The research behind the influential “science of reading” movement was built over decades through federally supported research spanning cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, linguistics and classroom studies.

Education research organizations say a proposed 100-page sweeping overhaul of federal grant rules, which would add a new review by political appointees, could make it harder to produce similar important bodies of evidence in the future. 

The federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB) says its proposed changes are intended to strengthen accountability, transparency and oversight of taxpayer-funded grants. The May 29 proposal would revise the rules for issuing and overseeing grants, including those awarded by the Department of Education and the National Science Foundation, two major sources of federal education research funding. OMB wants the final rule to take effect by Oct. 1, according to the proposal.

But in letters submitted to OMB on July 13, the deadline for public comment, education research groups argued that some provisions could have unintended and harmful consequences by narrowing the questions researchers study, giving political considerations too much influence in funding decisions and disrupting research already underway. The education groups are asking not only for changes, but for the entire overhaul proposal to be withdrawn. 

Objections specific to education research were detailed in three letters from the National Academy of Education, signed by 19 other education and science organizations; the American Educational Research Association (AERA); and the Knowledge Alliance, a group representing about 20 organizations that conduct education research.

Could researchers study differences in student outcomes?

One of the most significant concerns raised by education researchers involves studies that examine whether educational outcomes differ among student groups.

The proposed rule would prohibit federal funds from supporting research related to what the administration calls “unlawful diversity, equity and inclusion” activities and would restrict funding for what are known as “disparate impact studies.” These analyze whether policies that might appear neutral produce different results for different groups.

The National Academy of Education, in a letter signed by 19 other education and science organizations, warned that the rule could ban studies examining racial or ethnic achievement gaps, and whether educational interventions help some students more than others.

“Whether a reading intervention works differently for English language learners, whether a discipline policy falls more heavily on students of color, whether a gifted education program under-identifies students with disabilities — these are not fringe questions,” the organization wrote. “They are central empirical questions of education policy research.”

Researchers also pointed to possible conflicts with existing education laws and programs that require demographic analysis. For example, the roughly $17 billion federal program for high-poverty schools known as Title I requires states and districts to examine student outcomes by race, disability status, income and English learner status in order to identify and support struggling groups of students.

The proposed rule does not explicitly prohibit all such analysis. But researchers argue that the language around diversity, equity and inclusion  and “disparate impact” is broad and vague enough to create uncertainty and discourage researchers from proposing important studies.

Who decides what counts as valuable research?

Education researchers also object to proposed changes that would increase political involvement in grant decisions.

The proposal would require agencies to consider alignment with federal priorities, which could change from administration to administration, and the “national interest,” which is undefined. It also states that political appointees are to review all grants before they are issued. Research organizations argue that this requirement could reduce the role of independent scientific review, when subject experts evaluate proposals based on quality, rigor and feasibility.

Researchers also worry that the Trump administration’s push for “gold standard science” in the proposal is undefined and could favor some methods over others. Education research is not as straightforward as testing the effectiveness of a new drug and often uses a variety of approaches — including surveys, interviews and sophisticated data analysis that attempt to replicate an experiment without randomly assigning students to a program or a style of instruction. 

Among other changes, the OMB proposal calls upon agencies to give preference to grant proposals with low overhead costs, which disadvantages large research universities. It would also cut federal funding for attending conferences and publication costs, unless specifically approved. Researchers would be required to provide written justification for each request to receive grant funds, adding to their regulatory paperwork. Education research organizations objected to all of these proposals. 

The White House proposal emphasizes supporting research that can yield immediate results or breakthrough innovations. In response, the Knowledge Alliance pointed to the science of reading as an example of why real progress requires patience.

“Researchers would be less likely to pursue important long-term questions that are critical to creating the foundational knowledge needed for scientific breakthroughs,” wrote Rachel Dinkes, president of the Knowledge Alliance. The science of reading “reflects the accumulation of evidence over many years and across multiple administrations, which has been pivotal to improving student outcomes in reading.”

What happens when research is interrupted?

Education research groups also raised concerns about the consequences of suspending or terminating grants after studies have begun.

The National Academy of Education warned that interruptions could be especially damaging for longitudinal studies, which depend on consistent data collection over time. Losing a year of data collection, the group argued, could permanently damage a study’s value.

Researchers also pointed to effects beyond universities. Federal research grants often fund partnerships between researchers and schools, provide professional learning or pay for interventions for students. The consequences of abrupt terminations are fresh in education researchers’ minds. When the Department of Education terminated dozens of research studies in 2025, for example, 1,600 high schoolers with disabilities lost services. 

Restrictions on international research partnerships were another concern. Researchers argued that broad limits on foreign collaborations could affect U.S. participation in international assessments such as PISA and TIMSS, which help policymakers compare U.S. student performance with that of other countries.

The Trump administration’s proposal to overhaul how the federal government awards and oversees grants is drawing fierce opposition from scientific societies and research organizations across many fields, from medicine to climate science. These comments from the education research community are just three among 496,775 that have been submitted. A July 14 article in MedPage Today explained that research organizations intentionally flooded the OMB with comments to respond to, hoping to either slow the rule-making process or create an administrative record that could be used in future lawsuits to challenge the rule. 

OMB did not respond to questions about the objections raised by education researchers.

Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or barshay@hechingerreport.org.

This story about education researchers’ objections to a proposed overhaul of federal grants was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

The post Education researchers warn political review of federal grants could reshape what gets studied appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

For years, early childhood leaders have been asked to solve structural problems with predictable answers: Improve quality. Expand access. Support families. Retain educators. Strengthen transitions into kindergarten.

All of it matters, but none of it can be fully accomplished with our fragmented system, one in which Head Start, child care, public pre-K, special education and K-12 are all funded separately, governed separately and operated separately.

On their own, these programs don’t always fit the needs and realities that many families with young children are actually facing. 

That’s why in rural Skowhegan, Maine — a community facing significant challenges, including poverty, transportation barriers and a shortage of care options — we decided not to work around that fragmentation but to fix it. Following the national Educare model, we intentionally engaged in a combination of cross-sector partnerships and public policy change in a local effort. 

The result is a broad solution: A new infant-through-grade-five public school that includes babies, toddlers, preschoolers and elementary students on one campus.

Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues. 

In Skowhegan, we did not want to just build a school; we wanted to build a case for a new way forward that shows what high-quality early education can look like in practice when systems align. Educators in Skowhegan and at Educare have known from the outset that one strong school would never be enough. That’s why we sought to create a replicable structure in which children could learn in inclusive settings and where families could access support through a more connected system. 

In our rural state, Educare wanted to influence the broader conditions that shape quality for children and families across communities. That meant starting with partnerships and increasing commitments to early care and education from all stakeholders, including the area’s future workforce.

Such partnerships build trust, and deepening that trust made greater change possible. Through our Educare Maine Lab School and Learning Hub, we partnered with home-based and center-based child care providers in Skowhegan. (Educare Maine was formerly known as Educare Central Maine.)

Educare did not approach that work as outside experts arriving with answers. Educare coaches worked alongside local providers to strengthen quality, stabilize programs and build a more coherent early childhood ecosystem. And our joint work surfaced evidence from other communities. With the University of Maine, we gathered data showing that providers were more likely to sustain their businesses and improve quality when they had coordinated support. 

That local pilot program became the basis for statewide legislation: First4ME, a model designed to help communities collaborate around early care and education rather than compete within a fragmented system.

As Skowhegan planned a new elementary school, local leaders rallied, choosing not to replicate the traditional model, and instead aligned the building with Educare Maine’s research model of child development and family needs, professional development and community partnerships.

