The hottest Education Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
Category
Top Education Topics

Why Employees Quit

The Future of Education • 59 implied HN points • 28 Oct 24
🚌 Education Career development Educational Policy Learning Strategies Employee retention
  1. Many people quit their jobs because they don't find their work meaningful and don't feel valued by their colleagues or managers. To keep employees happy, companies should focus on providing fulfilling work experiences.
  2. People are leaving jobs despite being offered good pay because traditional hiring and retention strategies are not addressing their real needs. Employers need to look beyond just salaries and benefits to understand why employees leave.
  3. Relationships and connections in life matter a lot for both personal happiness and career success. It's important to nurture these relationships, as they can provide joy and future opportunities.

Open Thread: What Would You Teach Everyone?

Everything Is Amazing • 705 implied HN points • 03 Mar 26
🚌 Education Lifelong learning Science Skills Communication Community Creativity Critical Thinking
  1. People from many different careers and life paths bring a huge range of expertise and perspective.
  2. That collective knowledge can surprise, delight, and teach others in ways a single person can't imagine.
  3. Asking everyone what they'd teach opens a simple, powerful way to share practical lessons and spread useful wisdom. It turns a community into a place where readers become teachers.

The Damage Done by Accreditors

Heterodox STEM • 490 implied HN points • 04 Mar 26
🚌 Education Higher education Accreditation Curriculum Student Rights DEI
  1. Accreditation bodies (like CACREP) can dictate not just standards but the ideological content of training programs, using “professional dispositions” to evaluate students’ beliefs and values.
  2. When programs enforce identity-based frameworks as a gatekeeping tool, students can be blocked from licensure, suffer emotional and financial harm, and the profession risks turning therapy into activism that erodes trust.
  3. Because accreditation is tied to federal funding, universities have strong incentives to comply, so real change will likely require new laws, accountability measures, and organized advocacy to protect student rights and free expression.

Stanford Starts to Make Ammends: Lessons from the Pandemic

COVID Reason • 535 implied HN points • 14 Oct 24
🚌 Education Health Education Public Policy University Governance Civic engagement
  1. Open dialogue is key to understanding different viewpoints and creating solutions. It's important to have respectful conversations, especially when opinions differ.
  2. Universities should promote healthy discussions and critical thinking. They play a big role in preparing future leaders to engage with tough topics.
  3. Recognizing past mistakes can lead to better decisions in the future. Learning from errors is essential for growth in both education and public policy.

Colleges

David Friedman’s Substack • 305 implied HN points • 11 Mar 26
🚌 Education Higher education Student life Administration Sexual misconduct Admissions
  1. College has become much more expensive partly because schools now offer luxurious amenities and many more administrative and support services, and they use heavy price discrimination so published tuition often overstates what students actually pay.
  2. Many colleges actively organize students' social lives with curated housing groups, orientation trips, and staff-led programs, which reduces opportunities for students to learn how to make friendships on their own.
  3. Recent campus sexual-misconduct policies give institutions strong power to adjudicate disputes and can chill sexual activity by creating risks for one partner if accusations arise, effectively replacing old parental rules with administrative enforcement.
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Local education authority ‘not getting the basics right’,says council boss

NN Journal • 198 implied HN points • 22 Oct 24
🚌 Education School funding
  1. The new director of children's services says the local education department is struggling and needs to improve quickly. Parents are pulling their kids from schools and choosing to homeschool them because they don't trust the system.
  2. There is a big funding crisis affecting the schools budget, which is in serious deficit. Officials warn that if things don't change, the entire system could collapse and impact everyone's education.
  3. The council is facing a crisis with increasing numbers of children in care and not enough support for those with special needs. Leaders say they need to act fast to fix these problems and make services better for the community.

Today is the Last Day to Register for Fall 2024 Courses @ IPAK-EDU

Popular Rationalism • 99 implied HN points • 25 Oct 24
🚌 Education Discounts Enrollment Health Education Online Learning
  1. Today is the last chance to register for Fall 2024 courses at IPAK-EDU, so don’t miss out if you're interested.
  2. There are discounts available, such as 25% off for veterans and older individuals, making it a great opportunity to learn.
  3. The courses cover a range of topics, from health and wellness to biology and law, so there's something for everyone.

