Author: Nola Jones

Somewhere in Google’s Sunnyvale headquarters is a conference room that gained some notoriety in April of last year. Workers entered, took a seat, and wouldn’t leave. They weren’t calling for better pay or benefits. They were calling on their employer to cease doing business with a government that they perceived to be carrying out crimes. Trespassing charges were brought against nine of them. Twenty-eight were let go. Eventually, the figure reached fifty. Even by the increasingly turbulent standards of Silicon Valley, it’s difficult to ignore how unusual that is. One of the most contentious business agreements in recent memory is…

Around the second week of CS50’s Introduction to Artificial Intelligence with Python, things start to feel less abstract. You’re looking at an A* search algorithm on your screen when all of a sudden you realize that this is the same logic that most likely instructed your maps app to stay off the highway this morning. Over 1.6 million enrolled students have reportedly experienced that feeling, which is equal parts strange and electric, thanks to Harvard’s most ambitious online AI program. This course has accumulated gravity so subtly that it’s difficult to ignore. No big-budget advertising campaign or celebrity endorsements. David…

The closure of Drumduan School has a subtle, devastating quality. The slow, sinking kind that occurs when something truly rare vanishes from the world without enough people noticing in time, rather than the dramatic, headline-grabbing devastation of a scandal or an abrupt collapse. Drumduan was never your average school, perched above Forres on the Moray Coast in the kind of northeastern Scotland that gives you the impression that the wind has opinions. No tests. No uniforms. No desperate attempt to improve scores on standardized tests. For forty years, the tiny Steiner Waldorf school nestled into Drumduan House drew families who,…

Dabo Swinney has never been one to tuck his thoughts away in his back pocket. The head coach of Clemson, who has won two national titles and spent decades watching from grass fields to NIL battlegrounds, has witnessed college football change into something he hardly recognizes. And lately, he’s been expressing this clearly, loudly, and with such specificity that it’s difficult to write him off as just another traditional coach who opposes change. In a recent conversation with Chris Low of On3 Sports, his frustration erupted, and the quote that emerged was remarkably clear. “The only thing worse than having…

You’ll notice something subtly strange if you stroll through the corridors of the majority of American community colleges today. For the early summer, the staff is busier than anticipated. Advisors are gathered around bulky policy documents. Marketing teams are making quick films, carefully selecting words, and steering clear of anything that sounds overly scholarly. There’s a sense of urgency, but to be honest, there’s also some confusion. The cause is a change in policy that hasn’t yet gained widespread recognition. Americans who wish to enroll in short-term job training programs—not four-year degrees or even two-year associate programs—will have access to…

This week, a Catholic school in Evergreen Park, Illinois, made a covert announcement that it will not be reopening in the fall. No grandiose press conference. No forum for the community. Families who had spent years—some of them their entire childhoods—inside those walls received a letter on Monday morning. After the 2026–2027 school year never starts, Queen of Martyrs School, which has been in operation since the 1950s at 3550 West 103rd Street, will permanently close. Losing a local institution causes a specific kind of grief. The kind of slow, resigned grief that comes after you’ve suspected the conclusion for…

American education reform is plagued by a sense of déjà vu. Somewhere, a teacher discovers something amazing, such as a novel strategy for keeping struggling ninth-graders interested in algebra or a reading strategy that reaches children who had virtually vanished into their own apathy. Word gets around a bit. A principal notices. Perhaps a story appears in the local newspaper. The thought then silently fades away. The instructor steps down. Districts are moved by the principal. The process never extends beyond the corridor. This is not an accident that happened at random. According to recent research from Stanford’s Hoover Institution,…

When Jonathan Vasquez announced that he would be leaving the Little Lake City School District at some point during the summer, it appeared to be a low-key, planned departure—the kind of administrative change that hardly ever makes the local press. In any case, that was the plan. The plan was entirely altered by the end of April. In the midst of a teachers’ strike that had already taken up almost two weeks of the academic year and showed no signs of abating, Vasquez rescheduled his departure for Monday, April 28. It’s difficult to ignore the timing. After 94% of union…

Teachers carry around a certain kind of frustration. Something more subdued, almost philosophical, rather than the kind that results from challenging pupils or unrealistic schedules, though those are real enough. It’s the sensation of having discovered something that actually works, seeing how your students react in ways that even surprise you, and then realizing that learning ends as soon as it leaves your classroom. It doesn’t go anywhere. No one is able to scale it. It is absorbed by the system in the same way that sand absorbs water. Hoover Institution researchers have been grappling with that issue for some…

The phrase “We just don’t have the data” has been a recurring theme in American education policy hearings for decades. In Senate subcommittees, it is stated. In think tank panels, it is stated. Every time someone advocates for increased federal funding for early childhood education and care, this statement is made. The implication is always the same: ambitious policy is a leap of faith that no one in Washington is willing to take in the absence of solid, globally comparable evidence. The data is now arriving, which is a recent change that has happened quietly and without much fanfare. And…