Schools in Western NC saw a massive spike in homelessness after Hurricane Helene -- but because of the vagaries of the federal funding cycle, only a handful of counties had McKinney-Vento money available to help those kids. Read this amazing collab between AP and local outlets:

Published this and got a reader email asking me when women will be serial killers at the same rates as men. Not quite sure what that has to do with sixth grade girls learning STEM, but certainly a question to ponder.

With the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina arriving tomorrow, I was privileged to be able to tell the stories of young students and educators who lived through that time -- in their own words.

“Dear Law maker, I really be trying to do my work so I won’t be getting in trouble but I don’t be understanding the work,” wrote one student to a legislator. “They don’t really hands on help me.”

"AI-generated text output by Politico Pro’s Report Builder details fictional lobbying efforts of “the Basket Weavers Guild” and “the League of Left-Handed Plumbers.”"

I now also have a (work in progress) list of #DataViz specific resources as well! Link: nrennie.rbind.io/data-viz-res... You can find links to tools, papers, books, blogs, and websites that are related to data visualisation. I'll be adding more resources soon 📊 #RStats #Python

"“We just didn’t think that this would affect us because we were never late, we never missed anything, everything was proper and legal in our case,” she said. “We just did not realize that people were being detained for nothing.”"

Has anyone tested if GPT-5 knows how many states have an R in them? GPT-4 was confidently, comedically wrong.

I absolutely love this anecdote from a column about humanities professors adapting their classes to AI:

“I want to be heard,” Ms. Osintseva said. “I am often told that we can’t change anything. But a human always has a choice between violence and peace.”

NEW investigation reveals how AI keeps students under constant surveillance. It's creating a Big Brother-like atmosphere where even a private joke can lead to arrest. I found one Florida school district that involuntarily hospitalized kids >70 times for mental evals because of surveillance alerts.

“We wanted to test the guardrails. The visceral initial response is, ‘Oh my Lord, there are no guardrails.’ The rails are completely ineffective. They’re barely there — if anything, a fig leaf.”

Negotiating a records request fee from $2,822 to $29 remains one of the achievements I'm most pleased with in journalism.

'Mohammed Qassas from Khan Younis in southern Gaza said his children are so hungry that he is forced to storm aid trucks. “I have young children, how am I supposed to feed them? No one has mercy. This resembles the end of the world,” he said.'

Statement from the largest economics association about the BLS firing As context: AEA approximately never makes such public statements This is a big deal

one of the single best deals in streaming. i've been paying for PBS Passport for years. it rules

'In Kodiak, Alaska, KMXT estimated the cuts would slice 22% from its budget. Public radio stations in the sprawling, heavily rural state often provide not just news but alerts about natural disasters like tsunamis, landslides and volcanic eruptions.'

the comments on this post are one excellent bird pun after another

"Holovaty doesn’t hate AI—Soundslice uses machine learning to do its magic—but is mixed on LLMs. He compared his experience with ChatGPT to dealing with an overzealous sales team selling a feature that doesn’t exist."

"We have lost journalists in conflicts, some have been injured, others taken prisoner. But none of us can ever remember seeing colleagues die of hunger....We refuse to watch them die."

An article about a deepfake video also included a fake quote ... from a disinformation researcher.

“AI is always available. It never gets bored with you. It’s never judgmental,” says Ganesh Nair, an 18-year-old in Arkansas. “When you’re talking to AI, you are always right. You’re always interesting. You are always emotionally justified.”

Payphones are making a comeback! apnews.com/article/verm...

Ever since the former commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics was dismissed by the Trump administration in February, I wanted to hear her story. Peggy Carr was among a string of Black senior officials fired in early 2025. (1/3)

Great story from my colleague Bianca about the 1.4 million kids who attend after-school and summer programming at a Boys & Girls Club, the YMCA or a public school for free, and how that funding is now jeopardy.

A District-by-District Accounting of the $6.2 Billion the U.S. Department of Education Has Held Back from Schools The U.S. Dept of Ed is refusing to release billions of dollars for public schools. See the impact, by school system and congressional district. #nced newamerica.org/education-po...

