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Current and former students in some school districts may benefit from a $17.25 million class action settlement reached in February with ed tech companies and the Chicago Board of Education over student data privacy concerns involving PowerSchool’s Naviance platform.
The college, career and life-readiness tool — developed by Hobsons and later acquired by PowerSchool — has been used by many districts nationwide, including Chicago Public Schools. The case’s original plaintiff, a CPS student identified as Q.J., alleged in 2023 that the two ed tech companies “aided and conspired” with third parties including insight and analytics platform Heap to unlawfully intercept students’ confidential and sensitive communications without consent.
This is the amount of the historic relief funds infused into the K-12 system during COVID-19, the last of which were spent in March. Education experts say it’s difficult to sum up how effective the massive influx was in helping schools and students recover.
Many state and local education leaders point to specific projects that tie the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds to improved academic performance, safer and healthier schools, student engagement, tighter community partnerships, and quicker student mental health and behavioral responses. But whether ESSER fully delivered return on investment is hard to measure, as research into its impact is still ongoing, and the design of the program and trajectory of the pandemic add to the difficulty of quantifying the funding’s results.
AI’s latest education inroads
- The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence tools will necessitate new approaches to adoption and implementation, some K-12 leaders say. Unlike how districts commonly procured ed tech in the past, decisions on AI tools need to be reevaluated over time, said Julia Rafal-Baer, CEO of ILO Group, an education strategy and policy firm, and education consultant. Some of the ways that could play out include school leaders creating AI leadership roles at the district level, integrating AI responsibilities into existing district teams, or distributing ownership across the whole school system.
- One way AI is finding its way into school logistics is in the review of curriculum and library materials. Districts like Texas’ New Braunfels Independent School District are leaning on the technology to comply with restrictive state laws, marking a new and controversial development in a yearslong push by Republican states and lawmakers to pull books they say are divisive, indecent, profane or pornographic off of classroom and library shelves.
Curriculum corner
- While career and technical education credentials typically provide students with an income boost immediately after high school, those returns diminish as time passes, according to a study of long-term Ohio CTE program outcomes released last week by the Fordham Institute. The research also found that earning industry credentials in high school is, on average, negatively linked to college attendance and degree completion — veering from findings in prior studies.
- Scaffolding new lessons and concepts onto students’ prior knowledge builds a sturdier foundation for learning, teacher educators say. Approaches can include charts and concept maps tracking what students know or want to know, helping them see links among ideas, and basing lessons on their own experiences. Before starting instruction on a unit, teachers should analyze how their students’ interests, passions and backgrounds could help to anchor their lessons, said Christopher Emdin, professor of science education at Columbia University Teachers College.
- Math and executive functioning skills strengthen one another and should be taught simultaneously, according to a five-year research effort commissioned by EF+Math, a program of the nonprofit Advanced Education Research and Development Fund, and carried out by the ETS Research Institute. Research survey data shows 88% of teachers are “very” or “moderately” interested in professional development for improving students’ executive functioning skills to improve their ability to learn challenging math concepts.