Because there were already infant and toddler classrooms on the district campus, the superintendent made a compelling case to the state that our youngest learners should be included in the future of this school.

That helped persuade Maine’s Department of Education to do something it had never done before — include infant-toddler space in a new school construction project, a fundamental policy shift signaling that care and education do not need to exist in separate silos. 

Families cannot navigate five disconnected systems across long distances with limited transportation and few available providers. Programs cannot sustain quality without shared infrastructure. And communities cannot thrive when early childhood is treated as a private challenge instead of a public priority.

Related: Lessons from the first state in the nation to offer universal child care 

What happened in Skowhegan was not accidental. It was built step by step, and it helped redefine what public education can be. 

But the fragmentation in our area wasn’t limited to the provision of early education. Too often, early childhood policy discussions focus on isolated interventions — one grant here, one pilot there, one program expansion somewhere else. But families do not experience policies and systems in pieces. They experience them as either connected or disconnected, accessible or burdensome, responsive or impossible to navigate. 

If, in other districts, we want systems that work, we have to build them the way we did in Skowhegan. Educare Maine is now continuing this work across the state, assisting communities in recognizing opportunities for both local and broader solutions. 

What began as a local necessity in Skowhegan now offers a scalable blueprint for a nation drowning in child care deserts and fragmented systems. By following Maine’s lead — pooling cross-sector funds and rewriting state construction policies to include infants — other states can stop applying temporary band-aids to early education. Integrating infant-to-grade-five care directly into public school infrastructure transforms a private family burden into a shared public asset, proving that the best way to solve a national crisis is to stop building systems in pieces and finally build them whole.

Tracye Fortin is the Educare Maine chief impact officer and former chief operating officer of KVCAP Child & Family Services and Educare Maine at Waterville. 

Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.

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

The post OPINION: How a small town in rural Maine built a public school that serves a whole community, including infants and toddlers  appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

LOVELAND, Colo. — Just beyond the front doors of Namaqua Elementary School, past a banner that reads “attendance matters — every school day counts,” a stuffed wildcat in sunglasses sits in the lobby, observing the comings and goings of students. 

The school mascot is called Wyatt, and the students are told that he monitors attendance. Are the children arriving on time? Did they make it to school today?

Wyatt is one prong of the elementary school’s strategy to reduce chronic absenteeism, which is common even among the youngest students. Nationally, the grade with the worst attendance record before high school is kindergarten, a year that some families view as optional and low-stakes but educators treat as foundational for establishing healthy habits, routines and relationships.

Each week at Namaqua, the classroom with the best attendance wins Wyatt’s “Beat the Bell Challenge.” As a reward, the stuffie pays a visit to the winning classroom, and students get to select a coupon for their prize; options include pajama day, extra recess and lunch with the teacher. 

It’s simple but effective, said Angie Geraghty, the school principal.

“We joke that we want the kids to have FOMO, like they’re missing out on something if they’re not in school,” Geraghty said. (Moments later, almost as if to underscore her point, children could be heard erupting in squeals and cheers in the gymnasium, where a “mad scientist” was presenting during a schoolwide assembly.)

“Because if they’re not here,” she added, “we can’t teach them.”

Related: 7 insights about chronic absenteeism, a new normal for American schools

Like schools all over the country, Namaqua has struggled with high rates of chronic absenteeism, especially for the youngest learners, in recent years. Statewide, Colorado has one of the highest rates of kindergarten missing school; 29 percent of these students were chronically absent in the 2024-25 school year — defined as missing 10 percent or more of the school year. That compares to 24 percent for all the elementary grades combined. 

During the 2022-23 school year, when the problem appeared to reach its peak, 35 percent of Namaqua’s kindergarten students were chronically absent, compared to 30 percent school-wide, according to the district.

In the 2025-26 school year, after a coordinated effort that has involved everyone from district staff to classroom teachers, the chronic absenteeism rate among Namaqua kindergartners dropped to 14 percent, compared to 18 percent schoolwide, according to data provided by the district.  

Namaqua’s progress reflects what research shows can help schools turn around: increasing student and family engagement, fostering relationships between students and staff, communicating with parents and caregivers about children’s attendance patterns, and making sure students feel supported and connected at school.

That work has to start early and be reinforced often, said Michael Gottfried, a professor at University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education who has studied school-based interventions to reduce chronic absenteeism. 

“Your child is developing skills in kindergarten that will help them throughout their entire schooling,” he said. “What they learn in kindergarten is going to help with first grade, and what they learn in first grade is going to help with second grade. It’s a big snowball effect.”

Charted on a graph, the grade-level chronic absenteeism percentages for K-12 form a “Nike swoosh,” as Hedy Chang, CEO, president and founder of the nonprofit Attendance Works, put it. The rates are high in the earliest grades, drop to their lowest point around fourth and fifth grades, and then continue to climb throughout middle and high school. In some states, the absenteeism rate in kindergarten is higher than that of 12th graders.   

“Kindergarten — that experience is so pivotal. It lays a foundation for future success,” Chang said. “Students are much more likely to be chronically absent in subsequent years if they’re chronically absent in kindergarten.”

Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues. 

But despite its importance, the kindergarten year has several unique challenges to overcome. 

For one, kindergarten is mandatory in fewer than half of U.S. states. Colorado is not one of them. 

“Families are like, ‘But it’s not required,’” said Mary Rutledge Ward, a student engagement specialist and lead on the positive attendance team at the Thompson district. “But it does matter. You came in and filled out the paperwork and did the tour and bought the new backpack and got your kid excited.”

Ward added: “Once you’ve enrolled, you’ve said your expectation is that we provide your child with an education, and we’re here to do that.”

Then there’s the oft-repeated protest from some parents who are being reminded that their child’s attendance is essential, said Geraghty, the Namaqua principal: “It’s just kindergarten.”

Brittany Trimbath, a kindergarten teacher at Namaqua, said that attendance is especially important because so much of the learning revolves around listening, interacting and playing. She can’t exactly send home a packet of make-up work that recreates the experience of teaching students the sounds for the letter a. 

“Kindergarten is such a hands-on, experiential learning grade for them, coming in and interacting with their friends,” Trimbath said. “The things we’re doing are not necessarily always paper-and-pencil activities. They need to be here to experience the read-alouds, to hear the conversations we’re having.”

There are other challenges, too — like the way school closures and remote learning during the pandemic made families feel like it wasn’t so critical, after all, for their children to physically show up to school each day. In the years since traditional in-person learning has resumed, many families seem to be more comfortable treating school attendance as elective.

“That societal permission had been given,” said Jennifer Guthals, director of student success at Thompson School District, “that you can opt out.”

Other long-standing barriers — like the newness of kindergarten and the anxiety that some children have around it, or unmet basic needs such as housing and transportation — remain in place and, in many school communities, have only become more urgent. 

At Cottonwood Plains Elementary School, a Title I school less than 10 miles north of Namaqua in Fort Collins, staff members created a community resource room inside the building (with exterior access for family privacy) to remove some of the barriers that were keeping kids home, said Eric Harting, the school principal. The room is well-stocked with non-perishable foods, shoes and clothing in all sizes, diapers and other newborn essentials, hats, backpacks, toiletries and much more. All of it is available for free to students and families — no questions asked. 

“We’re eliminating as many variables as we can,” said Harting, adding that he’s heard from families over the years that a lack of clean clothes kept their kids from school. “Now you can have clean clothes whenever you want them.”

