Author: Nola Jones

Every June, someone opens the QS World University Rankings on a laptop in an administrative office at a university and braces. There is no emotion in the numbers. Scores change. Positions shift. All of a sudden, years’ worth of decisions about research funding, faculty hiring, and policy are condensed into a single worldwide figure. It’s an odd, a little awkward ritual, but every year it is repeated with the same ferocity, the same press releases, and the same mixture of quiet disappointment and pride. The UK-based Quacquarelli Symonds has been compiling the QS World University Rankings since 2004, initially in…

An unusual form of institutional blindness exists that is not caused by ignorance. It stems from priorities—from quietly and covertly determining that some information just doesn’t fit the agenda. It’s difficult to avoid seeing precisely that kind of selective vision in slow motion when observing how the U.S. Department of Agriculture has interacted with international early childhood nutrition frameworks. With contributors from almost 70 countries, the World Organization for Early Childhood Education, or OMEP, has been creating something truly helpful: a resource bank that links early childhood education and sustainable development research, policy, and practice. Nutritional studies pertinent to children…

This past spring, there was a noticeable shift in Texas classrooms. Teachers in San Antonio were the first to notice that students were questioning not just what the AI had said, but also why. Teachers throughout the state are still attempting to determine whether that change occurred as a result of a new law or in spite of the customary opposition to one. Texas has been subtly changing the way its public schools handle artificial intelligence while maintaining the legislative confidence it usually saves for stadium funding and energy policy. After being signed into law in June 2025 and incorporated…

A child leans toward a tablet screen, types something about being confused or afraid of an exam, and then waits. This moment is easy to miss if you’re not paying close attention. The reply is prompt. It has a cozy sound. It makes appropriate word choices. Reassured, the child nods and continues. It’s likely that what happened there felt like a connection. It wasn’t. Researchers have begun to refer to this discrepancy between what seemed real and what actually happened as the “AI empathy gap.” Even though the term has been making the rounds in academic circles and LinkedIn posts…

If you walk into any prekindergarten classroom in Baltimore on a Tuesday morning, you’ll probably see the same thing: a paraprofessional stretched thin across the room, a teacher overseeing far more students than is comfortable, and a quiet tension that everyone in the building seems to have quietly accepted as normal. It’s a staffing issue that didn’t develop overnight and most likely won’t either. However, there is a gradual change in the way Baltimore and Maryland as a whole are considering the origins of their future generation of early childhood educators. The neighborhoods themselves are increasingly the source of the…

Watching the world’s most technologically advanced nation abruptly remove screens from its classrooms is subtly ironic. When you walk into a school in Alabama or Utah today, you’ll notice something almost disorienting: teachers standing at whiteboards once more, younger students working on paper, and children in hallways without phones. It appears to be a step backward. In fact, it could be the opposite. The movement quickly gained significant traction. Twenty-six states had implemented complete cellphone bans in schools by the beginning of 2026. Restrictions have been passed in 37 states and Washington, D.C. The trend continued, and as of right…

When you sit with these numbers long enough, a certain kind of unease sets in. According to a meta-analysis that was published in a peer-reviewed journal, 73% of the 1,088 mandated reporters from twelve different countries—including social workers, educators, and healthcare workers—reported having a bad experience with the mandatory reporting procedure. 73 percent. That number is not marginal. That is, most of the people who have been given the specific responsibility of safeguarding society’s most vulnerable children abandon that duty because they feel harmed by it. On paper, mandatory reporting in early childhood settings has always carried a certain moral…

Imagine a classroom in the United Kingdom. A Playmobil treehouse sits between two kids at a table. They are merely classmates and don’t really know each other. Behind a camera, a researcher silently observes. The kids pick up pieces, put them down, and circle around one another for a while in that somewhat uncomfortable manner that strangers do when they are confined to the same area. Not much takes place. After that, they are given a drawing of a tree trunk and some coloring pens, and they are instructed to construct a treehouse out of it. Almost instantly, something changes.…

You’ll notice something that isn’t immediately apparent in a data set if you walk into any kindergarten classroom in the middle of the morning. In roughly ninety seconds, a four-year-old carefully stacks blocks, bargains with a peer over who gets the red one, and then quietly solves a problem when the tower collapses. It doesn’t appear to be learning. It really is. Although the idea of extending early childhood education to two full years prior to school is not new, the body of evidence in favor of it has significantly increased. More time spent in high-quality early learning programs leaves…

The first thing she saw were the flags outside. Bright against the Arizona sun, LDS imagery is displayed next to an orthodontist’s office in a Mesa strip mall. Next door was a China Palace. And there, tucked away in the middle of everyday business life, was Title of Liberty Academy, a private Mormon K–8 school that, to at least one mother looking for alternatives to public school, seemed to be just what she had been searching for. Her son was enrolled. She began taking money out of his Empowerment Scholarship Account, Arizona’s equivalent of a school voucher that provides families…