🤖 AI教育新闻周报

报告周期: 2026-08-16 至 2026-08-23
文章总数: 7 篇
生成时间: 2026-08-23 21:41

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• eSchoolNews: 4 篇

出勤是记分牌-连接是游戏

原文标题: Attendance is the scoreboard–connection is the game
来源: eSchoolNews | 发布时间: 2026-08-21
原文链接: 点击阅读原文

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Key points:

• Students go where they feel connected

• Chronic absenteeism isn’t the problem–it’s the signal

• Don’t wait for September: Reach students now, when it matters most

• For more news on attendance, visit eSN’sEducational Leadershiphub

If I had been asked a few years ago, I would have told you that chronic absenteeism was a school system’s problem to fix. With better data systems, staff trained on outreach, and improved intervention protocols, school districts could move the numbers on their own. But today we can see that while the numbers moved a little, the deeper story didn’t change nearly as much as we hoped.

Why? Because chronic absenteeism isn’t the problem. It’s the symptom.

In speaking with school leaders across the country, I’ve found near-unanimous agreement that the real issue is disconnection. When a young person stops believing that school has anything to do with their future, they stop showing up. Not because they’re defiant. Not because they don’t care. Because somewhere along the way, school stopped feeling relevant to them.

Personally and professionally, the fact that some students don’t see school as relevant is hard to admit. It would be simpler to say that today’s kids and families need to try harder to get out of the house in the morning and go to school. But if you actually sit with a teenager who has disengaged from school and ask why, “I don’t feel like it” is rarely the answer. Rather, you’d hear something closer to “no one there really knows me” or “I don’t see the point.”

So we’ve shifted how we think about this work. Attendance is the outcome, not the mission. The mission is reconnecting young people to people, purpose, and opportunity. Get that right, and attendance follows. Chase attendance directly, without addressing connection, and you’re just measuring a symptom while the underlying condition festers.

Belonging beats compliance

Think about the places in your own life where you show up without anyone reminding you, like your gym or church or your job. You don’t need a policy to make you go to those places. You go because you feel you belong there.

Kids are no different. Students go where they feel connected. Belonging, trusted relationships, and hope for the future move young people far more reliably than rules ever will. You can install every attendance tracking system in the world, and it won’t out-motivate a kid’s need to feel like they matter to somebody.

This is where I think schools–districts like mine included–have sometimes gotten it backwards. We’ve treated disengagement, and by extension chronic absenteeism, as a compliance problem best solved with stricter policies and more consequences. But you can’t discipline your way into belonging. You have to create belonging.

Why schools can’t do this alone

Here’s the part that took me longer to accept: even the best schools can’t build that web of belonging by themselves.

I believe that the Ithaca City School District, which I am proud to lead, is home to extraordinary teachers, principals, counselors, and support staff. Each day, they pour themselves into our students, and I’ve seen them work near-miracles for individual students. But I believe in the old African adage, “It takes a village to raise a child.” No matter how gifted a teacher is, they can’t be the only trusted adult in a student’s life. Unfortunately, schools alone can’t create the community of relationships children need.

Humans are social creatures. Our brains are wired for connection and community, and that community has to extend beyond the school building.

That’s why I’ve stopped talking about youth disengagement as a school problem with a school solution. It’s a community issue that requires a community-wide answer. Reconnecting disconnected youth is not something schools do to communities. It’s something communities do with schools.

What this looks like in practice

Pause for a minute to consider all the parts of your community young people interact with after school. Each should ask: How can we become one more reason young people stay connected?

Youth sports. A coach who shows up early to talk with a struggling player about how things are at school before discussing the game plan is doing identity-building work, whether they know it or not.

Libraries. A librarian who remembers a teen’s name and saves the next book in a series is actually saying, “I know you, and I expect you back.”

Faith communities. Churches and congregations have long been anchors of belonging, offering young people mentors, structure, and a sense of purpose that stretches beyond any single Sunday service.

Employers. A local business owner who gives a 16-year-old their first job is handing that young person proof that the adult world has a place for them.

After-school providers. Here in Ithaca, we’re fortunate to have organizations like the Greater Ithaca Activities Center, the Ithaca Youth Bureau, and Village at Ithaca doing this work daily, wrapping kids in mentorship, activity, and community after the final bell rings.

Mental health agencies. Counselors and clinicians in the community help young people work through the barriers–trauma, anxiety, family stress–that no attendance letter home will ever resolve.

