Howard Dvorsky

Elementary school is tough. There are playground politics, multiplication tables and learning to read. Imagine dealing with all that in a new language — or even a whole new country. That’s the added challenge for kids who are learning English at the same time they’re learning everything else as their peers. It’s an issue that Sarah Walters and her colleagues were determined to tackle in Troy City ...[Read More]

A cyberattack against one of the world’s largest digital education platforms has forced attention onto the vulnerability of U.S. schools’ data. Instructure, the company behind Canvas, a learning management system used by thousands of schools which has 30 million active users, had its service interrupted late last week. According to a company statement, hackers breached Instructure’s “free for teac...[Read More]

For over 30 years I’ve been teaching teachers to engage in meaningful conversations with their students about real things. Strong teachers know how to pose thoughtful questions, elicit questions from students, and listen and engage respectfully with students. And yet, 30 years in, there are still a shocking number of schools where adults and children fail to discuss important issues. For instance,...[Read More]

To be an educator and a writer is to inhabit a rollercoaster world of hope; at times, you are filled with the excitement and power of possibilities, and at others, you are terrified of losing it. During the Voices of Change fellowship, I not only grew as a writer but was also inspired by educators who gave me the gift of “freedom dreaming.” I’ve since sought opportunities to practice freedom dream...[Read More]

While schools have made progress in technology adoption — from artificial intelligence guidelines to vetting education technology — they still struggle with the lack of resources, funding and expertise, according to a new report. The annual State of EdTech report from the Consortium for School Networking polled roughly 600 chief technology officers for K-12 schools. One of the biggest takeaways, a...[Read More]

For the past few years, our nation has been flooded with headlines declaring the demise of the college degree. This trend was exacerbated by COVID-19, which accelerated a decline in college interest. I understand, really, I do. Tuition costs are rising. Student debt is real. Artificial intelligence (AI) is also reshaping white-collar work by automating routine cognitive tasks, changing hiring patt...[Read More]

Increased attendance, better attention in classrooms, stronger friendships, and more engaged citizens – these are not a long wishlist of preferred traits in an elementary school student. They are what some advocates believe are a direct impact from recess. Recess, long a staple in children’s school days, has been put on the back burner or cut entirely by some districts as the push for more class t...[Read More]

The U.S. Surgeon General’s office issued a warning yesterday about the harms of extended uses of screens on children, raising concerns about its impact on academic performance, physical health and mental well-being. The advisory follows a contentious debate over screen time that has been fraught in recent years as schools that implemented 1-to-1 device ratios amid the pandemic now struggle with st...[Read More]

As one fourth grader peers over the top of a 300-foot-tall wind turbine, a classmate stands next to surgeons operating in an emergency room. Nearby, another fourth grader shuffles through an autobody shop. They are not visiting high-risk job sites, at least not in real life. These experiences are the result of a series of investments into virtual reality in North Dakota. The state hopes that putti...[Read More]

Keri Rodrigues, a mother of five boys, knows the value of screens. For her boys, four of whom receive school accommodations, screens serve a practical purpose at school. “When you get a kid who’s got [a learning plan] for anxiety and a substitute teacher that hasn’t read his 504 [plan] and there’s nobody there to de-escalate him, he’s got to use his phone to call mom so I c...[Read More]

Students increasingly turn to AI first for school help, raising trust and safety concerns.

By: Jon Alfuth Kathleen Farley from Google recently wrote about what it would mean to shift from traditional credit hours in K-12 education to skills-first standards. I’ve long thought a shift like this is needed and necessary. But, in my years of work around personalized, competency-based education policy, I continue to see such efforts run into a persistent and steadfast roadblock: college admis...[Read More]