Category: Teaching

Do Alpha Schools Deliver on Their AI Promise?

A recent article in the Chicago Tribune about a second Alpha School opening up in Chicagoland piqued my curiosity. I decided to do a deep dive into their programming and any research and evaluation I could find.

There are some features I love. I avidly support the small student/teacher ratio, the time devoted to life skills and real-world experiences, their project-based and problem-based learning, and the use of their mascot, Steve the Yet Yeti, to promote a “growth mindset” [the conviction that learners can grow and develop through hard work and learning from failures].

But we should be concerned about the level of self-promotion and lack of outside validation and the dependence on AI tutoring that marketing expert Edward Nevraumont says “is closer to ‘turbocharged spreadsheet checklist with a spaced‑repetition algorithm.’” (www.astralcodexten.com) Unbound Academy, for example, an Arizona charter school that claims to use the Alpha Schools curriculum, “projected 60% proficiency in math off a baseline of 34% and ended the year with 10% compared to an Arizona state average of 34%. They projected 65% proficiency in ELA off a baseline of 40% and ended with 28% compared to an Arizona state average of 42%.” (www.edweek.org)

Alpha Schools uses the NWEA MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) to measure progress. MAP uses a computerized adaptive that is adapts as each child progresses. It is not considered a standardized test, and “schools are allowed to modify their preferences when interpreting data

which can inflate scores and performance.” Their results are “based entirely on an internal analysis of NWEA MAP test data and haven’t been independently verified by third parties. Critics have also challenged the statistical methodology, alleging use of ‘inflated MAP growth ratios’ and ‘misused medians’ to produce impressive but potentially misleading results.” These concerns led the state of Pennsylvania to reject their proposal for a school there. (https://npec.colorado.edu) Van Schoales , a senior policy director at the nonpartisan Keystone Policy Center, warns that “The website is covered in figures suggesting that Alpha students are not merely doing better than students elsewhere but blowing the doors off them. No outside study supports any of it, and the MAP and SAT numbers are close to meaningless without knowing whether Alpha students are being compared with students of similar background. That comparison matters more here than usual: tuition runs as high as $75,000 a year, and every family in the building went looking for this school. (https://fordhaminstitute.org) Where is the evidence of their highly touted success?

Alpha Schools claim they can help students do twice [or now 2.6 times] the learning in only two hours each morning, though students often self-report needing more time than that. They say they accomplish this by depending on Artificial Intelligence [AI] tutoring with “guides” to help students. Is Alpha Schools dependence on AI tutoring for academics effective when most current research says it is valuable as a supplement rather than a replacement for instruction? If the AI programs are more like worksheets than Socratic dialogues, do they foster critical thinking effectively? What sort of training and preparation do the “guides” have? I could not find answers to these questions.

Educational neuroscientist Dr. Jared Cooney Horvath, author of The Digital Delusion: How Classroom Technology Harms OurKids’ Learning– And How to Help Them Thrive Again, argues that “If learning could truly be accelerated at the rates claimed by Alpha schools, then students would finish a complete K–12 education by the second year of elementary school – an obviously absurd implication. EdTech developers have long promised faster and easier learning. But speed and ease have never been the hallmarks of deep education. Real learning is slow, effortful, and deliberate.” He reminds us that covering content does not equate real learning. He defines learning at the effort to “‘think through knowledge’ and ‘transform ideas’. The time students spend revising ideas, debating them, and applying them across varied contexts is not wasted time.” (https://npec.colorado.edu)

Gerald LeTendre, an educational policy researcher at Pennsylvania State University, says that good tutoring is not equivalent to good teaching. “There’s no evidence in the literature that you can substitute a pure AI tutoring model and still achieve all of the multiple effects that one gets from studying in a classroom.” Indeed, a 2025 literature review of 28 studies that involved a total of nearly 5,000 K–12 students found that while AI-driven intelligent tutoring systems generally had positive effects, the advantage was negligible when compared with nonintelligent tutoring systems that also used active learning models without relying on AI. (www.scientificamerican.com)

Another article warns about the limitations of the teaching guides. “When a child hits a conceptual wall that requires a human to explain it differently—not replay a

video or serve up a parallel problem—the system breaks. Guides are facilitators, not subject-

matter teachers. Multiple parents describe guides who gave incorrect methods just to push

a student past a stuck point and keep their dashboard metrics looking clean.” (www.aifunlab.io)

The guides are “outsourced foreign contractors with no teaching background.” (https://terryu.stubstack.com)

We need to ask what the impact of a reliance on screens over human interaction is? Doctors and psychologists warn that overuse of technology can have damaging effects on young kids – and make teens more likely to suffer from social anxiety, low self-esteem and depression. “I believe it’s dangerous to wipe teachers from classrooms,” said Joe Vercellino, a Detroit Teacher of the Year and founder of The Lion Heart Experience, which brings mental health programming to schools. “What I worry about is what it will take away from our human development.” (https://nypost.com)

Stanford University Researchers at the Scale Initiative for Learning emphasize the importance of a strong student-tutor relationship “as an essential contributor to engagement and improved outcomes in high-impact tutoring. “o date, AI does not replicate human relationships. Most AI tutoring developers interviewed describe the goal as applying specific AI strengths rather than replacing human relationships.” (https://scale.stanford.edu)

I also question Alpha Schools’ use of extrinsic motivation and rewards. Students rack up Alpha Bucks by hitting daily academic minimums, mastering lessons, and turning in work on time. They buy rewards that actually matter to them: AirPods, Taylor Swift merch, snacks, or access to the lounge. They also offer the 100-for-100 to new students, paying students $100 for every 100% they make on the Texas STAAR test. (https://alpha.school/blog) Although extrinsic rewards may prompt desired behaviors, do they develop a lifelong love of and commitment to learning? Should learning be transactional? What will cause students to continue to learn when rewards are no longer part of the package?

