Key Points

College admissions policy shapes K-12 practice. If colleges continue to privilege course sequences, seat time, and grades, high schools will remain constrained in how far they can move toward competency-based learning.
States and institutions already offer models for change. Wisconsin, Colorado, Indiana, and pilots like CUNY and Michigan Ross show that admissions can incorporate portfolios, demonstrations of learning, and durable skills.

If we could instead orient K-12 education around skill development and application rather than Carnegie Units and grades, we could create a new paradigm for where, when and how students demonstrate college and career readiness. Competency-based education moves schools and systems towards this desirable future that balances knowledge with skills.

Despite tremendous evidence of its potential, efforts to accelerate this shift have been stymied by the tyranny of college admissions requirements and processes. Parents, teachers, administrators and policymakers end up in a quandary. Anyone attempting to shift away from this traditional course sequence is criticized as trying to lock kids out of higher education and we snap back to the way things have always been done.

American Microschools 2026 Sector Analysis [microschoolingcenter.org]

On 06/14/2026, in Alternatives, education, education reform, homeschooling/homeschoolers, K-12 related, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, legislatures / government / legal, parents/guardians, policy, student-related, teachers, trends, United States, youth, by Daniel Christian

American Microschools 2026 Sector Analysis — from microschoolingcenter.org

The National Microschooling Center just published its latest report, the American Microschools 2026 Sector Analysis, it’s most ambitious yet.

This report comprises the most thorough research published to date on microschools in America, examining 1,000 microschools located in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Most are currently operating, with prelaunch microschools as well as those which have closed their doors also included.
…
This 2026 edition of the annual American Microschools Sector Analysis series by the National Microschooling Center includes questions on a number of new topics, including ways microschools are impacted by different regulatory and policy stipulations, specifics of educational, business and operational aspects within the microschooling sector. Other questions revisit topics examined in previous studies, to illuminate trends over time and effects of growth and evolution on the ways microschools operate.

Three items re: AI in our LE’s (involving corporate training, higher ed, and K-12)

On 06/10/2026, in 24x7x365 access, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, attention, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, education, education reform, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, faculty/staff, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, liberal arts, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, training / L&D, United States, universities, youth, by Daniel Christian

Rethinking Learning Design in Elementary Schools — from edcircuit.com
Why K–5 leaders must redesign—not just adopt—technology to restore attention, deepen thinking, and align AI with how children actually learn

Rethinking learning design in elementary schools is critical as screen time and AI reshape attention, thinking, and student engagement.

Designing for Thinking, Not Just Doing
At its core, learning design must shift from task completion to thinking development.

This requires creating environments where students:

Spend time processing ideas
Work through confusion without immediate answers
Build persistence through challenge

It also requires clarity around the role of technology.

Technology should:

Extend thinking
Provide meaningful feedback
Support exploration

It should not:

Replace effort
Short-circuit reasoning
Eliminate productive struggle

The goal is not to reduce technology use.

It is to ensure that students remain the ones doing the thinking.

Should We Integrate AI into Our Teaching?: Evidence-Based Guidelines for Deciding When AI Belongs — from Faculty Focus by Norman Eng, EdD

Four Questions for Deciding Whether to Use AI

Question 1: Will this AI tool help students use, recall, and demonstrate understanding of core disciplinary content?
Question 2: Will this AI tool require students to apply their learning to a new context?
Question 3: Will this AI tool support—not replace—independent, evidence-based reasoning?
Question 4: Will this AI integration preserve meaningful human interaction?

Christian: Could this be a part of our future learning ecosystems?

On 06/09/2026, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, career development, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, CMS/LMS, communities of practice, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, faculty/staff, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, global / globalization, heutagogy, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, informal learning, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, K-12 related, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning hubs & pods & microschooling, learning preferences, learning spaces, liberal arts, library / librarians, lifelong learning, love of learning, microlearning, more voice more choice more control, online learning, online media, passions, personalized/customized learning, platforms, professional development, skills, social media, streams of content, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technologies for your home, training / L&D, United States, user experience (UX), vendors, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

From DSC:
Could this be a part of our future learning ecosystems? Education as a personalized content feed.

