Education Week

When the incoming president of the nation’s largest teachers’ union visited Minnesota this January, she witnessed teachers’ protests against immigration raids there. For Princess Moss, the activism highlighted the two sides of educator activism: both the teachers’ fears for their students and themselves, but also the connections they helped build, she said in an exclusive interview with Education Week..

The number of students with disabilities who spend a substantial portion of their school day in general education classes is on the rise, according to a new report from a government watchdog agency.

It’s been eight years since New Hampshire lawmakers, sounding the alarm on the “academization” of kindergarten, amended education law to ensure that kindergarten is structured on a play-based model. Policymakers in a handful of states followed suit, introducing or passing similar legislation. Others are likely on the fence, watching to see what changes result from this renewed push for play-based learning in early education. A new report offers some clues.

When Teach For America launched 36 years ago, one of its pilot sites was Scotlandville High School in Baton Rouge, La., where I happened to teach. So, I’ve observed TFA from its earliest days and been a sometime-friend and sometime-critic over the decades since. A year ago, I chatted with TFA’s longtime CEO Elisa Villanueva Beard as she was stepping down. Now, it seemed like a good time to speak with her successor, Aneesh Sohoni, about his first year on the job.

The effects of immigration enforcement, artificial intelligence, and other issues in schools topped teachers’ concerns at the annual meeting of the National Education Association here, but delegates held tight to the union’s purse strings with an eye to ongoing state and national legislative fights.

Teachers often get stuck in an “egg-crate” model of schooling—sequestered in their classrooms, with few opportunities to interact and exchange ideas with each other. When it comes to professional development, teachers value learning from each other. A growing body of research shows that when educators work more collaboratively, student outcomes improve, job satisfaction may rise, and teachers may stay longer in their jobs.

Across the country, schools are rethinking their relationship with technology. At least 38 states and the District of Columbia are restricting cellphones during the school day. Parents are pushing back on screen time and social media use. Educators are questioning whether technology in classrooms has improved learning or simply made it harder for students to focus.

Every conversation about artificial intelligence in schools asks the same question: How do we keep up? Districts buy tools, write acceptable-use policies, and train teachers on prompts. The race is to ensure students can use the technology. Almost no one asks what matters more: What is it doing to the minds we are educating? The early evidence is not reassuring. At the MIT Media Lab, researchers used EEG to monitor brain activity while students wrote.

Becky Pringle took the reins of the nation’s largest teachers’ union six years ago, in the teeth of the pandemic. “She touched people’s lives at a time when we couldn’t touch each other,” said Kim Anderson, the 2.8 million member National Education Association’s executive director, who credited Pringle with ramping up the national union’s support and training for local leaders in advocacy and teacher healthcare.

Princess Moss isthe new president-elect of the National Education Association, taking the reins of one of the most influential K-12 organizations in a time of rapid change in the education landscape. Moss, 65, taught elementary music for 21 years in Louisa County, Virginia before joining the national union. She said her rural upbringing—both her parents drove school buses in Memphis, Va.—spurs her drive to improve equity and support for rural students.