The required Alpha Schools Bootcamp is notoriously stressful. Every freshman at an Alpha High School must complete a set of 18 challenges that the program considers essential life skills, like “selling an idea, speaking compellingly in public, teaching themselves something difficult, receiving critical feedback productively, working effectively with others, and doing demanding work without complaint.” Students must pass a test to show mastery, and they do have unlimited opportunities to succeed. (https://alpha-high-bootcamp.vercel.app/ But students in the bootcamp “are also required to pass an eyebrow-raising heart rate challenge, in which they’re hooked up to live monitors in front of their classmates and presented with a pre-recorded video of their parents berating them.” (https://futurism.com) Is that part of a humanitarian approach to education? What about the required social media posts that must achieve a minimum of 100 organic followers? (Ibid.)

If Alpha Schools students are indeed more successful academically than their peers in public schools, how much of that is due to the inherent self-selection? With a tuition range of $40,000 to 75,000 a year, aren’t their students likely to have stronger backgrounds and more drive to succeed? Doesn’t the high tuition self-select a student body that comes to school already advantaged, especially since under-performing students are invited to leave?

Despite all these red flags, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon promotes Alpha Schools. During a Fox Business interview, she said, “I certainly believe AI is definitely a tool used correctly, and I’ve seen it in action,” McMahon said in the interview. “I have visited the Alpha School in Austin, Texas, where they use AI for the first two hours every single morning… It is incredibly effective.” (https://truthout.org) She said she was very impressed by her visit to the Austin campus. (www.kxan.com) And in a CNN interview this summer, when Dana Bash asked her if Alpha Schools were a proper model, McMahon replied, “It’s working wonderfully.” (www.nytimes.com) Of course, this is the same cabinet member who once referred to artificial intelligence as A1, the steak sauce. She may be easily taken in, but I join the many educators who seek serious evaluation of Alpha Schools before we consider them the answer for the future of education.

Schools must change. They are not adequately addressing students’ needs, nor are they preparing them for the future. But let’s not jump to this model without more information…

we should be wary. There must be a better way.

The Tech Backlash

Whether it’s Jeremy Adams, a high school social studies teacher, writing about his students’ fatigue with the overdose of technology in their lives or the Gallup survey of 14-29-year olds that shows they are becoming “increasingly skeptical of — and downright mad at — AI, ” (www.the 74million.org), a tech backlash seems to be building momentum. The Gallup poll quantifies the change clearly: “Gen Zers’ strong agreement or agreement that they feel excited about AI has dropped 14 percentage points to 22%, while hopefulness has fallen nine points to 18%, and anger has increased nine points to 31%. At the same time, anxiety about AI is steady at 42%.” (https://news.gallup.com/poll)

A senior education researcher at Gallup, believes there might be a link between recent revelations about the harmful nature of social media and AI-related distrust. Zach Hrynowski points out that many of the respondents came of age just as former surgeon general Vivek H. Murthy called for a warning about its use. “Year over year, among that super user group, they’re much less excited, they are much less hopeful — and they are more angry,” he said. “So this is not a case of some people who are adopting it and loving it and some people who are just avoiding it and feel negatively about it.” He goes on to say that Gen Z is keenly aware of the risks of technology in general, “whether it’s social media, whether it’s AI or screen time.” (www.the74million.org/)

Examples of this discontentment abound. In May, the 2026 graduating class of the University of Central Florida booed a real estate development executive whospoke about how “the rise of artificial intelligence is the next Industrial Revolution” and about “living in a time of profound change.” (www.theguardian.com) The same month, when pro-AI  Big Machine Records CEO Scott Borchetta said, “AI is rewriting production as we sit here”,  Middle Tennessee State University graduates jeered. (the-independent.com) Glendale Community College in Arizona used AI to read graduates’ names and many were skipped. President Tiffany Hernandez acknowledgement that the school was using AI to read names for the ceremony “was met with resounding boos.” (nbcnews.com) Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was also booed by students as he spoke about the rise of artificial intelligence during his speech at University of Arizona’s graduation ceremony. (bbc.com)

Students have reason to be skeptical about technology and its impact on them. AI threatens their job plans and hopes, social media has been shown to be harmful to their psyches, and technology has too often failed its promise to improve our educational system. According to two new reports, schools that retreat from AI create “’the worst of both worlds’ — students who can neither think independently nor use AI effectively,” while schools that embrace AI run into a wide array of problems and misfires. Furthermore, many educators acknowledge that “AI is currently being thought of as a productivity tool for the education system that we have, rather than a tool to radically improve teaching and learning and outcomes for kids,” said Robin Lake, Executive Director of Center on Reinventing Public Education. (www.the74.million.org2)

