This Week in Education

Top 10 Stories

Back-to-School Season Arrives — and It Costs More

Millions of students streamed back this week as most of the country opened the 2026–27 year, with Texas, Utah and much of the South and Midwest holding first days and Washington, D.C. and many colleges opening August 24. Educators report that back-to-school supplies are noticeably pricier this year, leaving some families struggling and prompting teachers and community groups to step in and help fill the gap.

Read the full story → Education Week

AI Returns to Class — Now With Guardrails

As classrooms reopened, districts rolled out the AI policies that were mostly theoretical a year ago. Ohio now requires every public district to have an AI policy in place, Charleston County (SC) launched a districtwide “safe, ethical, effective” framework, and several Central Florida districts set rules allowing AI for research but not for graded work without a teacher’s permission. Microsoft is offering Copilot at no cost to Washington classrooms for three years, and trackers counted roughly 100 state AI bills this year — a clear shift from banning AI to teaching students to use it responsibly.

Read the full story → K-12 Dive

Cellphone Restrictions Take Hold Nationwide

New state laws requiring phone-free classrooms took effect for the 2026–27 year, with California, Florida and Indiana among those mandating pouch- or locker-based restrictions that schools began enforcing this week. Momentum is broad and bipartisan — well over three dozen states now have policies, and a Pew Research Center survey found 77% of U.S. adults support banning phones during class, up for a second straight year.

Read the full story → Psychology Today

International Student Enrollment Set to Fall

U.S. colleges are bracing for a sharp drop in international students this fall. New projections from NAFSA and the Institute of International Education estimate up to 111,000 fewer international students — a roughly 9.5% decline — costing an estimated $3.4 billion and nearly 40,000 jobs, with 63% of institutions expecting decreases. Analysts point to visa-appointment bottlenecks, tighter immigration policy and uncertainty around Optional Practical Training; international applications on the Common App fell about 9–10%, the steepest decline on record.

Read the full story → CNBC

A Deepening Global Teacher Shortage

The teacher-workforce squeeze is worldwide. UNESCO estimates the world needs 44 million more primary and secondary teachers by 2030 — including 15 million in sub-Saharan Africa — as primary-teacher attrition has nearly doubled since 2015. In the U.S., rural districts are struggling to retain staff heading into the new year, and Texas moved to bar schools from using H-1B visas to hire international educators for hard-to-fill subjects like math and world languages.

Read the full story → UNESCO

Teachers Face Rising Aggression at Work

As staff returned, Education Week spotlighted growing concern about aggression toward teachers, reporting that educators feel less victimized when they have strong support from their principals. Safety debates are playing out locally, too: in Nebraska, police agreed this week to stop carrying shock-delivering “G.L.O.V.E.” devices while working in Omaha’s largest school district.

Read the full story → Education Week

Extreme Heat Reshapes the First Weeks of School

Record late-summer heat collided with back-to-school across the South, Southwest and Midwest this week, forcing “heat protocols” that limit outdoor recess and athletics and, in some places, trigger early dismissals — Colorado’s Poudre School District sent elementary students home two hours early amid strained air conditioning in older buildings. Districts are leaning on hydration breaks, shade rules and, for athletics, Wet Bulb Globe Temperature monitoring to keep students safe.

Read the full story → School Closings Briefing

McMahon Presses Schools on Transparency and Rigor

Education Secretary Linda McMahon opened the school year with a broad call for schools and colleges to spell out commitments to transparency, academic rigor and free speech, part of the administration’s “return education to the states” push. The Department also sent educators a follow-up letter after last month’s rescission of longstanding anti-discrimination rules — guidance schools are now working to interpret.

Read the full story → Education Week

UNESCO Turns a Global Lens on Rights and Higher Ed

The U.N.’s education agency published a run of global reports this month, including a Higher Education Global Trends report and the eleventh worldwide consultation monitoring the right to education under the 1960 Convention against Discrimination in Education, plus new country snapshots across Southeast Asia. Together they underscore how access, equity and quality are being tracked — and contested — well beyond any one country.

Read the full story → UNESCO

Kids’ Digital Lives Take Center Stage

Beneath the new phone and AI rules sits a bigger question schools are grappling with: how growing up in a hyper-digital world shapes kids’ attention, learning and social skills. Psychologists this week weighed the benefits and drawbacks of adolescents’ tech use, and a prominent social-emotional-learning organization’s new leader argued that academics and SEL rise together — a reminder that back-to-school “rules” are ultimately about the human skills behind the screens.

Read the full story → Education Week