Author: Nelson Rosario

When it opened in the fall of 1962, Hamilton High School in Sussex, Wisconsin, had students from Pewaukee, Hartland, Germantown, and even some parts of Wauwatosa. This seemed like an absurdly large area. The building was brand new and was named for Alexander Hamilton, who was one of the most complicated people in American history. It is hard to say if that choice was symbolic or just based on what was best. But after 60 years, the school has become something the original builders probably didn’t have in mind: a highly regarded institution with robotics teams that win regionals, a…

The news came with the kind of language that makes press releases feel happy. “Starting early makes a difference,” said BlackRock Foundation President Claire Chamberlain. She’s right, too. But there is something important to think about here: the world’s largest asset manager, a company that is in charge of about $10 trillion in assets, just sent $586,00 to 586 children of Pittsburgh firefighters to start college savings accounts. It’s a really helpful thing. It’s also a very planned one. The mechanics are pretty easy to understand. Through a partnership with The Pittsburgh Foundation and the Pennsylvania Treasury Department, BlackRock put…

There’s something quietly important about a book for kids. Not the ones that look nice on a shelf, but the ones that are given to a child, opened, pointed out, and read out loud in a voice that sounds like home. In 2021, OMEP Aotearoa New Zealand made sure that every early childhood center in the country had one of those books. The bilingual book was called For Each and Every Child: He Taonga Tonu te Tamariki. It was based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which says that children have certain rights. It’s interesting that…

A lot of the important work that some groups do is done in rooms that not many people know about. One of them is OMEP Argentina, which is the country branch of the World Organization for Early Childhood Education. It’s not as well known as a big multilateral organization and doesn’t have as much money as a big development agency. That being said, it has credibility that was built up slowly over many years and is ready to show up when real decisions need to be made. OMEP Argentina joined the Advisory Council of the UN’s SDG Fund program for…

People who work with young children often pay attention when Ingrid Pramling Samuelsson talks. She has had a big impact on how people in the Nordic countries think about preschool learning, play, and child development for many years, and not just in Scandinavia. It wasn’t just another interview when she went on a podcast to talk about the role of nature and risk in early education. For many practitioners, it was more like finally getting something straight. A question that researchers and teachers have been debating for years came up in the conversation: how far should adults stand back when…

Those who work with young children and have seen this change happen in real time will remember a certain moment. Norwegian kindergarten kids aged four were asked to draw and play with adult supervision to show what they would like to see more of in their day. Almost all of them said spending time outside, telling stories, and making things with their hands. Their teachers knew this already. But the fact that they were asked in a formal, planned way changed how the school planned its week. In some ways, that small moment is a microcosm of what about 70…

A group of Stanford researchers got together a year ago and made their predictions. Not the hyped-up kind you see in tech news stories, but the careful, slightly doubtful kind that academics make when they’re keeping a close eye on an industry and starting to see cracks. It’s time to see how that prediction holds up now that 2026 has arrived. It turns out pretty well. Sometimes too well for comfort. Stanford HAI’s main idea for its 2026 predictions was simple: the time of AI promotion is ending and a time of evaluation is beginning. Rather than “look what it…

It happens all of a sudden. As summer approaches, the chaos of the school year fades into memory. Then, sometime between going to the store and Tuesday night, a parent in Savannah realizes they have no idea which school their child is supposed to walk into this September. Yes, that is a true statement. The Savannah-Chatham County Public School System quietly approved changes to attendance boundaries for several schools in Western Chatham County and the Eastern Corridor after a vote in February. The changes will start with the 2026–27 school year, but not all families know about them yet. New…

It’s hard not to think about how far back the real problem goes when you walk through any neighborhood school that isn’t getting enough money. The paint is peeling, the classrooms are overcrowded, and teachers are trying to make every dollar count. Not when kids first walk through those doors at age six. Not even when they are four years old and some are lucky enough to get into preschool. Researchers have been saying for decades that birth is the real beginning. Nobel Prize-winning economist James Heckman at the University of Chicago has spent much of his career making a…

In most policy debates, someone finally says the quiet part out loud at some point. At that point in Manitoba, Premier Wab Kinew told reporters straight out that people have become “laissez-faire” with social media and that this had to stop. Do not soften. Not keep the edges in check. Don’t go. From now on, schools in Manitoba will be the first places in Canada where kids under 16 are not allowed to use social media or AI chatbots like ChatGPT. The news hit with the weight that makes neighboring governments very interested in surveys and consultations all of a…