the best option for you. CS50, which is one of the most popular free online courses of all time, is a prerequisite for Harvard’s Introduction to Artificial Intelligence with Python course.

This seven-week course covers AI algorithms, game-playing engines, handwriting recognition, and machine translation. Students have to commit between 10 and 30 hours per week to complete the course, which includes hands-on projects and lectures. The course is taught by David J. Malan , a renowned computer scientist and Harvard professor.

IBM: AI Foundations for Everyone

IBM, which is recognized as a revolutionary leader in emerging technologies, offers an AI Foundations for Everyone specialization through Coursera. The specialization includes three courses:

• Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AI)
• Getting Started with AI using IBM Watson
• Building AI Powered Chatbots Without Programming   

The entire specialization takes about three months to complete, assuming you dedicate two hours per week to coursework. Students will learn the basics of what AI is, as well as its applications and ethical concerns. They’ll also hear from experts about starting a career in AI. The program is taught by Rav Ahuja and Antonio Cangiano, who work for IBM’s Skills Network . Participants earn a certificate upon completion.

Intel has a goal to provide more than 30 million people with AI skills by 2030 . As part of this commitment, the company provides dozens of free self-paced courses online on subjects such as deep learning for robotics, deep learning, and natural language processing. 

Intel also has several “AI Concepts” educational pages that will walk you through definitions, real-world examples, tools, and resources for topics such as generative AI, AI inference, and transfer learning. Additionally, the company provides free on-demand webinars on more advanced AI use cases such as optimizing transformer models, optimizing AI workloads, and AI performance tuning.

University of California—Davis: Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Ethics

As part of its Computational Social Science specialization through Coursera, the University of California—Davis offers a course focused on AI: Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Ethics . During this four-week course, participants learn about big data and its limitations, the history of artificial intelligence, and research ethics. The entire self-paced course takes about 12 total hours to complete.

The course is taught by Martin Hilbert, who is a professor at UC Davis and serves as a chair for computational social science. The course uses case studies to help participants learn AI concepts. More than 31,000 participants have completed this course, and those who do earn a certificate that can be shared on LinkedIn.

University of Pennsylvania: AI for Business

For someone who may be looking to break into AI or who wants to learn more about the applications of this new technology to different industries, the University of Pennsylvania offers a string of courses focused on artificial intelligence. The AI for Business specialization includes four courses:

• AI Fundamentals for Non-Data Scientists
• AI Applications in Marketing and Finance
• AI Applications in People Management
• AI Strategy and Governance  

These beginner courses take a total of about four months to complete and culminate in an applied learning project. Program participants complete peer-reviewed exercises to illustrate what they’ve learned about data analytics, machine learning tools, and people management. The specialization is taught by eight UPenn professors from the Wharton School , a top-ranked business school by Fortune Education, and other professors from the university. The courses are offered through online education platform Coursera, and students can earn a certificate that can be displayed on their LinkedIn profile.

Frequently asked questions

Which course is best in ai.

There is no one best course or program since AI is still so new. What ultimately matters is your curiosity to learn about AI, which you can do by working directly with prompt engineering or machine learning to gain hands-on skills.

Can I learn AI in three months?

You can certainly learn the foundations of AI in three months—especially if you already have a background in computer science. It is important to keep in mind that because AI is always changing and developing, you will need to keep up to date with the latest trends if you are looking to pursue a career focused on working with the technology.

How to learn AI for beginners?

Taking  free AI courses on platforms such as Udemy or Codecademy is a great place to learn AI if you’re a beginner. You can also learn AI by watching YouTube videos or reading through AI subreddits. The number of ways to learn AI are only growing, so there is ultimately no perfect path. Above all, just be curious, ask important questions, and don’t be afraid to dive down rabbit holes

Check out all of  Fortune’ s  rankings of degree programs , and learn more about specific career paths .

Sydney Lake contributed to this piece.

