Sign in

Sharon Lurye

@sharonlurye.bsky.social
3K followers 2.6K following 296 posts

Education data reporter for the Associated Press, occasional gardener, former math teacher, proud member of the AP News Guild. Send tips/comments/dog pics to slurye@ap.org.

PostsRepliesMedia
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 15h
It baffles me that colleges scare so many students off of even applying by showing the full sticker price without the added context that most students pay nowhere near this amount.
220
Reposted by Sharon Lurye
Joshua Foust 🪖🎮 @joshuafoust.com · 11/09/2026
I banned Meta glasses in my classes because students told me they are hesitant to speak up and engage if they think they’re being recorded. Apple releasing this feature is just another tech company setting off yet another bomb on young people trying to learn things and join society. Really gross.
220273
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Can't believe my editor made me cut the line "much like the famous tower in Italy, PISA scores are leaning"
apnews.com
Families' interest in their kids' education is falling around the globe as scores drop, test shows
Families’ interest in their kids’ education is falling in many high-income countries as school systems struggle with plunging test scores.
041
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
The Trump administration suppressed every single datapoint related to nonbinary students in the nation's most important and comprehensive database on educational opportunity, including questions meant to hold schools accountable for bullying and harassment based on gender identity.
apnews.com
Trump administration scrubs data on gender-based bullying from school civil rights survey
The Trump administration this week quietly released an update to a major survey on civil rights in schools that was scrubbed of all data related to nonbinary students or bullying based on gender ident...
010
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
I think my favorite study here is the one where they had people step on venomous snakes to find out which conditions were most likely to provoke a snake bite. Spoiler alert: don't step on a venomous snake.
000
Reposted by Sharon Lurye
Matt Darling @besttrousers.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
This advice is based on observational data with n=1. Need to see a scaled RCT.
121756
Reposted by Sharon Lurye
Joseph Cox @josephcox.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
We got a live demo of the shirt that is designed to fool certain people detection systems. Read more here: www.404media.co/this-digital...
24934293
Reposted by Sharon Lurye
Josh Eyler @josheyler.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
They make some stellar recommendations, including a whole section on grades. I'm going to post a screenshot of the section here, and then add some commentary about different pieces of it. 2/x
Text about grades from MIT's report.
3.1.6. Reconsider grades and incentives
Several peer institutions recently imposed limits on the number of A’s instructors can give in a subject. We do not advocate this kind of grade rationing, in part because we expect it to be counterproductive in helping the Institute navigate the challenges of AI. Responding to an intense societal focus on credentials and grades, students who are set on maximizing their GPA have a strong incentive to use whatever means they feel are most effective to achieve that goal. Rationing top grades would intensify the temptation to cut corners on actual learning by increasing reliance on AI.

As instructors explore new forms of assessment and experiential learning activities, MIT should take this opportunity to consider what role grades play in our overall system, and if the current approach could be improved. For instance, if instructors mainly respond by putting more weight on in-class exams, there’s a risk of narrowing what the MIT credential has long signaled: that MIT students are capable of difficult, independent, and thought-intensive problem solving, not just acing exams on paper.

The committee encourages MIT to explore alternative systems of grading and assessment, including those that work in other countries (such as the UK system, which uses percentages to express relative mastery against an expert standard), and newer paradigms such as competency-based and mastery-based assessments. As one thought experiment, the committee discussed the idea that if MIT did not have grades, many of the incentives around AI cheating would disappear. Note that MIT already refrains from the common practice of awarding summa/magna/cum-laude diplomas, because we believe that earning an MIT degree stands as distinction enough.