Mentoring organizations. A mentor who keeps a standing weekly appointment with a teenager teaches that young person, through simple consistency, that they’re worth showing up for.

Local businesses. In addition to offering jobs, businesses sponsoring teams, hosting events, or simply knowing their young neighbors by name, add another connection to the network.

None of these efforts are new. What’s new is naming them for what they are: essential infrastructure in the fight against youth disconnection, not just “nice to have” community programming on the side.

Building an ecosystem, not a campaign

We’re not simply trying to improve attendance numbers. We’re building a community ecosystem that reconnects young people to opportunity. That distinction matters more than it might sound.

An attendance campaign has a start date and an end date. It has a target and a deadline. An ecosystem doesn’t work that way. It grows, it adapts, and it depends on many different organisms doing their part, day after day, without any of them needing to control the whole thing.

Communities don’t solve chronic absenteeism by demanding students show up. They solve it by becoming places young people want to show up for. That’s a fundamentally different posture. It’s less about enforcement and more about invitation. Less about tracking kids down and more about giving them somewhere worth going.

A shared responsibility

I’m not suggesting we let schools off the hook for absenteeism, or that we should shift blame elsewhere. School systems still play the most prominent role in engaging students and ensuring students go to school, and we’re backing that up: building relational advisory structures, training staff in trauma-informed practice, redesigning what engagement looks like inside our buildings.

But we’ve also learned that our work only goes so far if it stops at the schoolhouse door. Reconnecting youth is a responsibility shared by schools, families, employers, youth organizations, places of worship, libraries, coaches, mentors, and local businesses. Each of those groups holds a piece of the puzzle that schools simply can’t hold alone.

Collective responsibility isn’t a slogan. It’s a practical necessity. If you want a young person to feel connected seven days a week, you need more than a five-day-a-week institution trying to do it single-handedly.

The real scoreboard

I keep coming back to this image: Attendance is the scoreboard, connection is the game. Watch any scoreboard by itself, and you’ll miss everything that actually matters, the strategy, the effort, the relationships built between teammates over a long season. The score just tells you the outcome. It doesn’t tell you how you got there.

The same is true for our young people. Attendance numbers tell us something happened. They don’t tell us why, and they certainly don’t tell us how to fix it. If we want different numbers, we need a different game–one built on belonging, trusted adults, and genuine opportunity.

So here’s my invitation to this community, and to every community wrestling with this same challenge: Don’t wait for the school district to solve youth disconnection on its own. It won’t, because it can’t. This is community development work as much as it is education work. If we want young people connected to school, to work, and to their own futures, every sector of our community has a role to play.

The question isn’t whether our kids will show up. The question is whether we’ve given them enough reasons to.

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• Attendance is the scoreboard–connection is the game- August 21, 2026

• Children learn best on paper: We need better technology, not less of it- July 13, 2026

• In districts, reaching readiness, retention, and success- March 5, 2026

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学生辅导可以帮助成千上万的HBCU学生重新注册并毕业

原文标题: Student coaching can help thousands of HBCU students re-enroll and graduate
来源: eCampusNews | 发布时间: 2026-08-21
原文链接: 点击阅读原文

Key points:

• The initiative focused much of its outreach on students who are too often overlooked by traditional retention efforts

• Most states struggle to bring adult learners back to college

• The new rules of student recruitment for adult learners

• For more on re-enrollment, visit eCN’sCampus Leadershiphub

A new report fromInsideTrack, a national student success coaching nonprofit, reveals that a five-year coaching initiative across 39 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) helped stopped-out students re-enroll at 2.5 times the national average while keeping actively enrolled students on track at a fall-to-spring retention rate of 83.8 percent.

According to the report, thousands of students not only re-enrolled but ultimately persisted and completed their degrees as a result of the one-on-one success coaching delivered through the multi-campus partnerships.

“Effective partnership with HBCUs starts with respect for the history, culture, and leadership already present on each campus,” said Henri A. LaSane, Ed.D., associate vice president of HBCU programs at InsideTrack. “Our role was to add capacity in ways that strengthened, rather than replaced, those institutional relationships. These results show that this approach can help more students stay connected to the support, momentum and sense of belonging that keep completion within their reach.”

HBCUs make up just 3 percent of the nation’s colleges and universities yet produce nearly 20 percent of all Black graduates. In recent years, these institutions have experienced a surge of interest and philanthropic support, with many seeing increased applications and, in some cases, record enrollment.