Rethink AI and its potential to innovate in this 6-week online course from MIT Sloan.

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I'm a college student studying abroad. I'm shocked at how many luxury trips my classmates take.

• I was excited to study abroad in Florence and to take small, cheap trips while abroad.
• My classmates are not traveling cheaply; they are flying to luxury places like Dubai and the Alps.
• I wonder if they are just doing it for social media, but I'm still enjoying my time abroad.

As a third-year college student attending Colorado State University in Fort Collins, I jumped at the chance to study abroad . Trading in a semester of snow and freezing temperatures for beautiful architecture and centuries-old art was a no-brainer.

I was so excited that I filled out the application to study in Florence nearly a year before the day I would depart. Four months in Florence, Italy, was comparable to the cost of a semester at my state school . After talking to my parents and counselor, I believed the cultural experience and travel opportunities were worth it.

I knew that when I arrived, I would have to budget when traveling —doing so through communal hostel stays and low-cost airlines. I was prepared for overstuffed backpacks and bus tickets; upon arrival, though, it became clear that pinching pennies was not on everyone's agenda.

The other students are jet-setting every weekend to expensive locations

The first few days in Florence were comparable to a freshman welcome week. The time was full of activities, including hikes, dinners, and other various ventures to get students to meet one another. My roommates and I attended one of the dinners to make connections before classes began.

Standing among groups of strangers , I expected to converse about majors and hometowns; however, I witnessed a quiet competition between students on who would be going to the most places in the coming months.

Comments such as "I have every weekend planned and booked" or "I would go, but I've already been" were stacked on top of one another as my peers attempted to one-up each other. At this time, I had a total of zero trips planned. When caught in these conversations, I felt oddly pressured to also fill my calendar each weekend, accompanied by the feeling of stress due to not being able to afford travel every five days. I feared I would be left behind.

Related stories

I've been here for over two months, and this conversation hasn't ended. Every Monday, I hear whispers about where my peers had jet-setted to days before. Places like Dubai and Morocco have been mentioned, leaving me just as shocked as that first dinner. I knew studying abroad was a privilege before getting here, but "a weekend in Dubai " was not what I expected.

Nobody is 'roughing it' like I thought they would be

My spring break was only three weeks into the start of the semester, and this was when I decided to take my first trip. When booking, I scoured sites, such as KAYAK and Skyscanner, but plane tickets and hotels were still extremely pricey. Eventually, my roommates and I decided to spend five days in Prague after finding affordable tickets on Ryanair. One of the greatest appeals of Prague was it was walkable, cheap, and had a good nightlife — my top three requirements as a traveling college student.

My three roommates and I booked a studio apartment for around $100 each for a total of five nights. It took us two trains, one bus, a plane, and some walking to get there, but the price was right. I was excited for the following week and felt satisfied with our trip and housing accommodations.

That was until I scrolled through Instagram to see my peers skiing in the Alps and skydiving in Copenhagen. It was almost unbelievable that the people I attend classes with could afford this style of travel while my school backpack was stuffed with a week's worth of clothes cause I opted out of the carry-on baggage fee Ryanair required.

I thought everyone at this stage made sacrifices when traveling, but I was mostly wrong.

I'm convinced people are traveling for the sake of their Instagram

I have a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that anyone can experience a new country in the span of 48 hours.

I do know, however, that people are really good at making their time away look like the best time ever on my Instagram feed . It's as if they're collecting comments like postcards or putting another notch in their belts by showing one another how many stamps they have accumulated in their passports.

Traveling while studying abroad is a competitive sport with a large price tag that no one told me to train for.

I've learned that such comparisons defeat the purpose of traveling. Maybe I haven't flown on the best airlines or stayed in an oceanfront villa, but my experiences abroad have been enriching and allowed me to engage with other cultures. Best of all? I didn't have to spend much money, and my Instagram still looks good.

