This Week with EdSurge

What does it actually take to support the adults who shape our youngest learners? Nicol Russell, chief academic officer at Teaching Strategies, argues that early educators deserve the same intentional investment as engineers, not treatment as replaceable hires. Dr. Nneka McGee, founder of Muon Global, brings that same philosophy to how five year olds encounter AI, starting with conversation instead of screens. Both guests land on the same idea from different angles: good tools fail without good follow-through.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

• Nicol Russell points to a study out of NIEER at Rutgers that found teacher retention increased 23 percentage points when curriculum, assessment, and coaching functioned as one connected system rather than separate tools.
• Russell draws a line between teacher exhaustion and burnout, and she recommends that program leaders protect a set block of time each week where teachers have complete control over how it is used.
• Dr. Nneka McGee led a session at ISTELive that pairs Play-Doh with generative AI, using the activity to teach young learners about anthropomorphism while building creative thinking and questioning skills.
• McGee recommends introducing AI to young children through conversation rather than devices, citing both her own research on early learner readiness and guardrails like COPPA that already limit generative AI use for this age group.

STORIES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Story 1

We Talk About Whole Children. What About Whole Educators? by Nicol Russell

Story 2

AI for Young Learners (Jump Start Guide) by Nneka McGee

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HOST AND CONTRIBUTORS

Host: Ira Apfel

Featuring:

• Nicol Russell, Chief Academic Officer, Teaching Strategies
• Dr. Nneka McGee, Founder, Muon Global

Today on This Week with EdSurge, we look at AI policy from two very different vantage points. One guest spent a year coding AI policy from more than 100 school districts across the country. The other helped write her own district's policy from the ground up. Listen as they both explore what happens when a policy leaves the page and is applied in an actual classroom.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

• District AI policies fall into five levels ranging from actively promoting AI to outright prohibition, and Jody Britten found that 44.3 percent of the 122 districts she studied land in the conditional, teacher-directed middle level.
• Only 3.3 percent of districts studied sit at Level 1, actively promoting AI with equity built into the design, while nearly a quarter restrict or ban AI outright.
• Most districts studied operate in states with official AI guidance, yet only 15.6 percent of those districts actually reference that guidance in their own policy.
• Tambra Clark found that writing her own district's AI governance policy in Birmingham required retraining her committee first, because knowledge in the room was too uneven to write a single line.

STORIES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Story 1

Study: The National AI Policy Landscape in K-12 Education by Jody Britten

AI School Policy Database

Story 2

Learn about the Voices of Change Fellowship

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HOST AND CONTRIBUTORS

Host: Ira Apfel

Featuring:

• Jody Britten, Interim CEO, AI and Education Studio
• Tambra Clark, Technology Integration Facilitator, Birmingham City Schools

This week, two educators arrive at the same question from very different directions. Nathan Kraai, Director of Innovation and Design Thinking at The Fenn School, explains what a trip to the record store taught him about artificial intelligence and learning. Court Shuller, a middle school English teacher and EdSurge Voices of Change fellow, joins from ISTELive in Orlando to talk about what their classroom has already decided about AI. Together, they ask what should still take real effort when a shortcut is only a click away.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

• Nathan Kraai connects the resurgence of vinyl records to what he calls a signal about how people are actually responding to AI, drawing on Jane McGonigal's trends versus signals framework from her book Imaginable.
• Nathan also explains why watching 9th graders wrestle with capstone speeches, despite having AI tools that could draft a polished version in seconds, left him hopeful rather than worried.
• Court Shuller, a National Board Certified educator and reading specialist, discusses how their district in New Jersey has responded to AI by returning to pencil and paper.
• Both guests weigh in on what students should still be required to do themselves.

STORIES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

How a Vinyl Record Resurgence Helped Me Understand the Future of AI in Education by Nathan Kraai

We Must Stop Using AI to ‘Level-Down’ Our Students by Court Shuller

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HOST AND CONTRIBUTORS

Host: Ira Apfel

Featuring:

• Nathan Kraai, Director of Innovation and Design Thinking, The Fenn School
• Court Shuller, Middle School English Teacher and Reading Specialist

Every few months, another headline declares the college degree dead. This Week with EdSurge puts that claim to the test with two guests defending something slow against something fast. Rita Finkel of the Armory Foundation argues that a four-year degree still holds value at a moment when artificial intelligence can produce a credential adjacent skill in minutes. Then Cobretti Williams of the EdSurge Voices of Change Fellowship makes a similar case for writing, where an essay can take months to draft even though AI could produce one in eight seconds. Both guests land on the same idea: skip the time, and you skip the point.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

• Bachelor's degree holders earned a median of $81,800 in 2024, compared to $50,600 for high school graduates, a gap of 62%, according to the College Board's Education Pays 2026 report.
• From 2000 to 2025, workers with only a high school diploma consistently faced unemployment rates at least 2.3 percentage points higher than college graduates, according to a St. Louis Fed analysis.
• A McKinsey survey of more than 3,000 employers found that skills such as critical thinking and judgment remain in high demand from employers even as AI adoption grows.
• Cobretti Williams describes how the EdSurge Voices of Change Fellowship helps teachers develop their writing across multiple drafts, arguing that the growth between a fellow’s first and fourth essay only comes from doing the work yourself.