Coursera wants users to learn through shorter, faster content — from digitaltrends.com by Moinak Pal
Coursera wants online learning to feel more like TikTok
.

Online learning platform Coursera is taking a page straight out of TikTok’s playbook. The company has launched a new AI-powered feed designed to serve short-form educational content in a scrollable, personalized format, signaling a major shift in how digital learning platforms may try to keep users engaged.

The feature introduces bite-sized video lessons, clips, and explainers curated through artificial intelligence based on a user’s interests, learning habits, career goals, and previous course activity. Instead of committing to hour-long lectures or full certification programs upfront, users can now discover short educational snippets designed to make learning feel more casual, accessible, and addictive.

Users scroll through a feed of short educational videos and AI-curated learning moments covering topics ranging from coding and business to AI, productivity, data science, and personal development.

Pinpoint, Explained | A guide to Google’s free tool, now open to all [Caplan]

On 06/05/2026, in adjunct faculty, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, data related items, digital audio, digital learning, digital video, education, education technology, faculty/staff, Google, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, IT in HE, journalism, K-12 related, languages and translation, learning, learning agents, learning ecosystem, liberal arts, library / librarians, research, teaching & learning, tools, United States, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

Pinpoint, Explained — from wondertools.substack.com by Jeremy Caplan
A guide to Google’s free tool, now open to all

.Jeremy prompted ChatGPT to generate illustrations in his post.

.

Learn about Pinpoint— from support.google.com

Pinpoint is an AI-powered research platform designed to help journalists and academics analyze large collections of documents. With Pinpoint, you can:

Analyze massive collections: Easily search, filter, transcribe and organize thousands of documents, including PDFs, images, and audio files.
Leverage generative AI: Use Gemini’s capabilities to answer research questions together with supporting evidence found in your documents.
Foster collaborative research: share your work with colleagues and tackle large scale projects as a team. You can also publicly share – supporting community-driven research.

For assistance with Pinpoint, please consult our Community Forum or you can contact our support team.

What Michigan schools reveal about reversing chronic absenteeism | Time-intensive home visits show promise [Barshay]

On 06/01/2026, in education, education reform, K-12 related, leadership, learning ecosystem, Michigan, parents/guardians, participation, research, society, strategy, student-related, teachers, United States, youth, by Daniel Christian

What Michigan schools reveal about reversing chronic absenteeism — from hechingerreport.org by Jill Barshay
Time-intensive home visits show promise

Absenteeism is a huge and seemingly intractable problem for the nation’s public schools. And Michigan has one of the worst attendance rates in the country.
…
Yet a new study released in May offers hope. Researchers found that some Michigan schools appear to be substantially better than others at getting students to show up, and identified one intervention — frequent home visits to families whose children are absent from class — that was used more often by schools making a difference.

The findings are a reminder that “best practices” recommendations often overstate what researchers actually know. Schools can make a meaningful difference in attendance, but identifying genuinely successful schools is hard, isolating why they succeed is even harder, and simple solutions rarely hold up under scrutiny.

Absenteeism: When Students Don’t Show Up, Everyone Pays [Perkins]

On 05/31/2026, in education, education reform, K-12 related, parents/guardians, society, student-related, teachers, United States, youth, by Daniel Christian

When Students Don’t Show Up, Everyone Pays — from thelearningcounsel.com by Dr. Atiya Y. Perkins

The imagined student is disengaged, indifferent, choosing video games over algebra. The actual student is frequently exhausted. She may be the oldest child in a household where a parent is ill, which means she is responsible for getting younger siblings fed and out the door before she can even think about her own way to school. He may be managing an untreated health condition because his family cannot afford consistent medical care. They may have moved three times since September and still haven’t fully sorted out transportation to a building they barely feel they belong to.

Toldson’s research documents more than 70 distinct barriers that contribute to chronic absenteeism, and very few of them have anything to do with motivation. Housing instability, food insecurity, unaddressed mental health needs, and unreliable transportation all appear on that list. So does something we rarely discuss openly: the growing number of students who have caregiving responsibilities that would overwhelm even the most capable and supported adults.