There is another path. Author and expert on student-centered learning, Stephanie Malia Krauss assures us, “‘We don’t have to remove all tech…We need to remove toxic tech’ and bring back play and adequate sleep.” She considers any other approach an empty gesture. Krauss considers tech toxic if it keeps kids from what they need to be happy and healthy, to learn and develop. But she supports what she calls “humane tech”:  technology that actually assists or amplifies the ability to tap into the essentials that keep us healthy and happy. She decries the approach of schools that see the solution as removing all tech for two reasons: that prevents the limits of humane and productive technology, and it allows us to ignore what she describes as “the other ‘dangerous weather conditions’ that I talk about — being overtapped, overworked, and overwrought, really afraid for our lives, safety issues that students feel.” (www.the74million.org3)

Jeremy Adams is right. Technology is valuable as a supplement to teachers themselves, but it must not replace them. He says it better than I ever could:

This is why — especially in this era — the humanity of teachers and the personal vitality of our classrooms are essential. The voices of instruction our children hear should be the voices of teachers who know and care about their students — not Alexa, not Siri, not some anonymous digital interface designed to maximize engagement rather than human flourishing.

Eye contact. Conversation. Personal relationships. No code or product required.

The kids know this. The kids want this.

Shame on us if we fail to give it to them.

(www.the 74million.org)

Reinventing High Schools for the Future

If you’ve read my blog before, you probably already know that I’m a passionate fan of problem-based learning experiences and real-world, hands-on learning. These approaches help students learn to work collaboratively for a meaningful purpose, to think critically to justify their solutions, to build schools that focus on real-life skills integrated with academic content, and to prepare for a future ever more uncertain.

Recently I’ve collected an array of schools that do just that. Each has a different focus, but all of them value the life skills their approaches develop. For example, the Grand Rapids Public Museum School (GRPMS) has learners work in small and collaborative cohorts co-taught by teachers. The community is their classroom, and their mission is to “use place-based design thinking and the museum context to create learning experiences that develop confident, creative, and competent thinkers, doers, and leaders.” They have an impressive list of core competencies as goals: “Read Critically; Reason Quantitatively; Learn Independently; Lead Inquiry; Explore Social Phenomena; Communicate Effectively; Collaborate on Teams; Build Community; Design Solutions; Develop Self-Knowledge; Cultivate Well-Being; and Think and Act Globally.” (https://grps.org/schools/high-school/gr-museum-hs/) At this school, housed inside the Grand Rapids Public Museum itself, students “help museum staff collect, process, and curate new materials in a design lab where they play a role in designing and updating existing exhibits.” They’ve found artifacts like a spacesuit from an Apollo mission and a flapper dress from the 1920s, and they’ve recorded interviews about the artifacts and created podcasts. (https://xqsuperschool.org/where-we-work/grand-rapids-public-museum-school) At this school the content is integrated across subject areas, and classroom activities are blended with community-based experiential projects. How powerful that approach must be!

Another example, Elizabethtown High School is the only high school in its northeast Tennessee district, in a region hit hard by opioid epidemic and poverty. Teachers there invited a sociology class to design a school that could earn an XQ Super School grant.  As a result, they added two new classes the following school year, “Community Improvement” and “Entrepreneurship.” Students were able to work in the community; build relationships with government, non-profit, and business leaders; and start their own community project or business. One sociology class “investigated and helped solve a cold case from the 1980s, leading the authorities to identify the murder suspect.” They started in 2018, and subsequent students continued “investigating links between that crime and a series of murders. In 2024, their work became the subject of iHeart radio’s hit true-crime podcast series ‘Murder 101,’ now set to become a feature-length film.”

Other students there have found their own opportunities to make a difference. A student is now liaison to the local school board, and the at the prompting of students, the school has a Cyclone Student Center where students can find school resources and college information. (https://xqsuperschool.org/where-we-work/elizabethtown-high-school) Yet another student took on painting murals in the community during her senior year, even though she knew nothing about it prior to that effort. As an alumna, she still leads this ongoing project that’s transforming the downtown. Another student learned how to network and build relationships to make art “a viable business endeavor while providing a public service.” (https://ehs.ecschools.net)

These schools are not alone in their reinvention of high school. Crosstown High in downtown Memphis, a charter school with about 480 students, is sited within a one-million-square-foot landmark with over 40 business and agencies. It recruits students from all over Memphis who then learn “through projects, such as analyzing pollution in local soil and its correlation to cancer rates.” (https://xqsuperschool.org/where-we-work/crosstown-high) 

The learning framework at Crosstown High is action-based:

  • Center learning around authentic, real-world problems
  • Incorporate student voice and choice
  • Build in feedback, revision, and public exhibitions
  • Align projects with both academic content and transferable skills

(https://crosstownhigh.org/adult-learning)

In 2024, award-winning documentary filmmaker Lee Hirsch premiered “The First Class,” a documentary that goes inside Crosstown High to tell the story.

