By Joseph Bernstein, The New York Times (from September 22, 2024)
Alton Russell is a white, 85-year-old toilet paper salesman from Columbus, Ga., where for years he was the chair of the local Republican Party. Wane Hailes is a Black, 68-year-old newspaper owner from Columbus, where he formerly served as the president of the city’s chapter of the N.A.A.C.P.
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Ask a host of experts how to be smarter, and they'll give you the same counterintuitive answer: acknowledge all the ways you're probably being dumb.  Warren Buffett's right-hand man Charlie Munger recommends "trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent." Jeff Bezos famously looks for people who are willing to admit mistakes and learn from them in job interviews.
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by Hamza Mudassir, Kamal Munir, Shaz Ansari and Amal Zahra, Harvard Business Review (from September 26, 2024)
Generative AI has demonstrated the potential to significantly outperform human CEOs in strategic decision-making by excelling in data-driven tasks like product design and market optimization. In an experiment simulating the automotive industry, AI models outpaced human participants in market share and profitability but faltered in handling unpredictable disruptions, leading to faster dismissals by virtual boards. While AI’s ability to analyze complex data sets and iterate rapidly could revolutionize corporate strategy, it lacks the intuition and foresight required to navigate black swan events. Rather than fully replacing human CEOs, AI is poised to augment leadership by enhancing data analysis and operational efficiency, leaving humans to focus on long-term vision, ethics, and adaptability in dynamic markets. The future of leadership will likely be a hybrid model where AI complements human decision-making.
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By Lauren Camera, The 74 (from September 20, 2024)
The country’s youngest elementary school students suffered steep academic setbacks in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic – just like students in older grades. But new research shows that they aren’t catching back up to pre-pandemic levels in reading and math the way others are. And when it comes to math, many are falling even further behind.
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By Miriam Plotinsky, ASCD (from September 24, 2024)
“That just about covers it,” Ms. Davis says to her 5th grade class, winding up a long 30 minutes of direct instruction. “Any questions?”  The silence that ensues comes as no surprise. For the past couple of years, Ms. Davis has noticed that kids have gotten so much quieter. Initially, she attributed this to pandemic-related disruptions in learning, but now she wonders if increased student passivity has become the new norm.
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By Sian Leah Beilock, The Atlantic (from September 14, 2024)
As students return to college campuses across the country and reunite with friends and classmates, I am struck by the number of my own Ivy League classmates who will not return this fall. Three of my newly minted presidential peers, to be exact: University of Pennsylvania’s Liz Magill, Claudine Gay of Harvard, and Columbia’s Minouche Shafik. These losses have caused me, as president of Dartmouth, to reflect on the very purpose of a university as a home for intellectual inquiry and debate, and on what leaders can do to preserve that purpose.
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By Dana Goldstein, The New York Times (from September 19, 2024)
As printed textbooks increasingly gather dust in classroom bookshelves, a new and expansive survey published on Thursday finds that social studies teachers are turning to digital sources and primary documents from the nation’s past.
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By Daniel Mollenkamp, EdSurge (from September 24, 2024)
A school district in Brighton, in the Denver metro area of Colorado, was having a hard time keeping teachers. The salaries in the district, 27J Schools, were low for the region. And in Colorado, voters have to approve higher property taxes to send additional dollars to schools, including for salary bumps, but by 2018 voters had refused six straight times.
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By Josh Moody, Inside Higher Ed (from September 16, 2024)
The college presidency, much like higher education itself, is undergoing a period of upheaval.  Instability and uncertainty wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation, slumping enrollment, state and federal politics, international conflict, and a wave of protests over the Israel-Hamas war have challenged—and ended—a number of high-profile presidencies in recent years.
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By Pamela Paul, The New York Times (from September 26, 2024)
Last week Jonathan Holloway, the president of Rutgers University, announced he would be stepping down at the end of this academic year — the latest in a series of university president departures.
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By Lesley Muldoon, The Hechinger Report (from September 10, 2024)
The pandemic disrupted education in previously unimaginable ways. It limited testing and pushed schools toward remote learning and easier assignments, along with softer grading and a more relaxed attitude around attendance.
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By Christa Dutton, The Chronicle of Higher Education (from September 3, 2024)
The kinds of questions freshmen have to answer at orientation are typically mundane and uncontroversial: “Where are you from?” or “What do you think you’d like to major in?” or “Have you found the dining hall yet?”
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By Challenge Success (from July 29, 2024)
In recent years, the trend of inadequate sleep among students has become alarmingly prevalent, impacting nearly all areas of their lives. With competing priorities such as academic performance, extracurricular activities, and preparing for life after graduation: does prioritizing sleep matter?
