The people's voice of reason
The people's voice of reason
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At 250, the Declaration of Independence still sparks hard questions in class Among longtime history teacher Karalee Wong Nakatsuka’s most prized possessions are two nearly identical T-shirts with very different meanings. One comes from Philadelphia’s Museum of the American Revolution, celebrating the Founding Fathers’ signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and their fight for freedom from the British Crown. The second is from Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C., where an assassi...
How to maximize internship season and start your financial future For young adults entering the workforce, there is good news and bad news right now. Let’s start with the bad: The job market is looking a little bleak, at 7.8% unemployment for those ages 22-27, according to the latest data from the New York Fed. Those are the worst numbers since the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent college grads are doing a little better, but not much, with their unemployment rate at 5.6%. M...
What parents should understand about AI chatbots in social media apps Most kids on social media have likely interacted with an artificial intelligence (AI) chat buddy. Some well-known examples: Meta has a new AI assistant that explains how to change a tire or lose weight. Snapchat’s My AI buddy will explain a science topic in a simple way. Even X has an AI chatbot named Grok (available with a subscription upgrade). For most families, the first interactions with these AI chatbots on social m...
What the US can teach other countries about home-based child care Each day, nearly 70% of the world’s children are cared for and educated by adults other than their parents in home-based settings, many of which are informal and run by women. (In the United States, it’s about 30%.) In many countries, these home-based settings receive little financial or training support from their governments. The National Association for Family Child Care’s (NAFCC) global learning convening this past summe...
Southern Preparatory Academy has several summer programs available for students....
Raising resilient kids in a hyper-connected world Parenting has never been easy, but the job now follows families into places previous generations never had to manage. A child can be sitting at the kitchen table, completely safe at home, and still be absorbing the unrelenting pressure of group chats, online conflict, and social comparison that does not pause when the day ends, BetterHelp reports. Key takeaways - Modern parenting has become harder because children’s stress now follows them h...
More than a quarter of private colleges are at risk of closing, new projection shows More than a dozen newborn lambs cavorted around a fenced-in yard beneath the scrutiny of their mothers and a few watchful students taking turns attending to them. The lambs’ successful births have been a needed bright spot at tiny Sterling College, which uses a 130-acre farm to teach agriculture and other disciplines in a part of northeastern Vermont so isolated it’s rare to see a passing car, and there’s no ce...
School funding is relatively equal, but childhood still isn’t Children from low-income families have roughly $80,000 less invested in their development, well-being, and education relative to their peers from high-income households, according to a new study, the findings of which Chalkbeat examines here The research is significant because it puts a figure on what has long been known: Children do not have the same access to the resources that might help them flourish. While formal schooling is f...
How families are paying for college when savings fall short College affordability can be a tough nut to crack, especially if you don’t have enough in savings to pay it. College Ave, a private student loan company, conducted a June 2025 survey of college parents and found less than half (44%) felt ready to pay for college when their child graduated high school. Most parents (80%) reported they could not pay for the full cost of college with savings alone. And it’s not surprising. In its Tre...
What school districts actually spend to replace a single school bus, and why the number keeps climbing If you ask your local school district board member how they buy buses, they'll probably reply, "on a plan." That plan is a budget that’s approved months before anyone submits a state bid or signs a purchase order. The problem is that the gap between what districts budget and what they actually pay has been widening for years. And in 2026, BusesforSale.com reports, three separate forces p...
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (MAY 6, 2026) – The University of Alabama System Board of Trustees unanimously appointed Donald J. Leo, PhD, as the 11th president of The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH). He will assume the role on June 1. An accomplished administrator with more than 30 years of experience in higher education, Leo's leadership journey is largely defined by his 11‑year tenure at the University of Georgia, where he served as the first permanent dean of the College of Engineering. Rec...
Teachers say there’s a rise in misbehavior even among the littlest kids School had been in session at Lead Elementary for less than an hour, but already Andrea Quinn had paused teaching her first graders nearly 20 times, she told The Hechinger Report. First, there was the child who had zipped his entire face inside the hood of his green sweatshirt. “Is that a good choice?” Quinn asked. “Yeah?” responded a muffled voice. Then, there was the girl in pink leggings who stood up from her seat, wan...
Why kids who love dinosaurs may be smarter than we think A child who falls completely in love with dinosaurs has a way of turning everyone around them into an accidental expert. Researchers who study early childhood development have been paying close attention to children who develop that kind of devoted interest in one subject. And what they are learning is helping explain why these early passions can offer important clues about how children begin building knowledge and confidence as they...
