Friday News Roundup

Here’s your Friday News Roundup for January 9, 2026:

“Constant Juggling”: Teachers Share the Job Stressors That Keep Them Up at Night (EducationWeek)

Teaching is a hard job. No doubt about it.

Long hours, low pay, little appreciation. EducationWeek recently asked a group of teachers to identify the stressors that impact them on a daily basis. Here are some of their answers:

Limited time, too many responsibilities, lost Sundays, school shootings, keeping up with new technology, meeting your own expectations, continuous improvement, losing kids on fieldtrips, grading, parents, principals.

Based upon how much stress teachers are under these days, maybe it’s time to change their title and their role moving forward?

Colorado District Teaches Cutting-Edge Skills Needed for a Changing Workplace (The 74)

It’s not hard to find exemplary elementary, middle, and high schools in America. The problem is finding great schools, on all levels, at scale.

Witness St. Vrain Valley Schools in Colorado. Their district not only pushes students to explore new fields of study, but encourages them to dive deeply into one of more career pathways.

“St. Vrain’s website boldly claims its students ‘are the future of America,’ and once you peek inside its 50,000 square-foot Innovation Center, that phrase seems less like a boast than a statement of fact. In addition to the district’s 260 competitive robotics teams, there are groups of students raising an endangered species of frogs, another group building and designing airplanes, as well as students taking classes in artificial intelligence, cyber security and music innovation.”

But the problem with America is that right down the road from a district like St. Vrain, there could be four or five districts that can’t teach their kids how to read, write, or problem-solve. So it’s difficult to celebrate the isolated successful district when there are so many dysfunctional and broken districts around them.

Who Are the Nation’s Top Education Scholars? (EducationWeek)

Every year, Rick Hess, director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute releases his list of America’s top education scholars.

This year’s winners include Angela Duckworth from the University of Pennsylvania (known for her research on “grit”), Harvard’s Howard Gardner (learning styles), and Stanford’s Carol Dweck (growth mindset), along with several new names to the list: John McWhorter (Columbia), Shaun Harper (USC), David Yeager (University of Texas), and Thomas Dee (Stanford).

I’m sure all of these educational researchers deserve recognition, and it’s great Hess issues his list every year, here’s the problem with the current recognized group:

All of them continue to be recognized for work that is now extremely dated. For example, Duckworth’s work on “grit” and Dweck’s research on growth mindset are both at least 20 years old now.

In addition, the work recognized must be considered traditional research on traditional practice. No one on Hess’s top ten list could be working on cutting edge learning.

Keep the list but modernize it to include those researchers working on what the next learning system might look like.

Falling Enrollment Most Extreme in Wealthy Districts, Study Finds (The 74)

Traditional public schools continue to lose enrollment nationwide, including the wealthiest districts in the country.

“Years after COVID-related health fears subsided, public school enrollment in Massachusetts remains significantly lower than in 2019, according to research released earlier this year. The sharp declines – matched by simultaneous moves to private schools and homeschooling – were drive overwhelmingly by a flight from the most affluent school districts, which lost many more students than all of the state’s low- and middle-income communities combined.”

And this isn’t happening just in Massachusetts. Researchers are finding this phenomenon all across the country.

Middle-class and upper middle-class families have found other options when it comes to teaching and learning.

Does this mean that traditional K-12 schools are destined to house only black, brown, and poor kids who can’t figure out any other option other than the brick and mortar neighborhood campus?

That’s the Friday News Roundup for January 9^th. Til Monday. Enjoy your weekend. SVB