The Shape of Stats to Come

arg min • 634 implied HN points • 10 Oct 24
🚌 Education Statistics Optimization Philosophy Data Analysis Mathematics
  1. Statistics often involves optimizing methods to get the best results. Many statistical techniques can actually be viewed as optimization problems.
  2. Choosing a statistical method isn't just about the math—it's also based on beliefs about reality. This philosophical side is important but often overlooked.
  3. There's a danger in relying too much on tools and models we can solve. Sometimes, we force the data to fit our preferred methods instead of being open to the actual complexities.

AI and Academia

In My Tribe • 364 implied HN points • 24 Feb 26
🚌 Education Higher Ed Research Teaching EdTech
  1. New AI tools that can write, run, and manage code let individual researchers build scrapers, dashboards, and analysis pipelines far faster than before, creating a big gap between code-savvy users and ordinary users.
  2. Replacing junior researchers or coding projects with AI may be efficient for supervisors but it also destroys the hands-on training that turns students into skilled practitioners, so educators must find new ways to teach those capabilities.
  3. AI will make it much easier to churn out low-value papers, so the academic reward system needs redesigning to stop incentivizing quantity over meaningful research.

Education, Technology, and Controversy

In My Tribe • 227 implied HN points • 28 Feb 26
🚌 Education Ed-tech Assessment Pedagogy Motivation Policy Research
  1. The Alpha School reports unusually high student growth that suggests its practices might actually accelerate learning, but a randomized lottery study would be needed to be sure.
  2. Many miracle-school results can come from selection, unique funding, or unsustainable practices, so impressive outcomes aren’t automatically easy to replicate.
  3. Ed tech can harm motivation when it feels like wasted or punitive effort, but better tools or reward structures might help—and the overall causal link between digital adoption and falling scores is still uncertain.

Pending Change in Higher Ed

In My Tribe • 470 implied HN points • 21 Feb 26
🚌 Education Higher Ed K-12 Education & Policy EdTech Governance Homeschooling
  1. Parents are moving away from public K–12 toward private schools and homeschooling, which expands the pool of families willing to try alternative higher-education models like UATX.
  2. UATX expects a fast surge in enrollment that could quickly change campus culture and shows how new providers can exploit demographic and recruitment problems facing legacy universities.
  3. Colleges now face a governance choice about how much to embrace AI; going all in will reshape hiring, curriculum, and budgets but risks alienating faculty, while hesitating risks becoming irrelevant.

'Screen Schooled': Kids Should Learn to Use Brains, Not iPads

The Analog Family • 919 implied HN points • 09 Sep 24
🚌 Education Digital learning Child development Teaching Methods Technology impact Educational Policy
  1. Kids are spending a lot of their time on screens, often 9 hours a day, and mostly consuming content instead of creating it. This means they miss out on learning opportunities.
  2. It's important to recognize that technology sometimes distracts kids from actually learning. Just giving them gadgets doesn’t mean they will use them for education; they often just want to play.
  3. Basic skills are being lost because kids rely on technology for instant answers. They need to build knowledge and skills first, instead of just Googling everything.

Top Links 1022 NY public school maths. Unhistorical economics. Comprehension debt & Magic Flute.

Chartbook • 443 implied HN points • 23 Feb 26
🚌 Education K-12 Math Policy Curriculum Assessment Teaching
  1. New York’s public school math scores are very low, showing many students are struggling with basic math.
  2. The phrase 'unhistorical economics' criticizes approaches that ignore historical context, warning this can lead to flawed economic analysis.
  3. 'Comprehension debt' refers to accumulating gaps in understanding that make future learning harder, and references like The Magic Flute are used to show how cultural knowledge and comprehension interact.