Understanding this should fundamentally change how we respond. A court referral does not help a student whose bus route was eliminated. A warning letter does not make a family that moved last month feel more at home. Instead, these warnings and referrals actively damage the relationship between schools and the families we most need to reach, at precisely the moment when trust is the only currency that matters.

Inside the latest global research on school cellphone bans — from hechingerreport.org by Jill Barshay
First wave of studies raises questions about other digital distractions and cellphones at home

But the first wave of rigorous research on those policies — including two major U.S. studies — does not point neatly in one direction. Some studies have found modest academic gains from cellphone restrictions. Others have found little to no effect on test scores, even when student phone use dropped sharply. Some studies suggest benefits for low-achieving students, others for girls, and still others for boys. In some places, attendance or student well-being improved. In others, they didn’t.

The scientific process can be messy. Cultural differences may explain why the bans are more effective in some places than others. But almost any education reform will get different results in different places, even within a single country. And the current confusion may also stem from how difficult it is to study cellphone bans in the real world.

Ideally, researchers would randomly assign some students to surrender their phones while others kept them, and then measure the effect on academic performance — the equivalent of a clinical trial for an education policy. But those experiments are difficult to enforce in schools, and so far only one study, conducted among college students in India, has attempted a randomized controlled trial. It produced a notably strong improvement in course grades for lower achieving students.

Instead, most studies rely on rougher real world comparisons that capture only partial effects of cellphone restrictions.

Deans for Impact Releases New Edition of The Science of Learning — from deansforimpact.org
Second edition of seminal report reflects new research amidst growing momentum for evidence-based instruction in teacher preparation and PK-12.

AUSTIN, Texas (May 19, 2026) – Deans for Impact (DFI) today released the second edition of The Science of Learning, a report translating cognitive-science research into practical implications for teaching. The updated edition includes new research on memory, attention, motivation, and learning misconceptions, offering educators a research-based foundation for understanding how to support durable student learning.

First released in 2015, The Science of Learning is DFI’s most widely-used and cited resource, with more than one million downloads. Since its publication, DFI has supported nearly 300 teacher-preparation programs to make instructional quality a priority in the way teachers are prepared, directly impacting more than 110,000 teachers over the last decade.

The second edition arrives at a moment when more than 40 states have made meaningful investments in strengthening evidence-based instruction, particularly in early literacy, mathematics, and the use of high-quality instructional materials. The science of learning supports future teachers to build a comprehensive foundation for instructional decision-making that cuts across content areas and grade levels.
…

The report has been endorsed by more than 100 field experts and leading organizations across the United States and internationally.

Download the report at deansforimpact.org/thescienceoflearning.

An example excerpt:

“The sad fact is that we don’t teach learners how to be good at learning. Whether K12, higher ed, or organizations, it’s just not there.”

— from Clark Quinn’s posting entitled, Thoughts on meta-coaching!

From DSC:
I agree. We could do a much better job at this.

Three items re: AI in our learning ecosystems

On 05/16/2026, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, adjunct faculty, adult learning, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, bots, career development, change, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, colleges, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, corporate universities / corporate training, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, faculty/staff, game-changing environment, generational differences, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, instructional design, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, IT in HE, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, liberal arts, library / librarians, organizational change, pace of change, skills, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, training / L&D, trends, United States, universities, vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

LinkedIn Grad’s Guide 2026: Starting your career in the AI era — from linkedin.com by Gianna Prudente
To help you head off in the right direction, we’ve identified where those starting their careers are finding opportunity, based on data from millions of LinkedIn member profiles.

While all of this is happening, colleges are still catching up. Many students are graduating without having spent much time learning how AI actually fits into day-to-day work — even as employers seek out those exact skills.

“Colleges are moving into an era of, we’ll let the faculty decide, which leads to a very uneven experience for students because some faculty are really into AI and other faculty are not,” says Jeff Selingo, a higher education strategist. “Employers are the same; they don’t really know how to act around early careers.”

