What happened to learning as a national priority? For decades, both Republicans and Democrats strove to be seen as champions of student achievement. Politicians believed pushing for stronger reading and math skills wasn’t just a responsibility, it was potentially a winning electoral strategy. At the moment, though, it seems as though neither party, nor even…
Donald Trump is the face of these cuts, but the cruelty of his administration is not the only story. After leaping upward in the 2000s, global giving for health grew very slowly through the 2010s. The culture of philanthropy has changed somewhat, too, with the age of the Giving Pledge — in which hundreds of…
Joshua Goodman, an associate professor of education and economics at Boston University, found a similarly striking effect at the college level. Goodman looked at a data set of students whose SAT scores were right on the margin of a cutoff point established for admission to what he called “target colleges.” The candidates were essentially equivalent,…
Google plans to roll out its Gemini artificial intelligence chatbot next week for children under 13 who have parent-managed Google accounts, as tech companies vie to attract young users with A.I. products. “Gemini Apps will soon be available for your child,” the company said in an email this week to the parent of an 8-year-old….
Stock market gyrations. Inflation. Layoffs of federal workers. A possible recession. Children may overhear their parents talking about these things and not fully understand what’s going on or how it may affect their family’s finances. But if the children have questions, parents should be ready to talk, experts say. “Parents are the biggest influence on…
For decades, politicians have cast education as a great equalizer and cornerstone of a thriving society. But in New York City’s competitive mayoral race, it is attracting scant attention. With less than nine weeks until the Democratic primary, none of the major candidates has released a plan centered solely on elementary and secondary education. Across…
This article is part of our Museums special section about how artists and institutions are adapting to changing times. Surrounded by a group of 10th graders, Alex Asal, a museum educator at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia, read aloud from three school lunch menus. She asked the students to raise their hands for which…
The percentage of American children estimated to have autism spectrum disorder increased in 2022, continuing a long-running trend, according to data released on Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among 8-year-olds, one in 31 were found to have autism in 2022, compared with 1 in 36 in 2020. That rate is nearly…
Emboldened by President Trump, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary on Monday escalated his culture war against what he calls “gender madness,” after his governing party voted to amend the Constitution to mandate that all Hungarians are either male or female. The amendment proposed by the government was endorsed by Parliament, where the prime minister’s…
During his Senate confirmation hearings to be health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. presented himself as a supporter of vaccines. But in office, he and the agencies he leads have taken far-reaching, sometimes subtle steps to undermine confidence in vaccine efficacy and safety. The National Institutes of Health halted funding for researchers who study vaccine…