Your Review: Alpha School

Astral Codex Ten • 37923 implied HN points • 27 Jun 25
🚌 Education School Systems Learning methods Educational Technology Parental involvement
  1. Alpha School promotes a unique learning model where students spend only two hours on academics and are said to learn faster. This has raised curiosity and skepticism about its efficacy compared to traditional schooling.
  2. The school uses a technology platform for personalized learning. However, the teaching staff, called guides, play a significant role in supporting students, making it more of a blended model than a fully tech-driven approach.
  3. Incentives are a key part of Alpha's strategy, rewarding students for completing lessons and meeting goals, which helps motivate them and encourage a love for learning.

The Hinternet Foundation

Justin E. H. Smith's Hinternet • 933 implied HN points • 08 Feb 26
🚌 Education Humanities Higher Ed Lifelong learning Alternative Education Curriculum
  1. A new nonprofit has been launched to protect and promote humanistic creativity in an AI-driven world, acting as a sober, programmatic counterpart to a more playful publication.
  2. In 2026 the group will run small, selective programs — an online summer school, paid fall courses, and a Paris summit — with limited spots, application deadlines, and modest fees.
  3. The initiative responds to a perceived failure of universities by building para-academic communities, adapting technology rather than rejecting it, and using boutique publishing and courses to sustain humanistic inquiry.

Come and be my intern (to talk about J.S. Mill)

The Common Reader • 1382 implied HN points • 27 Jan 26
🚌 Education Internships Higher education Humanities Philosophy Literature Civic Education Intellectual history
  1. There's a Mercatus summer internship focused on classical liberalism and the mainline political economy tradition, blending economics and philosophy.
  2. The program treats literature as essential to liberal thought and will spend a lot of time reading and debating J.S. Mill, so applicants should be ready to discuss Mill's essays regularly.
  3. Undergraduates, recent graduates, and early-stage grad students are encouraged to apply, and interns can propose their own literature projects across many authors and topics, with initiative welcomed.

Designed Interactions

arg min • 257 implied HN points • 15 Oct 24
🚌 Education Statistics Optimization Mathematics Machine Learning
  1. Experiment design is about choosing the right measurements to get useful data while reducing errors. It's important in various fields, including medical imaging and randomized trials.
  2. Statistics play a big role in how we analyze and improve measurement processes. They help us understand the noise in our data and guide us in making our experiments more reliable.
  3. Optimization is all about finding the best way to minimize errors in our designs. It's a practical approach rather than just seeking perfection, and we need to accept that some questions might remain unanswered.

No More Gifted Students in Mamdani’s New York City

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 1400 implied HN points • 04 Feb 26
🚌 Education K-12 Public Schools Education & Policy Admissions
  1. The new mayor plans to phase out the city’s gifted and talented kindergarten program, affecting roughly 18,000 current G&T students and about 2,500 new admits each year.
  2. Many parents and advocates warn that abolishing G&T would hurt high-achieving kids who need advanced academic support and runs counter to what families want.
  3. Critics frame the move as part of a broader progressive shift that challenges merit-based programs and point to other recent policy decisions they say have had harmful consequences.

Literacy lag: We start reading too late

The Intrinsic Perspective • 22847 implied HN points • 31 Jul 25
🚌 Education Literacy Child development Screen Time Teaching Methods
  1. Kids today are exposed to screens too early, which makes learning to read later much harder. This gap is called 'literacy lag'.
  2. Experts often believe that children should wait until age 5 to start reading, but many children can actually learn much earlier, even as young as 2 or 3.
  3. There has been a decline in reading among kids, as more time is spent on screens instead of picking up books. Reading is losing a fair competition for children's attention.

Convex Optimization at the Midpoint

arg min • 198 implied HN points • 17 Oct 24
🚌 Education Graduate studies Optimization Programming Statistics Algorithms
  1. Modeling is really important in optimization classes. It's better to teach students how to set up real problems instead of just focusing on abstract theories.
  2. Introducing programming assignments earlier can help students understand optimization better. Using tools like cvxpy can make solving problems easier without needing to know all the underlying algorithms.
  3. Convex optimization is heavily used in statistics, but there's not much focus on control systems. Adding a section on control applications could help connect optimization with current interests in machine learning.