Check out Thomas A. Edison High School is an anchor school among the 100-plus city high schools participating in FutureReadyNYC, a consortium for career-connected learning. Their students choose from thirteen different career tracks that allow them to seek internships and earn industry certifications. They can also earn college credit. The school focuses on developing five essential skills—communication, collaboration, giving and receiving feedback, design thinking, and professionalism. That focus guides classroom work, with students and teachers collaborating to co-design curricula suited to the modern world and workplace. For example, an English class may include a student-run theater. (https://xqsuperschool.org/where-we-work/thomas-edison) They don’t focus on career skills in place of academics; they integrate the two. Their vision: “Thomas A. Edison Career and Technical Education High School envisions empowering every student to become a leader of tomorrow by excelling academically, technically, and civically through strong collaboration among faculty, students, parents, and community partners.” (https://www.taehs.org)

Take a look at Brooklyn STEAM Center, a school that “delivers innovative, industry-informed experiences that empower students—treated as young professionals—to shape their futures. (www.spacesmith.com) The Brooklyn Navy Yard behind the school hired Spacesmith, a design firm keyed to each client’s mission, to expand it. As a result, “school leaders and contractors, along with architects and interior designers from Spacesmith, put the entire high school body in the driver’s seat to design their future.” Already a bastion of student-centered learning, the school sought student input both pre-design and during design and construction. Students played a central role in designing quieter and more private spaces, adaptable classrooms, acoustic and health-grade materials, and glazed classroom entrances enhance transparency and connection. They learned a whole new level of advocacy and collaboration. (https://schoolconstructionnews.com)

My own students experienced this kind of learning in my problem-based learning classroom. Even as they worked for the school, public and private agencies, and a Chicago law firm to solve real-world problems, they met curriculum standards and developed academic skills. You can read all about it in Tales Told Out of School, my teaching memoir.

At a time when students are so disengaged and often not even present, offering learning opportunities that prepare them for the future is an invaluable approach. American public schools suffer from inertia, and change is somehow always harder than it should be. It’s up to all of us – students, parents, teachers, taxpayers, citizens – to demand that change occur now.

Will A.I. Triumph?

I am mortified! The New York Times posted a quiz, “Who’s a Better Writer: A.I. or Humans?” They offered five pairs of writing samples in a variety of styles and genres. They asked A.I. to “to choose an existing piece of strong writing and then craft its own version using its own voice.” Readers then indicated their preference for each pair. (nytimes.com)

Certain that I could tell the difference, confident that A.I. could not have as strong a voice, I plowed through the quiz quickly. I was wrong. I choose more A.I. than human-written passages. Even my scientist spouse did better than that!

What happened? I can blame the small sample, the particular genres chosen that don’t happen to be my favorite, or even the stars not aligning… but I think the truth is that A.I. has made huge progress in writing effectively.

So, confession over, what are the implications for writers and the teaching of writing? I’m going to switch gears here: instead of offering evidence-based and cited information, I’m going to share my own musings.

Efforts worth considering:

  • Writers have been reading. Our kids have not been reading. We must do more to foster the habit of reading, especially the reading of good writing and of passages longer than sound bites.
    • Resurrect the pattern of Silent Sustained Reading using printed books for young students to build the habit of reading and to improve attention spans.
    • Revise book choices in school to include works with more appeal alongside some of the canon.
    • Consider using excerpts of longer works.
    • Develop book clubs in classrooms where students choose what to read more freely and then “sell” their choices to their classmates.
  • Let go of formulaic writing like the five-paragraph essay. That’s exactly the kind of writing that A.I. can do, perhaps even better than most of us. Instead, look for more meaningful writing tasks that depend on the author’s voice.
  • Teach the concept of author’s voice and of original work. Perhaps start with music and have students identify singers whose voice is instantly recognizable; then play with writing samples. Perhaps offer a quiz like the one the New York Times provided, but choose strong works likely to have an appeal over the A.I. version.
  • Provide more writing time in class without access to technology tools. If students are using tablets or laptops, turn off the internet access temporarily to limit access to technology tools like A.I.
  • Use a writing workshop approach and portfolio grading to show that the process of writing matters and helps writers produce better finished works.
  • Teach students to use A.I. to assist them instead of replacing their own efforts:
    • Brainstorming tool
    • Sounding board – let it play devil’s advocate to make the opposite case in a persuasive piece, for instance.
    • Help with character development and word building.
    • After developing one’s own outline for a piece, ask it for one and use additional ideas for scaffolding.
    • Feed a draft into A.I. and ask it to create an outline – that will show disorganized and disconnected parts.
    • Help with sentence variety by asking it to evaluate and improve variety in sentence length, type, and openings.
    • Help with transitions.
    • Identify a specific, desired tone like “conversational” and ask A.I. to revise the piece in that tone.
  • Show students A.I. written passages riddled with misinformation and passages that are badly written as exemplars of what’s wrong with using A.I. in place of their own writing.
  • Teach students to write effective and specific prompts for A.I. Not only will they get more out of their A.I. collaboration, but that in itself is a form of writing that will help them improve their clarity and focus.

We have been using technology to improve writing since the advent of personal computers and the internet. Spellchecks, grammar checks, and internet research are old hat. More sophisticated programs have offered tools to evaluate and improve readability, sentence variety, etc. Before the turn of the century, the high school where I taught for my last 24 years was the beta site for AT&T’s writing analysis program, Writer’s Workbench. I had my writers run their drafts through the analysis, then turn in their first draft along with the analysis and their revision. I saw huge growth for many of them. I know we can figure out how to use these tools for good.