One recent spring morning, Luz Kipsey, a bilingual family engagement specialist at Cottonwood Plains, called the mother of a fourth grader who had recently transferred to the school from out of state. Kipsey told the mom about the community hub, and the mom mentioned that her fourth grader didn’t have a backpack. The child later came in and was able to pick out one she liked. 

It was a brief exchange, but one that would hopefully have a lasting impact on both the parent and child, Kipsey said. Staff at Cottonwood Plains want students and their families to feel connected to and supported by the school. 

“Some families didn’t have the best experience in school when they were kids,” said Harting. “They are hesitant to come to school.” 

The community hub is one way to try to rewrite that narrative. Another is that Harting tries to meet families where they are — sometimes that means physically holding meetings for families in their neighborhoods, such as the mobile home park 2 miles from the school where about a third of Cottonwood Plains’ 270 students live. 

“We go to their turf. We eat together,” Harting said. “You have to really work on building relationships with people from the start.”

Related: What Michigan schools reveal about reversing chronic absenteeism

He acknowledged that he has his work cut out for him as a white principal with “terrible” Spanish-language skills leading a dual-language school where between a quarter and a third of students speak primarily Spanish at home. 

Walking through the hallways of the elementary school building, Harting’s efforts are evident. He greets students by name, noticing a recent haircut or a new pair of shoes, asking how their weekend went. 

“Things like that that show you see them, you know? That they matter,” said Harting.

That helps to make school feel like a safe, welcoming environment where kids want to be, which is more than half the battle, he said. But it also comes in handy when he needs to talk to families about absences, because Harting and the student and the student’s family have already established a rapport.  

“You can’t have that conversation with someone who doesn’t know you and trust you,” he added. 

In the 2022-23 school year, 27 percent of all students and 44 percent of kindergartners were chronically absent at Cottonwood Plains, according to data provided by the district. In the 2025-26 school year, the percentage of chronically absent students plummeted to 14 percent of all students and 19 percent of kindergartners. 

Invariably, this work is school-specific. Every school community is different. Its needs are different. While Cottonwood Plains serves a significant population of native Spanish speakers, 30 percent of students at Namaqua have individualized education programs.

However, the district has directed schools toward initiatives that have been shown to work across contexts. All schools are expected to greet students each morning with “warm welcomes,” for example. School leaders also benefit from the district’s extensive data trove, which analyzes attendance trends for every student, in every grade, at every school. Ward said the data is key to their work.

Ward and her two colleagues on the district’s positive attendance team have been a large part of the district’s success in slashing its chronic absenteeism rate, both school principals said. They were hired with Covid-era funding, but after those dollars dried up,  their positions were made part of the district’s general fund, she said. 

Someone from the positive attendance team is available to meet regularly with all 16 elementary schools in the district. Ward meets with half of them, including Namaqua. 

At Namaqua, that meeting is held on most Fridays with the principal, dean of students, secretary and health aide, and together they review trends in their attendance data, evaluate individual cases that need attention and brainstorm solutions. 

Related: Adding bus stops, serving biscuits and gravy, and catching butterflies: How schools are tackling absenteeism

It was during one of those weekly meetings last winter that the idea to make Wyatt the wildcat a signature part of the school’s attendance strategy emerged. 

For kindergarten, specifically, that team decided to emphasize the importance of attendance during the school’s annual open house for incoming kindergartners and their families. The event includes a kindergarten “commitment letter” signing and a session where current kindergartners teach the incoming class about what to expect. 

The school has also sent postcards — “written” by Wyatt — to students who have improved their attendance, congratulating them on their progress. One girl even wrote him back. 

“We used to have letters that were super punitive, like, ‘Get your kids to school — or else,’ that I’ve literally had thrown in my face,” Geraghty said. “We need to have open communication. I don’t want it to be punitive, because then we’ve shut that door.”

Now, the school’s tardy slips say, “Happy to see you,” and magnets sent home to families say, “Strive for less than five days absent.”

When staff at Cottonwood Plains made a similar shift in tone and wording, they also started to notice a change in how families responded, Harting said. 

“We moved away from threatening language to supportive language, from hollow consequences to problem-solving,” he said.

Both principals have found it helpful to get classroom teachers involved too. Those are typically the people in a school who families trust most, Chang said. 

“Teachers are a force when it comes to getting kids to school,” Ward said, not least because they have their own interests at stake. “There’s this assumed expectation and really heartfelt desire to catch the kids up — which takes time and energy and attention away from the rest of the class. They have to be really flexible at times.”

At Namaqua, staff have worked with teachers on how to bring up attendance with families without sounding judgmental or accusatory. Mostly, that just means laying out the data matter-of-factly. 

Ward offered an example: “‘Your child has missed 13 days as of November. The average in class is two absences. This really worries me. Help me understand how we can help you.’”

During fall and spring teacher conferences at Namaqua, every family gets a letter outlining how their student’s attendance is going, even if they had perfect attendance. The letters are coded green, yellow and red, based on the number of absences. 

Trimbath, the kindergarten teacher, said she walks parents through the information in that letter and connects attendance patterns to outcomes such as high school graduation rates. “It’s a nice conversation to have,” she said. 

She also regularly sends families messages through the district’s two-way communications app. If a child misses one day, she said, she might send a note like, “We’ve missed your student today. Hope everything is OK.” If a child is out for longer, she would suggest some activities they can do at home but emphasize the importance of returning to school.

Attendance conversations used to be difficult for Trimbath, she said, but now that the issue is a “whole building-wide effort,” she finds that it gets easier each year. 

“We want them to enjoy being at school, to love learning,” she said. “I need them here to do my magic.”

Contact editor Christina Samuels at 212-678-3635 or samuels@hechingerreport.org.

This story about chronic absenteeism was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post Why are so many kindergartners chronically absent? appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Artificial intelligence is often promoted as a way to make teachers more effective by helping them write lesson plans, generate classroom materials and provide feedback to students in seconds. But one of the first randomized trials testing AI in real classrooms found that it can also undermine learning. Students whose teachers were given access to an AI teaching assistant felt less motivated to learn.

The damage was especially pronounced among students whose teachers were already weaker instructors, as measured by their performance before the experiment began. Their students also scored lower on standardized final exams, the researchers found.

“Teachers, just like students or coders, might be using AI as a crutch,” said Alp Sungu, lead author of the study and an assistant professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. “Instead of doing the actual work, they’re using AI to delegate the task, and that lowers the quality of their teaching.”

A draft of the study, “Generative AI Can Harm Teaching,” was released online in June and has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. It echoes Sungu’s widely discussed 2024 research on how students’ use of AI is harming learning. 

“Students use AI as an answer machine, not as a tool for learning, and therefore it harms learning,” said Sungu. “Here, I think teachers are potentially using AI as a material generating machine for homework, lecture notes, lesson plans, syllabus. Instead of improving their own output, they’re using AI as a replacement with very minimal interaction, and therefore the quality of output is not good enough.”

Related: Faster solutions, lower test scores: How AI is eroding math skills

Sungu’s experiment, conducted with fellow University of Pennsylvania researchers, including educational psychologist Angela Duckworth, followed 193 teachers and more than 2,800 middle and high school students in a private school chain in Turkey during the spring of 2025. 

Teachers were randomly assigned either to receive access to a ChatGPT-based teaching assistant customized to Turkey’s national curriculum or to continue teaching as usual. Over 10 weeks, teachers primarily used the tool to generate lecture notes, assignments and exams.

Students whose teachers had access to the AI tool rated their classes as less enjoyable, less interesting and less important than students in the control group. The decline in intrinsic motivation was modest, but larger among students of those teachers who had already been heavier AI users before the experiment began.