Should comparative economics still exist?

Global Inequality and More 3.0 • 1374 implied HN points • 25 Jan 26
🚌 Education Curriculum Economics Economic History Inequality Pedagogy
  1. Some argue economics should focus only on today’s capitalism and drop comparative-system study because alternative systems no longer exist in practice.
  2. Teaching other systems like socialism reveals a very different logic of income distribution—politically set wages, mostly proportional taxes, transfers tied to age or family status, and little private capital income—which helps broaden how we think about inequality.
  3. Including a short unit on comparative systems costs little class time but may attract limited student interest, so teachers must decide whether to teach to meet demand or to broaden students’ horizons and create new interest.

5 Ways to Stop AI Cheating

The Honest Broker • 34143 implied HN points • 28 May 25
🚌 Education Teaching Learning Cheating Technology Tradition
  1. AI cheating is a big problem in schools right now, and many believe it's worsening fast. Students often use AI tools to do their work instead of learning.
  2. An old-fashioned education style, like the one at Oxford, could help stop AI cheating. This system relies heavily on handwritten work and face-to-face discussions with teachers.
  3. The Oxford method is tough and demanding, encouraging real understanding and preventing cheating. If used more widely, it could ensure students truly learn and earn their degrees.

Why I Don’t Homeschool

The Analog Family • 1458 implied HN points • 19 Aug 24
🚌 Education Public Schools Homeschooling Child development Curriculum Parenting
  1. The public school system in Ontario can be good enough for many families. It offers physical activities, creative learning, and outdoor experiences, unlike some more extreme examples seen elsewhere.
  2. The author loves her job and doesn't want to pause her career for homeschooling. She feels it's important to balance work and family life while still providing education.
  3. Education is about more than just school. The author believes in filling learning gaps with real-life experiences, discussions, and activities at home, emphasizing ongoing education outside of the classroom.

If You Missed the First All-IPAK Webinar Conference...

Popular Rationalism • 198 implied HN points • 16 Oct 24
🚌 Education Online Learning Webinars Health Education Public Health
  1. You can still watch the first All-IPAK Webinar Conference online if you missed it. It's available for four hours, so you have plenty of time to catch up.
  2. Registration for the courses mentioned at the webinar has been extended. This is a great chance to participate in some learning opportunities.
  3. The webinar aims to spark a learning revolution, so it might inspire new ideas and methods in education. Checking it out could be worthwhile for anyone interested.

Your Review: School

Astral Codex Ten • 25190 implied HN points • 04 Jul 25
🚌 Education School Systems Learning methods Curriculum design Teaching Strategies
  1. Schools focus more on keeping kids motivated rather than maximizing learning. This means that while kids might not always be eager to learn, the way schools are set up tries to engage as many students as possible.
  2. Personalized learning hasn't worked out as many hoped. Most students benefit from structured learning environments where everyone is learning at the same pace, rather than trying to learn individually.
  3. Age-graded classrooms are still the most effective way we've found to teach a large number of students. Even if they aren't perfect, they help organize education in a way that works for the majority.

How I taught my 3-year-old to read like a 9-year-old

The Intrinsic Perspective • 26836 implied HN points • 28 May 25
🚌 Education Child development Tutoring Reading Cognitive Science Parenting
  1. Teaching a child to read early can lead to them enjoying books and reading for pleasure. This habit can help with their brain development and emotional well-being.
  2. Using methods like reading together, fun activities, and spaced repetition can make learning to read more effective and enjoyable for kids.
  3. The process of teaching reading requires patience and flexibility, as each child learns at their own pace. Making it fun is key to keeping them interested.

Average is Over with AI

In My Tribe • 759 implied HN points • 01 Feb 26
🚌 Education K-12 Higher Ed EdTech
  1. The economy increasingly rewards people who can work well with AI, so those who complement machines will thrive while others doing automatable tasks lose opportunities.
  2. The Alpha model pairs AI-driven one-on-one learning in the morning with student-chosen project work in the afternoon, and it naturally selects for learners who can learn from AI and who push themselves to excel.
  3. Colleges and other institutions should move from lecturing and grading toward guiding and coaching, because conscientiousness and ambition plus the ability to use AI will determine who succeeds and will widen social and geographic divides.

