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Experts warn that education systems must change in the age of AI

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Rows of desks and timed tests once suited factory-age education systems, yet teenagers now share classes with chatbots that can summarize a chapter in seconds.

In addition, one in seven adolescents worldwide lives with a mental disorder, a signal that the old setup is creaking under modern pressure.

The job picture is shifting just as fast, with employers predicting 69 million new roles and 83 million losses within five years, a net fall that exposes how blunt academic rankings have become.

The warning comes from education researchers Yong Zhao of the University of Kansas and RuoJun Zhong of YEE Education, whose June 19, 2025 paper argues that schools must abandon a winner‑takes‑all mindset or risk leaving graduates ill‑equipped for a world that operates on partnerships.

Why education systems struggle

“Meritocracy turns education into a race,” Zhao and Zhong state. Meritocracy once promised fairness, yet it often masks how money, networks, and geography load the dice before the first quiz is graded.

Competitive stress is tangible, and the U.S. Surgeon General has linked heavy social‑media comparison culture to rising youth anxiety.

Teamwork matters more than winning

“Excellence in the age of interdependence is not about being better than others. It is about becoming better with others,” explain Zhao and Zhong.

They swap the track‑meet metaphor for human interdependence, a frame that values shared strength over solo wins. 

Evidence for this shift is visible outside school walls, where 64 million Americans earned pay through freelance work in 2023, trading standardized résumés for niche expertise.

Co‑agency asks students to work with tools powered by artificial intelligence, not against them.

Large language models have already met or cleared the passing bar on parts of the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam, proof that rote recall is now cheap silicon labor.

When algorithms handle routine analysis, classrooms can pivot toward creativity, ethics, and empathy, talents a chatbot cannot reliably fake.

Education systems focused on strengths

Uniform syllabi give way to interest‑driven routes that honor each learner’s jagged profile of strengths.

Personal growth, social contribution, and wellbeing replace class rank, turning the report card into a portfolio rather than a scoreboard.

Research on team performance shows that psychological safety, not constant ranking, drives collaboration and deeper understanding.

Zhao and Zhong outline practical steps: mixed‑age studios, community projects, and assessments that ask what value a student created for others.

When learning works best

When students work on problems they care about, learning becomes internalized. They stop asking what will be on the test and start asking how their strengths can improve someone else’s life.

Zhao and Zhong argue that real engagement happens when learners find problems that matter to them and that also have social or environmental relevance.

These challenges draw out personal gifts while pushing students to think about others, anchoring them in shared responsibility.

Skills matter more than college degrees

Employers are steadily moving away from requiring four-year degrees for most roles. In 2024, over half of U.S. job postings no longer asked for formal education credentials, favoring proven skills instead.

State governments are following suit. In early 2024, Massachusetts removed degree requirements for most public jobs, and Minnesota had already done the same for 75% of its roles the year prior. This shift signals that what a person can do is finally outweighing where they went to school.

The push toward interdependence only works if differences are seen as assets, not problems. Research shows that teams with diverse skills, backgrounds, and thinking styles outperform more uniform groups on creative and analytical tasks.

Cognitive diversity isn’t just a social value, it’s an economic advantage. McKinsey found that companies in the top quartile for diverse leadership were 25% more likely to have above-average profitability.

Education systems can prepare students

Teachers become coaches who curate real‑world problems, then step back while learners form teams around their individual talents.

Policymakers can help by dialing down high‑stakes testing, freeing hours for the messy work of project design and reflection.

The authors frame their model as preparation for a labor market where collaboration beats competition and where empathy can earn as much as code.

If education accepts that premise, tomorrow’s graduates may see classmates not as obstacles but as essential partners in a shared experiment.

The study is published in ECNU Review of Education.

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Education

Threats to local school officials have nearly tripled, research finds : NPR

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When the school board in Florida’s Broward County defied Gov. Ron DeSantis’ ban on school mask mandates during the pandemic, some parents sent vitriolic emails and made veiled threats.

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When Sarah Leonardi filed to run for Florida’s Broward County School Board in 2019, she had no idea what she was getting into.

Leonardi won and took office in late 2020 in the middle of the pandemic. It was tumultuous. Gov. Ron DeSantis threatened to withhold school funding after the board defied his masking ban. Angry over mask mandates, some parents sent vitriolic emails and made veiled threats.

But as COVID rates began to ebb, new flashpoints emerged. In the fall of 2021, Leonardi chaperoned an elementary school field trip to a local bar and grill that happened to be gay-owned. Some conservative media ran with the story. New threats poured in.

“Some of them were like ‘You can’t outrun my Glock 9mm gun’ [and] ‘Take a dirt nap,’ ” Leonardi recalled in an interview with NPR. “One was like, ‘Sell that b**** as a sex slave to ISIS,’ which was oddly specific.”

Leonardi says she still receives threats when conservative media occasionally republishes the school field trip story.

“I’ll get an email or a phone call about it, just telling me what a horrific person I am,” she says.

