Owen Phillips

What's the tiniest change you can think of to create the biggest improvement in someone's well-being?

That's the question at the heart of the first annual report by the new Social and Behavioral Sciences Team inside the White House.

This group of scientists has found that simple, small ...

One of the toughest jobs in education is the substitute teacher. The pay is low, schedules are unpredictable and respect can be hard to come by. But because the average teacher missed 11 days of school in 2012-2013, a sub like Josephine Brewington ends up playing a crucial role.

It's getting to be that time of the year when students wipe tears from watery eyes, exchange final goodbyes and throw their graduation caps into the sky. In other words, it's graduation season — and that also means the season of commencement speeches.

Over the weekend, President Obama and the ...

Entering kindergarten early or skipping a grade later on can be great for a lot of reasons. A bored but highly gifted student will be challenged appropriately, may graduate early and could reach other milestones in life faster.

But on the flip side, jumping ahead also means being the youngest ...

No matter how high you climb in life, you never forget your favorite teacher.

This week, President Obama awarded Shanna Peeples, a high school English teacher from Amarillo, Texas, the title of the 2015 National Teacher of the Year.

We've been exploring great teaching as well, with our 50 ...

On the first day of school, perhaps the only person more discussed than the "new kid" is the "new kid who skipped a grade."

Words like "gifted," "brilliant" and "genius" get thrown around to describe these students. Education researchers generally refer to them as "accelerated." It's a catch-all term to ...

Think, for just a moment, about the last job you applied for.

If you didn't get the job (apologies), did you get an interview? If not, did you feel some hidden forces, beyond your control, working against you?

Perceived hiring biases against women working in science, technology, engineering and math ...

Back in 2011, Newt Gingrich was running for president, and he proposed a radical idea to help schools cut costs: Fire the janitors and pay students to do the cleaning.

Needless to say, the idea to turn students into moonlighting janitors had about as much support as Gingrich's presidential campaign.

Every year, thousands of fresh-faced teachers are handed the keys to a new classroom, given a pat on the back and told, "Good luck!"

Over the next five years, though, nearly half of those teachers will transfer to a new school or leave the profession altogether — only to be ...

What happens when a teacher wants to assign an extra book for class, but the school can't afford a copy for every student?

For Dana Vanderford, an English teacher at L.W. Higgins High School in New Orleans, the book was Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation. Buying enough copies for her ...

Earlier this month, we reported on an alarming drop in enrollment at teacher training programs in several large states. Considering the job's long hours, generally low pay and unpopular testing requirements, many teachers in our audience weren't surprised by the trend.

This made us wonder: Why, in spite ...

Earlier this week we reported on the decline in teachers entering the profession.

And the responses from social media poured in.

From Facebook

From Twitter

From Instagram

Now, what about the other side: Why do teachers stay in the profession? Reach out on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. ...

All this week we've been talking about the importance of applying for financial aid, the difficulty of doing so and what can be done to make it simpler.

Every year, more than 2 million students who would qualify for federal Pell Grants fail to fill out the ...

It's Financial Aid Week here at the NPR Ed Team (not really, but it sure feels like it). And we're kicking things off with a nostalgia nugget for all you children of the '80s.

The old G.I. Joe animated series famously ended with the phrase, "Now I know! And knowing ...

Studies, research papers, doctoral dissertations, conference presentations — each year academia churns out thousands of pieces of research on education. And for many of them, that's the end of it. They gather dust in the university library or languish in some forgotten corner of the Internet.

A few, though, find ...

The NPR Ed team is discovering what teachers do when they're not teaching. Cartoonist? Carpenter? Dolphin trainer? Explore our Secret Lives of Teachers series.

Most teachers will watch the Super Bowl at home, cracking open a beer maybe, or yelling at their flat-screen TVs. Lauren Schneider will be right ...

The NPR Ed team is discovering what teachers do when they're not teaching. Artist? Carpenter? Quidditch player? Explore our Secret Lives of Teachers series.

It's not unusual for kids to wear a T-shirt to school with their favorite band on it. But at Oakwood Elementary in North Hollywood, Calif., ...

Every year, more than a million students don't complete the FAFSA — the main federal student-loan application.

One big reason? The form is so complicated that it discourages some people from even trying.

Two U.S. senators have introduced a bill that would scrap the much-maligned Free Application for Federal Student ...