The hottest Assessment Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
Category
Top Education Topics

What People Want From Our Schools Has Never Been Accomplished, Anywhere, Ever

Freddie deBoer • 8261 implied HN points • 12 Mar 26
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. The idea that schools used to universally prepare everyone for the same academic track or that education can by itself erase class and racial gaps is a modern invention and has never been achieved anywhere.
  2. Bringing more people into formal schooling naturally lowers average test scores and completion rates because many newly included students are less prepared, so declining metrics often reflect wider access, not a sudden failure of schools.
  3. Economic changes like globalization, automation, and the decline of unionized middle-skill jobs removed pathways to good work for non-degree holders, and policymakers then pressured schools to fix that problem by pushing everyone toward college—something schools alone cannot realistically do.

AI Can't Fix Student Engagement

After Babel • 1412 implied HN points • 04 Mar 26
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. Too many students are disengaged from school; only about one in three are highly engaged, and that lack of engagement undermines real learning and long-term outcomes.
  2. Engagement falls into four modes—Passenger, Achiever, Resister, and Explorer—with Explorer mode (curiosity plus agency) as the goal because it supports initiative, deep learning, and resilience.
  3. Parents and schools can move kids toward Explorer mode with concrete actions: model curiosity, give students choice and authentic projects, protect extracurriculars, manage tech, and use tools or workshops to make engagement visible and supported.

EdTech Is Borrowing Zuckerberg's Playbook

After Babel • 2125 implied HN points • 26 Feb 26
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. Saying “there is no evidence of harm” is often used to block action, but demanding product-specific causal trials is usually impractical or unethical, so converging correlational evidence should be taken seriously.
  2. Broad rollout of classroom technology — for example in Utah after 2014 — coincided with reversed gains in reading and math, suggesting widespread EdTech can correlate with stagnation or decline rather than clear improvement.
  3. When billions and millions of children are affected, the burden should be on proving clear, durable benefits before wide deployment; choosing restraint and investing in proven interventions avoids large opportunity costs.

Bad education is a terrible way to fight inequality

Noahpinion • 23353 implied HN points • 26 Nov 25
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. Basic math and reading skills have fallen sharply across the US, with many college entrants unable to do middle-school math or meet basic writing standards, forcing universities to place large numbers in remedial classes.
  2. The decline comes from multiple sources: pandemic learning loss, grade inflation and lowered K–12 standards, elimination of standardized tests, policies like “no zeros,” high absenteeism, and distractions such as phones, making grades a poor signal of real skills.
  3. Relaxing standards in the name of equity — effectively giving students a pass instead of educating them well — is a misguided approach that harms learners and is a counterproductive way to try to reduce inequality.

Maybe Parents Are Just Misinvesting

Bet On It • 679 implied HN points • 02 Mar 26
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. After basic stability is ensured, most common parental investments (extra activities, enrichment, busywork) add almost no extra benefit. Only extreme rescue from neglect or truly exceptional, specialized effort produces large gains.
  2. Small, immediate rewards tied to demonstrated mastery (for example, paying for 100% scores on Khan Academy units) can drastically speed learning and cut costs compared with typical schooling. Short daily practice, immediate feedback, and deadline incentives produced multi-grade progress in the example given.
  3. Ordinary parents can get big returns by swapping low-value time and money sinks for simple high-ROI tactics like focused practice, frequent assessment, immediate feedback, and demand-side incentives. Basic literacy and numeracy can often be taught far faster and cheaper than commonly assumed.
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Education, Technology, and Controversy

In My Tribe • 227 implied HN points • 28 Feb 26
🚌 Education Assessment
  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.

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

Chartbook • 443 implied HN points • 23 Feb 26
🚌 Education Assessment
  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.

Further Progress on AI Teaching Assistant

In My Tribe • 288 implied HN points • 15 Feb 26
🚌 Education Assessment
  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 Assessment
  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 Assessment
  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.

How We Hire at Clipboard

Creating Value from Nothing • 291 implied HN points • 05 Feb 26
💼 Business Assessment
  1. They hire for skill over resume polish by using role-relevant exercises and case studies so candidates can show real work instead of relying on proxies like past titles.
  2. The process is intentionally clear and structured, with written prompts and expectations shared up front so candidates know the effort required and can decide if it’s a fit.
  3. Culture fit means thriving in a high-ownership environment—show clarity, judgment, and follow-through in your case work, and explain your reasoning and assumptions more than chasing a single ‘right’ answer.