The report, “Empowering Student Momentum at HBCUs,” tracks outcomes from Fall 2021 through Spring 2026, during which InsideTrack coaches supported more than 43,800 students across the 39 campuses. This included 23,886 students who had stopped out before completing their degree and 11,815 enrolled students navigating barriers to persistence, such as balancing work and family responsibilities, financial challenges, or the transition into college.

Of those who received outreach from a coach, 1,343 stopped-out students returned to school, and more than 2,300 have gone on to graduate, according to outcomes verified through the National Student Clearinghouse. As a result, participating institutions have seen an estimated $26.9 million in recovered and retained tuition revenue.

The multi-year coaching initiative focused much of its outreach on students who are too often overlooked by traditional retention efforts, including adult learners, who made up nearly 40 percent of the coached population, and Black male students, who made up about a third. Among a group of 13 public HBCUs, Black male students who met with a coach re-enrolled at a rate of 15.1 percent—10.8 percentage points higher than their peers who didn’t meet with a coach from the same cohort.

The five-year initiative was made possible through a coalition of funders and partners, including Blue Meridian Partners, UNCF’s Institute for Capacity Building, the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, and Ed Advancement. The coaching work was led by a dedicated InsideTrack team of seven partnership directors and 28 trained success coaches, nearly all of whom were HBCU alumni.

“HBCUs are powerful engines for social mobility. By supporting institutions with tools like reenrollment coaching from InsideTrack, we’ve helped more students enroll, persist, and graduate,” said Jim Runcie, co-founder and CEO,Ed Advancement. “As a result, more students are on a path to economic opportunity, and more institutions have built internal capacity to support re-enrollment”

InsideTrack is now working to make this coaching support last well beyond the five-year initiative. Through a companion Coaching Development and Training program, 233 staff members and leaders across 21 HBCUs are building coaching capacity of their own, with training set to wrap up in late 2026.

“The national conversation around HBCUs has rightly shifted toward recognizing their outsized contribution to student success and economic mobility,” said Julian Thompson, senior director of UNCF’s Institute for Capacity Building. “The next step is ensuring these institutions have the enduring capacity to meet the changing needs of students while remaining true to the mission that has defined them for generations. The outcomes in this report demonstrate the impact that’s possible when HBCUs are empowered to build on those strengths.”

This press releaseoriginally appeared online.

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• Student coaching can help thousands of HBCU students re-enroll and graduate- August 21, 2026

• AI is reshaping entry-level work and the talent pipeline- May 25, 2026

• How higher ed and lifelong learning can shape a future-proof workforce- April 8, 2026

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如何加快整个学区的青少年识字率

原文标题: What it really takes to accelerate adolescent literacy across our district
来源: eSchoolNews | 发布时间: 2026-08-20
原文链接: 点击阅读原文

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Key points:

• Building the right system supports adolescent literacy goals

• 5 ways to make reading click for teens

• From fragmentation to fidelity: How we built a literacy system that works

• For more news on literacy, visit eSN’sInnovative Teachinghub

When people hear about the literacy gains we’ve seen in our middle schools, they often ask a simple question: What program did you use?

I understand why. In education, we’re always looking for the lever, the thing that will move outcomes quickly and at scale. But what changed outcomes for our students wasn’t a single tool. It was a set of deliberate decisions about time, instruction, data, and, most importantly, people.

And none of it started with a solution. It started with an uncomfortable realization.

Facing the gap we could no longer ignore

Like many districts, we had invested deeply in elementary literacy. But when we looked closely at our middle school data, we also found that students were arriving with gaps in foundational skills, from decoding and spelling to fluency, which were quietly undermining everything else.

These weren’t new gaps. But our secondary system wasn’t designed to address them. Our teachers are highly skilled English instructional content experts. They don’t typically see themselves as teachers of foundational reading. What we had was a mismatch: students who still needed explicit literacy instruction, and a system not built to provide it. Once we acknowledged that, the work became clearer.

Making literacy a structural commitment

One of the most important shifts we made was moving literacy out of the category of “initiative” and into “structure.”

That meant creating time, not just squeezing literacy into the margins but building it into schedules. Our schools each approached this differently: intervention blocks, repurposed advisory periods, even “all hands on deck” models where every adult supported literacy instruction. There was no single model. But there was a shared expectation: Literacy work would happen consistently.

