A Tennessee judge on Wednesday seemed ready to agree with an attorney for Nashville police that the writings of a school shooter could be released as public record once the investigation is officially closed. But the parents of children at the Covenant School added an extra twist to an already complicated case by asserting that they have gained legal ownership of the writings from the shooter’s parents and now hold the copyright. Read more on AP News. The post Tennessee judge wants more information on copyright before ruling on school shooter’s writings appeared first on Di ..read more

In the middle of night, students at Utah’s Kings Peak high school are wide awake – taking mandatory exams. At this online-only school, which opened during the pandemic and has seen its enrollment boom ever since, students take tests from their homes at times that work best with their schedules. Principal Ammon Wiemers says it’s this flexibility that attracts students – including athletes and teens with part-time jobs – from across the state. Read more on The Guardian. The post Are your kids being spied on? The rise of anti-cheating software in US schools appeared first on District A ..read more

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine is once again making the push for phonics-based literacy education for Ohio students after last week’s State of the State address. In Columbus, guests packed the Lincoln Theatre in King-Lincoln Bronzeville on Tuesday to join DeWine in viewing a documentary that champions an emerging science of how kids learn to read. DeWine, along with education leaders, parents and community members viewed a screening of the “The Right to Read,” a 2023 documentary that follows an NAACP activist, a teacher, and two families who champion the importance of literacy. Read more ..read more

Register Now Date & Time: Monday, April 29th at 2 pm ET Are you ready to elevate your district’s strategic planning process? Join us for a first-of-its-kind webinar presentation based on the “Annual Public School System Strategic Plan Scan” by Godek et al., (2024). Discover transformative insights from our comprehensive analysis of strategic plans across U.S. urban and rural school districts. Learn how leading districts are successfully engaging families and communities, integrating effective pandemic-era strategies, and enhancing principal involvement to drive educational excellence. Our ..read more

There has already been a slew of changes within the Nampa School District — and another is to come. At Tuesday’s Nampa School Board meeting, trustees voted to move to a four-day school schedule beginning in fall 2024. Students can expect to attend classes for four days a week. The fifth day, a non-student contact day, will serve as time for instructors to plan lessons, prepare for class and schedule meetings on campus. This vote comes after a line of large decisions made in the past academic year. This includes the closure of four schools and moving away from an A/B block schedule. Read more f ..read more

One after another, parents, teachers and even elementary schoolers stepped up to a microphone in the auditorium of Poudre High School on Tuesday evening to voice messages that were sometimes sharp, other times articulated through tears, about widespread fears around plans to close schools. Their audience: Poudre School District R-1 board members and Superintendent Brian Kingsley, who listened as speakers, many of them clad in “red for ed,” demanded they take more time to decide how to consolidate schools, expressed how central their neighborhood schools have become to their families and accuse ..read more

Illinois lawmakers want to extend a moratorium on school closures in Chicago and prevent changes at selective enrollment and magnet schools until 2027, when a fully elected school board is sworn in. The proposal moving through the legislature first emerged in response to a resolution passed by the Chicago school board in December to develop a new strategic plan that would move away from school choice and invest more in neighborhood schools. That sparked concerns Chicago Public Schools could close or change admissions at dozens of sought-after selective and magnet schools, though board members ..read more

Mad dash does not describe how most teachers are approaching artificial intelligence as a learning tool. On National AI Literacy Day, a new survey shows that AI may well transform education but fewer than one in five educators are teaching with AI in the classroom. Surprisingly, perhaps, 9% of teachers surveyed had never heard of AI, according to a survey released this week by the RAND Corporation, a research nonprofit. Meanwhile, the district leaders interviewed by the think tank were less concerned about restricting the technology and were focused on convincing teachers and student ..read more

In recent years, education technology has propelled itself further into the future than most could have predicted. Edtech solutions have multiplied in number and a large share of them are incorporating artificial intelligence into their products. It’s an exciting time for educators as they learn to harness the power of AI technologies to enhance their work, but how exactly are they using it? Preply, an online tutoring platform, recently conducted a global survey of more than 3,500 participants (including more than 1,00 educators) to better understand the importance of human interaction in lear ..read more

More book bans had occurred halfway through this school year than in all of 2022-23. Research by a leading censorship organization identified 4,000-plus book bans in a sample of 52 districts between July and December. Those numbers mean book bans, which are taking place in both red and blue districts, are “soaring to a record level,” PEN America says in its latest report, “Banned in the USA: Narrating the Crisis.” “Book bans are targeting narratives about race and sexual identities and sexual content writ large, and they show no sign of stopping,” said Sabrina Baêta, Freedom to Read program ma ..read more