New head of children's services investigates ‘growing trend’ in home education

NN Journal • 218 implied HN points • 11 Oct 24
🚌 Education Policy Issues Community Response
  1. More families are choosing to homeschool their kids, with a big increase in the number of children learning at home. This is being noticed especially in the North area, where the rate is one of the highest in the country.
  2. The council is looking into why so many parents are withdrawing their children from schools, especially to see if kids with special needs are affected. They want to understand if families feel their children's needs aren’t being met in traditional schools.
  3. Covid-19 seems to have pushed more parents to consider home education as a safer option for their children. The local children's services are now focusing on addressing this situation.

I’m a Harvard Student. It’s Too Easy to Get an A.

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 551 implied HN points • 13 Feb 26
🚌 Education Higher education Student life
  1. A faculty proposal would cap A grades at 20% per class and replace GPA ranking with average percentile rank for honors and prizes.
  2. Most undergraduates strongly oppose the cap, but critics say current grade inflation makes it too easy to get an A and pushes students into damage-control instead of genuine intellectual risk-taking.
  3. The reforms aim to curb grade inflation and change incentives so grades become more meaningful and encourage real academic ambition.

Further Progress on AI Teaching Assistant

In My Tribe • 288 implied HN points • 15 Feb 26
🚌 Education Higher Ed EdTech Pedagogy Assessment Governance
  1. The AI tutor tracks your skills and uses adaptive spaced repetition, showing items less often when you get them right and more often when you get them wrong, but it currently won't recognize you if you switch browsers.
  2. Building the tutor was fast with Claude, however the tool runs intensively so continuing development will require upgrading to a more expensive subscription.
  3. Universities suffer from too much professor autonomy and weak centralized leadership, which makes it hard to identify or reward instructors who teach AI-relevant skills and to reorganize the institution for the AI era.

How is teaching going?

In My Tribe • 364 implied HN points • 11 Feb 26
🚌 Education Higher education Pedagogy Curriculum Assessment EdTech Student Engagement
  1. Seminar-style paper discussions don't fit less-prepared freshmen, so classes often turn into lectures; assigning core concepts and short written answers before class would establish a common baseline for discussion.
  2. AI can be used effectively for grading and feedback, as practice exams with AI grading matched instructor judgments; building an AI teaching assistant for intro courses is feasible but would take several months to a year of development.
  3. Student engagement is limited by competing commitments and time constraints, so active projects have produced mixed results and early morning classes reduce participation.

Education Links, 2/18/2026

In My Tribe • 227 implied HN points • 18 Feb 26
🚌 Education K-12 Higher education Education & Policy Assessment Curriculum Workforce Student outcomes Creativity
  1. Blurring high school, college, and career can give students real work experience, college courses, and employer-valued credentials before they graduate, making schooling more directly relevant to careers.
  2. Using metrics like cost per graduate or return on investment lets policymakers compare programs and see which models produce more graduates for the money, guiding funding and design decisions.
  3. Dollar-focused metrics miss important non-monetary benefits—like lifelong enrichment from arts—and overlook the value of creativity and combining skills, so education should also cultivate personal growth and skill-stacking.

Toward a New College Culture

In My Tribe • 501 implied HN points • 04 Feb 26
🚌 Education Higher Ed Teaching Methods Educational Technology Mentoring
  1. Students should adopt an achievement mindset and put in real effort to gain skills instead of expecting high status with minimal work.
  2. Faculty roles should shift from distant authority figures to hands-on mentors or guides who understand individual students and help motivate their growth.
  3. AI can serve as personal tutors for subject knowledge, so colleges should reorganize around AI-powered learning and bring in coaches or practitioners to help students apply skills.

