We foster educational equity through coaching leaders & teachers in public schools across the US.
03/24/2026
https://www.facebook.com/share/1K58KhuWjQ/?mibextid=wwXIfr
The Humanities: 5 Leadership Skills That Business Schools Don't Teach We were told to hire for efficiency. Optimization. Scale. And yet the five most important skills I look for in a leader rarely come from a business background at all.
03/20/2026
A writing professor’s new task in the age of AI: Teaching students when to struggle How do instructors get students to trust their own thinking and be better than robots?
03/11/2026
Improving Student Achievement: What Red and Blue States Are Doing Right Across party lines, the states achieving the strongest and most lasting student outcomes share a common set of evidence-based strategies. From Massachusetts to Mississippi, high-achieving states all invest in equitable and adequate school funding, teacher quality, and coherent instructional systems.
03/07/2026
ChatGPT and student learning: a meta-analysis
https://www.facebook.com/share/17n1JQJb91/?mibextid=wwXIfr
ChatGPT and Student Learning: What 51 Studies Actually Show!
I've been saying for a while that pedagogy determines whether AI helps or hurts.
Wang and Fan (2025) just gave me 51 studies worth of evidence to back that up.
Their meta-analysis covers studies from November 2022 to February 2025. The headline: ChatGPT has a large positive effect on learning performance (g = 0.867). But the effect on higher-order thinking drops to roughly half (g = 0.457).
ChatGPT helps students score better. It's considerably less effective at helping them think more critically.
The duration findings are especially useful. Four to eight weeks of structured use produced the strongest gains. Anything under one week barely moved the needle because, as the authors note, students "lacked the questioning skills needed to use it effectively."
Beyond eight weeks, a decline set in, which they attribute to over-reliance. Shaw and Nave (2026) call that cognitive surrender, and it keeps appearing across studies.
The role ChatGPT plays also matters.
As an intelligent tutor providing personalized feedback and prompting reflection, the effect on higher-order thinking was large.
As a simple tool for resource retrieval, the effect dropped by half. Fan et al. (2025) documented something similar with metacognitive laziness: the product improved but the cognitive process didn't.
Wang and Fan are direct about something most studies skip: ChatGPT lacks emotional intelligence. It delivers content efficiently but can't spark the kind of interaction that builds genuine curiosity.
Kosmyna et al. (2025) showed reduced neural engagement when students relied on ChatGPT for writing. Hard to ignore that connection.
The tool works. The question is whether we'll design the pedagogy around it well enough to matter.
Link in the first comment!
References
Fan, Y., Tang, L., Le, H., Shen, K., Tan, S., Zhao, Y., Shen, Y., Li, X., & Gašević, D. (2025). Beware of metacognitive laziness: Effects of generative artificial intelligence on learning motivation, processes, and performance. British Journal of Educational Technology, 56(2), 489–530.
Kosmyna, N., Hauptmann, E., Yuan, Y. T., Situ, J., Liao, X.-H., Beresnitzky, A. V., Braunstein, I., & Maes, P. (2025). Your brain on ChatGPT: Accumulation of cognitive debt when using an AI assistant for essay writing tasks. MIT Media Lab.
Shaw, S. D., & Nave, G. (2026). Thinking fast, slow, and artificial: How AI is reshaping human reasoning and the rise of cognitive surrender. Working paper, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Wang, J., & Fan, W. (2025). The effect of ChatGPT on students' learning performance, learning perception, and higher-order thinking: Insights from a meta-analysis. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 12, 621.
09/08/2025
11/05/2023
Reading about reading helps us understand reading.
The IDA 2023 Annual Reading, Literacy & Learning Conference is abuzz! 🌟📚
Come see us at booth #410 and get your all-new book, Science of Reading 2.0! It's packed with the best practices and inspiration you need to implement the science of reading and transform literacy in your school or district.
We look forward to seeing you soon! 🙌
06/14/2023
https://www.ascd.org/blogs/how-principal-coaching-differs-from-teacher-coaching
How Principal Coaching Differs from Teacher Coaching Strategies for principal coaches to accelerate growth—for education leaders, schools, and districts.
04/22/2023
Gloria Ladson Billings via blackteacherproject
https://instagram.com/blackteacherproject?igshid=YjNmNGQ3MDY=
12/30/2022
Happy end of ‘22, friends.
If you’re still looking for that tax-deductible donation to make before year end, look no further. 🙂
We are continuing the good work of making education more equitable by supporting schools in need.
Read more about us and click the donation button here or at www.improving-schools.org
Thank you and wishing you all health, happiness, and equity in 2023.
IMPROVING SCHOOLS INC Improving Schools Inc is a non-profit educational services provider focused on improving outcomes for all students.
11/29/2022
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IMPROVING SCHOOLS INC Improving Schools Inc is a non-profit educational services provider focused on improving outcomes for all students.
09/19/2022
16 Characteristics Of A Critical Thinking Classroom How do you know if your students are thinking critically in the classroom? Here are examples that might be good indicators.
09/19/2022
Why Students Forget—and What You Can Do About It Our brains are wired to forget, but there are research-backed strategies you can use to make your teaching stick.