Knowledge about how students learn, particularly during the adolescent years, has grown dramatically recently, providing the opportunity to reorient the traditional, commonsense, but often incorrect approach to instruction to one based on a scientific understanding of what actually happens in and with the brain during learning.

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Updated to include the results of the Loudoun County decision.

Although it has been more than 60 years since Brown v. Board of Education, the country’s schools are still considered to be separate and unequal, reports Education Dive. Public schools are more segregated now than in the 1970s, the article points out, with more than 30 percent of the nation’s African American and Latino population attending schools that are 90 percent non-white.

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Former U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan continues to say it loud and clear—the time is now to invest in programs for traditionally underserved students. Recently, Duncan announced that he will continue to advocate on behalf of traditionally underserved students in Chicago as a managing partner for the Emerson Collective, a philanthropy and advocacy organization focused on education, immigration, and justice. He will join a group of individuals eager to strengthen schools for students and unlock their human potential. At a time when students of color make up more than half of the nation’s K–12 population, Duncan’s upcoming work underscores the need to ensure that all students succeed and to provide opportunities for youth who are at risk of leaving the K–12 system without a high school diploma.

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This week in San Diego educators, policy makers, funders, researchers, and others gathered for the Deeper Learning 2016 Conference, focused on creating more opportunities for students to learn deeply. The three-day event, which finishes up today, features deep dives, interactive workshops, and opportunities to create new ideas to implement and scale deeper learning.

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“What good is technology if teachers and students don’t have access to it?” asks two education technology companies, Chalkup a next-generation learning management system, and Quill, a free literacy tool for middle and high school students, in a piece on Teach Thought. As edtech conversations become more focused on the issue of access, the article takes the perspective of what edtech companies can do to increase digital access and equity across the country.

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In New York, a new study shows that improvements in school climate can be linked to the equivalent of over a month of extra math instruction and reduction in teacher turnover by 25 percent in some cases, reports Chalkbeat New York. The new study “could help shift the debate about what factors are most important in boosting student achievement,” the article says. According to the report, individual teacher effectiveness is a key element to improving school climate, however other factors, including disciplinary code, could thwart teachers’ efforts.

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Today marks the second day of the negotiated rulemaking process for the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), where a committee of educators, parents, civil rights activists, paraprofessionals, business leaders, and others are meeting at the U.S. Department of Education (ED) to determine the regulations for the new education law. This week the committee is hashing out regulations in two areas: assessments and supplement-not-supplant (how states and districts spend their own funds in relation to federal money). Learn more about the background on regulations and the negotiators here.

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NPRed reporter Anya Kamenetz explores what artificial intelligence (AI) could mean for education, diving into the potential benefits of “computer systems that ‘learn.’”

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It’s commonplace these days to engage in a conversation where a question comes up that no one can answer. But unlike days past, the solution no longer is to get in the car, go to the library, and consult the set of encyclopedias on the bookshelf. Today, more often than not, people look the question up at home on the internet. But for far too many low-income families across the country, home internet access is not affordable. According to a report from the Pew Research Center, low-income households with children are four times more likely not to have broadband than their middle- or upper-income counterparts.[1] This lack of high-speed access to the unlimited information and enrichment that the internet provides contributes to disparities in learning opportunities between students from low-income families and their peers.

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New analysis shows African American students are four times as likely to be suspended from charter schools as their white peers. The New York Times reports on the findings of this new research, which also shows that in charter schools students with disabilities are suspended at two to three times the rate of nondisabled students. The research, conducted by the Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the UCLA Civil Rights Project, is a first-ever analysis of school discipline records from the more than 5,250 charter schools in the United States.

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