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Find out how design thinking and collaborative innovation are revitalizing education, inspired by leaders like Molly McMahon at IDEO and The Teachers Guild.

Explore expert insights from Jaime Singer on assessing and enhancing your child’s afterschool programs with practical, high-impact strategies.

By Andrew P. KellyOver just a few years, college affordability has gone from a minor political issue to a headlining one. Why? A wider swath of the income distribution is feeling the pinch, and they are feeling it for longer. Tuition has increased at the same time that family incomes have declined, meaning responsible middle-class families who have saved for college can no longer afford it. Thanks to growing reliance on loans, what used to be a temporary financial crunch has become a lasting financial obligation that hangs around students and parents for years. For the 40 percent of students who drop out, these loans can quickly become an albatross. Taken together, these trends are a recipe for a broader political coalition in search of college affordability.

Special correspondent John Merrow has reported on education for more than four decades, and for the PBS NewsHour since the 1980s. Now retiring, he joins Judy Woodruff to talk about what he’s observed over the years.

Online education will grow up by scaling down. In spite of the practical and theoretical possibilities of e-learning, the very qualities that have enabled massive open online courses (or MOOCs) to serve prodigious numbers of learners—machine-graded assessment, prescriptive course design, and self-paced enrollment—have also tend to promote antiquated pedagogy, curtail student engagement, and preclude a sense of cohort. It doesn’t have to be that way.

This summer I had the honor of attending an event that brought together educators and industry leaders involved in improving the state of STEM education in the U.S. During a panel discussion, I was asked whether I was encouraged or discouraged by where we are today in terms of diversity in STEM education. I am definitely encouraged, but we still have far to go to achieve equity in STEM education for minorities who have been historically underrepresented in STEM fields.

Author and educator Kathy Cassidy discusses her new book and how primary teachers can integrate technology into the classroom. “Connected from the Start: Global Learning in the Primary Grades”, makes a compelling case for connecting our youngest students to the world, using the transformative power of Internet tools and technologies. Cassidy presents both the rationale for connecting students “from the start” and the how-to details and examples teachers need to involve children in grades K-3 in using blogs,

If education is to thrive again, universities must rebuild teacher training—and restore the mission to serve every child.

InterviewDigital citizenship continues to become a part of the everyday vernacular in education. Dr. Marialice B.F.X. Curran takes a deeper dive into the subject following her recent op-ed in edCircuit. Curran shares upcoming events tying Connected Educator Month with the DigcitSummit and provides educators resources for weekly Twitter chats