Schools & Policy
Chronic absenteeism doubled during the pandemic and has not fully recovered. What the current numbers show, why they persist, and which interventions are working.
The math of homeschooling on one income is more workable than people assume and harder than the social-media version suggests. The honest line items, in order.
The K-12 device wars settled into a partial truce. Chromebooks dominate by unit count; iPads still win in specific contexts. A guide to mixed deployments.
Honest reviews of the apps, platforms, AI tools, and devices teachers are asked to adopt. We assess what genuinely helps students think, what just keeps them busy, and what's heavily marketed without earning its place.
“Chromebooks vs. iPads in K-12: where each one actually wins”
25 posts
Reading, writing, and thinking in a media environment that wasn't built in students' interest. We cover information literacy, source evaluation, attention, and what it means to be a careful reader and a credible writer online.
“Teaching media literacy in an algorithm-shaped attention environment”
25 posts
What happens to teaching when policy meets practice. We write about school systems, assessment regimes, district decisions, and the quiet politics that shape what's possible inside the classroom.
“Chronic absenteeism, three years on: what the data actually shows”
21 posts
How real classrooms work, lesson by lesson. We write about instructional design, classroom practice, and the small craft decisions that shape what students actually learn, separating durable pedagogy from passing fashion.
“The first ten days: what new teachers should actually focus on”
18 posts
Notes on how teachers actually grow. We cover conferences worth attending, PD that doesn't waste a Saturday, and the case for treating educators as career-long learners rather than topped-off skill sets.
“ISTE 2010: Easy…Not Free”
16 posts
MOOCs, course platforms, bootcamps, and the rest of the open-web learning economy. We cover where online courses deliver, where they don't, and how adults are actually picking up new skills outside traditional classrooms.
“Udemy vs. Skillshare vs. LinkedIn Learning: where each one wins”
9 posts
Three online course marketplaces serve different audiences and use cases. A practical comparison for picking the right platform for what you actually want to learn.
Community college as a stepping stone to a four-year school works in some states and breaks in others. The articulation agreements that exist, and the ones that do not.
The media literacy curriculum most schools use was designed for a search-era internet. The feed era requires different lessons, and the work has gotten harder.
Long-term homeschoolers do not teach everything themselves. How outsourcing classes, joining co-ops, and finding tutors fits into a sustainable homeschool.
Lesson-planning AI is one of the few clearly working AI use cases in classrooms. Which tools deliver, what they cannot replace, and how to evaluate them.
Some Coursera certificates clear resume screens. Most do not. Which credentials function as hiring signals and which are decoration.
Flagship public universities now charge non-residents two and a half to three times in-state tuition. The math has shifted enough to be worth a fresh look.
Most of how the year goes is decided in the first ten days. New teachers should front-load routines, names, and tone, not lesson plans for September.