To support this work, we implemented Lexia PowerUp Literacy as part of a broader, blended approach that combined online learning with explicit, teacher-led instruction. Tools alone don’t drive change, but when paired with strong instruction and clear expectations, they can accelerate it. Just as important, it gave teachers visibility into where students were struggling in real time, so they could target instruction more precisely.

Measuring what actually matters

Early on, we focused on engagement, including time on task and progression through levels. But we realized we were asking the wrong question. Students were completing content. Not all were mastering it. That distinction mattered. It’s also a pattern we’ve seen echoed in recent national conversations, including a webinar with district leaders focused on adolescent literacy implementation. Completion and mastery are not the same thing, and confusing the two can lead to overestimating impact.

That had us shift our focus and ask: Were students demonstrating understanding? Were teachers using data to adjust instruction? Were we prioritizing depth over pace? That shift changed our results. It also pushed us to look more closely at student-level data, helping us understand not just whether students were progressing, but where they were getting stuck and what to do next instructionally.

Keeping the work visible and centering the people who make it work

Even strong efforts lose momentum if they aren’t revisited. We built a cadence into the work: planning at the start of the year, structured data conversations throughout, ongoing professional learning, and end-of-year reflection tied to next steps. Those touchpoints kept the work visible and honest—but more importantly, they kept teachers and students at the center of it.

Teachers are the linchpin.

We cannot expect teachers to deliver instruction they haven’t been prepared to deliver, especially in secondary settings where foundational literacy training is often limited. Teachers often understand the “why” behind effective literacy instruction, but they need support with the “how”—how to apply those practices within the constraints of their classrooms.

That’s why we focused on job-embedded professional learning that connected research to daily practice and built internal leadership across schools. Access to clear, actionable data helped bridge that gap, turning insight into day-to-day instructional decisions teachers could make with confidence.

Over time, we saw a shift not just in instruction, but in student ownership. Students began to name what they didn’t understand. They asked for help with specific skills. That level of engagement doesn’t happen by accident.

Letting momentum build

It’s also important to note that we didn’t mandate this work across every school. We invited schools in. We were clear about expectations and support. Some joined immediately. Others waited. What drove expansion wasn’t compliance, it was actual results. When school leaders saw improvements and heard from peers, momentum grew organically.

Using data to go deeper

Keep in mind, data wasn’t the goal. It was a tool. With the help of our literacy partner’s evaluation team, we analyzed student progress, instructional patterns, and outcomes across groups to go deeper. That level of visibility helped us move beyond surface trends and pinpoint the specific skills holding students back, giving teachers clearer direction for instruction. That work also confirmed true impact and helped us refine our approach, particularly for multilingual learners and students with disabilities.

For example, when we examined outcomes for students who consistently engaged with the program and in-person learning, we saw meaningful gains across multiple literacy domains. From the beginning to end of year, Loudoun students in grades 6–8 with consistent participation demonstrated substantial growth:

• +36 percentage points in Word Study, strengthening decoding and vocabulary needed for deeper comprehension

• +10 percentage points in Grammar, supporting clearer writing and reading fluency

• +28 percentage points in Comprehension, critical for success with complex, grade-level texts across subjects

These gains reinforced what we were seeing in classrooms: When implementation is strong, students don’t just engage they make measurable progress.

This also aligns with broader research showing that implementation matters. In a randomized controlled study meeting ESSA Tier 1 (Strong Evidence), the program demonstrated significantly greater reading gains—reported as up to five times the impact of the average middle school intervention. But those results only happen when systems support strong use.

A final reflection

If I could offer one takeaway, it’s this: Accelerating adolescent literacy isn’t about finding the right program. It’s about building the right system.

A system that creates time.

A system that is based on research-based instructional practices.A system that supports teachers.A system that uses data to inform decisions.And a system willing to learn and adapt.

This work is complex. It takes persistence. But it is possible. And when students begin to see themselves as readers, that’s when you know the system is working.

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Dr. Michelle Picard serves as the district supervisor of Secondary English and Reading for Loudoun County Public Schools in Virginia and Dr. Octavia Gray-Essex serves as Lexia’s national senior education advisor.

