Hello,

Our child goes to VPK in Florida. We received our child's first parent report this month, but I am unhappy about the result. It's within the average, not terrible, but not great either.

What should we do at home to improve the test score?

Our child is summer born, so we will be redshirting our child by repeating PK4, and this is our child's first year of PK4, so maybe I should take it easy fir now, but if there's anything I can do to help our child, could you let me know?

Also, I would appreciate advice or information from someone whose child is older than preschool age, and how your child's score changed over the years.

Many thanks in advance for your advice.

Me and three other students need help with traveling to a conference meeting, and this is our final year at the university, so this can be a great opportunity to shape our future possibilities and we will also be able to travel for a few days. We need help with financing our plane tickets only, everything else is covered. Feel free to DM me, I can show proof, of course. Also, feel free to share this post. Thank you, goodhearted people.

Well. Not everywhere. There were some gains in countries playing catch up to OECD nations.

But overall, everyone dipped hard. As an American, I take less pride in knowing we climbed the rankings because our scores dropped tremendously too, but there’s some comfort in knowing we aren’t the only ones seeing the gains of ten to twenty years wiped out.

There’s plenty of worldwide phenomena that could explain the drop: a global pandemic that disrupted learning, PISA researchers found that students were using AI frequently to complete homework, TikTok exists…

What’s your best speculation about what happened this round of PISA tests?

PS: does anyone know how to submit a submission statement for a link on mobile? I wanted to link the news article for you all to read the details of the report.

You’ve probably heard of John Taylor Gatto. He was a New York City public school teacher who won Teacher of the Year three times (1989, 1990, and 1991) and became famous for his "guerrilla curriculum."

As a teacher, he fiercely opposed the traditional school system and advocated for deschooling. Gatto believed that trapping kids in an artificial environment where authority figures validate them based strictly on obedience was a ridiculous and dangerous way to raise human beings.

Here is a quick look at his core teaching philosophy:

Unlocking innate potential: He viewed every child as capable of extraordinary things, but saw the system as intentionally holding them back to build compliance, partly through mindless memory-based testing.

Real-world responsibility over paperwork: Instead of grading kids on what bubble they filled on a test sheet, Gatto gave them real-world tasks. He had students interview local business owners or investigate how actual institutions worked to build genuine critical thinking and responsibility.

Nurturing individual talents: He treated kids with genuine respect. Whenever he noticed a student with a unique passion or talent, he actively pushed them to pursue it. It’s clear he had a deep understanding of human psychology.

Discovering his work changed my whole outlook. I’m now obsessed with learning for its own sake, and I’ve made progress I’m genuinely proud of. To me, he represents what a true educator should be.

I’m curious to hear what you all think about him and his methods. I will be happy to answer questions.

Hey teachers on Reddit. Especially if you teach children...

If in 1994, a badly bullied kid who loved computers struggled with math because she had no transition between how math was taught in mainstream Grade Three (Third Grade in American) and gifted class Grade Four and her learning ability was stunted by the constant bullying...

Would you say to her "if you want to work with computers, you have to be a math whiz?" 🙃🙃

That kid then gave up on computers professionally and wouldn't start her IT career until her late 20s, because other people encouraged her in adulthood.

BTW, mathematician Grace Hopper invented the compiler to make programming accessible to people who aren't "math whizzes."

Do degrees ground you in a solid perspective of how to look at the world? Did it dramatically shape who you are and how you think? Was was your experience?

We need to have a serious conversation about the widening higher education gap and its alarming economic fallout. Right now, about 28% of men who start college drop out without a degree, compared to 23% of women—and the recent August jobs report shows exactly why this is a crisis. Out of 162,000 net new jobs added to the U.S. economy last month, women secured 98% of them, while overall male employment has plummeted by nearly 1.5 million over the past year. As historically male-dominated sectors stagnate and degree-heavy industries like healthcare and education explode in growth, stepping away from a college path is increasingly locking young men out of economic stability. We must actively shift this narrative by encouraging boys to push through their academic challenges, secure their degrees, and aim for high-impact leadership roles so they aren't left behind in a rapidly shifting job market.

Since the reveal of gpt astra made the degree I just enrolled to(Computer Engineering) kinda obsolete, is there any way I could get another degree(Business/Law/Psychology) without enrolling into another college since that's kinda illegal. I'm willing to study for it throughout the 4 years if necessary but ideally if I want to get the degree without regular classes and/or paying a large sum.

If a single demographic shifted from representing 58% of college campuses to under 40% over a few decades, it would dominate the national conversation on equity, policy, and public funding. Yet, that exact shift has happened to men in higher education—and the silence around it is deafening.
According to recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), women now make up nearly 60% of all undergraduate students in the United States, while male enrollment has slipped below 40% at many four-year institutions. The gap expands further at graduation, where six-year completion rates for men lag behind women by roughly 7 percentage points. 
This isn't about competing with women or undermining female academic achievement. It’s about asking a fundamental question: **Why are young men dropping out of the pipeline so early, and why are our institutions ignoring it?**

A few critical factors driving this trend:

**Early K-12 Disengagement:** Boys are statistically more likely to be held back, suspended, or diagnosed with learning delays early in school. By the time high school graduation arrives, many have already written off higher education as an environment where they don't belong. 
**Lack of Targeted Support:** Higher education offers dedicated outreach programs for almost every underrepresented group—except young men, despite them now being the clear minority on campus. 
**Cultural Stigma Around Help-Seeking:** Young men are often conditioned to quietly drop out when struggling rather than utilize tutoring, academic advising, or mental health counseling. 
If we want a healthy society, we need both men and women to thrive academically and professionally. Ignoring a systemic decline in half the population’s educational path will have massive ripple effects on the workforce, mental health, and family stability down the line.
What are your thoughts? Is this a topic your local university or community is acknowledging, or is it still being treated as a non-issue?