And I know that we have to figure that out. We don’t have a choice. I graduated high school before most of the technology that students now take for granted. I didn’t have a calculator and needed to depend on a slide rule (which, I admit, I never fully mastered). I wrote lots of papers in high school and over 80 in college, all of which were drafted longhand on yellow legal pads with arrows and asterisks to my revisions, before most of them were typed on a manual typewriter. I got my first electric typewriter in college, my first computer in 1981. I have watched the inevitable progression of tech into every aspect of our lives. I helped promote that progression by having a paperless problem-solving classroom in the 1990s where students used Palm handhelds, a web target to share files, a classroom computer, and CDs to turn in their work. I commented on and graded their work directly on their CDs. I responded to their writing in the computer lab in real time, and I had my writers turn in their portfolios digitally. Instead of fearing the constant new opportunities, I worked to harness them

A.I. is here. It isn’t going away. Are we brave enough, determined enough, smart enough to figure out how to harness it? I certainly hope so!

A Happy Success

Last week I had the privilege of speaking with a double class of sixth graders and their two teachers. I told the story of how this came about in the previous blog; now I can tell what it was like.

Before I started talking about writing nonfiction and the importance of revision, I encouraged them to interrupt with questions at any point. They frequently did, asking to see my books, asking if I made money writing them, asking where I got my ideas. You could power a city with their energy!

When I asked why they wrote, the first answer was, “for fun”—my heart sang. When I asked about purposes for writing, they were able to list many. They also understood the importance of audience, agreeing that a letter to a grandparent would describe their weekend differently from one to a buddy. And when I asked about artificial intelligence and both its impact on and role in writing, their sophistication blew me away. Students referenced the unreliability and poor quality of AI writing, though they acknowledged using it.

I talked about my own writing journey, from being in a junior high writing group and seeing my poems—bad though I now know they were—in print to the writing of my most recent book, my first work of fiction. I encouraged them to read widely because it was fun and would make them better writers. Many nodded at that, and some even described their favorite books and series. Others complained that they hadn’t found books of interest, and I encouraged them to use librarians as resources, assuring them that once they found the right books, they would want to read them. I told the story of my scientist husband’s journey from near-illiterate writer to accomplished memoirist, thanks in good part to the support a writing group. They were responsive and engaged; I found their gusto inspiring.

Then they formed small groups to revise the AI-drafted poorly written paragraph I’d sent. They could read it on the whiteboard, and all of them had it on their Chromebooks. Despite the occasional grumbling about group work, their groups did rewrite the paragraph. Some just reworded it without reducing the wordiness, but some did a really good job. If I were to do this again, I would emphasize finding the main idea and amplifying it without extras, and I would explain the difference between revising and editing better.

After our debriefing, students began to pack up. One brought me a part of her story to read, several surprised me by asking for autographs, and one gave me the picture that you see here as a gift. They really made me feel validated. I hope they found it to be a good learning experience. I know I learned from them.

When I research the state of education for my blogs, the doom and gloom can be daunting. This experience gave me far more hope than the research implies. Two committed teachers working together with a large group of learners, coping with some chaos to produce enthusiastic and effective results—that’s what schools should be like.   

I’m so glad I had this chance… but I confess that I no longer have the stamina more teaching would require. I came home and took a nap! So thank you, students and teachers, for inviting me, and keep on writing!

AI to the Rescue

Schools face a financial cliff. Last March the U. S. Department of Education cancelled all extensions of Elementary and Secondary Education Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds. The new policy requires states to reapply; in the meantime, they don’t receive the funds. “The clawback of previously approved funding extensions is resulting in students losing access to evidence-based programs that are addressing learning loss.”  (www.afterschollalliance.org) These financial cuts hit especially hard given the increased special needs of students since the pandemic: mental health support, tutoring to catch up, addressing behavior and attendance issues, falling enrollment, etc.

The vast majority of school funding goes to salaries for personnel, on average 81%. (www.the74million.org) That reality has two significant consequences: funding cuts almost invariably require cuts in personnel, and any measures that maximize the use of personnel can help offset such cuts.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) can help “prioritize and enable broader academic, staffing, and budget goals. And most importantly, strategic scheduling can help ensure that all students get access to the courses they want and need to be on track to graduate, remain inspired to attend and excel in school, and be empowered to pursue a postsecondary pathway.” (www.the74million.org2) Misty Rieber, the chief academic officer of Lubbock Independent School District, which serves approximately 25,000 students in West Texas, says “there are few questions more paramount than how your staff and students spend their time every day, what positions you’ll hire for, how many teachers you will hire, and how students will be able to interact with them. Equitable resource allocation across schools, proper access to core courses and electives, and dedicated support to sub-groups begins with the development of a school schedule. And perhaps the most overlooked aspect of scheduling is the ability to develop innovative staffing and budgeting solutions.” (Ibid.)