• What it really takes to accelerate adolescent literacy across our district- August 20, 2026

• Uncovering the college and career readiness shifts that exceptional school systems are making- August 19, 2026

• Today’s classroom isn’t broken–but it wasn’t built for today’s top students- August 18, 2026

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揭示卓越的学校系统正在进行的大学和职业准备转变

原文标题: Uncovering the college and career readiness shifts that exceptional school systems are making
来源: eSchoolNews | 发布时间: 2026-08-19
原文链接: 点击阅读原文

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Key points:

• Preparing students for life requires more than preparing for the next grade level

• Rethinking employability skills in K–12 education

• Education in a connected world: Preparing students for global careers

• For more on college and career readiness, visit eSN’sInnovative Teachinghub

If you ask most educators where college and career readiness (CCR) begins, many will point to high school. That’s when many students start thinking seriously about graduation requirements, dual enrollment, financial aid, career pathways, and college applications. High school is the last stop before students pursue a postsecondary pathway, whether that’s a degree, credential, or something else, and it might feel like the logical place to focus on CCR.

But exceptional school systems know that by the time students reach high school, many of the foundational beliefs that influence those decisions have already taken shape. Students have developed opinions about what they’re good at, which subjects they enjoy, whether college is “for them,” and even what careers they believe are possible. Those perceptions don’t suddenly appear in ninth grade—they’re formed over years of experiences inside and outside the classroom.

That’s why the highest-performing college and career readiness systems don’t treat CCR as a high school initiative. They treat it as a PreK-12 commitment. Their work begins long before students start filling out applications because they understand a simple truth: Preparing students for life requires more than preparing them for the next grade level. It requires designing an educational experience that intentionally builds toward postsecondary success from the very beginning.

Preparation for life begins earlier than we think

Walk through almost any elementary school and you’ll hear teachers talking about preparing students for next year. Reading benchmarks, mathematics proficiency, writing development, and grade-level standards dominate conversations about instruction. Those priorities matter, and they always will. Strong academic preparation remains the foundation of every student’s future.

Exceptional systems, however, add another layer to that conversation. They ask educators to see beyond the next school year and consider the student sitting in front of them as a future college student, skilled tradesperson, entrepreneur, healthcare professional, engineer, artist, or community leader. Every lesson becomes part of a much longer journey. Instead of asking,“What does this student need next year?”they also ask,“What habits, skills, and experiences will this student need to thrive after graduation?”A single conversation can reinforce a positive belief or instill a negative one. A teacher can say, “Oh you’re really great at math, you should think about being an engineer.” What might feel like a one-off comment might plant a seed that leads towards a whole different outcome as a student sees someone believe in them in a new way.

That subtle shift changes the purpose of daily instruction. A first-grade classroom isn’t simply building literacy; it’s developing communication. A fifth-grade science lesson isn’t only teaching the scientific method; it’s nurturing curiosity and problem-solving. Students begin seeing learning not as something they complete for school, but as something that prepares them for life. When educators embrace that mindset collectively, college and career readiness stops belonging to counselors and high schools. It becomes everyone’s responsibility.

The goal isn’t a strategic plan—it’s postsecondary success

Nearly every school district has a strategic plan. These plans establish priorities, align resources, and communicate a shared vision for improvement. They are valuable because they create organizational focus and help leaders monitor progress over time.

The strongest college and career readiness systems understand that strategic plans are only meaningful if they ultimately improve students’ lives after graduation. They don’t measure success simply by completing initiatives or checking off implementation milestones. Instead, they continually ask whether those initiatives are leading to greater postsecondary enrollment, credential attainment, workforce readiness, and long-term success for every student. The milestones students make along the way to graduation should tell a consistent story towards preparing students for long-term success. If a milestone is misaligned, it veers a student off course from the greater goal.

This distinction matters because implementation is not the same as impact. A district can successfully launch new advising programs, expand career exploration, or adopt new planning tools without fundamentally changing student outcomes. Exceptional systems keep the destination in view. Every improvement effort—from attendance initiatives to literacy instruction to family engagement—is viewed through a single lens: Will this create better opportunities for studentsafterhigh school? That question keeps postsecondary attainment at the center of the work rather than allowing it to become one initiative among many.

Graduation is not a finish line, it’s a launching point

Increasing graduation rates has been one of education’s great success stories. Schools across the country have worked tirelessly to remove barriers, provide interventions, and support students in earning a diploma. Those efforts have changed lives and deserve recognition.