STORIES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

Why College Degrees Matter in the Age of AI by Rita Finkel

EdSurge Voices of Change Writing Fellowship by EdSurge, featuring Cobretti Williams

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HOST AND CONTRIBUTORS

Host: Ira Apfel

Featuring:

• Rita Finkel, Co-President, Armory Foundation
• Cobretti Williams, Editor, EdSurge Voices of Change Fellowship

Microsoft just released the third edition of its global AI in Education report, and the numbers raise more questions than they answer. Ira Apfel sits down with Pat Yongpradit, General Manager of Global Education and Workforce Policy at Microsoft, on the floor at the ISTELive and ASCD Annual in Orlando. They dig into the delta between daily use and overall adoption of AI, a sharp drop in student optimism, and a persistent training divide between what leaders believe and what teachers and students actually experience. The conversation also turns to academic integrity and where the policy backlash against AI in schools may be headed next.

• Daily AI use lags far behind overall adoption, with just 33 percent of educators and 27 percent of students using it every day despite nine in ten having tried it.
• Student optimism about AI dropped 21 points in a single year, a shift Pat links to a predictable trough in the technology adoption curve.
• Three out of four students and half of educators report no formal AI training, even though seven in ten leaders believe their people are trained.
• Yongpradit explains why academic integrity worries students and educators for opposite reasons, and what that means for how schools should write AI guidance.

2026 AI in Education Report, Published by Microsoft

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Host: Ira Apfel

Featuring: Pat Yongpradit, General Manager of Global Education and Workforce Policy, Microsoft

Ira Apfel wraps up a whirlwind week at ISTELive 26 in Orlando with Sarah McKibben, Editor-in-Chief of EdSurge. Together they unpack the buzziest ideas to come out of the conference, including why so many educators are pushing back on AI bans, and what one surprising theory about AI slop means for the future of student writing. From burnout to breakthroughs, this recap captures everything that stuck with them once the convention center emptied out.

• Why current education leaders believe relational intelligence could become education’s most valuable currency in the age of AI.
• How new research cited at the conference links a steep decline in daily conversation, especially among people under 25, to rising social isolation.
• Why one Educational Leadership contributor’s approach to AI in the classroom centers on microdosing rather than banning it outright.
• How district leaders are being encouraged to rethink AI policy by comparing it to another everyday risk millions of teenagers already navigate.

This is a special recap episode from ISTELive 26 in Orlando where Ira and Sarah reflect on the hallway conversations, speaker presentations, and podcast interviews they enjoyed throughout the week. Featured speakers include:

• Pat Yongpradit, GM, Education and Workforce Policy at Microsoft
• Dr. Nneka McGee, Fmr. Chief Academic Officer and Founder of Muon Global
• Isabelle Hau, Executive Director of the Stanford Accelerator for Learning
• Heather E. McGowan, Bestselling Author, Leadership Expert, and LinkedIn Global Voice for Education
• Melinda Glowacki, MAT Supervisor and Leadership Coach for the University of California, Irvine
• Tambra Clark, Technology Integration Facilitator of Birmingham City Schools
• Mary Ehrenworth, Author, Speaker, Consultant, from Teachers College, Columbia University
• Philip Seyfried, Student, from Teachers College, Columbia University
• Jessica Garner, Managing Director, Innovative Learning at ISTE+ASCD
• Court Shuller from the Voices of Change Fellowship

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Host: Ira Apfel, Editorial Director, EdSurge

Featuring: Sarah McKibben, Editor-in-Chief, EdSurge

This week, two teachers take a hard look at what happens when you hand a problem to a tool and trust it to solve that problem. David Webb, a school teacher based in Jakarta, India, spent a year vibe coding an AI-powered library app called LibraryAid and discovered exactly where the algorithm ends and the educator begins. Then, California high school teacher Gabe Nitro makes a counterintuitive argument: the phone pouches sweeping his district may be swallowing the very instructional time they were designed to protect.

WHAT YOU’LL LEARN

• David Webb built LibraryAid, a personalized book recommendation app, using vibe coding techniques with no prior computer science background, and the tool now tracks approximately 30 factors, including student interests, reading history, and classroom topics, to generate personalized reading recommendations.
• One student reading two grade levels below placement made three times the average reading progress after the app matched him to a book series he loved, demonstrating both the power and the limits of algorithmic recommendation.
• A study from the National Bureau of Economic Research found that Yondr pouches had no statistically significant impact on standardized test scores for high schoolers in English, a finding that surprised even teachers who had adopted the pouches.
• Gabe Nitro argues that phone pouches consume up to 49 minutes of instructional time per school day in enforcement alone, and that the real distraction problem simply shifts to Chromebooks once phones are sealed away.

