Author: Nola Jones

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…

After child research conferences, there’s a certain irony: rooms full of adults discussing what kids need, how kids feel, and what kids can do, with hardly any kids present. This year, thousands of researchers, educators, and policy advocates are traveling to Poznań because of this tension, bringing with them an almost embarrassingly long-overdue question. Are we really paying attention to kids? not seeking their advice. not looking at them through the glass. truly paying attention. Without much input from kids themselves, the academic community has spent generations creating sophisticated frameworks around kids. Clinical observations, experimental controls, and parent-reported measures were…

One type of influence is one that doesn’t make an announcement. It rarely appears in conference keynotes, doesn’t trend on social media, and doesn’t receive breathless coverage in the tech press. It simply arrives in inboxes, typically on Tuesdays, and is read by those who truly influence the creation and dissemination of knowledge. That’s essentially how Elsevier’s Future Ready newsletter has been functioning, and it’s important to consider whether the academic community as a whole is paying enough attention. The focus of the April 2026 issue was the validity of science itself, which seems almost illogical for a major publishing…

Most parents will recognize this scene. A five-year-old is sitting at the kitchen table, lip trembling, staring at a worksheet about letter formation at 6:30 p.m. Dinner is on the stove, somewhere between warm and cold. The parent lingers, attempting to sound supportive. The youngster is worn out. They both don’t want to be there. As it happens, none of it may have been worthwhile in the first place. Teachers and parents are becoming increasingly uneasy due to a growing body of research showing that structured homework-style assignments given to kids before the age of six not only don’t improve…

On any given Tuesday morning, you might notice something in a well-funded Morris County school that would have seemed almost unreal ten years ago. Students are using real-time adaptive learning platforms that change the lesson on the spot and provide immediate feedback on a math concept a child is having trouble with. The instructor is close by, circling and posing more challenging questions rather than giving a lecture. The type of classroom is different. The contrast is startling in ways that are hard to describe when you drive forty minutes east into Newark or Paterson. Theoretically, the technology is also…