Educational Policy News

March 2, 2025

Top Headlines

Problem-Based Learning Helps Students Stay in School

Feb. 26, 2025 — Education experts are encouraging schools to consider problem-based learning (PBL) in a move to improve engagement and creativity among high school students. New research demonstrates how hands-on, community-based projects can deliver successful ...

Adults Don't Trust Health Care to Use AI Responsibly and Without Harm

Feb. 14, 2025 — A survey of adults found most had low trust in their health care system to use artificial intelligence responsibly or to make sure an AI tool would not harm ...

Scientists Harness AI to Help Protect Whales, Advancing Ocean Conservation and Planning

Feb. 11, 2025 — Researchers have developed an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that will help predict endangered whale habitat, guiding ships along the Atlantic coast to avoid them. The tool is designed to prevent ...

A Wealth of Evidence: 85,000 Individual Studies About Climate Policy

Feb. 11, 2025 — Research on climate policy is growing exponentially. Of the approximately 85,000 individual studies ever published on policy instruments for mitigating global heating, a good quarter are from 2020 or later. A study using machine learning methods now ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:24pm EST

Adults Can Learn Absolute Pitch: New Research Challenges Long-Held Musical Belief

Feb. 12, 2025 — It's been a long-held belief that absolute pitch -- the ability to identify musical notes without reference -- is a rare gift reserved for a select ...

School Bans Alone Not Enough to Tackle Negative Impacts of Phone and Social Media Use, Researchers Find

Feb. 5, 2025 — Students attending schools that ban the use of phones throughout the school day aren't necessarily experiencing better mental health and wellbeing, ...

Study in India Shows Kids Use Different Math Skills at Work Vs. School

Feb. 5, 2025 — A study by economists shows a wide gap between the kinds of math problems kids who work in retail markets do well and the kinds of problems kids in school do ...

Acoustic Sensors Find Frequent Gunfire on School Walking Routes

Jan. 6, 2025 — A new study used acoustic sensors that detect the sound of gunfire to show how often children in one Chicago neighborhood are exposed to gunshots while walking to and from school. Results showed that ...

How Loss of Urban Trees Affects Educational Outcomes

Dec. 17, 2024 — Economists looked at test scores and school attendance for Chicago-area kids before and after a bug infestation wiped out the city's ash trees. Education outcomes for low-income students went down, ...

Confidence Drives Feedback-Seeking Behavior: Insights Into Learning and Motivation

Nov. 21, 2024 — New research reveals how low confidence drives feedback-seeking, enhancing learning with insights for education and rehabilitation ...

Traditional Mayan Practices Have Long Promoted Unique Levels of Family Harmony: But What Effect Is Globalization Having?

Nov. 16, 2024 — A new study shows that the past 30 years of globalization have brought fundamental shifts in some aspects of family interaction among Indigenous ...

Why Health and Price, Not Sustainability, Drive US Meat Consumption Choices

Nov. 8, 2024 — Environmental sustainability isn't a major factor influencing meat consumption decisions for most Americans, despite increasing awareness of the climate impacts of red meat production, according to ...

Probability Training: Preventing Errors of Reasoning in Medicine and Law

Nov. 6, 2024 — A new study shows how students can better understand and interpret conditional ...

How Local Governments Can Lead the Way in Decarbonizing the U.S.

Oct. 30, 2024 — The success of the $1 trillion that was recently invested by the U.S. federal government to mitigate climate climate change through the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law ...

COVID Lockdowns Disrupted a Crucial Social Skill Among Preschoolers, Trailblazing Study Finds

Jan. 29, 2025 — Researchers discovered children ages 3 to 5 tested before and after COVID lockdowns had a significant gap in a key cognitive skill, particularly for children from homes with low financial resources ...

'Heartbreaking' Impact of COVID on Treatment of Children With Brain Tumors

Jan. 7, 2025 — Research into the impact of the COVID pandemic on children and young people with brain tumors has revealed how investigations or treatments were frequently postponed as key people or resources were ...

11 To 12-Year-Olds Use Smartphones Mainly to Talk to Family and Friends

Dec. 26, 2024 — A research group has analyzed the digital ecosystem of 11- to 12-year-old children across the Basque Autonomous Community, and concluded that two out of three own a smartphone. They use smartphones ...

