National Shakespeare Day is on April 23rd, the anniversary of his death. You might be interested in The Best Resources For Teaching Shakespeare To English Language Learners.
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  1. National Shakespeare Day Is On April 23rd – Here Are Teaching & Learning Resources For ELLs
  2. Yet Another Study Finds This Program Is Successful For Ninth-Graders – I’m Not Really Sure Why Most Schools Don’t Implement It
  3. This Week’s “Round-Up” Of Useful Posts & Articles On Ed Policy Issues
  4. This Week’s Free & Useful Artificial Intelligence Tools For The Classroom
  5. How Did I Not Know That The PBS NewsHour Publishes A “Daily News Lesson” …Daily?
  6. More Recent Articles

National Shakespeare Day Is On April 23rd – Here Are Teaching & Learning Resources For ELLs

GDJ / Pixabay

 

National Shakespeare Day is on April 23rd, the anniversary of his death.

You might be interested in The Best Resources For Teaching Shakespeare To English Language Learners.

     

Yet Another Study Finds This Program Is Successful For Ninth-Graders – I’m Not Really Sure Why Most Schools Don’t Implement It

 

I’ve previously published several posts highlighting the success a program called Building Assets And Reducing Risks (BARR) has had with ninth-graders.

In one of those posts, I shared an excerpt from Education Week that summarized the program, which had a number of similarities to how my former school operated:

…incoming freshmen are grouped into cohorts of about 30 students who take the same reading, math, and science classes together. They also receive a 30-minute lesson each week on social-emotional skills, taught on a rotating basis in a core class. Teachers meet every week for a check-in on every student in their cohort, evaluating weekly progress on both academic and social-emotional goals.

Now, yet another study has found that the program has a major positive impact on ninth-graders.  It’s actually from 2022,  but has recently been reviewed by The Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy and found to be credible.

I am a firm believer in Dylan Wiliam’s comment, “Everything works somewhere; nothing works everywhere.”  Nevertheless, this kind of support for ninth-graders has consistently been found to be successful.  I’m not sure why more schools, even if they don’t want to work directly with the BARR program, at least try adopt its characteristics.

     

This Week’s “Round-Up” Of Useful Posts & Articles On Ed Policy Issues

 

Here are some recent useful posts and articles on educational policy issues (You might also be interested in seeing all my “Best” lists related to education policy here):

Last-minute deal averts Los Angeles schools strike

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— Politico (@politico.com) April 14, 2026 at 9:58 AM

Why so I not feel reassured by this combo?————ED, Khan Academy and ETS announce new institute to reimagine higher education for the AI age blog.ted.com/ted-khan-aca…

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— Larry Ferlazzo (@larryferlazzo.bsky.social) April 14, 2026 at 9:27 AM

Historic LAUSD triple-union strike averted after final agreement with SEIU Local 99

LEARN MORE: bit.ly/4taTfg6

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— EdSource (@edsource.org) April 14, 2026 at 8:31 AM

Millions in the US never finished college. With targeted help, reenrollments are ticking up
apnews.com/article/coll…

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— Larry Ferlazzo (@larryferlazzo.bsky.social) April 14, 2026 at 5:18 AM

conservative free speech is when they speak and you listen or suffer the consequences

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— jamelle (@jamellebouie.net) April 14, 2026 at 12:05 PM

Wow, now the school I went to many decades ago (Goddard) is dust & the school I wanted to go to but couldn’t afford (Hampshire) has joined them ——–Hampshire College Will Close Amid Student Enrollment Declines www.nytimes.com/2026/04/14/u…

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— Larry Ferlazzo (@larryferlazzo.bsky.social) April 14, 2026 at 3:27 PM

Want to see how messy the politics of school vouchers are for Dems? Here’s likely 2028 candidate Mark Kelly on what a disaster vouchers have been for Arizona. Meanwhile, pro-voucher Dems are in Mass. today to push Gov. Maura Healey to sign onto Trump’s voucher plan www.azcentral.com/story/opinio…

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— Jennifer Berkshire (@jenniferberkshire.bsky.social) April 15, 2026 at 10:27 AM

But I thought they were giving back power to the states to make decisions?

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— Larry Ferlazzo (@larryferlazzo.bsky.social) April 15, 2026 at 4:21 PM

California’s ongoing drop in public school enrollment is steepest in LAUSD and L.A. County is from The LA Times.