Average academic achievement did not change overall. But among teachers whose students had lower marks before the experiment — a proxy for lower-performing teachers — student achievement and confidence both declined. Academic achievement was measured through externally administered standardized exams, ruling out the possibility that these teachers had different grading standards.

The study cannot explain exactly why teaching quality deteriorated. Researchers did not observe classrooms or analyze the AI-generated materials teachers used. But Sungu suspects that teachers may have been giving up one of their most effective tools. 

“When you start using AI-generated material, you’re losing your personal voice,” said Sungu. “It might be technically good enough, but it doesn’t really carry your own style. If everything is very uniform, it just becomes a bit more boring.”

One possible explanation for the weaker academic performance among students of low-performing teachers, Sungu said, is that stronger teachers treat AI output as a first draft, revising and adapting it to their classrooms. Weaker teachers, he suspects, may be more likely to use AI-generated material as is.

Related: AI gives more praise, less criticism to Black students

This study is not a clean comparison between teaching with and without AI. Teachers in the control group were free to use other AI tools, making this a comparison between access to a customized AI assistant and whatever teachers chose to do on their own. If anything, Sungu said, these findings might be understating the risks of teachers relying heavily on AI-generated materials.

Still, Sungu cautions that it would be a mistake to conclude that “AI is terrible and will ruin education.” He sees a different lesson: Access to AI technology alone does not improve teaching. 

The challenge is to help teachers use AI in ways that preserve human judgment and creativity. That will require teacher training programs, guardrails and better interfaces. 

“As of right now, how teachers are using it organically, there is something to be worried about,” he said. 

Sungu says he personally uses AI in his university teaching to create interactive games and polls that would otherwise take too long to build.  “When I first get the output, it just looks great,” he said. “And then, if I don’t immerse myself in it, the examples, the numbers don’t make sense. I end up spending an equal amount of time to improve the output or calibrate it to my class.”

“It’s not a time saver,” he said.

Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or barshay@hechingerreport.org.

This story about AI in teaching was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

The post Teachers save time with AI. Their students may pay the price appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Confidence in higher education is declining across the United States.

Fewer Americans say a college degree is very important: A growing share believe the system is headed in the wrong direction, particularly when it comes to preparing students for employment. 

Not surprisingly, college enrollment has fallen in recent years. And nowhere are the stakes of this decline more visible than in high-poverty Southern states like Louisiana and Mississippi, where economic opportunity is unevenly distributed and just one in four adults hold a bachelor’s degree or higher.

For families struggling to make ends meet, the promise that education will lead to better opportunities may feel distant or unrealistic. The result is a troubling paradox: Communities that could benefit most from strong universities are often the ones where confidence in them has eroded the most. 

Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.

In the South, where inequality is persistent and public systems are under strain, universities are one of the few types of available institutions that can reduce that strain. In fact, universities should and often do function as a part of shared civic infrastructure, but that role is largely invisible to the public. At a time when trust in institutions is fragile and public investments are constrained, we can no longer afford to be invisible.

To be recognized as a public good, universities must do a better job of demonstrating how their work strengthens communities and expands opportunity in the regions they serve. 

Universities can bring research funding, job opportunities, skilled workers, hospitals and cultural institutions. They can attract talent: students, faculty and entrepreneurs from across the country and around the world who build careers, start businesses, boost local economies and contribute mightily to the economic and civic life of the regions around them. 

But to do that, universities must first attract in-state students and bring other young people into the state, connect them to local employers and create the kinds of research, medical access and technology ecosystems that help retain graduates as residents.

States such as Louisiana are losing population and aging faster than the national average. At the same time, many young adults who earn college degrees in poor Southern states are leaving for opportunities elsewhere, contributing to a brain drain of educated workers.

Political and policy environments in parts of the South are fueling the exodus. For example, faculty in Southern states who have witnessed political interference on their campuses reported that they are looking for positions elsewhere. And states that have banned abortions have seen a reduction in medical trainees applying to OB-GYN residency programs.

I saw a different model growing up in Mississippi, for decades the nation’s poorest state. My family was part of a generation of immigrants and migrants who came to the state in the 1960s and 1970s to teach and conduct research at its universities, which attracted intellectual capital from across the country and the world. Many stayed for generations; their children became doctors, entrepreneurs, educators and taxpayers who contributed to economic and civic life.

This system worked not only because of individual drive, but because the universities created clear pathways for talent to enter, build careers and put down roots. There were stable academic positions, research opportunities and strong connections to local economies. 

Today, declining investment in higher education, reduced career advantages from college degrees and policy environments that deter graduate education and recruitment of international talent have weakened these pipelines, making it harder for states to attract and retain the very people who can drive long-term economic and civic growth.

While universities bring economic, intellectual and infrastructure benefits, poorer and less educated communities may experience less of that benefit. Medical schools illustrate this dynamic clearly. Most newly trained physicians remain in the states where they trained, but we see less retention in poorer states, many of which are in the South. In Louisiana, roughly half of medical school graduates ultimately leave the state. 

Related: OPINION: If higher education wants to rebuild public trust, start with making college affordable

Strengthening pathways from education to in-state employment is essential. Universities must boost partnerships with local health systems, schools and industries to create paid internships, field placements and residency pipelines that embed students in communities during their training. These experiences not only build skills, they increase the likelihood that graduates will remain and work in the regions where they trained.

Work connected to a local community and designed to be responsive and accountable to that local community benefits the community, and in turn the students and researchers who participate in this work feel more bound and connected to the community, increasing their inclination to stay and produce work that is by design contributing to the public good. 

I’ve taken these lessons to heart in my own work as a public health researcher at a university in Louisiana. With support from students and local research staff, I lead analysis of statewide violence surveys that provide population-based data on intimate partner violence, sexual violence and other forms of harm in Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, and we provide these reports to policymakers, advocates and public agencies to help them understand patterns of violence.

This impact is already visible. Our population-based surveys produced statewide estimates of intimate partner violence and quantified its economic costs — evidence that helped make the case for increased public investment. In Louisiana, advocates used the data to secure $7 million in state funding, contributing to a doubling of shelter capacity for survivors seeking safety and providing an essential source of public knowledge.

No single institution can meet workforce, health and economic challenges alone, but universities must play a major role by becoming part of the civic infrastructure, providing community benefits and rebuilding faith in institutions. 

Anita Raj, a Mississippi native, is executive director of the Newcomb Institute and a professor of public health at Tulane University in Louisiana, and a member of the National Academy of Medicine.

Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.

This story about public trust in universities in the South was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

The post OPINION: Poor Southern states have a brain drain problem. Public universities can and should be doing more to help  appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

Even as job seekers fret about artificial intelligence and tech behemoths announce massive layoffs, Matt Walsh is finding it surprisingly hard to help technology companies hire certain kinds of workers.

That’s what Walsh’s recruiting firm, Blue Signal, does. And in specialties including semiconductor production, “the unemployment rate is probably negative 20 percent,” the CEO of the Phoenix-based search company said. “It’s ridiculous. There just aren’t enough people.”

College graduates booed commencement speakers who hyped AI, which has steadily reduced the number of entry-level jobs available, and Meta cited AI when laying off more than 8,000 workers in May. 

But economists are sounding alarms that the AI talk is masking a different problem. 

It’s not that there won’t be enough jobs, these experts say — it’s that the United States is already facing what’s projected to be the biggest shortage of workers in its history.