Education Scholar Calls for Ecological Shift to 'School Within a School' to Give Students Autonomy Needed for Success

Dec. 12, 2024 — An international education expert, argues in a new study for an ecological shift to a 'school within a school' approach that would give students, teachers and parents the ability to guide ...

Preschool Education: A Key to Supporting Allophone Children

Nov. 28, 2024 — A Canadian study reveals that allophone children often face learning and communication difficulties in kindergarten, which can negatively impact their educational ...

Need a Landing Pad for Helicopter Parenting? Frame Tasks as Learning

Nov. 22, 2024 — Parents are much less likely to intervene when their young children are getting dressed or performing other simple chores if those tasks are framed as learning opportunities, according to a new ...

Math-Selective US Universities Reduce Gender Gap in STEM Fields

Nov. 21, 2024 — Nationally, men in colleges and universities currently outpace women in earning degrees in physics, engineering, and computer science (PECS) by an approximate ratio of 4 to 1. To better understand ...

School Suspensions and Expulsions Can Lead to a Lifetime of Depression, Study Finds

Nov. 7, 2024 — A new study shows that children who are suspended or expelled from school report higher rates of depression in adolescence and into ...

Explaining Science Through Dance

Nov. 5, 2024 — Explaining a theoretical science concept to high school students requires a new way of thinking altogether, which is precisely what researchers did when they orchestrated a dance with high school ...

From Compliance to Conversation: New Guidelines Push for Ethical Reflection in Research Reporting

Nov. 4, 2024 — A new study highlights key challenges and tensions in research ethics, particularly in light of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, and calls for the adoption of new research ...

Autistic Traits Shape How We Explore

Oct. 31, 2024 — People with stronger autistic trails showed distinct exploration patterns and higher levels of persistence in a computer game, ultimately resulting in better performance than people with lower scores ...

Dramatic Drop in Marijuana Use Among U.S. Youth Over a Decade (2011 to 2021)

Oct. 28, 2024 — Using a national survey of 88,183 adolescents in grades nine to 12, findings show marijuana use declined from 23.1% in 2011 to 15.8% in 2021, with first-time use before age 13 dropping from 8.1% to ...

Studying Wikipedia Browsing Habits to Learn How People Learn

Oct. 25, 2024 — A collaborative team of researchers led by Dale Zhou, who did his Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine, and Dani Bassett in Penn's School of Engineering and ...

Early Active Learning Boosts Skills for Children Born Into Extreme Poverty, but Gains Fade for Black Boys, Study Shows

Oct. 23, 2024 — Research findings provide further evidence that early childhood education can improve educational outcomes for low-income Black children, but that subsequent experiences may erode those impacts ...

Adapting GenAI for the Next Generation of Learning

Oct. 23, 2024 — A new study by learning analytics researchers presents key considerations for generative AI (GenAI) educational tools so they are carefully developed to support, rather than replace, human ...

Deep Learning Illuminates Atmospheric Blocking Events of Past, Future

Oct. 17, 2024 — Atmospheric blocking events are persistent, high-impact weather patterns that occur when large-scale high-pressure systems become stationary and divert the jet stream and storm tracks for days to ...

Students Who Feel More University Connection May Be More Likely to Binge Drink, Study Finds

Oct. 10, 2024 — Mentally healthy college students who felt connected to their university were more likely to binge drink than those who did not feel connected to their university, according to a new ...

Why People Think They're Right, Even When They Are Wrong

Oct. 9, 2024 — If you smugly believe you're right in a disagreement with a friend or colleague, a new study suggests why you may actually be wrong. Researchers found that people naturally assume they have all ...

Green Education Can Create New Generation of Eco-Leaders

Oct. 8, 2024 — Countries across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region can overcome major shared environmental challenges such as water scarcity and air pollution by harnessing the power of 'green ...

New Study Explores How Universities Can Improve Student Well-Being

Oct. 2, 2024 — Despite growing evidence of the importance of student well-being and an abundance of best practices, most institutions have yet to prioritize it as much as they do enrollment, graduation and grades. ...