Faculty in the Media

"[When] an attempt to communicate with a family only happens after there’s an incident, or when the student is chronically absent, [it's a problem]."

"When they move to third grade, that is when we see children make the transition from learning to read to reading to learn, which is why some experts see this grade as pivotal."

"What’s really important for us to do is to start to tell a much more honest story about college. Every student has their own version of feeling lonely and unsettled, and almost no student shares it with each other. They all think that they are struggling alone [and] that they are uniquely doing something wrong.”

"A kid should learn how to fail and how to cope with it. [They need assistance] to make sense of a trauma in some way, feel like they have some control over it."

"Learning is a process that is relational. Having tools arrive in the classroom without any sort of understanding of what effects they’ll have, it’s dividing teachers and students. And in that division, the relationships are being damaged."

"That’s one of the big advantages of learning to write cursive: In the process of learning to write it, you’re learning to read it. It’s learning to access history and literature and shared culture."

"We need to recognize the importance of creative critical thinking and giving children opportunities to learn skills like listening, like empathy, like how to tell stories through all different sorts of mediums, how to communicate feelings through paint and movement and sound and how to sit with uncertainty and develop resiliency."

"We can’t promise you if you learn this skill, this one profession or occupation, that [it] is going to be around."

"My plea is: Let's move beyond quickly on the fact that children are our future, and say what we are going to do about that. We need new ideas, we need to be bold."

"Responsibility for digital agency can’t rest just on the shoulders of our young people, who are being asked to withstand designs that prey on psychological vulnerabilities and developmental sensitivities."

"Our leaders have been asleep at the wheel, and I hope they wake up before Massachusetts loses its lead in K-12 education."

"There’s a confidence crisis in public education. We need leadership and a sense of urgency in our field."

"Teachers, like most workers, respond to robust performance evaluations and employment incentives—and in the case of Tennessee, these responses boost their effectiveness in the classroom and, therefore, student achievement."

"The gravitational pull of the elites is, unfortunately, drawing attention away from problems within higher education that are more consequential and widespread: an unsustainable economic model, unfavorable demographics, outdated pedagogy and curricula, and, maybe most important, a stubborn resistance to transformational change."

"The only thing we can count on is that things are going to change. AI is ... just giving us a new way to think about the importance and the necessity of adaptability."

“Among Gen Zers, there is a lot of concern about the world, and there’s a wanting to do something meaningful that will make it better.”

"The question isn’t whether to use AI but how and with what benefits and costs."

"Teachers are facing a difficult choice.The questions are how do we create incentives in the teaching profession that lead teachers to teach in a more ambitious way, and how can we maintain high standards in teacher training so that teachers are trained to teach the way we know through 30 years of work that teachers should be teaching?"

"The problem is that our educational systems are geared to teaching reckoning, and their quality is measured by assessing reckoning, the GRE, the SAT, the LSAT, et cetera, et cetera. And, so, what we're doing is preparing human beings to lose to AI as opposed to preparing human beings with skills that complement AI." 

"Young people don’t always know what’s a foundational skill-building activity and what isn’t. So they can’t make decisions about what to offload, if anything."

"Changing when and how the test is administered can make a real difference in access even without any kind of explicit consideration of neighborhood or school in the admissions policy."

"The research shows that when you teach to the high standards, regardless of students' past performance or their income level or background, students rise to the occasion and make the largest gains."

"Meaning and purpose are the deep engines of our lives. ... We can talk about banning cellphones in schools, which I think is a good thing, and providing more therapists, which I also think is a good thing, but my guess is that helping other people and making a positive difference in others’ lives is significantly more likely to strengthen Gen Zers’ mental health than those other strategies."

"Immigration policy has had a chilling effect. There is less likelihood that families will come to the border with their children ... knowing that separation and incarceration are possibilities."

"Getting the policy passed is phase one. Phase two is implementing it with fidelity to the intentions of the original legislation. … This is something we needed to correct an imbalance. It will take time for the results to show up."

"The systemic issue is we don't have a sense of trust and integrity around the work, then we're trying to layer on EdTech as a solution, and kids are finding ways around it because they're missing the core thing that is going to give them pride in the work."

"Getting the campus mental health story right isn’t about softening the reality of the struggles young adults are facing, or dismissing the data. Some pressures young people face today are genuinely new. But resisting the 'crisis' frame lets us tell a more complex and accurate story about what we are seeing — and how we can help."

"Those test scores already exist. Asking not to see them creates more inequality than it eliminates. Covering your eyes or asking others to figure out whether they should close our eyes for us, that creates this unnecessary dilemma."

"There are lots of opportunities to use AI to adapt learning materials into different languages, which can expand access for bilingual learners."

"Helping others is good for our mental health, and lots of Gen Zers lack meaning and purpose, which is really not good for your mental health. They’re finding meaning and purpose in helping others.”