Yet a diploma, while important, is not the destination. Graduation should represent readiness for what comes next—not simply completion of required coursework. Two students may walk across the same stage on the same evening with identical diplomas, yet leave with vastly different levels of preparation. One may have explored multiple career pathways, earned college credit, completed work-based learning experiences, and developed a thoughtful postsecondary plan. The other may still be uncertain about what opportunities exist or how to pursue them.

Exceptional school systems redefine what it means to graduate successfully. They certainly celebrate commencement, but they also ask whether every student leaves with a viable, informed, and personally meaningful next step. In many ways, graduation becomes less of a finish line and more of a launching point. That perspective aligns closely with the broader goal of postsecondary attainment—not simply helping students finish high school, but ensuring they are prepared to succeed after they leave it.

Every student deserves a transcript that tells their story

Traditionally, transcripts have served as compliance documents. They record credits earned, courses completed, grades achieved, and graduation requirements satisfied. While those functions remain important, exceptional systems recognize that a transcript can represent something much more meaningful. At both of the school systems where we worked, establishing a vision for the transcript to serve as a brand that represented what it meant to be a student who graduated from our programs. These were brands that colleges and other post-secondary destinations grew to know and trust over time because of this work.

Every student’s educational journey tells a story. Their advanced coursework reflects academic curiosity. Industry credentials demonstrate technical skills. Dual enrollment signals college readiness. Leadership experiences reveal initiative. Service learning illustrates civic engagement. Work-based learning highlights authentic application. Together, these experiences paint a picture of a learner whose education reflects both achievement and purpose.

Helping students build that story cannot begin during senior year. It requires years of thoughtful advising, meaningful reflection, and intentional opportunities that allow students to explore their interests while developing their strengths. The transcript becomes more than a record of what students completed. It becomes evidence of who they are becoming. When schools shift their focus from helping students accumulate credits to helping them build a coherent story about their future, they prepare graduates who are ready to articulate not only what they learned, but why it matters.

Looking beyond graduation

The four shifts described here share a common thread: they require schools to think differently about the purpose of education. Exceptional college and career readiness systems don’t necessarily have more programs or larger budgets. What distinguishes them is that every decision is made with students’ lives after high school in mind.

Preparing students for postsecondary success is not the responsibility of one counselor, one department, or one grade level. It is the cumulative result of thousands of intentional moments across 13 years of schooling. Every classroom experience, every conversation, every opportunity to explore interests, and every supportive relationship contributes to a student’s ability to thrive after graduation.

As conversations about postsecondary attainment continue to evolve, perhaps the most important question school leaders can ask is not, “What are we doing in high school to prepare students?” Instead, the better question may be, “How is every educator, at every grade level, contributing to the future our students deserve?” Exceptional systems understand that answering that question begins on a student’s very first day of school—not their last.

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Dr. T.J. Vari is the Senior Director of Product Strategy atMaiaLearning, with a focus on postsecondary planning for students worldwide. Dr. Vari is a former deputy superintendent, middle school assistant principal and principal, and high school English teacher. He’s the cofounder ofTheSchoolHouse302, a leadership development firm, and the coauthor ofseven bookson educational leadership, which are the basis for his speaking engagements, coaching, and leadership development institutes.Thomas O’Brien is the Vice President of Success & Engagement atWinward Academy, where he supports hundreds of schools, districts, and after-school programs across the country in achieving their college and career readiness goals. Prior to joining Winward Academy, Mr. O’Brien served as a nationally recognized high school principal and award-winning math teacher, leading innovative efforts to improve student achievement and access. He writes ablogabout math instruction, education technology, and school leadership. His forthcomingbookwill be released this summer.

• What it really takes to accelerate adolescent literacy across our district- August 20, 2026

• Uncovering the college and career readiness shifts that exceptional school systems are making- August 19, 2026

• Today’s classroom isn’t broken–but it wasn’t built for today’s top students- August 18, 2026

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停止每次滥用人工智能抄袭

原文标题: Stop calling every misuse of AI plagiarism
来源: eCampusNews | 发布时间: 2026-08-19
原文链接: 点击阅读原文

Key points:

• AI-generated content is not automatically plagiarism

• Schools are building AI rules before they know the destination

• Higher education needs better AI experiences, not more AI tools

• For more news on AI and plagiarism, visit eCN’sAI in Educationhub

AI-generated content is not automatically plagiarism.

