Faculty in the Media

"While we do not advocate for public schools to teach religious doctrine or use public funds for religious purposes, partnerships with faith communities can offer untapped resources to enrich student learning opportunities, especially for those in disadvantaged communities."

"The most important thing that states need to realize is that it’s up to them whether their students’ achievement recovers — or continues to fall."

"I see [students not participating] as the most significant challenge facing the NAEP program in the medium term because it threatens our ability to speak with confidence about states’ success in supporting student learning.”

"By naming and validating the real and typical challenges that students are experiencing, we can help them feel less alone."

"Instead of the topic being, ‘We’re going to learn how to divide fractions,’ the topic is something that is actually a real-world question they have that requires them to understand fractions. There’s reason to believe that having them participate in the high-quality production of questions for their peers could be beneficial."

"I am not sure how we argue against work examples as a productive way to learn, [although] there may be better and worse ways to use them in a classroom setting."

“A lot of their fixed costs stay, and yet the enrollment decreases and therefore the aid decreases, and then they're thrown into budget crisis.”

“Audiobooks, particularly when students find them engaging and have opportunities to participate in book discussions, can be a powerful tool for helping developing readers expand not only their background knowledge but language resources essential for making meaning from text.”

“The theory of learning styles has been debunked. ... It’s not the case that someone learns better by listening or by reading. You may have a preference, but learning is sort of the same regardless of the modality. ”

“Young people’s sense of belongingness is such an essential Maslovian need. The pain of social rejection activates the same part of the brain as physical pain. You can’t really learn if you are agitated and feel excluded.” 

"The role of the superintendent has changed. When we do the job well ... we are, in fact, civic leaders. It is a team sport to ensure the health, wellness, and education of our communities and young people."

"This is a wake-up call and a moment for educators to think about how we could restructure education and restructure the classroom and learning so that it’s more relatable for what students want to do in their life."

"Once you start to know what your mind can do that’s so much better than AI, it kind of makes sense that some tasks are well-relegated to AI and other tasks are not. That is going to be a constant challenge to figure out those relationships and lines over time."

"There are real consequences to these low scores and survey findings. Democracy is not self-sustaining. It’s incumbent on us to ensure each new generation can support and strengthen America’s system of governance by understanding how it functions and how to participate in it."

"I hope that there are lots of governors that are looking at Mississippi and saying, 'Look, I want us to be next.'"

"We need to be honest about the full range of Black experiences, which means telling the truth about both the terrible and the beautiful. That honesty can still be hopeful and future-oriented."

"Math is cumulative: If you don’t understand fractions when they’re introduced in third and fourth grade, you’re going to have a lot of trouble when you get to algebra."

"You want to model for them that you're not just focused on your own kid. You're focused on other people's kids too, and the team and how well the team does."

“You can’t just lock a group of kindergartners in a library and expect them to emerge, a couple of weeks later, as readers. It’s more like learning a musical instrument. You can listen to Mozart all your life, but if I put you in front of a piano and say, ‘Play Mozart,’ you will fail."

"If you look at the data over the long term, it's very clear that the declines started prior to the pandemic. ... What is an explanation that can check all of those boxes?"

"These are skills that are in motion. You can’t have a classroom where you say, ‘Okay, fourth period, we’re going to teach social skills.’ It’s not really about the content. It’s learning how to work with others, how to deal with information, and how to make decisions in a fluid, unpredictable world."

"The vast majority of young people are not in four-year residential colleges buying pizza. Many of them are trying to pay rent. Many of them are young parents. Many of them are working the gig economy as their main source of income while trying to raise a young child. We don't think about the 20s as being responsible adults because we don't treat them like that."

"When [early child care and education] centers close down, this doesn't necessarily mean that parents no longer need care for their children. Parents still need to work."

"Research indicates that both children and adults have a great capacity for moral growth, and the cost of assuming their morality is fixed is high."

"Many students use AI without a good understanding of how it works ... and this leads to putting too much confidence in its output. So, teaching them to be critical and discerning about how they use it and what it offers is important. But even more important is helping them understand how their embodied human minds work and how powerful they can be when used well."

"Sometimes folks may underestimate just how well children are sophisticated in their thought, and eloquent in how they describe things. And it's on us, on the adults, to understand their stories."

"It seems clear that interpersonal connections – and the deep-seated principles that govern them, such as the general desire to reciprocate good deeds that others have done for us – are likely to persist. Investing in understanding other people and trying to help them where possible still seems like a worthy bet in the age of AI."

"We need to recognize that what sounds good on paper doesn’t always work, and that — when it comes to critical questions like lowering absenteeism — you have to be collecting evidence."

"Cold-calling is a technique. That’s a toolbox item. It’s secondary to pedagogical practices and where it fits into those practices. Students are anxious in class for a lot of different reasons. This is one thing that sparks anxiety and makes them not able to learn."

"To recognize and respect the context of applicants from low-income, rural or working-class backgrounds is not to diminish the accomplishments of the wealthy; it is to ensure that success is measured by individual effort and achievement, not just by access to opportunity."