Taken together, new grads are entering a uniquely challenging environment: fewer traditional entry points, slower turnover and a workplace that’s evolving faster than the systems preparing people for it.

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I knew my writing students were using AI. Their confessions led to a powerful teaching moment — from theguardian.com by Micah Nathan
The problem wasn’t just the perfectly polished, yet mediocre prose. It’s what’s lost when we surrender the struggle to translate thought into words

For a few moments, all was quiet except the classroom’s ticking radiators. Then, a teary-eyed confession: one of the ostensible authors said she only used AI because she was scared of looking stupid, of being criticized for bad writing. She said she loved writing stories and hated having used AI. But she couldn’t stop herself, recounting a sequence similar to an addict’s descent: at first she fed her story into AI for a grammar check, it suggested line edits and she accepted, then it asked if she wanted structural edits, then it offered to rewrite the entire piece.

The other would-be author admitted he had never written a short story before and he had an idea but didn’t know where to start. I asked him why he didn’t reach out to me for help. He shrugged.

One of the other students raised her hand, saying she didn’t understand why it was bad for AI to write stories as long as the stories are based on their ideas. More students spoke: one wanted to know how using AI was any different from using a human editor. Another wanted me to answer why, at a university that launched one of the world’s first AI research programs in 1959, were we even having this debate? Isn’t AI meant to make everyone’s life easier? Less stressful? Isn’t the point of AI to free humans from the tedium of rote tasks?

The conversation that followed their confessions was one of the most productive teaching moments of my eight years at MIT. Writing, I told them, isn’t supposed to be easy, and of course it can be tedious but that doesn’t make it rote. Writing isn’t just the production of sentences – it’s the training of endurance by way of sustained attention. It’s a way of learning what one thinks by attempting to say it.

This $10K AI School Promises to Future-Proof Your Career — from builtin.com by Matthew Urwin
Khan Academy, TED and ETS are starting a new program to equip students and professionals with the skills to thrive in an increasingly AI-driven economy. Here’s what you need to know.

Summary: The Khan TED Institute is a higher-education program that will teach students and workers how to use AI through interactive learning. The program’s AI-centric curriculum is an unproven approach, though, casting doubt on whether it will actually improve learning outcomes and career prospects.

Reflections on “Want Students to Build a Healthier Relationship With Technology? Start With The Arts” [Marshall]

On 05/16/2026, in Adobe, Apple, art, communications, communities of practice, content development, aggregation, repositories, creativity, Daniel S. Christian, design, digital audio, digital photography, digital storytelling, digital video, education technology, Emotion, engagement / engaging students, experimentation, faculty/staff, graphics, higher education, homeschooling/homeschoolers, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, instructional design, IT in HE, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, learning preferences, liberal arts, library / librarians, media/film, multimedia, music, new media literacies, online media, presentations, productivity / tips and tricks, professional development, reading, real-world assignments, simulations, skills, STEAM-related, student-related, teachers, teaching & learning, technology (general), tools, United States, universities, vendors, vision/possibilities, web design and production, by Daniel Christian

Want Students to Build a Healthier Relationship With Technology? Start With The Arts — from techlearning.com by Adrianna Marshall
Arts classrooms demonstrate what technology integration at its best can look like

But at a moment defined by rapid AI adoption and ongoing debates about screen time, the argument for protecting and investing in arts education needs to take on a new tone. The arts continue to be one of the most effective places in school for students to build healthier, more intentional relationships with technology.

In short, in the age of AI, we need the arts more than ever.
…
Digital composition software, notation tools, and recording platforms allow students to experiment, revise, and refine their ideas in ways that would have been far more time-consuming a decade ago. Students can layer tracks, hear immediate playback, annotate their own scores, and collaborate across devices. The same is true in other contexts besides music; in visual arts, for instance, a variety of digital drawing and painting platforms enable students to practice with new mediums, styles, and techniques without having to worry about supplies or messes. But in either case, the core intellectual work of looking and listening critically, understanding structure, and making aesthetic choices remains entirely human and part of the learning.