Too often, schools “roll over” the previous year’s schedule even though it may no longer be appropriate for the upcoming year. Building a master schedule is an intensive, demanding, complex process. AI can transform this process. Lubbock, Texas, schools used AI to analyze thousands of possible scheduling scenarios, a task too broad for individuals, thereby allowing them to avoid defaulting to a prior schedule and instead to align the schedule with school and district priorities while meeting the student needs more efficiently. (www.the74million.org3)

After piloting using AI for master scheduling in select schools, Austin, Texas, now uses it for all 33 middle and high school master schedules. Trying to decide how to balance the needs of a student body that includes special education students, students on 504 plans, and emergent bilingual students added additional challenges that AI manages. (www.edweek.org)

AI can optimize resources and provide strategic alignment and adaptability to unexpected changes because it can process a level of complexity that considers countless variables: teacher preferences, student elective choices, room specifications, state rules, teacher certifications, class size issues, enrollment numbers both for specific classes and schoolwide, etc. A process like this is nearly impossible manually.

The Stanford Scale Initiative Accelerator for Learning published a 2025 research brief about this entitled The Key Resource of Time: Master Schedules and Effective Allocation of Students and Educators. They describe AI-driven scheduling tools as powerful solutions that “not only reduce the manual workload for administrators but also introduce a data-driven, strategic approach to scheduling, ensuring that student needs, teacher availability, and institutional priorities are balanced more effectively than ever before… By leveraging machine learning algorithms and predictive analytics, AI scheduling platforms can analyze historical enrollment patterns, optimize course placement, and anticipate scheduling conflicts before they arise.” The brief lists concrete benefits:

  • Identifying staffing inefficiencies and potential budget savings. 
  • Creating better instructional delivery for special student populations, especially inclusion settings, to ensure that instructional specialists can focus on their content areas.
  • Enabling academic interventions by grouping students and assigning them to targeted instructional supports such as MTSS [Multi-Tiered System of Supports, a proactive and preventative framework that integrates data and instruction to maximize student success from a strengths-based perspective] and learning acceleration strategies.
  • Supporting strategic priorities by building in professional learning communities or common planning time (e.g. professional development blocks for first-year teachers and common planning periods with their mentor teachers).

It’s time for more districts to take advantage of the very positive outcomes that AI offers, at least in the area of building master schedules. Avoiding human error and dealing with layers of complexity that are challenging to solve manually should compel districts to invest in this process. Ultimately, they will save time and money, allowing them to avoid unnecessary cuts.

In Support of Teachers

I am sitting at a table at Sturdy Shelter Brewing in Batavia for my third book event in two weeks. It’s been nice to sell a few books, but the real value of each event has been meeting people and talking about education.

I particularly treasure conversations with those still in the classroom. I know: teaching is harder than it ever was in my time, but this country depends on these teachers to help prepare our youth for an evermore uncertain future. Each one of them has stories to tell.

At my reading last Sunday night, after I read the opening of my novel about a teacher in Texas who struggles with micromanagement and limits on the history she can include, a current teacher came up to me, eyes moist, to thank me. A history teacher herself, she struggled even here in liberal Illinois. That same night one of the facilitators, a teacher I know and respect, told me how much harder it had gotten. Mental health issues, absenteeism, a lack of cooperation and collaboration, helicopter parents, cheating and misuse of AI – the list of challenges seems pretty overwhelming.

I heard the same issues from teachers who stopped by my table at the local authors event at my public library last weekend. I read an entry from my favorite teacher’s blog where even he, one of the most reflective and committed teachers I know, wrote about burnout and discouragement.

I do indeed feel fortunate to have taught where and when I did. I faced plenty of challenges, but nothing like those crippling too many teachers today. My book events bring me face-to-face with those teachers, and I ache for them.

What does this mean for us as a country? We need to face these challenges head-on. We need to find ways to support teachers who are still deep in the trenches, doing their best to make a difference for their learners. Teachers and students need more than the lip service we freely offer them—they need us to work to change the culture, to provide support services, to make their workload manageable. The future holds further challenge, and our students are ill-prepared for it, our teachers too worn out. We simply can’t afford to wait.

You can make a difference. Learn about your school’s programs. Go to board meetings to support reasonable budgets. Consider volunteering. Ask what the schools need.

I’ve written often about our failure to meet the needs of our students and the cost to their learning.  Now I’m asking my readers to think about how to support teachers who are trying to help those learners. If our teachers are too burned out to prepare our children for the future that awaits them, we’re in even deeper trouble than we thought. All of us have a stake here.

Team Teaching, A Proven Concept

Although some claim that team teaching in American public schools was a response to the Sputnik launch and the need to innovate in education, most credit William Alexander with popularizing the concept. At a 1963 conference at Cornell University, he presented a plan to establish “teams of three to five middle school teachers who would be in charge of team teaching content to large groups of pupils, ranging from 75 to 150.” He foresaw “several pedagogical and intellectual benefits, including the development of dynamic, interactive learning environments; creation of a model for facilitating the teaching of critical thinking within or across disciplines; and establishment of new research ventures and partnerships among faculty.“ Alexander acknowledged that teamed teachers would need to adapt their instructional strategies and course planning in order to collaborate successfully. (www.researchgate.net)

We now have research to support many benefits of team teaching, yet it largely disappeared in the 1970s. Larry Cuban writes, “as a buzzword, team teaching in K-12 classrooms flew like a shooting star across the educational sky in the 1960s and disappeared by the mid-1970s leaving little cosmic dust in its wake.” (larrycuban.wordpress.com)

Why did we let such a promising initiative wither? Many factors may have contributed to its decline, but I can think of four: it’s hard to do well because it requires a learning curve and professional development; other innovative initiatives may have displaced it, there are so many different approaches to teaming, and American education is a remarkably inert institution that resists change.