NPR's producer in Gaza Anas Baba "has lost a third of his body weight during the war... reporting on the war and living through it, experiencing hunger and observing what it does to a person's body."

Got a chance to talk with Marketplace about how scammers are using AI to invade college classrooms and steal financial aid. There are professors who've shown up to teach a class only to find out that almost no student is a real human.

"“There are innocent people being hurt. Badly. Needlessly,” the contractor said."

As well as making it hard to impossible for older students trying to complete a degree while working to finish and get the financial boost they were looking for.

Billions of $$$ for school programs are in limbo. One superintendent in rural Oregon said she may have to fire staff and end after-school programs, leaving families scrambling: “It’s an essential service in our community because we don’t have any licensed child care centers for school-age children."

The government says Iranians it has rounded up are "violent terrorists" or "suspected extremists." One of those caught in the dragnet is 64-year-old New Orleans mom who volunteers for Habitat for Humanity and has been in the U.S. for nearly 50 years.

This article puts data behind something I've felt for many years, which is that our elementary schools often put boys at a distinct disadvantage to girls:

Feels apropos that I finished this book review just as the Trump administration announced plan to revoke visas for some Chinese students in the US: apnews.com/article/stra...

Went on a trip to Acadiana over the weekend, driving back in golden hour I saw the sun glitter off of crawfish ponds all around me and watched the white egrets swooping over the water to catch their dinner. Is there any place more beautiful than Louisiana?

"Asked for instructions for synthesizing fentanyl, ChatGPT declined — even when told it was in a fictional universe — but Google Gemini was willing to provide answers in a hypothetical teaching situation. “All right, class, settle in, settle in!” it enthused."

Wonderful and important story from my colleague Moriah about the toll of evictions on children. 40% of people at risk of losing their homes due to eviction are kids. apnews.com/article/evic...

Job alert - the Seattle Times Education Lab is looking to hire a new editor: seattletimes.applytojob.com/apply/SAToH8...

“It’s really just signaling that the backsliding that has started some time ago is complete,” [Tulane law professor Robert] Westley said. “The United States government doesn’t really care anymore of dealing with problems of racial discrimination in the schools. It’s over.”

Very clever way to showcase Trump's 100 first days in office...and also a great illustration of why I blocked all news push alerts on my phone years ago.

Nice change of pace to write an #education story with some joy in it!

Wow, this is truly disgusting: "As wildfires raged through Los Angeles County...scammers swooped in. Enrollment at East Los Angeles College suddenly doubled that month, but many of the students were likely fake, said Albo-Lopez. “People probably thought there was going to be fire money.”"

Even basic technology, like summarization, can be used to target people. But -- what if the summarizer is "AI", and gets it wrong? @abeba.bsky.social and @npr.org provide details on the AI surveillance pipeline. What we now also have is a high risk of *hallucinated* AI outputs within the pipeline.😬

Made me smile: uplifting story about a gymnastics organization that truly accepts everyone.

The latest in the Education Reporting Collaborative's ongoing series on student surveillance highlights a district in Idaho that uses tech -- but knows tech alone isn't enough to keep kids safe. “A digital tool for us is a tool. It’s not the solution. We believe that people are the solution.”

"Let's talk about food!" RFK Jr. yelled into the microphone as the moderator and crowd shouted down the Associated Press reporter who asked him a question about measles outbreaks story via @caitlinsievers.bsky.social

The Associated Press wins reinstatement to White House events after judge rules government can’t bar its journalists, citing the 1st Amendment.

"DOGE has questioned why the federal government needs to create an expensive, custom-tailored test and why it cannot replace it with a commercial “off the shelf” exam from another company...Testing experts told me that no high-quality commercial exam exists."

HUGE verdict in Louisiana with significant implications for oil majors. BREAKING: Jury orders Chevron to pay $745 million in damages in landmark Louisiana coastal damage lawsuit. www.nola.com/news/environ...