The problem “could hobble the American economy for years to come,” predicts the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. “The largest labor shortage the country has ever seen,” the Lightcast labor market data company calls it. JPMorganChase warns of a national security risk from “a pervasive talent deficit that constrains the nation’s capacity to build, compete, and protect its interests.” 

And it’s not only tech workers. There will be shortages in the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of nurses, physicians, teachers, engineers, pharmacists, mental health counselors, construction workers and airplane mechanics, both government and independent sources project. Most are jobs AI generally can’t do.

“All of these people who keep a society functioning are the very people we’re not going to have enough of,” said Ron Hetrick, Lightcast’s principal economist. 

Among the trends that have been leading to this moment: a mismatch between the careers college graduates are pursuing and the kinds of jobs employers are struggling to fill. Far fewer students are majoring in health care fields than are needed to meet demand, for instance. 

Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter. 

“We have pumped so many young people into business and finance” when what’s really in demand are graduates in other fields, Hetrick said. “It’s like a factory producing these workers like widgets, even though society is saying, ‘We really don’t need them.’ And the factory just keeps pumping them out.”

But the principal reason for the looming workforce shortages is much more basic. It’s that a protracted decline in the birthrate is coinciding with a record wave of retirements. 

Between 2024 and 2032, when the last baby boomers sign up for Social Security, more than 18 million college-educated workers will leave the labor force while fewer than 14 million enter it, according to the Georgetown center. Meanwhile, even as the number of people with associate and bachelor’s degrees falls, the center forecasts, the number of jobs requiring them will grow. 

That will leave a gap of 4.6 million fewer workers than are needed. Lightcast puts the deficit at an even higher 6 million.

These aren’t dystopian predictions. The shortages are already showing up, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports. In many industries, it says, even if every worker now unemployed were plugged into an open job, there would still be positions left unfilled.

“We have a crisis in front of us in not preparing people for the world that’s coming,” said Bill Haslam, the Republican former governor of Tennessee and co-chair with Democratic former Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Commission on the American Workforce.

The effect of population shifts on the supply of talent, with or without degrees, has been compounded by a drop in the proportion of high school graduates choosing to go to college; a sharply reduced rate of immigration; and a growing number of Americans who have left the workforce altogether because of such things as lack of child care, early retirement, incarceration and substance addiction.

College and university enrollment is down by nearly two million students since its peak in 2010, the U.S. Department of Education reports. The low birthrate since around then means the number of college-age Americans is forecasted to decline by another 13 percent through 2041. 

Related: What it’s like to enter the job market in the middle of an AI revolution

Fewer than half as many people immigrated to the United States last year as the year before, the Census Bureau says; yet 41 percent of the home health aides who will be increasingly needed to care for the nation’s aging population have historically come from somewhere else, along with a fifth of nursing assistants, dentists, pharmacists and registered nurses.

“We’re doing a fantastic job of rolling up the welcome mat and saying, ‘We don’t want you,’ ” said Brad Hershbein, senior economist and deputy director of research at the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research.

Walsh, at Blue Signal, has a theory about why there seems to have been little attention to the looming labor shortage, outside of the industries affected. He uses the metaphor of frogs that will jump out of a pot of boiling water if they’re dropped into it but not if the water is brought to a boil gradually. In the same way, people are only slowly becoming aware of shortages, Walsh said. 

Already, in his small Illinois hometown, he said, he’s noticed it takes six months for people to get a doctor’s appointment because there aren’t enough doctors.

“ ‘Everybody needs to hear this,’ ” Lightcast principal economist Ron Hetrick said an audience member implored him after he spoke at an event about the problem. But “some people really haven’t felt the pain enough to care as much as they should.”

Besides, said Allison Shrivastava, education and labor market economist at the college search and ratings platform Niche, attention has been focused on the shrinking supply of entry-level jobs in certain fields. “When people are having trouble getting into the labor market, it’s hard to say there are going to be labor shortages soon,” Shrivastava said.

Related: Faster, thinner: Colleges are swiftly trimming a B.A. degree to three years

The fact is, she said, that “we are going to be hard pressed to find a corner of the economy where labor shortages don’t have an impact.”

Shortages of workers have already begun to slow production lines at manufacturing facilities tied to the defense industry, according to JPMorganChase. Semiconductor plants are being built faster than they can be staffed. Too few electricians, line workers and technicians mean delays in the modernization of the energy grid. 

The semiconductor industry payroll is projected to grow by nearly 115,000 jobs by 2030, which is 67,000 more than there are workers now or projected to be in the pipeline to become technicians and engineers, the Semiconductor Industry Association estimates.

“The semiconductor industry is not alone here,” however, said Erik Hadland, the association’s director of technology policy. “We’re a small part of a much larger issue.”

State governments, which are closest to the problem, have been scrambling to avert it. To get college graduates to come or stay and work, some will help them pay off their student loans. A bill under consideration in Minnesota would offer in-state tuition to most public colleges and universities for children of parents who take jobs in that state, waiving the previous requirement that students have graduated from a Minnesota high school after attending for a minimum of three years.

Several states have combined their higher education and workforce development agencies, including Missouri and Colorado. Connecticut has established both an Office of Workforce Strategy and a Career Pathways Commission. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has formed a working group to review that state’s workforce development infrastructure and increase the number of college graduates. 

Some states face shortages that appear more severe than others. South Dakota has just 41 workers for every 100 open jobs, for instance, while California and nine other states have more workers than jobs, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce finds. 

In Pennsylvania, a study commissioned by the state Department of Education has projected that the state needs to increase the number of people with credentials beyond high school by more than 4 percent to fill a shortage of 218,000 such workers a year by 2032. That will be a significant challenge, considering that college enrollment there has generally been falling.

There are also shortages in industries whose workers don’t need college and university degrees. Fewer than half as many people are entering the construction trades as are needed, for example, according to Branka Minic, CEO of the Building Talent Foundation, which represents 3,600 employers who are trying to fill that gap. 

Related: More than a quarter of private colleges are at risk of closing, new projection shows

“There’s plenty of jobs” in the skilled trades, she said, some starting at $50 an hour. “Show me what college graduates earn that kind of rate.” As for the prospect that AI can fill those largely physical roles, she told of seeing a poster plastered on an unfinished building. “Finish this, ChatGPT,” it said, mockingly.

That higher pay is an example of how the market will respond to shortages, said Hershbein, at the Upjohn Institute. In some industries, he said, “wages and compensation will adjust, people will find training, businesses will train people and there will be adaptations. Necessity is the mother of invention.”

Job seekers also need more current information about where the demand is greatest, said Cheryl Oldham, former vice president of education and workforce policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and now executive vice president for human capital at the Bipartisan Policy Center.

“We’ve got to develop systems that can be much more nimble and responsive to the needs of the labor market, because the labor market is changing probably faster than it’s ever changed,” said Oldham, who also served in the George W. Bush administration.

Some savvy workers are figuring it out for themselves.

Seth Russell’s high school counselor nudged him toward college. Instead he learned welding and now works full-time as a fabricator.

“I got hired straight out of high school. I have no debt. I’m just making money, paying bills,” said Russell, now 22, who lives in Torrance, California. “There’s so many jobs out there.”

Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556, jmarcus@hechingerreport.org or jpm.82 on Signal.

This story about shortages of workers was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter.

The post As college graduates fret over finding jobs, a record shortage of workers is projected appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

In 2020, a 14-inch tall robot named Moxie was introduced to the world as a way to help children build social and emotional skills through conversations and interactive games guided by artificial intelligence. Kids became enthralled and attached to the oblong teal robot, referring to it as their best friend. 