How to Evaluate Phone Policies in Schools

After Babel • 448 implied HN points • 05 Feb 26
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. A free, research-informed toolkit gives schools ready-made surveys and measures to track how phone policies affect students, teachers, administrators, and parents.
  2. It works for both single-school evaluations and large, rigorous studies—Qualtrics formats and optional collaboration with the Stanford Social Media Lab support longitudinal tracking and advanced analysis.
  3. The toolkit adds practical analysis help (a manual scoring guide, a customizable survey builder, and a coming Data Dashboard), but it doesn’t by itself establish definitive causality without stronger study designs.

Maybe a project?

In My Tribe • 151 implied HN points • 13 Feb 26
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. An AI teaching assistant could make freshman econ students fluent by using spaced repetition and testing them in new situations.
  2. A prototype demo for production possibility frontier exercises exists online, but it currently checks answers against hard-coded solutions rather than giving live AI corrections.
  3. The plan is to add real AI-driven feedback and a wider variety of examples so students get adaptive practice and become truly fluent.

Does Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) improve academic outcomes?

The Science of Learning • 219 implied HN points • 12 Aug 24
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) helps students with their emotions and relationships but it's unclear if it boosts academic performance. Some studies show positive impacts, while others do not.
  2. Different schools use SEL in varied ways, making it tough to gauge its true effectiveness. This inconsistency leads to mixed results in research about SEL's benefits.
  3. There's no strong evidence that SEL reduces the achievement gap or promotes equity in education. More focused studies are needed to really understand SEL's long-term effects.

Fun, Not Fear: Rebuilding University Assessment for the Machine-Learning Era, & Going Beyond to Modes of Research-Analytical Practice

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality • 222 implied HN points • 29 Dec 25
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. Use outside-the-class work plus short face-to-face interviews or check-ins to assess students, because oral exams stress-test real understanding and make grading fair even when students have powerful ML tools at hand.
  2. Teach students to use modern advanced machine-learning models as intellectual force multipliers by training them in the seven labors—survey, identify live issues, hone questions, research, analyze, store, and persuade—and by emphasizing provenance, triangulation, and small analytic scaffolds so tools accelerate thinking without replacing it.
  3. Recenter higher education on play and craft: make learning fun and practical by practicing prompting, debugging, oral explanation, and producing reusable artifacts, and budget the extra instructor time needed to do this well.

The Achievement Gap We're Not Talking About

After Babel • 1250 implied HN points • 29 Jul 25
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. Since the mid-2010s, students who are already struggling in school have been falling even further behind their peers. This gap is larger now than it was before.
  2. The gap in achievement is not just between different demographic groups like race or income; it's happening within those groups too. Even among students of the same background, top performers are doing better while others are doing worse.
  3. Technology and changes in education practices might be affecting students differently. Students who find it hard to focus might struggle more with the distractions of technology, widening the achievement gap.

Recruiting Brainfood - Issue 380

Recruiting Brainfood • 1100 implied HN points • 21 Jan 24
💼 Business Assessment
  1. Networking is crucial in the industry, meet people in-person to build connections.
  2. Enhancing your profile can give a competitive edge, consider participating in initiatives like Brainfood Tribune and Guest appearance on Brainfood Live.
  3. Performance is key, networking and profile building can complement performance in a positive cycle.

EXCLUSIVE: A High Schooler Graduated with a 3.4 GPA. He Couldn’t Even Read.

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 1711 implied HN points • 12 Feb 25
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. A high school student graduated with a 3.4 GPA but couldn't read or spell his own name. This raises concerns about the education system's effectiveness.
  2. The student is suing his school district, claiming they didn't provide him with the education he needed, which is required by law.
  3. A federal appeals court agreed with the student, saying his lack of education caused him serious harm and that he was capable of learning to read.

