🛝 Ed Tech Emails, Pre-K Teachers, and Middle Schoolers and AI

Welcome to Playground Post, a bi-weekly newsletter that keeps education innovators ahead of what's next.

Here's what we have on deck for today…

• Teachers Ignore 75% of Ed Tech Emails

• Pre-K Teachers Are Fleeing the Classroom

• Middle Schoolers Are Using AI to Cheat During Class

Teachers Ignore 75% of Ed Tech Emails. Here's What Actually Works.

140,000 elementary teachers just proved what every ed tech company suspects but doesn't want to admit: teachers delete most of their product emails without reading them.

Character Lab tested 15 different message types with teachers using the Zearn math platform. Only personalized alerts about specific students were opened. When teachers received "tower alerts" showing exactly where their students got stuck, or progress updates on individual kids, they logged in more often.

The opportunity:

Instead of mass-media campaigns, build notification systems that deliver hyper-specific, actionable insights about individual students at the exact moment teachers need them.

Pre-K Teachers Are Fleeing the Classroom at the Worst Possible Time

States just spent a record $11.73 billion expanding preschool programs. But here's what they missed: the teachers are burning out faster than anyone can replace them. New RAND data shows pre-K teachers experience work stress at nearly double the rate of other college-educated professionals.

New teachers with five years or less experience are most likely to quit. Just as states need fresh talent to expand programs serving 1.6 million kids, the pipeline is drying up. “You can only have so many children enrolled if you have a limited number of teachers," says Anna Shapiro from RAND.

Smart innovators will build solutions that reduce administrative burden, streamline classroom management, and help new teachers survive their first five years.

Middle Schoolers Are Using AI to Cheat During Class. This Teacher Found the Fix

Holly Distefano watches her seventh graders' responses roll in live during class. When too many answers look suspiciously similar, she knows they're using ChatGPT in the classroom. Students bypass school firewalls as fast as IT departments can build them. TikTok influencers rack up thousands of views teaching kids how to "humanize" AI content.

But teachers are fighting back by assigning hands-on work that requires actual thinking. An automotive teacher switched from basic questions to having students redesign engines for racing.

Education innovators can help by building platforms that allow teachers to create "AI-proof" assignments that are cognitively demanding yet scalable.

We'll be back with another edition on Friday. See you then!

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