Why does it matter? Research proves that team teaching improves teacher retention and morale while helping teachers meet the ever-increasing diversity of needs of their students.

An Education Week article says that more than 1,100 schools across 18 states use team teaching models. For example, at a Mesa, Arizona, elementary school, two teachers led a highly interactive fifth grade lesson while maintaining order.  The article posits that team teaching may boost retention “because the team models address some of the most difficult tensions that bedevil the teaching profession: It helps students connect to more adults, protects institutional memory in school buildings, and gives teachers timely support to improve their own craft.” When teachers are asked how to boost their morale, additional staff is second only to pay raises. That’s even more true as teachers overall become younger and less experienced and the gap between highest- and lowest-performing students continues to increase. They cite Arizona State University’s Next Education Workforce, and Opportunity Culture, a model designed by the North Carolina-based nonprofit Public Impact as an effective example. That program offers core-content teachers support staff, including counselors or tutors, and gives those teams more autonomy. Another example: the Ector County district in Odessa, Texas adopted Public Impact’s Opportunity Culture team-teaching model in 2019 to cope with and reduce staff vacancies. It’s working: “vacancies dropped from 350 in 2018-19 to less than 30 in 2024-25, even accounting for pandemic disruptions.” (https://edweek.org)

Research supports these efforts. Huriya Jabbar, an associate professor of education policy at the Rossier School of Education at the University of Southern California, found that “the most effective teaching teams quickly develop collective lesson plans, procedures, and student data. Some teams had well-organized systems for tracking calendars, lesson plans, and modifications they’d made over time.” He acknowledges the barriers to this approach: “For all their purported benefits, teaching teams remain comparatively rare in schools. Logistically, they are a heavy lift: They require extensive and ongoing training for teachers, outreach to parents and community groups, and sometimes even physical changes to classroom layouts.” (Ibid.)

Another Education Week article describes the June 2025 findings of researchers at Arizona State University and the Center on Reinventing Public Education on improved retention of teachers.  “… after controlling for teacher and school characteristics, that the teamed teachers were half as likely to leave their schools as their non-teamed peers.” Teamed teachers felt more autonomy about their pedagogy and were able to be more creative. (https://edweek.org2)

Through surveys, the researchers found the New Education Workforce teachers were more likely than teachers in the district working solo to feel they had a say in education decisions at their school. Teamed teachers were also more likely than solo teachers to feel control over their schedules and able to take creative approaches to instruction. Teachers, both solo and in teams, who reported a stronger sense of autonomy in their teaching were more likely to remain in their schools. That autonomy matters. “The study showed that having clear team support and accountability, coupled with flexibility for teachers within those teams, were associated with the highest teacher retention.” (Ibid.)

A  study, conducted by the Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation at Arizona State University in collaboration with the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE), found multiple benefits to team teaching, including  both improved teacher retention and greater teacher-driven decision-making. (https://www.datiak12.io)

Another initiative, The Next Education Workforce model (NEW) uses eight key elements in their team model: “1) teachers share a roster of students, (2) teachers share multiple learning spaces and move across these spaces throughout the day, (3) teachers have and use team planning time, (4) team members have different roles and responsibilities, (5) teachers adjust their schedule according to the needs of both teachers and students, (6) teachers group and regroup their students based on students’ needs and interests, (7) teachers use data to tailor learning to each student, and (8) teachers provide each student with rigorous learning opportunities.” They assert that this approach allows deeper and more student-centered learning, with improved student and teacher motivation and performance. (www.ascd.org)

NEW already works with 28 districts in a dozen states, where 241 teams of teachers use the ASU model, and in the next two years it will expand team teaching in dozens of new schools in California, Colorado, Michigan and North Dakota. (https://hechingerreport.org)

NEW also offers flexibility instead of a one-size-fits-all model. They support school communities in constructing the model that best fits their needs. (https://www.the74million.org)

I myself had two wonderful team-teaching opportunities that improved my own pedagogy and motivation. When the teacher next door and I both taught Junior Honors English, although our classes met at different times, we planned our lessons together, meeting every few Friday afternoons to do that. We also arranged for interactions among our students, like a joint student-run Medieval Festival to which the entire school was invited. Those experiences nurtured both of us as well as our students. I also had the privilege of actually sharing a classroom and team teaching with the chair of the Special Education department as we mainstreamed a number of kids into our joint American Literature class. Again, I learned so much from my partner, our lessons grew ever more creative, and we all were inspired. I so preferred these experiences to being a solo practitioner!

Why, then, if we know the benefits and believe they outweigh the obstacles and challenges, aren’t we doing this more? This investment would reap huge dividends if only we had the will to make it happen.

Reading Matters

American students can’t read well. That news, supported by data from the National Annual Assessment of Progress, should worry all of us. These test scores, the first since before the pandemic, show a stark decline that had begun even before the pandemic. We can’t blame Covid alone. Students are struggling, and their lack of adequate reading skills may limit their ability to function as adults in our society. This national snapshot cuts “across demographic divides of race, class and sex,” despite progress in the science or early reading teaching. (nytimes.com)

I am both saddened by these findings and concerned about their long-term impact on both students and on society as a whole. The New York Times article cited above acknowledges the likely role of technologies that have replaced reading time, including teens’ use of screen time for social media and videos. I believe the shift from paper to screens, from books to messaging, videos, and chats – that this paradigm shift is indeed one factor.