Four years later, Embodied, the company that created Moxie, shut down. Children were distraught as parents broke the news to them that the $799 toy would soon stop working. Social media videos showed the fallout: One girl sobbed as her tearful father consoled her. A young boy started crying and clutched his robot, moaning, “I don’t want Moxie to die!”

To Dr. Dana Suskind, a professor of surgery and pediatrics at the University of Chicago, this experience was not only completely avoidable, it also reflects the danger of AI in early childhood. While AI friends may seem appealing for young children, Suskind says those tools are too “deferential.” It may be hard for parents to watch children argue with peers or have difficult interactions, but by experiencing that and repairing a relationship afterward, children learn important conflict-resolution skills and how to compromise.

“AI use will not lead to critical thinking. AI use will not lead to the ability to deeply connect with other people. AI use will not lead to creativity and curiosity, because all of those experiences take human presence, messy interaction and productive struggles,” Suskind said in an interview. “AI is the antithesis of that.” 

Moxie is one of many AI tools described in Suskind’s new book, “Human Raised: Nurturing Connection, Curiosity & Lifelong Learning in the Age of AI,” which publishes this month. The book explores decades of research on brain development that shows why human interaction is needed for early brain development and why AI replacements can be harmful.

“In those early years, talk and interaction and human interaction is the instruction guide for the brain,” Suskind said. “Real parent input, or caregiver input, the responsiveness, the back-and-forth, is the key to building a child’s brain.”

Suskind cautions that there could be even bigger repercussions as AI usage expands. A recent study of parents with children up to 8 years old by Common Sense Media found 29 percent of young children have used AI for school, and 24 percent use AI tools to create stories or art. Ten percent of children ages 5 to 8 have talked or texted with a chatbot. Children now have access to AI toys such as dolls and stuffed animals with embedded chatbots, and can watch AI-generated content online. AI apps for parents track infant breathing and analyze crying. Companies are creating human-like robots that promise to take on duties in homes and in schools. 

Given how vulnerable children’s brains are in the early years, Suskind worries about the potential for these and other AI tools to shape brain architecture. 

“We’ve never ever questioned, ‘Are children raised by humans?’” Suskind said. “And now, with the age of AI and technology really seeping into all facets of our lives, the idea of children being human raised, you can’t bank on that.”

Despite her concern over AI in the early years, Suskind says she is not anti-AI. In her book, she also highlights promising uses of artificial intelligence, including robots that listen to children read, which have been found to be less stressful for kids, and AI tools that help ease the cognitive load on parents by producing meal plans or cross-referencing parent and school calendars. But she wants parents, educators and caregivers to be able to discern these uses from those that could replace real human interaction. 

“What AI has shown us in its beautiful, frictionless perfection is that actually our friction and our imperfections are what help build a child’s brain,” Suskind said. ”I can say confidently that a human is who should be building a child’s brain.”

The post Don’t let AI raise your kids appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

The students booing artificial intelligence at commencements across the country are not just worried about jobs. They have learned an urgent lesson from the not-so-distant past.

They know that the familiar promise of empowerment and creativity will continue to give way to the pathologies of the online surveillance economy: viral slop, commercial manipulation and addictive apps — this time on automated steroids. 

The utopian promise of the tech industry is on life support. The hope that it would empower workers and revitalize democracy soured sometime between the massive data breach of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the rapid uptake of the term “surveillance capitalism” to describe the online economy. 

If Silicon Valley once received the enthusiastic reception reserved for “good guy capitalists,” those days are over, and deservedly so.

Related: Interested in innovations in higher education? Subscribe to our free biweekly higher education newsletter.

The backlash is not limited to AI. The luster and hype surrounding the entire tech industry in the 1990s and 2000s, back when Gen Xers and millennials flocked to Silicon Valley, have fizzled, replaced by mass layoffs and a litany of social harms. 

It’s not only that Gen Z has lost faith in Big Tech. In the face of galloping economic inequality and democratic backsliding, many now view tech titans as greed-fueled latter-day barons of capitalism.

Gen Z has learned that what determines the future of technological innovations is not their inherent capabilities but the choices of the private organizations that deploy them. Students worry that AI will enhance the data-driven manipulation of consumers and flood the media environment with synthetic clickbait. 

These young people are already seeing what technology is doing to their lives and education and don’t like the results. At my own institution, students have formed a Luddite Club to resist the siren song of social media, and they’re not alone. 

In our short-attention-span era, it isn’t easy to hark back to the heady days of the early web, when we were assured everyone would benefit from access to the accumulated knowledge of the world and become active participants in well-informed self-governance. The futurist George Gilder predicted in the 1990s, for example, that the personal computer would become “a powerful force for democracy, individuality, community and high culture.” 

Today’s generation was not around for any of that, and now they are up against the reality the tech industry actually delivered — not the fantasy it sold. They are confronting the fact that what matters is not just the technology, but the social relations in which it is embedded.

Instead of cultural uplift and the creation of an informed citizenry, young people see billionaires profiting from pumping the most sensational and polarizing viral content into our news feeds. 

Instead of prosperity, they see the real wages of working Americans in decline and a country in which the richest one percent control more wealth than ever before. They see Amazon founder Jeff Bezos sending his fiancée and a pop star into the stratosphere while Amazon workers pee in bottles and collect food stamps. 

Instead of a vibrant information-enhanced multicultural democracy, they see a country sliding into authoritarianism and corruption at an unprecedented scale while platforms hire teams of psychologists to help addict young people to online brain rot. 

Related: What it’s like to enter the job market in the middle of an AI revolution

In the face of these developments, the tech oligopolists remain in something of a time warp. They look in the mirror and fail to see the caricature of extreme, unaccountable wealth they have become; they strain instead to recapture the image of themselves as hip young founders in hoodies parading through plush Silicon Valley campuses while promoting “don’t-be-evil” happy capitalism. 

The ubiquitous venture capitalist Marc Andreessen encapsulates this midlife crisis. A one-time founder of the web browser Netscape, he recently bemoaned the demise of the “deal” whereby tech moguls were revered by the media, awarded honorary degrees “from all the universities” and invited to “all the great parties.”

If tech billionaires are too cocooned in their fabulous wealth to absorb the lessons of history, this year’s crop of college students is not. They see a bigger picture: a world with powerful AI tools in the hands of a few companies devoted to using our own data to control and manipulate us. 

They see a present in which companies with unprecedented surveillance power are prostrating themselves before an increasingly authoritarian administration bent on targeting its perceived political foes. 

During his commencement address at the University of Arizona, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt responded to the AI skepticism of graduating seniors by urging them to play a role in shaping the future of AI. He was seemingly attempting to revive the promise of an earlier digital age. Schmidt, 71, is old enough to remember when those claims held currency, while today’s students are not. 

They have quickly learned what earlier generations have been slow to admit: When billionaires pledge to empower the world, they usually only mean themselves. 

Mark Andrejevic is a professor of media studies at Pomona College. 

Contact the opinion editor at opinion@hechingerreport.org.

This story about why college students hate AI was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s weekly newsletter.

The post OPINION: The days of ‘good guy’ capitalists are over. College students are right to turn against the tech elites appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

When Jodi Carreon’s son returned to school full time after the pandemic, she expected teachers would roll back the use of the laptops they had relied on while students were home. But soon after her son started second grade, Carreon realized he was still using a Chromebook throughout the day.

Then the teacher sent a note home: Her son was playing Minecraft and watching YouTube instead of doing his work. Could Carreon urge him to focus?