Part 2, Breaking the bureaucratic mold of instruction

Unsafe Science • 42 implied HN points • 24 Jan 26
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. Universities often proclaim values like critical thinking and open debate, but growing surveillance and tight classroom controls can quietly undermine those ideals.
  2. Students and institutional pressures push education toward measurable outcomes, detailed rubrics, and atomized syllabi, turning learning into scorekeeping instead of exploration.
  3. Instructors can push back by leaving room in the syllabus, encouraging student initiative and struggle, and treating knowledge as testable hypotheses rather than demanding one cookbook solution.

Student Assessment in the Age of AI

In My Tribe • 501 implied HN points • 12 Jun 25
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. AI can help monitor student assessments and make cheating harder. By having someone supervise, universities can ensure students aren't using AI to cheat during tests.
  2. Interviews can be a better way to assess students than traditional exams. They allow professors to see how well students understand important concepts and let students explain their reasoning.
  3. Using AI to conduct these interviews can be efficient and consistent. This way, professors can evaluate a large number of students fairly without getting overwhelmed by grading.

Who Needs a Professor?

UnfairNation by Ehsan Zaffar • 6 implied HN points • 24 Feb 26
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. AI can answer many questions, so traditional lectures and the professor-as-knowledge-delivery model are becoming obsolete. Teachers now need to change how they assess and teach.
  2. AI democratizes access to tutoring and expertise, giving students without elite resources personalized, always-available help.
  3. Humans still matter for mentoring: teachers can push students, model changing your mind, and evaluate real understanding in ways AI can't. That makes mentoring, judgment, and assessment design the new core roles for educators.

Part I: How to Succeed in Business & Econ Teaching Without Sweating Too Many Bullets

Unsafe Science • 24 implied HN points • 22 Jan 26
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. Give students leadership of class activities so they become collaborators and drive engagement rather than passive listeners.
  2. Use simple routines like brief reviews or quizzes at the start, paired introductions, and a final feedback period to boost learning, speaking skills, and class rapport.
  3. Adopt an experimental, risk-taking mindset with the instructor as mentor and fellow learner so teaching becomes lighter, more fun, and yields unanticipated learning.

Is Asset-Based AI Even Possible?

Mathworlds • 373 implied HN points • 24 Jan 24
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. Asset-based approach in teaching focuses on students' strengths rather than their weaknesses.
  2. Understanding students' existing knowledge is crucial for effective learning.
  3. AI may struggle to support asset-based instruction due to its focus on metacognitive learning over content learning.

Can parents save math?

The Bell Ringer • 159 implied HN points • 05 Apr 24
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. More math education can help get more students into STEM fields. Parents believe that improving math is a fair way to provide opportunities.
  2. A group of parents in California is advocating for better math programs in schools. They think this will help kids who want to succeed in science and technology.
  3. Investing in math education is seen as important for the future. Parents want to ensure all students have the chance to excel in these subjects.

Recruiting Brainfood - Issue 338

Recruiting Brainfood • 511 implied HN points • 02 Apr 23
💼 Business Assessment
  1. 300 million white collar jobs are at risk of being fully replaced by Generative AI.
  2. AI's impact on economic growth is significant, potentially affecting job security.
  3. Twitter's recommendation algorithm offers insights into enhancing content reach and engagement.

Unlocked: Teaching math with John Mighton

The Bell Ringer • 79 implied HN points • 31 May 24
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. John Mighton emphasizes the importance of understanding math concepts rather than just memorizing formulas. This helps students develop deeper problem-solving skills.
  2. Focusing on problem-solving in math education encourages critical thinking and creativity in students.
  3. Teaching math should be about making connections and understanding rather than just practicing procedures. This approach can make learning more enjoyable.

Lazy Brain

We're Gonna Get Those Bastards • 6 implied HN points • 08 Feb 26
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. People are increasingly using AI as a shortcut to avoid hard mental work, and that trend risks weakening our capacity to reason and think deeply.
  2. AI can be a useful tool for tasks like searching or coding, but it shouldn’t replace developing real thinking skills or the unique value of human, artisanal creativity.
  3. Education’s main purpose is to build the mental muscles needed for professional and civic life, so relying on AI instead of practicing reasoning will leave people ill-prepared for complex roles.

International Gender Disparities in Math

Heterodox STEM • 135 implied HN points • 17 Aug 25
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. Boys generally perform better than girls in high-level math, but the difference is small. At the lower end, girls often do just as well or better.
  2. Socioeconomic status and nationality have a bigger impact on math performance than gender does. Countries with more resources often show better overall math scores.
  3. Equal representation of genders in math isn't necessary or realistic. Focusing on improving math education and training for all students is more important than pushing for gender parity.

