How to find an expert online and check they're real
A plain checklist for telling credentialed specialists from confident amateurs before you act on their advice.
By Kara Williams • September 29, 2026
Mamagerah
Latest
What is technology, really? A plain-English definition
The word covers stone hand axes and cloud computing. That range is why the definition keeps moving.
By Michael Hayes • September 28, 2026
education-news
A Year Inside One Classroom: What a Teacher's Year Really Holds
The school year runs about nine months, but the work stretches well past the final bell. Here is how one teaching year actually unfolds.
By Kara Williams • September 26, 2026
education-news
What Is Montessori? The Method Explained
A century-old approach built on mixed-age classrooms, self-paced materials, and a prepared environment — and the catch that any school can use the name.
By Zara Nasser • September 24, 2026
What teachers say makes classroom technology work
Gallup and Walton Family Foundation data points to one lever: oversight of student device activity.
By Michael Hayes • September 18, 2026
Tablet stylus accuracy for math and science classes
What pressure, latency and palm rejection actually do to a student's handwriting — and which platforms handle them.
By Michael Hayes • September 16, 2026
Chromebook lifecycle costs: budget for the AUE date, not the hinge
Two clocks run on every school Chromebook. Only one of them decides when the device is actually done.
By Michael Hayes • September 13, 2026
Technology
AI detectors don't prove a student used AI to cheat
Turnitin's own documentation calls its report inconclusive, and independent research finds detectors misfire most against non-native English writers and Black students.
By Michael Hayes • August 21, 2026
From the past month
education-news
Why education news matters more than headlines suggest
School-board votes, funding fights and procurement rules reach classrooms years before the stories leave the news cycle.
By Zara Nasser • September 23, 2026
careers
Good careers without a degree: the paths that actually pay
Apprenticeships, trades and certifications can reach middle-class pay. What the routes look like, and where each one gets hard.
By Samuel Achebe • September 19, 2026
experts
When experts disagree: how to decide whom to trust
Conflicting specialist opinions are normal. A few checks separate the claims worth acting on from the noise.
By Zara Nasser • September 21, 2026
careers
Teacher salary progression: what experience actually buys
How step-and-lane pay scales advance, and where degrees, certifications and geography change the curve.
By Samuel Achebe • September 14, 2026
What FERPA actually permits before a new app touches student data
The 'school official' exception is why a class can start using an app without a permission slip for every family — but only when a vendor clears three specific conditions written into federal regulation, not its own privacy page.
By Samuel Achebe • August 19, 2026
Micro-credentials rarely change teaching or pay, research shows
Digital badges are pitched as a cheaper, faster alternative to a master's degree. The strongest independent study on the market found most teachers who start one never finish, and finishing didn't move student test scores.
By Samuel Achebe • August 12, 2026
Part-time doctoral programs for working teachers: the cost-benefit
An Ed.D. costs $35,000-$120,000 and four to seven part-time years, and pays off only where salary schedules pay for the lane — or where you plan to leave for administration.
By Zara Nasser • July 27, 2026
Resume language that gets teachers into edtech interviews
Edtech screeners spend seconds per resume and reject classroom vocabulary on sight — the fix is translating teacher work into outcomes, tools, and scale, not adding buzzwords.
By Samuel Achebe • July 5, 2026
The pandemic's test-score gap, in the federal government's own numbers
2022 brought the largest math declines in the NAEP's history; two years later, the 2024 results show recovery stalled and reading still falling.
By Kara Williams • August 26, 2026
Why AI detectors still get student writing wrong
A Stanford study found detectors flagged 61% of non-native English writers' essays as AI-generated, and a growing list of universities is dropping the tools rather than trusting the score.
By Kara Williams • August 23, 2026
Culture
How a book actually gets pulled from a school library
Removing a title from a school shelf is rarely one decision. It is a process with a form, a committee, and an appeal — and 2025’s record numbers show who is actually setting it in motion.
By Kara Williams • August 14, 2026
Culture
School morning announcements: the rituals that stick
The morning announcement is school culture's oldest broadcast, and the buildings that do it well treat it as ritual infrastructure rather than admin housekeeping.
By Marta Kowalczyk • August 10, 2026
2U's bankruptcy restructuring is done — and the OPM model it built shrinks on
The online-program manager emerged from Chapter 11 in late 2024 with debt cut and owners changed; the university partnerships that made it big keep expiring.
By Zara Nasser • August 24, 2026
What FERPA actually lets edtech vendors do with student data
The law doesn't ban vendor access to school records. It makes the district the gatekeeper — and most of what happens next depends on a contract clause few people read.
By Zara Nasser • August 15, 2026
Experts
How states are writing AI disclosure rules for classrooms
Every state introduced AI legislation in 2025, but in education most of the binding work is still guidance and task forces — and disclosure expectations are being written into district policy templates first.
By Kara Williams • August 1, 2026
Experts
Filtering and VPN rules on school devices at home
The same take-home Chromebook that satisfies CIPA on school Wi-Fi carries a moving mix of law, policy, and family expectation into the living room.
By Kara Williams • July 9, 2026
What 'evidence-based' actually means when an edtech vendor says it
Under federal law there are four tiers of evidence, and most sales decks are quoting tier IV — the tier that means 'a logic model.'
By Marta Kowalczyk • August 28, 2026
Retrieval practice works, but not as much as trainers claim
A 2007 federal practice guide gave testing-based study strategies its strongest evidence rating, but newer classroom studies show the real gains are smaller and more subject-dependent than professional-development slides suggest.
By Marta Kowalczyk • August 17, 2026
Business News
Why FERPA's vendor exception decides what ed-tech can access
Federal law never says a classroom app can have student data by default. A narrow exception does the work, and a wave of new state laws is now building stricter rules on top of it.
By Marta Kowalczyk • August 10, 2026
Education News
Why district edtech pilots rarely become contracts
Per the Pilot-to-Purchase research on K-12 pilots, most pilots never convert — and the reasons are structural, not product-quality problems.
By Zara Nasser • August 5, 2026