EdSurge

The education job market keeps shifting, and so do the kinds of roles available across the field. The EdSurge Jobs Board brings together openings from schools, edtech companies, higher education institutions, nonprofits, and other education-focused organizations. If you’re watching the market, considering a move, or ready to make one, take a look at what’s open. 🔎 Browse current roles: https://lnkd.in/ejVd7Tin

AI is increasingly appearing inside tools students already use, which means districts may encounter it even without adopting a dedicated AI product. On This Week with EdSurge, Yvette Renteria examines what that shift could mean for research and critical thinking when students are presented with generated summaries before they have evaluated the underlying information themselves. Her perspective also raises a practical question for schools: How should educators respond when the available technology is advancing faster than evidence of its value for learning? 🎧 Listen to the full episode at the link or find This Week with EdSurge on your preferred podcast platform. 🔗: https://lnkd.in/eK7fv9qX

A proposed rule would require Head Start programs to conduct all education in English, changing current standards that support bilingualism and continued development of children’s home languages. In an EdSurge opinion essay, preschool educator Caitlin Malloy reflects on what English-only programs can mean inside a classroom. Malloy once taught at an international school in Italy where she was expected to speak only English with her preschool students. Over time, she became increasingly uncomfortable with a philosophy that asked children to leave their home language outside the classroom. Her experience led her to another conclusion: multilingual children have a great deal to teach educators about communication. When their languages are excluded, teachers can lose opportunities for connection and learning, too. Read Caitlin Malloy’s full opinion essay on EdSurge. 🔗: https://lnkd.in/e3adxJhK

As districts try to stretch limited dollars, David Blazar, an associate professor of education policy at the University of Maryland, says the bigger concern may be what happens to tutoring quality. Blazar recently co-authored a study of tutoring programs across Maryland’s 24 school districts. The analysis found that 18 districts offered tutoring with several features associated with stronger implementation, including small-group instruction, frequent sessions, and delivery during school hours. He expects districts looking for savings to consider increasing group sizes, reducing session frequency, or turning to lower-cost providers instead of eliminating tutoring altogether. Blazar says those quieter changes could erode the design features that make tutoring work. For districts trying to stretch limited dollars, the challenge is figuring out where to trim costs without weakening those core features. 🔗: https://lnkd.in/girs3jf7

As districts try to stretch limited dollars, David Blazar, an associate professor of education policy at the University of Maryland, says the bigger concern may be what happens to tutoring quality. Blazar recently co-authored a study of tutoring programs across Maryland’s 24 school districts. The analysis found that 18 districts offered tutoring with several features associated with stronger implementation, including small-group instruction, frequent sessions, and delivery during school hours. He expects districts looking for savings to consider increasing group sizes, reducing session frequency, or turning to lower-cost providers instead of eliminating tutoring altogether. Blazar says those quieter changes could erode the design features that make tutoring work. For districts trying to stretch limited dollars, the challenge is figuring out where to trim costs without weakening those core features. 🔗: https://lnkd.in/girs3jf7

AI policy can determine which tools students access at school. It cannot fully determine how young people encounter AI outside the classroom. On This Week with EdSurge, Yvette Renteria of Common Sense Media considers what that means for district leaders weighing pauses or restrictions, and why preparing students to navigate these tools responsibly remains part of the work. 🎧 Listen to the full episode at the link or find This Week with EdSurge on your preferred podcast platform. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eK7fv9qX

For Jaime Casap, the debate over New Mexico’s literacy screener ultimately comes back to who bears the consequences. He argues that families opting out of the tool may have very different resources available to them. Some children have access to books, tutors, and parents who know how to navigate the system. Others may depend more heavily on schools to identify reading struggles early. Casap calls for governance rather than avoidance: write procurement rules, tell parents plainly what gets recorded and how long it is kept, require evidence of accuracy, and remove products that cannot provide it. He points to Albuquerque as one example. The district kept the screener, communicated with parents about why voice recordings were used, and shortened the period those recordings are stored. His closing argument is straightforward: New Mexico’s central problem is that too many children are not reading proficiently, and decisions about AI should be judged against that reality.

Nathan Kraai, M.Ed. grew up playing on a 12-foot metal slide that his father occasionally sprayed with glass cleaner to make it slicker. His playground also had an old merry-go-round, where children would run alongside it, jump aboard, and try to hang on. Playgrounds like his eventually changed as injury data prompted new safety guidelines. Yet researchers began asking whether efforts to eliminate hazards had sometimes removed opportunities for children to learn how to manage risk. That distinction has stayed with Kraai, now a school director of innovation helping determine when and how to introduce AI to students in fourth through ninth grades. His school has developed guidelines, experimented with AI in controlled environments, and worked with teachers to understand when the technology supports learning. Even with that experience, Kraai finds the questions increasingly difficult. In his Voices of Change essay, he considers what playground safety can teach educators about balancing protection with the developmental need to learn how to make judgments. 🔗: https://lnkd.in/eSkGQqes

What could schools lose by treating every AI tool as the same? On This Week with EdSurge, Jaime Casap, former chief education evangelist at Google, argues that districts should evaluate specific tools based on evidence and the role they can play in supporting learning. His perspective also brings equity into the conversation. For students without access to private tutoring or other forms of additional support, the question of whether an AI tool is useful can carry different stakes. Listen to the full episode at the link or find This Week with EdSurge on your preferred podcast platform. 🔗: https://lnkd.in/eK7fv9qX

Court Shuller expected teachers to watch their TikTok videos. They did not expect the comment sections to become their own micro-professional learning communities. Under one video about a morphology matrix, one educator shared a version of the strategy called “Meet the Relatives.” Another asked about the distinction between base words and root words. That exchange captures what Shuller values about online professional learning: ideas moving from one classroom to another, then returning with questions, adaptations, and new knowledge. For an educator who has sometimes felt alone while navigating major changes in literacy instruction, those conversations have reinforced the value of teachers learning from one another.