Harassment and threats up 170% 

Leonardi’s experience captures how threats against local school officials across the U.S. have shifted and grown, according to researchers at Princeton University. They conducted what they say is the largest and most comprehensive study of its kind in the country. Princeton’s Bridging Divides Initiative interviewed Leonardi along with 38 other school board officials. They also surveyed more than 820 school board officials with a group called CivicPulse. Using open-source material, investigators documented threats and harassment against school officials from November 2022 through April 2023, and the same period two years later. They found such incidents rose by 170%.

Bridging Divides says some of the local cases corresponded with national attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives as well as on LGBTQ+ policies. Roudabeh Kishi, the project’s chief research officer, says the targets held a variety of political views.

“This isn’t really like a partisan issue,” she says. “We’re seeing really similar reports of experiences (on) all sides of the political spectrum.”

In addition to Leonardi, NPR interviewed six other current or former school board officials who said they had been targets of harassment or threats. They said the anger and distrust that developed during the pandemic helped fuel and shape future disputes over cultural issues.

“The pandemic started this conversation about what are individual freedoms,” says Alexandria Ayala, a former school board member in Florida’s Palm Beach County. “What can a government tell me to do or not do?”

A second “Civil War” in Gettysburg

Al Moyer, who’s now in his ninth year on the Gettysburg Area School Board in Pennsylvania, says battles over masking frayed relationships in the district. Then, in 2023, some people in the community became uncomfortable with a tennis coach who was transitioning to female and had used the girls locker room.

Moyer said one resident called a Republican board member who opposed renewing the coach’s contract a “Nazi” to her face. He says his wife lost friends over the controversy.

“Those two situations really caused a kind of second Civil War battle in Gettysburg,” Moyer says. “It was pretty ugly.”

School board members have to navigate fights over genuine issues, but increasingly they have to grapple with fake ones as well. Russell Devorsky, who recently retired after 14 years on a school board in suburban Waco, Texas, says false stories on social media sow confusion and fuel harassment. “I am consistently and constantly harangued with individuals saying, ‘Well, kids are dressing up like cats, and they have litter boxes in bathrooms,’ ” says Devorsky. “Even though there’s never been a school district that had that situation, people believe it.”

“Like pushing a wet rope up a hill”

Even ordinary issues — such as the construction of a new band hall — can be targets of misinformation, Devorksy says. He says there were false claims on social media that the hall wouldn’t be ready on time and that students wouldn’t have instruments. Trying to set people straight who consider comments on Facebook community pages authoritative is exhausting, Devorsky says. “It’s kind of like pushing a wet rope up a hill,” he says.

The Princeton researchers worry that harassment could drive some school board members to leave public service — which they are monitoring — or avoid engaging on controversial topics. But Sarah Leonardi, the one who took the students to the gay-owned restaurant, says she isn’t quitting because she feels like she’s still making a difference.

“Ultimately, I decided to move forward and run again,” Leonardi says. “That is just a sacrifice — or a vulnerability — I’m willing to accept for now.”



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Pasco County, Fla., Schools to Personalize Education With AI

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(TNS) — When Lacoochee Elementary School resumes classes in August, principal Latoya Jordan wants teachers to focus more attention on each student’s individual academic needs.

She’s looking at artificial intelligence as a tool they can use to personalize lessons.

“I’m interested to see how it can help,” Jordan said.


Lacoochee is exploring whether to become part of the Pasco County school district’s new AI initiative being offered to 30 campuses in the fall. It’s a test run that two groups — Scholar Educationand Khanmigo — have offered the district free of charge to see whether the schools find a longer-term fit for their classes.

Scholar, a state-funded startup that made its debut last year at Pepin Academy and Dayspring Academy, will go into selected elementary schools. Khanmigo, a national model recently highlighted on 60 Minutes, is set for use in some middle and high schools.

“Schools ultimately will decide how they want to use it,” said Monica Ilse, deputy superintendent for academics. “I want to get feedback from teachers and leaders for the future.”

Ilse said she expected the programs might free teachers from some of the more mundane aspects of their jobs, so they can pay closer attention to their students. A recent Gallup poll found teachers who regularly use AI said it saves them about six hours of work weekly, in areas such as writing quizzes and completing paperwork.

Marlee Strawn, cofounder of Scholar Education, introduced her system to the principals of 19 schools during a June 30 video call. The model is tied to Florida’s academic standards, Strawn said, and includes dozens of lessons that teachers can use.

It also allows teachers to craft their own assignments, tapping into the growing body of material being uploaded. The more specific the request, the more fine-tuned the exercises can be. If a student has a strong interest in baseball or ballet, for instance, the AI programming can help develop standards-based tasks on those subjects, she explained.

Perhaps most useful, Strawn told the principals, is the system’s ability to support teachers as they analyze student performance data. It identifies such things as the types of questions students asked and the items they struggled with, and can make suggestions about how to respond.

