Minding the Gap

Photo by algoleague on Unsplash Two recent surveys estimate that 70 to 80 percent of secondary students are using AI. While some use it to help them understand schoolwork, 63 percent of the users in one survey said they simply rely on AI to provide answers for their homework assignments. That may lead to higher grades in the short term, but the evidence is mounting that the long-term effects are devastating.

Back in 2000, a panel of reading experts convened by the federal government issued a report that reviewed the research on how children learn to read. The findings of the National Reading Panel helped shift reading instruction away from ineffective techniques that involve having students guess at words and toward systematic instruction in phonics. No doubt many children have benefited as a result. Now there’s a move afoot in Congress, spearheaded by Rep. Josh Harder (D-Calif), to convene another NRP.

Photo by Vlad Deep on Unsplash Alpha School, as I discussed in a previous post, is a fast-growing network of private schools that relies on AI-powered “tutors” to deliver academic learning in just two hours a day, with the remainder of the school day devoted to “life skills workshops” that students choose. Alpha claims its students learn 2.6 times faster than average, as measured by standardized tests that track the progress of millions of students across the country.

History—or, to use a more general term, social studies—has long been the red-headed stepchild of the American education system. Disrespected, neglected, derided: you name it. The very idea of teaching history to young children has been seen as “developmentally inappropriate,” despite the absence of evidence to support that view.

Gifted and talented, or “G&T,” programs are both highly contested and highly sought-after. Among the criticisms are that the label implies a fixed and general trait, when in fact measures like IQ fluctuate—especially before age 12—and individuals may be “advanced” in one area and not others. Individuals who get the label when young sometimes feel under pressure to succeed in everything they try their hand at.

Alpha School—a chain of private schools that claims to have revolutionized education with the help of AI—has been around since 2014, but it’s having a moment. With campuses rapidly sprouting in affluent parts of the country, it’s claiming to enable students to learn at a rate that is 2.6 times faster than average while spending only two hours a day on academics. During those two hours, each student is served a personalized menu of lessons.

Rose Horowitch, a twenty-something staff writer at the Atlantic, has a knack for going viral. Two years ago, her article about the “elite college students who can’t read books” brought much-needed attention to that problem. A recent follow-up, “The End of Reading is Here”—a cover story—is spurring a tsunami of discussion as well. As with her piece on college students, Horowitch isn’t breaking new ground so much as digging into and expanding upon information that’s already out there.

For decades, reading comprehension instruction focused primarily on having students practice skills and strategies—like “making inferences”—in isolation from any particular content, contrary to what the research indicates will work. That’s still happening in many schools, but an increasing number are shifting to an approach that puts building content knowledge in the foreground and brings in comprehension strategies as appropriate to the content. That represents progress.

Just in time for the nation’s 250th birthday, the Texas State Board of Education has approved new social studies standards that are designed to foster patriotism—and are already exacerbating partisan division.

One popular explanation for declining test scores has been, basically, “because Covid.” But that analysis has been undercut by recent data underlining the fact that the decline has been going on since at least 2015, well before the pandemic hit.