STORIES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE

1. Vibe Coding Sparked a Love of Reading in My Classroom by David Webb

2. I’m a Teacher, and I’m Against Phone Pouches by Gabe Nitro

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HOST AND CONTRIBUTORS

Host: Ira Apfel, Editorial Director, EdSurge

Contributors:

• David Webb, International school teacher, Jakarta; creator of LibraryAid
• Gabe Nitro, High school teacher, California

Two educators are reckoning with who is really in charge: technology or the teacher. First, a teacher notices her students are quietly forming their professional knowledge on TikTok and decides to lean in rather than fight it. Then a high school engineering teacher builds an AI grading tool so efficient that it sent feedback to students without him ever reading it, and confronts what that actually means for his role in the classroom. Together, they raise urgent questions about judgment, accountability, and what teaching is really for.

• Pre-service teachers are forming their professional knowledge partly through TikTok and social media reels, including content from former teachers who left the profession, raising questions about how teacher prep programs should respond.
• Evi Wusk argues that the information gleaned from social media is already shaping how future teachers think, so the more productive move is to help them engage with it critically rather than dismiss or ignore it.
• Steven Swanson built a fully automated AI grading tool that sent feedback directly to students without his review, and after a student thanked him for words he never wrote, he rebuilt the tool to put himself back in the loop.
• Swanson describes specific assignment types where AI grading adds value versus where it falls short, including the risk of missing opportunities to learn who students actually are as people.

What TikTok Is Teaching Future Teachers That We Aren't by Evi Wusk

I Built an AI Grading Tool. Then a Student Thanked Me for Words I Didn't Write. by Steven Swanson

ISTE+ASCD Live '26 in Orlando, Florida

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Host: Ira Apfel, Editorial Director, EdSurge

Guests:

Evi Wusk, Ed.D., teacher educator and author of What TikTok Is Teaching Future Teachers That We Aren't

Steven Swanson, high school engineering teacher and author of I Built an AI Grading Tool. Then a Student Thanked Me for Words I Didn't Write.

Schools are racing to write AI policies, but what if the policy is not the first step? This week, we hear from Aleta Margolis, founder and president of the Center for Inspired Teaching, who argues that real progress starts with a conversation, not a rule. Then EdSurge editor-in-chief Sarah McKibben brings it home with what AI actually looks like at her kitchen table, with two middle schoolers navigating it in real time.

• A new RAND American Youth Panel survey found that only about one in three students say their school has a school-wide AI policy, and Aleta Margolis of the Center for Inspired Teaching explains why co-creating guidelines with students leads to better outcomes than top-down rule-making.
• A recent NPR and Ipsos poll found that 54 percent of teachers say AI is making it harder for students to learn critical thinking skills, and nearly three in four believe its impact on education will exceed that of the internet or computers.
• Sarah McKibben describes the mix of productive and concerning AI use she sees with her own children, including a student using an AI humanizer app to avoid plagiarism detection when submitting AI-written essays.
• Both guests converge on the idea of productive struggle: the concern is not AI itself but whether students are learning to think with it rather than bypassing the thinking entirely.

What to Do About AI: Begin by Talking About It by Aleta Margolis

NPR / Ipsos Poll: Teachers on AI and Critical Thinking

RAND American Youth Panel: Select Findings

ISTE+ASCD Live '26 in Orlando, Florida

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Hosted by Ira Apfel, Editorial Director, EdSurge

Featuring

Aleta Margolis, Founder and President, Center for Inspired Teaching

Sarah McKibben, Editor-in-Chief, EdSurge

Stay informed, stay curious.

Schools have been quietly chipping away at recess for nearly a decade, and a sweeping new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics says it is time to stop. Meanwhile, the federal government has issued a formal advisory on screen time and children, raising urgent questions about how schools, parents, and tech companies should respond.

This week, EdSurge reporters Lauren Coffey and Nadia Tamez-Robledo bring both stories together around a single urgent question: what does it look like when kids get less real-world experience and more pressure?

• The American Academy of Pediatrics updated its recess guidelines for the first time since 2013, expanding its recommendations to include middle and high school students.
• One Massachusetts high school cut chronic absenteeism from 35 percent to 23 percent in a single year after introducing movement breaks, suggesting that belonging and physical activity can drive school attendance in meaningful ways.
• The screen time advisory issued by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy calls for bell-to-bell phone bans, warning labels on apps, and the elimination of recommendation algorithms for children, but researchers caution that the evidence linking screen time to negative outcomes is correlation, not proven cause and effect.
• Experts warn that broad phone and screen restrictions could inadvertently affect students with IEPs and disabilities who rely on assistive devices, a tension the advisory acknowledges but does not fully resolve.

Recess Took a Break in Some Schools. A Push Is On to Bring It Back by Lauren Coffey

Surgeon General Advisory Wants Kids to Live Beyond the Confines of Screens by Nadia Tamez-Robledo

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Hosted by

Ira Apfel, Editorial Director, EdSurge

Featuring

Lauren Coffey, Reporter, EdSurge

Nadia Tamez-Robledo, Reporter, EdSurge

Stay informed, stay curious.