Watch: Marriott International's Tina Edmundson tells Insider that the travel mindset has changed since the pandemic

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Jessica Grose

Every tech tool in the classroom should be ruthlessly evaluated.

By Jessica Grose

Opinion Writer

Educational technology in schools is sometimes described as a wicked problem — a term coined by a design and planning professor, Horst Rittel, in the 1960s , meaning a problem for which even defining the scope of the dilemma is a struggle, because it has so many interconnected parts that never stop moving.

When you have a wicked problem, solutions have to be holistic, flexible and developmentally appropriate. Which is to say that appropriate tech use for elementary schoolers in rural Oklahoma isn’t going to be the same as appropriate tech use in a Chicago high school.

I spent the past few weeks speaking with parents, teachers, public school administrators and academics who study educational technology. And while there are certainly benefits to using tech as a classroom tool, I’m convinced that when it comes to the proliferation of tech in K-12 education, we need “ a hard reset ,” as Julia Freeland Fisher of the Christensen Institute put it, concurring with Jonathan Haidt in his call for rolling back the “phone-based childhood.” When we recently spoke, Fisher stressed that when we weigh the benefits of ed tech, we’re often not asking, “What’s happening when it comes to connectedness and well-being?”

Well said. We need a complete rethink of the ways that we’re evaluating and using tech in classrooms; the overall change that I want to see is that tech use in schools — devices and apps — should be driven by educators, not tech companies.

In recent years, tech companies have provided their products to schools either free or cheap , and then schools have tried to figure out how to use those products. Wherever that dynamic exists, it should be reversed: Districts and individual schools should first figure out what tech would be most useful to their students, and their bar for “useful” should be set by available data and teacher experience. Only then should they acquire laptops, tablets and educational software.

As Mesut Duran — a professor of educational technology at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, and the author of “Learning Technologies: Research, Trends and Issues in the U.S. Education System” — told me, a lot of the technology that’s used in classrooms wasn’t developed with students in mind. “Most of the technologies are initially created for commercial purposes,” he said, “and then we decide how to use them in schools.”

In many cases, there’s little or no evidence that the products actually work, and “work” can have various meanings here: It’s not conclusive that tech, as opposed to hard-copy materials, improves educational outcomes. And sometimes devices or programs simply don’t function the way they’re supposed to. For example, artificial intelligence in education is all the rage, but then we get headlines like this one, in February, from The Wall Street Journal: “ We Tested an A.I. Tutor for Kids. It Struggled With Basic Math. ”

Alex Molnar, one of the directors of the National Educational Policy Center at the University of Colorado, Boulder, said that every school should be asking if the tech it’s using is both necessary and good. “The tech industry’s ethos is: If it’s doable, it is necessary. But for educators, that has to be an actual question: Is this necessary?” Even after you’ve cleared the bar of necessary, he said, educators should be asking, “Is doing it this way good, or could we do it another way that would be better? Better in the ethical sense and the pedagogical sense.”

With that necessary and good standard in mind, here are some specific recommendations that I’ve taken away from several discussions and a lot of reading. It’s unrealistic — and considering that we’re in a tech-saturated world, not ideal — to get rid of every last bit of educational technology. But we’re currently failing too many children by letting it run rampant.

At the State and Federal Levels: Privacy Protections and Better Evaluation

A complaint I heard from many public school parents who responded to my March 27 questionnaire and wanted a lower-tech environment for their kids is that they’re concerned about their children’s privacy. They couldn’t opt out of things like Google Classroom, they said, because in many cases, all of their children’s homework assignments were posted there. Molnar has a radical but elegant solution for this problem: “All data gathered must be destroyed after its intended purpose has been accomplished.” So if the intended purpose of a platform or application is grading, for example, the data would be destroyed at the end of the school year; it couldn’t be sold to a third party or used to further enhance the product or as a training ground for artificial intelligence.