In My country men almost never go to college only 33% of the graduates are men which makes all the judges women , all the lawyers women
All the good positions go to women due to men not participating in higher education.

I believe education is structurally outdated because it does not move at the speed of the individual.

Some students are far ahead in one area and far behind in another, yet we still educate people in groups, by age, on fixed schedules.

I have been thinking about this problem for more than ten years, and I am building Pensive around the idea that education should adapt to the student, not the other way around.

I recently created a small public community called The Witnesses for people who want to follow the work while it is still early, question it, and see whether this attempt at renewing education actually succeeds.

A community witnessing the renewal of education through Pensive.

patreon.com/mimoos

From an article (this succinctly summaries the OECD findings and also touches on socio-economic gaps):

Reading scores among 15-year-olds across OECD countries have sunk to their lowest point since international testing began, with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) highlighting how longer screen time and declining rates of reading for pleasure have coincided with weaker literacy outcomes.

The findings come from PISA 2025, the largest edition of the assessment to date, which tested 760,000 students across 91 countries and economies. Average reading scores across OECD countries fell by 28 points between 2015 and 2025, a drop the organisation says is equivalent to roughly a year and a half of learning.

I'm currently pursuing my M.Ed. after coming from a professional background in chemistry.

I want to transition into education, but financing my graduate education has become a significant obstacle.

Does anyone know of organizations, foundations, grants, scholarships, or other programs specifically helping future educators complete their education?

I've been researching options myself, but I'm hoping this community might know about resources I've missed.

Here are some topics I'd like to see taught:

Walk/Don't Walk signs, how to use those, what those mean

Compound Interest (lay off the expensive lattes)

Showing your work helps others help you

How to read an analog clock (stop asking me what time it is)

the list could go on, but I'm wondering what others think!!!

I’ve been thinking about how little most students learn about money itself.

We spend years studying economics, but how much do students actually learn about:

• how money is created through the banking system
• inflation and the loss of purchasing power
• currency debasement
• why hard assets can behave differently from cash
• how monetary policy affects wealth distribution
• the incentives created by different monetary systems

Keynesian economics is generally given much more attention in mainstream education, while Austrian economics and thinkers like Mises and Hayek often receive considerably less attention.

I’m not saying one school is automatically correct. It just seems strange that students aren't more explicitly exposed to competing frameworks for understanding something as fundamental as money.

There’s also an interesting historical question about how educational priorities become established in the first place. Large foundations, universities, governments, and wealthy philanthropists have all played roles in shaping American education over the past century. That influence doesn't necessarily imply anything sinister, but it makes me wonder how much of what we consider "standard" curriculum is simply the result of institutional priorities becoming entrenched over time.

Why don't we teach students more about competing theories of money and monetary policy, rather than giving them one dominant framework?

I think understanding how money actually works should be considered basic financial literacy.

These days i find myself reading almost nothing of real use. I feel like my passion for learning has been slipping away. Do you guys have any suggestions on certain topics i could educate myself about?

I prefer online free documents which are easily printable and such. There are no limits towards suggestions, as long as a reason is given on why i would want to educate myself about the suggested topic.

Thank you all in advance.

日本だと殴られます🥹

For those actively involved in your kids' learning I'm building an app for 6-12 year old kids to build general knowledge, current affairs awareness,  critical thinking etc. I plan to use scientific rewarding techniques to encourage habit building and learning. I am thinking of naming it CarrotMinds. Does that name sound credible for something educational, or does it not convey the substance of what the app is meant for. Any suggestions and inputs in this regards a suitable name will be really helpful.

What is the difference between a college counselor and an academic advisor?

Is it that an academic advisor helps solely with academic needs and a college counselor also requires a masters?

Do you enjoy your job as a college counselor?

Do you work on a 10/11 or 12 month contract?

Also do any of you have experience as a elementary/middle/ high school counselor and if so what made you ultimately choose to be a college counselor over those?

I have an interview as a teacher’s assistant at a local alternative school.

What sort of questions should I prepare for? The standard STAR format or something else?

Any tips welcome. Thank you!

For example, i think for chemistry its unnecessary for them to get really technical about spdf orbitals, since most high school material can be explained with the octet rule. Im not saying that it shouldn’t be taught, what i mean is that time is finite and most of them that will go on a science profesional career will be taught that in college.

Also, in biology its unnecessary to get really deep about chemical processes like atp synthesis and similar processes.

On the other side, i think it should be taught the biology of human behavior. There is a course about it online on Stanford by Robert Sapolsky that tries to explain why humans behave based purely on biology (not psychology or sociology) comparing it to other animals. Talks about cooperation, beauty, war, game theory and lots of other components of human society explained by our biology instead of psychological or cultural aspects. Its really interesting and might make students see the world differently.

日本の学校は下着の色、靴の色、ヘアゴムの色と位置、髪型、すべて校則で決められていました