“In my mind, I was like, ‘What do you expect? He’s 7 years old. Of course he’s going to want to play games,’” said Carreon, whose experience prompted her to later create the California-based advocacy group San Marcos Unified School District Parents for Intentional Tech.

“Adults have a hard time and struggle to pay attention on devices. It’s unrealistic to expect a child to do so,” she said. 

For years, districts have promoted one-to-one devices as a way to boost learning, provide tailored lessons for differing academic needs and offer enrichment.

But parents and teachers say even the youngest students are finding ways past any blocks adults try to put on school devices to play games, watch videos and message friends on school-issued devices.

Interviews with more than 45 parents, educators and experts across the country, as well as recent surveys with parents and educators, describe the many ways elementary students are using devices in class: watching YouTube videos of soccer matches or playing games featuring Jeffrey Epstein or a “corpse-like grandmother” who chases players with a bloody baseball bat. Third graders have used Google Docs to compile inappropriate memes and images and message each other throughout the school day, and a second grader searched for a sexually explicit term and was shown a Wikipedia page — with pictures.

All of this occurred in districts that had filters, safeguards and systems in place meant to block such content. 

Related: Young children have unique needs and providing the right care can be a challenge. Our free early childhood education newsletter tracks the issues.

Bryn Prusky, a second grader in Pennsylvania’s Lower Merion Township, said her friends “just drift off into a video game and start doing something else that they’re not supposed to be doing” instead of classwork. It isn’t hard to find the games — they’re usually “just there,” she said, already downloaded on the computers.

Some parents and teachers are now asking if the benefits of classroom tech are worth the costs in distraction and energy spent policing its use. 

“The problem is in the way the machine works. As soon as you give me unfettered access to programs and the internet, … I’m going to go right down that path, and learning goes away,” said Jared Cooney Horvath, a neuroscientist and author of “The Digital Delusion,” which argues that educational technology harms learning. “It doesn’t matter the size of the screen or the fact that the school bought it and stamped ‘educational’ on it.”

In the New York City borough of Brooklyn, fourth grade teacher Martina Meijer only gives her students Chromebook time during small group reading rotations. But within minutes of sitting down with a computer, some of her students are navigating to video sites. Some wear headphones to listen to audiobooks, which also blocks Meijer from knowing exactly what they’re doing when she’s working with another group.  

“I always try to monitor what they’re looking at,” Meijer said, “but my eyes can’t be everywhere.” 

Kids have been off task and distracted in school long before Chromebooks or iPads existed. But some parents and experts say devices only make it easier to engage in non-academic, inappropriate and even dangerous content. 

This is especially challenging for young children whose brains, self-regulation skills and self-control are still developing. 

“Let’s say you hand a child a pen and you’re like, ‘This pen can write, it can turn into a magic wand, it can turn into a knife, it can fly, it can change colors. But only use it as a pen, OK?” said Deanie Eichenstein, a California-based clinical psychologist who is one of the leaders of the advocacy group Schools Beyond Screens. “It’s silly.”

John Bellis, the parent of a preschooler and a third grader in Lower Merion Township, said his son got in trouble earlier this year after he successfully guessed a classmate’s password, logged into one of the student’s online accounts and changed the profile picture to a poop emoji. 

“It’s not like they’re doing crime, but they’re goofing around and they’re not learning,” Bellis said. 

Many teachers say devices have added challenges to their classrooms. Fifty-six percent of more than 1,200 educators surveyed by Education Week last year reported that off-task behavior on computers is a “major source of distraction that cuts into students’ learning time.” Teachers said computers and tablets are more distracting than cellphones, which more than 20 states have banned in schools. And 70 percent of 350 educators surveyed by The New York Times last year said school-issued devices distract from learning and engagement in class. 

One North Carolina district found in an audit of student screen use, screen time spent on distraction added up to 31 lost instructional days each year, according to The Wall Street Journal. 

Teaching in an era of devices has been frustrating, said Meijer. “It’s reducing the children’s stamina, the children’s attention span and creating this dopamine hit need.”

Related: IPads in kindergarten, YouTube videos at snack time: Parents are pushing back on screens in the early grades   

In classrooms across the country, it’s largely up to teachers to monitor devices. Many say it’s become all-consuming.

“The onus is always put on the shoulders of the teachers,” said Molly Esquivel, who teaches sixth grade in California. “You need to monitor the kids, you better be watching them, you better be surveilling them,” she added. “You introduced this problem, and the problem is now the teachers’ problem.” 

Teachers don’t always have a choice, however: Some are required to prepare their students to take state tests on computers, and other districts are locked into contracts with ed tech vendors that mandate a certain level of use.

Districts vary in the degree they lock down student computers. Some districts, for example, have fully blocked access to sites like YouTube, while others allow it. 

Some districts have adopted monitoring programs that allow teachers to see student screens and get notified when a student is off task. Parents say even when it’s available, however, not all teachers use it. In Westchester County, New York, parent Lucy Collins said her oldest child, who is 11, knows which of his teachers use monitoring software and which don’t. Her son regularly tells her how tempted he is to e-mail friends, play games and watch YouTube while at school.

“Even if my kid was more focused, if you look up and see someone else on a laptop on something fun or distracting, that’s a distraction to him as well,” Collins said. 

Even the creators of blocking programs are constantly needing to evolve in response to determined children. Brian Larkin, the director of product management for the blocking program GoGuardian, said students are using proxy servers to bypass filters and blocks, and are hiding games inside of school-appropriate websites. 

“That’s how bad it’s gotten,” Larkin said. The company recently started using artificial intelligence to proactively block those workarounds for districts and give educators more ways to limit content.

Related: PROOF POINTS: 10,000-student study points to kindergartners who may become heavy screen users

In recent months, motivated by concerns over device use, wasted time and these effects of screen time, some districts have moved away almost entirely from technology, especially in the earliest grades. Los Angeles Unified was the largest to do so in April, but others have taken similar steps to completely remove or cut back on devices in class, including districts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma. 

Sixteen states have introduced legislation focused on evaluating ed tech products and setting limits for students’ screen time, including Alabama, which created screen time rules for early childhood classrooms, and Missouri, which sought to require districts to set limits for screen time in elementary school. And in May, the U.S. surgeon general issued a warning about screen time and encouraged schools to limit screen use to “enable distraction-free teaching.”

But such moves are not universal. 

In Lower Merion Township — despite widespread parent advocacy and a petition signed by more than 600 parents in a district of 8,600 students — school leaders recently rescinded a policy that allows parents to opt out of the system’s one-to-one device program. “Our curriculum is delivered the way it’s delivered, and part of that curriculum is done with electronic devices,” said Frank Ranelli, the district superintendent, at an April school board policy meeting.

(Ranelli later told parents the district would review the one-to-one policy in elementary school, strengthen web filters and provide teachers with “real-time control and oversight of student technology use.” One proposal under consideration would remove devices in grades K-2)

The district already has a shaky history with technology: More than 10 years ago, the school board was sued for spying on students at home through cameras on district-issued laptops. 

A spokesperson declined to answer questions about the district’s approach to technology or its decision to revisit its opt-out policy.

To be sure, teachers say there are some benefits of devices in class. Assigning work on laptops and tablets is a way to guarantee kids will be quiet and kept busy while they attend to the needs of other students, especially when classes are large. 

Erica Boyce, an elementary special education teacher in New York, said her students were especially excited to use a reading app provided by her district.

“They really wanted to read, they were enjoying reading,” Boyce said. She said having students take assessments on devices saves her time on grading, allows her to see what she needs to reteach and helps her group students for mini lessons and extra help. 

