Alpha Naysayers have weighted prominently in the choice of most Learning Scientists to do their work behind the scenes. The harassment of Carl Hendrick, and the efforts to cancel him by Alpha Naysayers, have been hard to miss and difficult to watch, as Carl's friend. I go into more detail on how we can create safe spaces for the rest of the Learning Scientists to talk about their work in the postscript of this piece: karenvaites.org/p/alpha-scho… For me, there was more to it. I started at Alpha last December as a consultant. For a while, I was only working part-time, by design. I was skeptical, and only willing to give it some of my time. It took me a while to do enough school visits, see enough data, and meet enough members of the leadership team to see that Alpha had true potential, and I could make a career there. Most importantly, I had to see my first app into classrooms, and see how it went. I was frankly shocked by how well AI was able to take on the biggest challenges we threw at it. And genuinely unprepared for the ways it expanded my thinking about what was possible. I'm going to try to write about that next, as I also mentioned in my post. Alpha Phonics schooled me. So, I didn't commit to a full-time, formal role until late this summer, after having all of the above experiences. I don't make career decisions lightly, especially because I know startups don't always succeed. My two previous EdTech startups are no longer with us (may they rest in peace)! Now that I know I'm staying at Alpha, it's absolutely the right time for me to talk publicly about this work. Even as I have (as expected) taken plenty of licks about my decision from Alpha Naysayers in the last 48 hours. I'll be OK; I have grown comfortable with taking grief for saying unpopular-but-accurate things, like "Yes, we can reopen schools this school year" (2020) and "The Teachers College Reading Workshop curriculum is badly-flawed" (2015-19) and "scripted curriculum is good for teachers, actually" (2015-onward), before these sentiments were popular. 2/3

By every measure, Opus 4.8 beats human experts as peer reviewers in a study of 124 Harvard social science papers covering a range from statistical analyses to formal models to qualitative work. As academics, we need to figure out how to adapt the practice of science to AI, fast.

I taught 6th grade in the 1980s. We didn't have learning scientists back then.

By every measure, Opus 4.8 beats human experts as peer reviewers in a study of 124 Harvard social science papers covering a range from statistical analyses to formal models to qualitative work. As academics, we need to figure out how to adapt the practice of science to AI, fast.

Ohio’s newly-revamped reports on teacher preparation programs are easier to read and more valuable for prospective educators than in the past. Kudos! A few more tweaks could make them even better still. fordhaminstitute.org/ohio/co…

It needs to be individualized to them so that it can be as efficient as possible. I hear of high school tutors quoting needing sessions 4-5 days a week for two years! If your program takes this long, it isn't sustainable!

Our little high school team got an invite to the implementation science conference for the leaders in literacy in Idaho last week. Do you know what I walked away with as the most important thing? Schools won't/can't be fixed without community partners. The task is too daunting, there is not enough time or money to address the problems we are facing.