“The data analytics has been the most helpful for our teachers so far,” she said.

She stressed that Scholar Education protects student data privacy, a common concern among parents and educators, noting the system got a top rating from Common Sense.

School board member Jessica Wright brought up criticisms that AI has proven notoriously error-prone in math.

Strawn said the system has proven helpful when teachers seek to provide real-life examples for math concepts. She did not delve into details about the reliability of AI in calculations and formulas.

Lacoochee principal Jordan wanted to know how well the AI system would interface with other technologies, such as iReady, that schools already use.

“If it works with some of our current systems, that’s an easier way to ease into it, so for teachers it doesn’t become one more thing that you have to do,” Jordan said.

Strawn said the automated bot is a supplement that teachers can integrate with data from other tools to help them identify classroom needs and create the types of differentiated instruction that Jordan and others are looking for.

The middle and high school model, Khanmigo, will focus more on student tutoring, Ilse wrote in an email to principals. It’s designed to “guide students to a deeper understanding of the content and skills mastery,” she explained in the email. As with Scholar, teachers can monitor students’ interactions and step in with one-on-one support as needed, in addition to developing lesson plans and standards-aligned quizzes.

Superintendent John Legg said teachers and schools would not be required to use AI. Legg said he simply wanted to provide options that might help teachers in their jobs. After a year, the district will evaluate whether to continue, most likely with paid services.

While an administrator at Dayspring Academy before his election, Legg wrote a letter of support for Scholar Education’s bid for a $1 million state startup grant, and he also received campaign contributions from some of the group’s leaders. He said he had no personal stake in the organization and was backing a project that might improve education, just as he previously supported Algebra Nation, the University of Florida’s online math tutoring program launched in 2013.

©2025 Tampa Bay Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.





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Crizac hits Indian stock market following IPO success

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Nearly a week after Kolkata-headquartered Crizac raised Rs. 860 crore (£73.9 million) through its initial public offering (IPO), structured as an offer for sale (OFS) by promoters Pinky Agarwal and Manish Agarwal, the company’s shares surged in domestic stock markets on Wednesday, at nearly a 15% premium above the issue price of Rs. 245. 

The IPO’s success – managed by Equirus Capital Private Limited and Anand Rathi Advisors Limited – along with its strong performance on the National Stock Exchange and Bombay Stock Exchange, is expected to fuel Crizac’s expansion into new destinations and services.

“The reason we went for a full OFS, or fully secondary, as we might say in the UK, is because the company’s balance sheet is very strong. We already have sufficient capital to support our expansion plans. Our focus remains on diversifying globally, which has been our strength over the past five years and will continue to be our strength in the future,” Christopher Nagle, CEO of Crizac, told The PIE News. 

While an OFS means that the company, in this case, Crizac, did not raise new capital through the IPO – with proceeds instead going to existing shareholders, namely the Agarwals – its entry into the financial markets allows the company to publicly demonstrate “the scale, size, and operations of the company in a transparent way”, according to Nagle.

Crizac’s decision to go public comes as it looks to expand, beyond student recruitment, into areas such as student loans, housing, and other services. 

The company is also eyeing new geographies and high-growth markets within India.

We also see great potential and can add great value in other destinations like Ireland, the USA, and Australia
Vikash Agarwal, Crizac

“We have a strong plan to expand across cities in India. Even though we are already one of the biggest recruiters for India-UK, we believe there’s still significant room for growth,” stated Vikash Agarwal, chairman and managing director, Crizac. 

“We also see great potential and can add great value in other destinations like Ireland, the USA, and Australia,” he added. 

Crizac, which reported a total income of Rs. 849.5 crore (£78m) in FY25, currently works with over 10,000 agents and some 173 international institutions.

Tthrough its stock market listing, the company aims to strengthen confidence among it partners.

“The fact that we are listed doesn’t change how we interact with agents, but we believe it will lead to even greater trust from universities and agent partners alike, thanks to the level of diligence and corporate governance that is now required of us,” stated Nagle.

With a market capitalisation of Rs 5,379.84 crore (nearly £555m), Crizac’s solid financial track record and low debt levels have been key drivers behind its IPO, even as changing policies in major study destinations continue to influence the sector.

As destinations like Australia hike visa fees, the UK increases compliance among institutions and considers imposing levies on international student fees, the US tightens vetting and eyes visa time limits, and Canada raises financial thresholds amid falling study permits, it remains to be seen how students from India, Nigeria, and China will navigate their study abroad choices in the coming years. 

According to government data presented in the Indian Parliament, there was a nearly 15% decline in Indian students going abroad, largely in the major four destinations, while countries like Germany, Russia, France, Ireland, and New Zealand saw increased interest.

However, despite the downturn, Crizac is confident that its move will inspire other Indian education companies to create value on the global stage. 

“Being the first listed company in this space will unlock significant value for the industry. We believe many are already watching our listing closely, and there will be a lot others going public from this sector now,” stated Agarwal. 



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