Related: Biting, kicking, wandering the classroom: Teachers say there’s a rise in misbehavior among even the littlest kids

Michelle Rogers, an elementary reading intervention teacher in California who has taught kindergarten, first and fifth grades, has found devices are helpful with tracking data and giving children work at their level. But she thinks schools need a healthier balance and should bring back computer labs so device use is more intentional. “I have seen when it is not in a structured environment, it’s abused,” said Rogers. 

What could help, Rogers added, is more education for teachers. “We need better training, better guidelines and better knowledge of how to use all the apps in a way that’s going to be beneficial,” she said. 

Some proponents of devices in schools caution that states and districts shouldn’t move too fast and establish blanket policy changes that completely remove devices from schools. 

“I just want to sort of help us all take a deep breath and not throw the baby out with the bathwater,” said Tracy Weeks, who leads education policy and strategy at the education technology company Instructure. “We want all children to be safe,” she added. “We want to put them in the best situation to learn,” but that doesn’t necessarily mean “arbitrary” time limits or bans on screens, she said. Instead, districts should prioritize ed tech that supports learning and show how they are keeping children safe, she added.

In California, Kelly May-Vollmar, superintendent of Desert Sands Unified School District and the board chair-elect for the Consortium for School Networking, a group for school ed tech leaders, said that more “structured, intentional” usage of tech in school can help cut down on distractions. “Inside the classroom, if there’s a problem, it’s not a screen problem, it’s a design problem,” she said.

If districts are going to keep devices, many parents want changes — less time on screens, increased protections, clear policies about screen time and a better sense of how their children are using the tools. 

Amy Swers, a Maryland parent of three, only found out her son was spending time gaming at his Montgomery County school when she reached out to his teachers for feedback near the end of sixth grade. (The district did not respond to multiple requests for comment).

When Swers asked if she could be notified when her son was distracted in class, the teacher responded that “contacting parents about gaming would mean we’d be sending emails all day every day.”

Swers was floored. “Our school district, they’ve thrown their hands up and it’s like a hydra, it’s a three-headed monster that they don’t have any control over.” 

Contact staff writer Jackie Mader at 212-678-3562 or mader@hechingerreport.org. 

This story about screen time was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post Schools try to block kids from accessing dangerous content and games online. Little kids are outsmarting them appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

When ChatGPT arrived in late 2022, educators quickly asked whether students would use artificial intelligence to cheat, learn or simply get through homework more efficiently. Evidence is beginning to point toward a troubling answer: Many students appear to be completing assignments faster while learning less from them.

This conclusion comes from one of the largest studies of how generative AI is changing student behavior and academic skills. Sina Rismanchian, a doctoral student at the University of California, Irvine, partnered with researchers at McGraw Hill to analyze millions of student interactions with ALEKS, an online math platform used by more than four million students a year, from fifth grade through college. Because ALEKS includes both low-stakes practice problems and college placement tests, the researchers were able to compare how students behaved and performed before and after ChatGPT’s arrival.

To isolate AI’s effects, the researchers compared two kinds of math problems that differ in how easily students can outsource them to AI: word problems and graphing problems.

Word problems can be copied and pasted directly into AI chatbots for instant answers. Graphing problems are far more cumbersome. A student would need to upload a screenshot and still recreate the graph inside ALEKS using its tools.

After ChatGPT’s launch, student behavior and performance on the two types of problems began to diverge. 

Beginning in early 2023, students started spending less time on word problems while continuing to spend about the same amount of time on graphing problems. The gap widened every quarter. By the end of the study period, near the end of 2025, average time spent on word problems had fallen 31 percent among high school students and 27 percent among college students — from about four minutes per word problem to less than three. (Middle school students showed only a modest decline of 9 percent, and fifth graders showed essentially none.)

The researchers believe those averages are being pulled downward by some students who spend only seconds on word problems because they’re using AI to answer them.

The same pattern appeared in college placement tests. When the exams were taken without supervision, students spent much less time on word problems after ChatGPT’s release. During proctored exams, the time spent on word problems returned to historical norms.

But time is only half the story. The more troubling finding is what happened to learning.

Many colleges allow incoming students to retake placement tests after practicing more math in ALEKS, giving them a chance to qualify for a higher-level course. Before ChatGPT, that practice generally paid off. After ChatGPT, students answered more word problems correctly during unsupervised practice sessions but performed substantially worse on those same kinds of problems when they later took a proctored placement test.

Historically, students answered about 80 percent of these word problems correctly on supervised placement tests. After ChatGPT’s introduction, that fell to about 60 percent — a roughly 25 percent reduction in the odds of answering a word problem correctly. 

Performance on graphing problems, by contrast, did not decline.

After ChatGPT’s release, students performed worse on word problems (AI-susceptible) during proctored exams, but answer more word problems correctly in nonproctored settings

If students’ math skills had generally deteriorated because of pandemic learning loss, weaker high school preparation or digital distraction, graphing performance should have deteriorated too. It didn’t.

The study cannot definitively prove that students were using AI. The researchers couldn’t see what else was happening on students’ screens outside of ALEKS. But it’s difficult to think of another explanation. The changes appeared only in problems that are easy to outsource to AI, disappeared under supervision and grew steadily over nearly three years.

“What makes me nervous is that it’s not only about the word problems,” Rismanchian told me. “This cognitive surrender might be going on in writing, science, everything.”

The paper, “Faster Completion, Less Learning,” was released in June 2026 as a working paper and has not yet been peer reviewed. Like any single study, it doesn’t settle the questions of how much students are using AI in their schoolwork, whether it’s harming learning and by how much. But it joins a growing body of evidence that generative AI is causing students to skip the brain work that leads to learning, and that this “cognitive surrender” is becoming commonplace.

A randomized experiment in Turkey found that high school students who used AI to help them study math ultimately learned less than students who practiced without it. Anthropic, the maker of Claude, has separately reported that many college students appear to use AI to obtain answers and offload cognitive work. Rismanchian’s earlier research, released in March 2026, documented troubling patterns of AI usage in short response essays among undergraduate students at a large California research university.

That doesn’t mean AI always undermines learning. Carefully designed AI tutors have improved student achievement in controlled experiments by asking questions, personalizing instruction and withholding answers until students reason their way through a problem. But using AI this way should increase the time students spend on a problem, Rismanchian said. The ALEKS data show the opposite.

Rismanchian doesn’t believe the answer is simply banning AI. Instead, he argues, students need to value learning enough to resist the temptation to outsource it.

A recent RAND survey suggests many already recognize the threat to their brains. Students report worrying that AI is weakening their critical-thinking skills while more of them admit using it for schoolwork.

Students are not entirely to blame. Even as many professors have warned students not to use AI to complete classwork, universities themselves have embraced the technology, often giving students free access to premium chatbots. 

“I think we need to communicate to students that you should value your learning,” Rismanchian said. “If ChatGPT does it for you, then you haven’t learned it.”

Rismanchian understands the temptation.

An international student, Rismanchian began using ChatGPT to help polish the English in his papers. The ideas were still his own. But after several months, he said, he noticed something unsettling.

“I realized that I cannot write anymore,” he said. “I was losing my writing abilities.”

So he stopped using AI to write.

He still uses it to code.

Contact staff writer Jill Barshay at 212-678-3595, jillbarshay.35 on Signal, or barshay@hechingerreport.org.

This story about AI use eroding math skills was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers education. Sign up for Proof Points and other Hechinger newsletters.

The post Faster solutions, lower test scores: How AI is eroding math skills appeared first on The Hechinger Report.