From DSC:
I agree. At one of my previous positions, I spent 10 years supervising a digital studio — helping professors and students use a variety of applications to create things. The applications were from Adobe, Apple, and a variety of smaller vendors. The deliverables could be graphics, edited soundtracks, music, videos, flyers, posters, collages, edited photographs, presentations, websites, and more. I longed for people to discover the power of multimedia to communicate their messages, tell stories, stir emotion, powerfully engage themselves (and others), and unleash their creativity.

There were several obstacles to our digital studio being more impactful at that institution. It was under the IT department, not the academic side of the house. It was in the basement of the library, where few students and faculty traveled. During those years, it was highly uncommon for faculty members to require multimedia-based assignments — so many students had to WANT to develop these skills on their own time. The majority of students didn’t see the value in developing the types of digital skills that we were trying to build…or they didn’t have the time.

Also relevant/see:

Want to boost early literacy skills? Try singing — from hechingerreport.org by Jackie Mader
Experts say music can help prepare children for reading success.

This $10K AI School Promises to Future-Proof Your Career [Urwin]

On 05/12/2026, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, accessibility / UDL, Alternatives, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, collaboration, colleges, communications, communities of practice, community colleges, content development, aggregation, repositories, corporate / business world, cost of getting a degree, dangers of the status quo, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, education, education reform, education technology, emerging technologies, entrepreneurship, experimentation, faculty/staff, Google, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, K-12 related, learning agents, learning ecosystem, Learning Experience Design, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, learning spaces, Microsoft, pace of change, platforms, productivity / tips and tricks, real-world assignments, reinvent, skills, staying relevant, student-related, teaching online, United States, universities, vendors, by Daniel Christian

This $10K AI School Promises to Future-Proof Your Career — from builtin.com by Matthew Urwin
Khan Academy, TED and ETS are starting a new program to equip students and professionals with the skills to thrive in an increasingly AI-driven economy. Here’s what you need to know.

Summary: The Khan TED Institute is a higher-education program that will teach students and workers how to use AI through interactive learning. The program’s AI-centric curriculum is an unproven approach, though, casting doubt on whether it will actually improve learning outcomes and career prospects.

Higher education might be on the verge of a radical overhaul to bring it up to speed in the age of artificial intelligence. At the TED2026 conference, Khan Academy, TED and ETS announced that they’re partnering to establish the Khan TED Institute — a new program that reorients the college curriculum around AI. By joining forces, the education technology trio aims to develop an alternative to traditional universities that better tracks student progress, teaches more relevant skills and provides a more personalized learning experience.

Accessibility is another major tenet of the Khan TED Institute. Its virtual nature allows anyone with an internet connection to participate in the program and makes it easier for students to move at their preferred pace. And because its curriculum prioritizes competency over course credits, advanced learners can complete the program in a shorter period. Time isn’t the only thing students can save on, either: The Institute promises a bachelor’s degree for less than $10,000, offering a much more affordable alternative to the typical four-year degree.

From DSC:
Faculty senates don’t do well with this pace of change. But to their credit, few organizations can begin to deal with this pace of change.

Why Sal Khan’s AI revolution hasn’t happened yet, according to Sal Khan — from chalkbeat.org by Matt Barnum

Three years ago, as Khan Academy founder Sal Khan rolled out an AI-powered tutoring chatbot, he predicted a revolution in learning.

So far, the revolution hasn’t happened, he acknowledges.

“For a lot of students, it was a non-event,” Khan told me recently about his eponymous chatbot, Khanmigo. “They just didn’t use it much.”

Khan gives this analogy: Imagine he walked into a class, sat in the back of the room, and waited for students to seek out help. “Some will; most won’t,” he said. That’s been the experience with AI tutoring, he said. It doesn’t necessarily make students motivated to learn or fill in gaps in knowledge needed to ask questions.

“AI is going to help,” said Khan of this reimagined Khan Academy. “But I think our biggest lever is really investing in the human systems.”

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