Another recommendation — from a recent paper by the University of Edinburgh’s Ben Williamson, Molnar and the University of Colorado, Boulder’s Faith Boninger outlining the risks of A.I. in the classroom — is for the creation of an “independent government entity charged with ensuring the quality of digital educational products used in schools” that would evaluate tech before it is put into schools and “periodically thereafter.” Because the technology is always evolving, our oversight of it needs to be, as well.

At the District Level: Centralize the Tech-Vetting Process

Stephanie Sheron is the chief of strategic initiatives for the Montgomery County Public Schools, the largest district in Maryland, and all the district’s technology departments report to her. She likened the tech landscape, coming out of the Covid-19 pandemic remote school period, to the “Wild West.” School districts were flooded with different kinds of ed tech in an emergency situation in which teachers were desperately trying to engage their students, and a lot of relief money was pouring in from the federal government. When the dust settled, she said, the question was, “Now what do we do? How do we control this? How do we make sure that we’re in alignment with FERPA and COPPA and all of those other student data privacy components?”

To address this, Sheron said, her district has secured grant funding to hire a director of information security, who will function as the hub for all the educational technology vending and evaluate new tech. Part of the standardization that the district has been undergoing is a requirement that to be considered, curriculum vendors must offer both digital and hard-copy resources. She said her district tried to look at tech as a tool, adding: “A pencil is a tool for learning, but it’s not the only modality. Same thing with technology. We look at it as a tool, not as the main driver of the educational experience.”

At the Classroom Level: Ruthlessly Evaluate Every Tool

In my conversations with teachers, I’ve been struck by their descriptions of the cascade of tech use — that more tech is often offered as a solution to problems created by tech. For example, paid software like GoGuardian, which allows teachers to monitor every child’s screen, has been introduced to solve the problem of students goofing off on their laptops. But there’s a simple, free, low-tech solution to this problem that Doug Showley, a high school English teacher in Indiana I spoke to, employs: He makes all his students face their computer screens in his direction.

Every teacher who is concerned about tech use in his or her classroom should do a tech audit. There are several frameworks ; I like the worksheet created by Beth Pandolpho and Katie Cubano, the authors of “Choose Your Own Master Class: Urgent Ideas to Invigorate Your Professional Learning.” In the chapter “Balancing Technology Use in the Classroom,” they suggest that teachers list every tech tool they are using and evaluate its specific functions, asking, “Are these novel or duplicative?” They also encourage teachers to write out a defense of the tool and the frequency of use.

I like these questions because they make clear that the solutions are not going to be one size fits all.

Students Deserve Authentic Connection

As I close out this series, I want to return to what Fisher said about the importance of student connection and well-being. Of course academic outcomes matter. I want our kids to learn as much about as many different topics as they can. I care about falling test scores and think they’re an important piece of data.

But test scores are only one kind of information. A key lesson we should have learned from 2020 and ’21 is that school is about so much more than just academics. It’s about socialization, critical thinking, community and learning how to coexist with people who are different from you. I don’t know that all of these are things that can be tracked in a scientific way, which brings me back to the idea of tech in schools as a wicked problem: These aren’t easily measurable outcomes.

Jeff Frank, a professor of education at St. Lawrence University, expresses a sense that I’ve had very well in a paper , “Sounding the Call to Teach in a Social Media Age: Renewing the Importance of Philosophy in Teacher Education.” He says students are “hungry for experiences that make them feel alive and authentically connected to other people and to deeper sources of value. Though filtering and managing life through technologies offers safety, predictability and a sense of control, it also leads to life that can feel extremely small, constraining and lonely. Teaching can offer a powerful way to pierce this bubble.”

Ultimately, I believe the only way kids will be able to find that deeper meaning is through human relationships with their peers and teachers, no matter how shiny an A.I. tutor appears to be at first blush.

Jessica Grose is an Opinion writer for The Times, covering family, religion, education, culture and the way we live now.