An Inversion Cookbook

arg min • 297 implied HN points • 04 Oct 24
🚌 Education Mathematics Statistics Optimization Regression Data science
  1. Using modularity, we can tackle many inverse problems by turning them into convex optimization problems. This helps us use simple building blocks to solve complex issues.
  2. Linear models can be a good approximation for many situations, and if we rely on them, we can find clear solutions to our inverse problems. However, we should be aware that they don't always represent reality perfectly.
  3. Different regression techniques, like ordinary least squares and LASSO, allow us to handle noise and sparse data effectively. Tuning the right parameters can help us balance accuracy and manageability in our models.

Heritability as Stalking Horse for Mutability

Freddie deBoer • 3310 implied HN points • 01 Dec 25
🚌 Education Policy Learning Outcomes Child development Inequality Genetics
  1. People argue about heritability, but what most people really care about is mutability — whether education and policy can change students' academic outcomes.
  2. Research shows students' relative academic positions are largely set early and remain stable despite interventions, suggesting there are consistent individual differences that schooling rarely eliminates.
  3. Non-genetic factors like prematurity, lead exposure, or brain injury can cause large, lasting academic harms, so 'environmental' does not automatically mean a problem is controllable or easily fixed.

Behavioral Interview Question Bank Categorized into 8 Themes

Behavioral OS for Techies • 419 implied HN points • 05 Sep 24
🚌 Education Career development Interview Preparation Skills Training Job Searching Professional Growth
  1. There are 40 behavioral interview questions split into 8 themes, which can help you prepare for interviews.
  2. For each theme, think of your personal experiences or create hypothetical scenarios to practice your answers.
  3. Identifying areas where you lack experience can focus your personal development and improve your interview skills.

Should economists read Marx?

Noahpinion • 37588 implied HN points • 13 Jan 25
🚌 Education Economics Philosophy History Theory Social Science
  1. Many economists don't need to read the original works of thinkers like Marx or Smith to understand economics. They usually study practical models and theories that help solve real-world economic problems.
  2. Modern economic education often emphasizes foundational papers by influential economists, which explain key concepts like market failures and public goods, rather than focusing on Marxist ideas.
  3. Reading Marx can be useful, but mainly as a cautionary tale about how economic theories, if misapplied, can lead to disastrous outcomes in real life. It reminds economists to approach their work with humility.

The Cool Professor: When Your "Student Centered" Classroom is All About You

Freddie deBoer • 12035 implied HN points • 24 Jul 25
🚌 Education Pedagogy Teaching Methods Student Engagement Academic standards
  1. Teaching requires authority and responsibility, not just being liked. A good teacher needs to challenge students and maintain high standards.
  2. The 'Cool Professor' style can be misleading. It often disguises authority and creates confusion about expectations, which doesn't benefit student learning.
  3. Real teaching means being honest and helping students grow, even if it means being unpopular. Students thrive when they are pushed to meet their potential.

IPAKIANS UNITE! ALL-IPAK WEBINAR/CONFERENCE - "FIRELIGHT" - THIS SATURDAY 10/12 6PM - 10PM ET

Popular Rationalism • 158 implied HN points • 11 Oct 24
🚌 Education Learning Health Public Health Thought leadership Personal Development
  1. There's a webinar called 'Firelight' happening on October 12th from 6 PM to 10 PM ET. You can join either through a live audience on Zoom or watch it online.
  2. The event features various speakers who will discuss important topics around knowledge, critical thinking, and personal empowerment. It's aimed at those feeling disillusioned by traditional education.
  3. Attending could help you learn about holistic health, public health insights, and more, all while being part of a community that values truth and intellectual freedom.

Making Your Own Examples Is One of the Most Powerful Math Skills

Kids Who Love Math • 587 implied HN points • 06 Feb 26
🚌 Education Math education Problem Solving Teaching Methods
  1. Have kids make their own example problems so they move from copying steps to creating and testing ideas; this builds ownership and a deeper grasp of the technique.
  2. Use a ladder of problem-posing—from copying examples to designing constraint-driven or error-catching problems—to guide growth so questions get harder as understanding grows.
  3. Asking kids to invent problems fights boredom, helps them probe when a technique works or fails, and builds the mathematical maturity to explore abstract ideas on their own.