The race for California state superintendent is wide open: Poll

LEARN MORE: bit.ly/42goNFq

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— EdSource (@edsource.org) April 16, 2026 at 5:00 PM

 

As Enrollment Dips, School Administrators Turn to TikTok to Advertise is from The NY Times.

 

‘Not Our Job’: Principals Decry a Proposal to Track Student Immigration Status is from Ed Week. I’m adding it to THE BEST RESOURCES FOR LEARNING ABOUT THE PLYLER DECISION NOW THAT RIGHT-WINGERS ARE PLANNING A PUSH TO MAKE MIGRANT CHILDREN PAY TO ATTEND SCHOOL.

 

Students are speeding through their online degrees in weeks, alarming educators www.washingtonpost.com/education/20…

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— Larry Ferlazzo (@larryferlazzo.bsky.social) April 19, 2026 at 5:03 AM

School choice is booming in Iowa. Are students better off?

www.npr.org/2026/04/19/n…

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— Larry Ferlazzo (@larryferlazzo.bsky.social) April 19, 2026 at 5:07 AM

I am a critic of 2 much tech in Ed. However, having columnist begin w/private school vignette & focusing much of your critique on Kahoot like games which r super useful formative assessment tools is not way 2 go——You Can’t Game Your Way to a Real Education www.nytimes.com/2026/04/19/o… gift link

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— Larry Ferlazzo (@larryferlazzo.bsky.social) April 18, 2026 at 10:40 PM

 

Schoolmen gonna schoolmen.

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— Jenn Borgioli Binis (@jennbinis.bsky.social) April 19, 2026 at 8:26 AM

Two things are true here.

First, lots of education research is of disturbingly low-quality — and that’s a real problem for the field. But second, painting with such a broad brush about a large, intellectually diverse field is not right.

bsky.app/profile/bren…

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— Matt Barnum (@mattbarnum.bsky.social) April 20, 2026 at 5:08 AM

How Professional Wrestling Prepared Linda McMahon for Trump’s Cabinet www.newyorker.com/magazine/202…

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— Larry Ferlazzo (@larryferlazzo.bsky.social) April 20, 2026 at 5:41 AM

I’m adding this post to The Best Resources For Banned Books Week:

Book bans and attempted bans remain at record highs, with ‘Sold’ topping the list
apnews.com/article/bans…

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— Larry Ferlazzo (@larryferlazzo.bsky.social) April 20, 2026 at 5:25 AM

     

This Week’s Free & Useful Artificial Intelligence Tools For The Classroom

geralt / Pixabay

 

At least, for now, I’m going to make this a weekly feature which will highlight additions to THE BEST NEW – & FREE – ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TOOLS THAT COULD BE USED IN THE CLASSROOM.

Here are the latest:

Quiz8 is like a less sophisticated Wayground or Kahoot. I’m adding it to The Best Online Games Students Can Play In Private Virtual “Rooms”.

Guess what The PDF To Quiz Generator does.

AlphaTune is a simple AI-powered listening exercised focused on the alphabet – for ELLs.

ArtGemAI Hub is a free text-to-image generator.

Best Color Pages is yet another AI-powered tool for coloring pages, as is ColorMon.

Learning Lab seems like a relatively decent tool parents can use with their kids to practice different skills.

Rabbit Hole is a typical AI chatbot. The twist is that it displays information somewhat visually.

DuoBooks is an app that lets you read books in any language you’re learning accompanied with easy translation to your home language.

How to Use AI Effectively in Writing Letters of Recommendation is from Edutopia.

 

 

Just say no to digital necromancy. We have something much better from our important leaders from history, their actual speeches and writings, which can be discussed and debated. This is a tragic dumbing down. engagededucation.substack.com/p/just-say-n…

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— John Warner (@biblioracle.bsky.social) October 3, 2025 at 11:38 AM

I’m adding this video to A Beginning List Of The Best Resources For Teaching About Artificial Intelligence:

 

Translate with ChatGPT is live, though I don’t know why anyone would use it instead of Google Translate.

     

How Did I Not Know That The PBS NewsHour Publishes A “Daily News Lesson” …Daily?

 

 

I just discovered that the great PBS NewsHour publishes a Daily News Lesson about current events.

You’ll find lots of other resources at The Best Resources & Ideas For Teaching About Current Events but, now this site and the NY Times Learning Network have become my favorites.

     

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