Education Week

Ensuring teachers feel effective and happy in the school community is critical—especially when it’s the only community for miles around. That’s the case in Alaska’s largest rural school district, Lower Kuskokwim, which educates 4,100 K-12 students spread across an area the size of West Virginia. Most of its 29 schools are located in tiny, low-income villages, some only reachable by boat or airplane.

Omaha police agreed this week to stop carrying gloves that can deliver electric shocks to students in the halls of Nebraska’s largest public school district. The decision affecting most Omaha middle and high schools came after The Associated Press first revealed Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s plan to give officers the gloves, which are known as G.L.O.V.E.s or Generated Low Output Voltage Emitters. The devices have also been used in recent years by some jails.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott wants to prohibit schools from using H-1B visas to hire international teachers as part of a broader campaign to “eliminate foreign influence” in education. If approved by state lawmakers, such a ban would eliminate a staffing strategy districts throughout the Lone Star State use to fill hard-to-staff teaching roles in subjects like math and foreign languages.

District leaders face a formidable task: aiming for high student achievement while battling persistent issues like teacher shortages and funding shortfalls. As schools reopen for the new school year, district leaders are particularly concerned about declining student enrollment numbers. Fewer students often mean major financial stress for schools, leading to staff and budget cuts, or even school closures or mergers.

Parents are pushing back against the amount of time students spend on screens in schools amid broader concerns over the effects of excessive technology on children’s well-being, creativity, critical thinking, and social skills. While some educators acknowledge that a tech reset in schools may be needed, there’s also a general concern that potentially beneficial will get scrapped in the rush to purge screens from classrooms.

We hear it constantly. Talk to someone. Tell a counselor. Text a friend. Don’t bottle it up. It’s on posters in school hallways and in every assembly about mental health. But here’s what I kept noticing: The availability of someone to talk to was rarely the problem. What people worried about was what might happen after they said something out loud.

A post I published last month considered the past 10 years of math instruction and what the next 10 might look like. Today, we’re doing the same thing with science. ‘Socialization Is Vital for Students’ Learning Experiences’ Stephen Fleenor, Ph.D., is the co-founder and CEO of Constructed Learning: I began my teaching career in 2014 in what felt like was the midst of a major wave of change in science instruction.

As a new school year begins, some classrooms may use artificial intelligence tools to flag a student struggling with classwork, track attendance, or try to raise reading scores. But as school districts make decisions on which tools are safe and worth spending thousands or millions of dollars on, some officials feel overwhelmed by the array of choices.

New surveys show many parents are struggling to afford school supplies—some even going to extremes to come up with the money. How can schools help? The general cost of sending kids to school is now higher than ever, when classroom school supplies and food needs are factored in, according to a report by the Groundwork Collaborative and the Century Foundation.

Across the country, states and school districts are investing heavily in early childhood education, as they try to give children the foundational academic and holistic skills necessary to succeed in elementary school and beyond. Enrollment in these programs continues to climb.