Khan Academy’s founder says AI tutoring revolution hasn't come for education, yet Three years ago, as Khan Academy founder Sal Khan rolled out an AI-powered tutoring chatbot, he predicted a revolution in learning. So far, the revolution hasn’t happened, he acknowledged. “For a lot of students, it was a non-event,” Khan told Chalkbeat about his eponymous chatbot, Khanmigo. “They just didn’t use it much.” Khan gives this analogy: Imagine he walked into a class, sat in the back of the room, and...
This elementary school banned screens in the middle of the year. Will it solve their reading crisis? Chromebooks are scattered all around the classrooms of Floyd M. Jewett Elementary School in Mesick, Michigan. Towers of them are teetering atop bookshelves. They’re piled up in corners of classrooms. They’ve even cropped up in one classroom’s dish rack. But there’s one place you won’t find them: in students’ hands. Last month, Mesick Consolidated Schools banned digital devices in its elementary...
Kids who were babies during COVID-19 are now struggling with reading and math Although most of them were still in diapers when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, today’s early elementary students didn’t make it through the global catastrophe unscathed. A new analysis from NWEA, an assessment company, suggests that these children are experiencing learning disruptions even now. While kindergarten achievement levels in math and reading largely held steady during and since the pandemic, by first and sec...
Are microschools a solution to falling public school enrollment? Seventh grader Taitym Lynch plans most of her school day herself, mapping out a schedule each morning on her school laptop. She typically starts with math when her brain is sharpest, logging into an online platform her school uses for math lessons. Next she often tackles science with her “class guide,” a teaching assistant who walks her through topics like animal food chains. Lynch chooses to have lunch around noon, and finds tim...
When panic hits: New data maps the moment students start studying Students in the U.S. and U.K. both procrastinate before high-stakes exams, but they do it on very different schedules, according to a new analysis by Quizlet of Google Trends data from 2022 through 2025. The study, which tracked eight common student prep search terms across both countries, found that U.K. students wait until just over a week before their General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) exams to begin searching...
14% of parents say nature is essential for kids. So why are families stuck inside? American parents aren't confused about what their kids need. They're just not doing it. A new national survey from Westgate Resorts found that 95% of U.S. parents believe nature and outdoor experiences are a nonnegotiable part of childhood development. But that's not the surprising number. What's surprising is how little it translates into action. Only about a third of those same families actually get outside...
Rural high school students are more likely than city kids to get their diplomas, but they remain less likely to go to college Many high school seniors are currently in the midst of the college application process or are already waiting to hear back from their selected schools. For high school students in rural parts of the United States, the frantic pace of the college application process can look a bit different. For starters, some of these rural students might not have large numbers of elite...
What is wisdom, and can it be taught? Emily Swanson was under pressure — not the end-of-the-world variety, but definitely stressful: prepping for her PhD qualifying exams. She fully expected the process to be grueling. But then, like a character from a heroic tale, she had an encounter that changed her path. Swanson took a job as a teaching assistant with Monika Ardelt, a leader in the scientific study of wisdom. Ardelt, a University of Florida sociologist, teaches an undergraduate course c...
Parents trust report cards more than test scores, with consequences for kids Most parents want to help their children succeed. We check report cards, ask about homework and try to help our kids study. When that fails, we sometimes hire tutors. But in an era of rising grades, it’s easy to be misled. A new study reviewed by The Hechinger Report found that parents often assume everything is fine when their child’s report card shows mostly A’s, even when standardized test scores slide. That assum...
Trussville, Ala. - May 4, 2026 - Trussville City Schools has chosen Transfinder's Tripfinder platform to manage transportation for field trips and extracurricular activities, expanding the district's use of Transfinder's suite of school transportation technologies. The district, located in the northeastern Birmingham metro area and serving roughly 5,000 students across five schools, already utilizes Routefinder PLUS for routing, Stopfinder for parent communication, and Viewfinder for systemwide...
HUNTSVILLE, Ala. (APR. 9, 2026) – The Alabama Office of the State Climatologist (AOSC), housed at The University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH), a part of The University of Alabama System, is inviting Alabamians to participate in the annual "Rain Gauge Rally" by joining CoCoRaHS, the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network. CoCoRaHS is a citizen science program made up of volunteer observers who measure and report rainfall across the nation. Each year, CoCoRaHS hosts the Rain G...
Microschools are seeing an enrollment surge this year Kara Fox did not want to wait. A mom of two, she was frustrated by the fall semester at her children’s traditional private school near Omaha, Nebraska — particularly for her 12-year-old son, Gavin. “He just felt so hopeless already in the second quarter, before the end of the first semester,” said Fox, explaining that the rigidity of a conventional classroom and curriculum weren’t working well for her son, who has ADHD and is on the autis...
