Author: Reporter

Listen to the article 12 min This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback. Declining birthrates and growing competition from school choice threaten public school enrollment counts — and therefore school district budgets. Student data privacy concerns are on the rise and only complicated by the explosive rise in artificial intelligence tools and usage. And administrators are continuing to adjust to new policy priorities for curriculum, staffing and more under the second Trump administration. These are but a few of the challenges facing public schools in 2026. As we head into a new calendar year —…

Changes — and subsequent confusion and concern — largely defined the early childhood education sector in 2025. Multiple social programs including Head Start and hunger assistance programs were in flux. Rising costs of living were coupled with the rising costs of child care. And many EdSurge readers were left searching for answers, as seen in our most-read stories of the year. There was also plenty of innovation in the field, from transforming empty school buildings, adding apprenticeship programs and introducing play into teaching math. There will be more of that undoubtedly in 2026 and EdSurge aims to bring you more…

Key points: Teacher evaluations have been the subject of debate for decades. Breakthroughs have been attempted, but rarely sustained. Researchers have learned that context, transparency, and autonomy matter. What’s been missing is technology that enhances these at scale inside the evaluation process–not around it.  As an edtech executive in the AI era, I see exciting possibilities to bring new technology to bear on these factors in the longstanding dilemma of observing and rating teacher effectiveness. At the most fundamental level, the goals are simple, just as they are in other professions: provide accountability, celebrate areas of strong performance, and identify where improvement…

Listen to the article 17 min This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback. The first year of President Donald Trump’s return to office brought unprecedented and far-reaching changes to the higher education sector, and 2026 is poised to continue the trend. The conservative-led spending and tax bill, dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, is set to go into effect in July. But effects of the forthcoming policy changes, including how certain students can finance their college educations, are still in flux. The Trump administration also looks poised to continue opening investigations into colleges as…

Nearly four in 10 adult Americans have tried to transfer credit toward a college degree or credential. Of those, 58 percent lost credits in the process. For some, the consequences were severe: using up financial aid and repeating classes they’d already passed. Sixteen percent reported giving up on higher education altogether because the transfer process was simply too difficult. These aren’t just statistics. They represent learners and workers who lost time, money and faith in a system that promised them opportunity. Many have been trying to address these issues, and great work is underway. But the effort to transform transfer and learning…

Griffin & Delloue, The 74 As the nation’s K-12 landscape shifts, public charter schools still face a persistent barrier: equitable access to school facilities.

Listen to the article 4 min This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback. Dive Brief: Iowa became the first state approved for a waiver for certain federal education regulations that will allow the state to have greater decision-making in academic programming and fiscal management, according to a Wednesday announcement by Iowa leaders and U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon.  The state’s waiver allows the Iowa Department of Education to combine four federal funding streams into one and will reduce compliance costs by $8 million, according to a U.S. Department of Education statement announcing the waiver.  The…

The criticism of AI companions is loud, sustained, and often warranted, especially when it comes to the harm they may pose to children and vulnerable adults. I am among the scores of politicians, health professionals, thought leaders, and educators who have written about the risks these AI-powered platforms present to all age groups, but especially the young and vulnerable. There’s a strong contrarian streak in me that often travels faster than reason from brain to keyboard. I have been wondering of late if we can design AI coaches, companions, and tutors that have a narrow focus shaped by adamantine guide…

As any new par­ent soon finds out, there exists a robust mar­ket for prod­ucts, ser­vices, and media that promise to boost a child’s intel­li­gence. Some of these offer­ings come as close as legal­ly pos­si­ble to hold­ing out the promise of putting any tot on the path to genius, brazen­ly beg­ging the ques­tion of whether it’s pos­si­ble to raise a genius in the first place. Still, the efforts par­ents have delib­er­ate­ly made in that direc­tion have occa­sion­al­ly pro­duced notable results, from epochal fig­ures like Mozart or John Stu­art Mill to the promis­ing-math­e­mati­cian-turned-street­car-trans­fer-obsessed-recluse William Sidis. More recent­ly came the Pol­gár sis­ters, who…

Listen to the article 9 min This audio is auto-generated. Please let us know if you have feedback. ORLANDO, Fla. — College leaders face no shortage of challenges in the year ahead. They’re up against an uncertain federal policy landscape, challenges to international enrollment and, for some institutions, operating models that may no longer be working.  This week, top leaders attending the Council of Independent Colleges’ Presidents Institute — an annual gathering of hundreds of leaders of private nonprofit institutions — shared those woes and more with Higher Ed Dive.  They pointed to the end of Grad PLUS loans, which…