AI × Education: Some Thoughts on How I'm Approaching My Courses This Fall

The Absent-Minded Professor • 235 implied HN points • 14 Jun 23
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. Spend time building relationships and explaining AI tools instead of blocking or preventing students from using them.
  2. Focus on building trust with students rather than setting traps or relying solely on technology to prevent cheating.
  3. Consider re-evaluating assessments to ensure they align with learning objectives, especially if AI tools expose weaknesses.

5M

Sriram Krishnan’s Newsletter • 216 implied HN points • 01 Aug 23
💼 Business Assessment
  1. Investors use frameworks like the 5M framework to categorize and assess startups.
  2. Having frameworks in place upstream makes it easier to make investment decisions downstream.
  3. Different Ms in the 5M framework are applied as startups progress from idea to product to traction.

Impact of 'noise' on assessing school shooting threats

School Shooting Data Analysis and Reports • 39 implied HN points • 15 Apr 24
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. Noise is the unwanted variability in decisions made by different experts looking at the same information.
  2. Variability in assessing threats leads to inconsistency and high costs, such as locking down schools and deploying officers.
  3. Conducting noise audits can reveal inconsistencies in decision-making, highlighting the importance of understanding and reducing noise in evaluating school shooting threats.

GenAI opportunity and risk

imperfect offerings • 79 implied HN points • 26 Jun 23
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. Researchers, policy-makers, educators, and edtech activists are raising concerns about the use of GenAI in teaching and learning, highlighting issues such as inaccuracy, bias, and ethics.
  2. Balancing the opportunities and risks of GenAI is crucial, as technologies are designed for use and may present actual harms over time that are harder to research.
  3. Cutting through the hype surrounding GenAI, the real opportunities involve improving efficiency in textual production and providing natural language interfaces for accessing information, but careful consideration is needed to ensure true educational value.

'Human intelligence'

imperfect offerings • 13 HN points • 10 Apr 24
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. The concept of 'artificial intelligence' has historically been used to define and value 'intelligence', leading to discriminatory practices in education and beyond.
  2. The term 'human intelligence' has been co-opted by the AI industry to alleviate concerns about job displacement, but in reality, it devalues certain types of work and people, especially those involving care and emotional labor.
  3. The comparison between artificial and human intelligence creates a double bind for students and workers, expecting them to conform to data-driven systems while also being 'more human', which can lead to confusion and anxiety.

Revisited and updated: How I reduced my marking time from 4 hours a week to 15 minutes

Eclecticism: Reflections on literature, writing and life • 3 implied HN points • 21 Dec 25
🚌 Education Assessment
  1. You can massively cut marking time by building praise and criticism comment banks and using spreadsheet formulas to randomize and concatenate feedback for quick copy‑paste delivery.
  2. Automatically generated comments can sound genuine and be useful, but they sometimes mismatch the student’s work and will require occasional clarification or manual edits.
  3. Spreadsheets are handy for tracking assignments and progress—functions like =randbetween() can generate scores quickly, though you may need to overwrite or adjust numbers and consider broader signs of progress like bravery.

Adapting Land Value Taxation to Space

Splitting Infinity • 39 implied HN points • 17 Aug 23
🕹 Technology Assessment
  1. Taxation is essential for governance and must be adapted for effective government in space as the celestial realm sees more activities and developments.
  2. Principles of taxation like efficiency, sufficient revenue, practicality, tolerance, clarity, and locality should guide the design of tax systems in space to ensure fairness and viability.
  3. Georgism, with its focus on land value taxes, can offer a balanced solution for taxation in space by encouraging development while discouraging rent-seeking behaviors.

Gloves Off

The Radar • 19 implied HN points • 27 Dec 23
💼 Business Assessment
  1. Old ideas and worn-out concepts in talent management must be identified and discarded to allow for genuine progress.
  2. Binary labels like 'hard skills vs soft skills' and 'introvert vs extrovert' are misleading and can hinder accurate talent assessment.
  3. The concept of 'high potential candidate' often introduces bias and leads to poor decision-making, hindering talent development and organizational growth.