That statement may unsettle faculty members and academic-integrity officers. It may sound like a defense of students who use ChatGPT to write papers or complete assignments intended to demonstrate mastery. Students can cheat with AI, but higher education cannot respond intelligently while using one label for every form of misconduct.

AI has changed how students learn

The2026 Student Generative AI Surveyfound that 95 percent of surveyed UK undergraduates used AI in at least one way, while 94 percent used generative AI to support assessed work. Students used it to explain concepts, summarize readings, and organize information.

These activities cannot all be classified as cheating because many resemble support students have long received from tutors, librarians, writing centers, classmates, search engines, and faculty members. Other uses may let students bypass the intellectual effort an assignment was designed to develop. The question is what the student asked AI to do.

A study inScientific Reportsfound that students using a carefully designed AI tutor learned more in less time than students receiving an active learning lesson. By contrast, research in theProceedings of the National Academy of Sciencesfound that students with unrestricted GPT-4 access performed better during practice but worse when the technology was removed.

The product is no longer proof of learning

Higher education has traditionally inferred learning from completed products. A polished essay suggested that a student understood the material, evaluated evidence, developed an argument, and communicated a conclusion. Generative AI has broken that connection between product and competence.

A polished paper may now exist without the student conducting the analysis represented in it. Another student may learn by challenging outputs, comparing sources, and defending decisions. TheOECD Digital Education Outlook 2026warns that general-purpose AI can improve performance without producing corresponding learning gains.

Learning should be defined less by who typed every sentence and more by whether the student developed the knowledge and judgment the course intended to produce. Can the student explain the argument, apply it elsewhere, evaluate evidence, recognize errors, and defend the work? Otherwise, institutions may mistake machine-assisted performance for human learning.

Cheating is real, but plagiarism is specific

The Brown University economics controversy shows that AI-enabled cheating cannot be minimized. Students averaged 96 percent on a take-home examination but only 48.6 percent on a later in-person final after the professor suspected widespread AI use, according toa recent study. The gap shows how AI can separate apparent performance from demonstrated competence.

If students used AI when prohibited, they cheated. If they submitted machine-generated reasoning as evidence of competence, they misrepresented their learning. Neither conclusion requires stretching plagiarism until it covers every unauthorized tool.

The federalOffice of Research Integritydefines plagiarism as appropriating another person’s ideas, processes, results, or words without credit. TheInternational Committee of Medical Journal Editorsstates that AI tools cannot qualify as authors because they cannot accept responsibility for accuracy, integrity, or originality. AI can facilitate plagiarism, but AI-generated language does not automatically prove plagiarism occurred.

Higher education needs a new taxonomy

Unauthorized AI assistance occurs when a student uses AI despite instructions prohibiting it. AI substitution occurs when technology performs the intellectual work an assessment was designed to measure. AI-enabled plagiarism occurs when AI reproduces identifiable human language or ideas presented without attribution. AI-enabled fabrication occurs when a student submits invented references, quotations, evidence, data, or findings.

These categories overlap but are not interchangeable. A student could use unauthorized AI without plagiarizing anyone, disclose AI use while fabricating sources, or use AI with permission yet fail to cite human scholarship. Clear terminology would help faculty design rules, students understand obligations, and integrity panels evaluate cases.Recent reporting on honor codesshows how permitted AI use varies across institutions.

Assessment must replace surveillance

Institutions have devoted enormous energy to detecting whether AI touched a student’s writing. That approach cannot restore confidence because detection software creates suspicion without proving how a paper was produced. Cornell University’sCenter for Teaching Innovationadvises against treating automated AI-detection systems as definitive evidence because of reliability concerns and false accusations.

The better response is assessment built around visible evidence of learning. Students can submit process notes, document source verification, explain how AI was used, participate in oral defenses, and apply conclusions to unfamiliar situations. Faculty can evaluate drafts, decisions, and reasoning rather than only the final product.

Australia’sTertiary Education Quality and Standards Agencyframes the challenge as assessment reform, ethical AI integration, and assurance of learning rather than detection alone. Institutions must prepare students for professions in which AI will be present while ensuring graduates possess the knowledge and judgment their credentials claim.

AI-generated content is not automatically plagiarism, although it may be unauthorized, deceptive, fabricated, or inconsistent with an assignment’s objectives. Higher education must punish misconduct precisely while teaching students to use intelligent tools transparently and responsibly.

Higher education must be able to prove that a human learned.

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