I do not believe it is the only factor. If we fail to recognize some of the additional forces at play, we will be even less successful at bringing students back to reading. We need to ask ourselves how the following patterns impact this issue:

  • How many kids grow up in a home with books, without adults who read to them?
  • How many kids even see the adults in their lives reading?
  • Given our tendency to overschedule kids with playdates, schooling, organized sports, etc., from a very early age, how many kids have the time and energy to indulge in reading for pleasure?
  • Given the shortened attention spans of kids identified by research, how might we support their making the effort that reading requires?
  • Does increased use of short texts in place of longer works in schools mean that students don’t build the habit of sustained reading?
  • Does the pressure of short, single, right answers in our test-driven curriculum push for superficial focus?
  • How much choice do we allow students in their reading, so that they find something compelling to push them to finish?
  • Given that television shows and movies require less active engagement, what are we doing to show the pay-off of the greater effort that reading requires?
  • Does the overscheduling of our older students, given their involvement in extracurricular activities and/or employment, preclude time for independent reading?

Until we acknowledge the variety of factors at play and find a consensus on how to support reading, we are destined to have a less literate work force and citizenry. That matters. I believe that readers not only find a source of pleasure and relaxation, but they discover a window into other worlds, ways to learn about more than our immediate present, and ways to tackle the big questions like what it means to be a good citizen or a collaborative worker.

There are solutions already available and more that we can generate. In thirty years, Dolly Parton’s amazing Imagination Library program has given over 270 million free, age-appropriate books to families, providing homes without books a shot. Project Head Start, whose funding has been under attack by the current administration, provides reading experiences to preschoolers who may not have them at home. School can reconsider how they structure reading assignments and—perhaps even more important—how they ask students to engage with their reading. Meaningful discussions about big ideas in the text seem far more effective than worksheets and busywork. We can stop using multiple choice and short answer tests that belie the importance of the content of books, instead helping students make meaningful connections. We can consciously teach students to expand their attention span by building it up slowly, incrementally, and purposefully. Our sons went to Montessori schools and a progressive public school, all of which included a period of “silent sustained reading.” Our children grew to love that time and continued to choose to read at home. Schools can also lessen their focus on academic achievement as early as kindergarten and offer more time for less structured play and for free reading. And other educators and parents, wiser than I, can offer additional strategies to help our children read widely and well.

Today we picked up a book on hold at our local library, and we were behind a mom whose toddler was returning a pile of children’s books. I told her about the research and complimented her on raising a reader. He then looked up and said, “I can’t read myself yet. But I’m practicing.”  She thanked us as they walked off hand in hand. Wouldn’t we wish that for every child?

Reading well develops critical thinking skills, grows vocabulary, and makes us better writers. It introduces us to wider worlds and other ways of being. It helps us figure out who we are and what we believe. Why would we settle for less?

A Tribute and an Answer

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My last blog explored why teachers continue to teach despite the challenges and frustrations that too often confront them. A recent loss reminded me of the answer to “why teach?”.

I grew up in part of a New York suburb with a K-8 grade school, Quaker Ridge, though the rest of the community had elementary schools and a shared junior high. I didn’t realize until much later in life how special that experience was, how tight the bonds we formed had been. When I went back to my high school’s 50th reunion, we also held a Quaker Ridge reunion, the highlight of the reunion weekend for me. I loved reconnecting with childhood friends, but some of the magic happened because a teacher beloved by all of us joined us. Nat Sloan was our seventh and eighth grade science teacher, and his passion for both us and for his subject mattered to all of us.

Nat had a particular impact on me because he required us to choose a book from his amply stocked bookshelf, read it, and report back to the class. In seventh grade I chose Patterns of Culture by Ruth Benedict. A well-respected anthropologist, Benedict explained her belief in cultural relativism, which emphasizes understanding behaviors within their cultural contexts rather than through the lens of one’s own cultural biases. She then went on to demonstrate her approach through an in-depth examination of three disparate cultures. Spellbound, I recognized that going steady and girls’ wearing a boys’ ID bracelet were patterns from my culture, not universal patterns. She opened my eyes to a world wider than I’d considered and drove my desire to travel to other cultures and to study anthropology in college.

Nat gave me a different lens to explore the world, and that mattered. It’s no surprise that he was one of two teachers we invited to our wedding. His presence, along with Garnet Almes, an amazing math teacher, mattered. They were the two teachers who did the most to shape my own commitment to teaching, and I was honored to stay connected with both of them. We visited Ms. Almes in Florida before she died, and I maintained email correspondence with Nat after the reunion. He had become a sculptor and we are glass artists, so we had a lot to write about and pictures to share!            

So what does this self-indulgent trip down memory lane have to do with why we teach? My classmate, who is now the mayor of our hometown, emailed us when Nat died last month after reaching 100. The outpouring of love and memories from all of us created a beautiful tribute to the man and his impact on his students. And we were only one class out of many years of classes, no doubt similarly affected by him.

Nat Sloan mattered. Good teaching matters. He and other really impactful teachers live on in the memories of the students they taught. How could anyone ask for a richer life than that?