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By Teddy Rosenbluth, The New York Times (from September 12, 2024)
Shortly after generative artificial intelligence hit the mainstream, researchers warned that chatbots would create a dire problem: As disinformation became easier to create, conspiracy theories would spread rampantly.
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By David Brooks, The New York Times (from September 5, 2024)
Back in February, the music historian Ted Gioia wrote an essay on the state of American culture. He argued that many creative people want to create art (work that puts demands on people), but all the commercial pressures push them to create entertainment (which gives audiences what they want). As a result, for the past many years, entertainment (superhero movies) has been swallowing up art (literary novels and serious dramas).
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By Megan Zahneis, The Chronicle of Higher Education (from September 9, 2024)

Diversity statements have endured a rough few months.  The statements, which generally ask people applying for faculty jobs or seeking promotion or tenure to describe how they can contribute to a college’s diversity, equity, and inclusion goals, have seen nine states pass bans on their use in the past two years. And when the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences each announced earlier this year that they would no longer require job candidates to write diversity statements, commentators across higher education began to ask: Is the diversity statement dead?
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By Miriam Reynoldson, The Mind File (from September 7, 2024)
The other week I was having lunch with an excellent fellow learning designer. We were talking about sometimes-difficult relationships with academics and other educators, and how so much of our work is about handling disagreements and conflicting beliefs about how to approach teaching.
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By Max Hughes, Teacher Magazine (from August 16, 2024)
Climate change education provides students with the knowledge required to understand and practice limate action.  Several UNESCO studies offer international insights into what students know, how confident teachers are on the topic, teacher training plans and current curriculum content.
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By Tim Viands, Indy School Consultancy (from July 30, 2024)
Being the head of a school is a role that comes with a myriad of responsibilities, challenges, and privileges. It is a position that not only demands strong leadership and administrative skills but also offers countless moments of joy and fulfillment. Here are some of the top joys that I have experienced in my tenure as a head of school.
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By Sarah Leon & Jenna B. Rubin, Fisher Philips (from August 16, 2024)
We’re starting to see courts define the boundaries of permissible DEI programs in the aftermath of last year’s SCOTUS decision limiting “race conscious” programs such as affirmative action in college admissions. For example, a recent federal appeals court decision cast a wider net over which types of programs may run afoul of the law. Specifically, the court blocked a business from providing certain grants solely to Black women business owners, finding that the program likely violated a federal law against race discrimination. While the decision involved a venture capital firm, it highlights the scrutiny placed on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs and may cause concern for schools that provide affirmative action opportunities. Furthermore, it serves as a reminder to review your scholarships and other inclusion programs to ensure they comply with federal equal rights law. Here’s are the three key takeaways for schools as you adapt your DEI programs.
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By Zach Hrynowski, Gallup (from July 30, 2024)
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- One of the challenges that defines adolescents’ journeys to young adulthood is learning to cope with their emotions. For the parents and caretakers who walk alongside preteens and teenagers on that journey, knowing when and how to support them when their emotions run high can prove challenging. New research from the Walton Family Foundation and Gallup, in partnership with psychologist Dr. Lisa Damour, reveals that most young people experience happiness on a daily basis, but many also feel stress, anxiety and sadness. Generation Z youth report having a deep arsenal of coping techniques when they are upset, but when it comes to what they want from their parents in those situations, listening is more important than giving advice and reassurance.
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By Challenge Success (from July 29, 2024)
In recent years, the trend of inadequate sleep among students has become alarmingly prevalent, impacting nearly all areas of their lives.  With competing priorities such as academic performance, extracurricular activities, and preparing for life after graduation: does prioritizing sleep matter?
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By Leah Newsom, Higher Ed Dive (from August 5, 2024)
A few years ago, Ayanna Thompson was teaching a large lecture class on a survey of early British literature. The class was surprisingly animated, willing to talk about the most challenging topics. Even though the majority of them were not English literature majors, or even humanities majors, they were willing to dive into complex conversations about topics like representations of misogyny, non-consensual sex and patriarchal violence. But it was when the class read Othello that the exuberance of discussion faded.
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By Andrew Kwok & Brendan Bartanen, EdSurge (from August 5, 2024)
What if why you choose to become a teacher determines how successful you will be in the role?  Society has always been fascinated to learn about the motivations of famous athletes, entertainers, and politicians and how they came to their profession. We think about their career trajectory and consider its relevance to ourselves or people we know. What if, similarly, we learned about the motivations of aspiring K-12 teachers, and used that to predict how effective they will be and how long they will stay in the classroom?
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By Larry Cuban (from August 9, 2024)
It is gone. What began as Ted Sizer’s ground-breaking effort to reform U.S.’s 25,000 high schools in 1984 reached 1000-plus schools by 1997, the year Sizer retired from CES. By 2017, however, CES had closed operations with less than 100 affiliated schools.
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