Grades are far from the only way for students to demonstrate mastery or gauge their own progress; real-time feedback during an oral exam or presentation, or written comments reflecting …
39728
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
This design is so simple yet so good. #dataviz
000
Reposted by Sharon Lurye
Colin @colin-fraser.net · 18/08/2026
This is not quite right. The interchangeability of words or lack thereof is already expressed by the model, independently of watermarking. The model always generates text by randomly sampling from P(next word | "The weather was cold and") = {"grey": .192382, "overcast": .13929, "wet": ...}.
3976
Reposted by Sharon Lurye
Jon Ippolito @jonippolito.net · 18/08/2026
Generative AI’s per-query footprint can be small compared to flying, eating meat, or even Zoom. Until agents show up and compute goes through the roof. How I updated my AI footprint calculator accordingly jonippolito.substack.com/p/agents-are...
jonippolito.substack.com
Agents are where AI’s energy bill gets ugly
Generative AI’s per-query footprint can be small compared to flying, eating meat, or even Zoom. Until agents show up and compute goes through the roof.
2145
Reposted by Sharon Lurye
Megan Greenwell @greenwell.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
I'm going to talk to a huge range of people for this book: teachers, parents, students, scholars, founders, and more. If you're interested in chatting with me about literacy education, please please please get in touch! readingmachinebook@gmail.com.
94210
Reposted by Sharon Lurye
The NewsGuild-CWA @newsguild.org · 10/08/2026
BREAKING: USA Today’s journalists and media workers demand that the media company end its relationship with AI firm Palantir.
329479
Reposted by Sharon Lurye
Eric Michael Garcia @ericmgarcia.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Does Steve Kornacki get a pausa de hidratacion?
1029532
Reposted by Sharon Lurye
J. Emory Parker 🏳️‍🌈 @jaspar.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
[shows a map of earliest sunsets under permanent standard time] everyone boos [shows a map of latest sunrises under permanent daylight time] everyone boos [suggests we keep changing the clock twice a year] everyone boos
2143
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
This is such a good example of transparency when using AI in journalism!
030
Reposted by Sharon Lurye
Nolen Gertz @ethicistforhire.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Our society has associated surveillance with security (CCTV) and with love (bluetooth tags) for so long that tech companies are betting (perhaps correctly?) that people prefer being surveilled to being ignored...
624241
Reposted by Sharon Lurye
EMILY WILSON @emilyrcwilson.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
3. Very few film scripts are composed entirely in Homeric Greek. In fact, I can't think of any. That's a shame, but also understandable. It would be quite unlikely to do well at the box office.
570648
Reposted by Sharon Lurye
Ugo Sin Hache @ugosinhache.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
IMPORTANTE. Hoy es el Día Internacional del Capibara.
Capibara con sus crías paseando entre un montón de hojas verdes.
19592184
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 10/06/2026
A surprising age gap has emerged: 9-year-olds' test scores are growing in math and reading, while 13-year-olds are stagnating. Their reading scores are basically at the same level now that they were in 1971 when the NAEP Long-Term Test started.
apnews.com
Teens' reading and math scores have stagnated, US test results show
Younger students have regained academic ground lost during the pandemic, but older students' test scores remain stagnant.
100
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 09/06/2026
AP added the name of journalist Mariam Dagga to its wall of honor last month. My son had just been born when she was killed in an Israeli airstrike of a Gaza hospital. It was so painful for me to think about the son that Mariam left behind. Keep her memory alive.
A photo of visual journalist Mariam Dagga, 33, while in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on June 14, 2024, alongside her name and the year she died on the Wall of Honor in New York. Mariam in the photo is wearing a protective vest and holding a helmet and camera as she stands in front of a pile of rubble. Names on the wall include Ambrose William Lyman 1898, Mariam Dagga 2025 and Myles Tierney 1999.
020
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 01/06/2026
An ironic correction to an article about the winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee.
A screenshot of an article about the winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee, Shrey Parikh. A correction at the bottom notes that the story had to correct the spelling of name of Shrey's father, Guarav Parikh.
041
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
Burger King is "piloting an AI assistant, called “Patty,” that lives inside employees’ headsets" and "listens to employees to evaluate them for friendliness. That means tracking whether they say “welcome to Burger King,” “please,” and “thank you.”"
000
Reposted by Sharon Lurye
ryan cooper @ryanlcooper.com · 15/05/2026
fuckin crazy story. some Ukrainian kid probably saved his whole family from being killed by a Russian drone murder squad by spotting and cutting the fiber optic connection www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/0...
washingtonpost.com
In northern Ukraine, it was boy vs. Russian drone. The boy won.
A soldier taught a 12-year-old how to disable the fiber-optic drones that Russia has been using to hunt Ukrainian civilians in a campaign the U.N. has labeled a war crime.
91359359
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
600+ people in a PA school district have signed a petition supporting parents' rights to opt their children out of school devices. They're not anti-tech -- they just don't want tech to dominate. “Teaching how to use technology is not the same thing as using technology to teach everything else."
apnews.com
Some parents don't want their kids to use tech at school. But districts are pushing back
Parents across the country who are worried about excessive screen time in schools are lobbying educators to go back to pencils and paper.
010
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
NEW: America's literacy crisis is growing. Only five states, plus D.C., have made any meaningful improvement in reading scores since 2022. What those states all had in common: science of reading reforms. But it's not a silver bullet.
apnews.com
Kids are in a ‘reading recession,’ as test scores continue to decline
Researchers are warning that the U.S. is experiencing a reading recession, a slide that predates the COVID-19 pandemic.
100
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Really like how they built "Size of Canada / Size of Alaska" into the y-axis!
120
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 11/05/2026
Disappointing to see people on this website unaware of the greatest piece of investigative journalism of our generation.
grubstreet.com
The Very Real, Totally Bizarre Bucatini Shortage of 2020
What the hole is going on?
073
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
If anyone happens to know someone who won 4th place in an Olympic event and/or has been divorced more than three times -- hit me up.
100
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
The federal government has always been incredibly slow to update education data but now we'll likely be waiting even longer. All this data is still out there but siloed across states and districts, making it a laborious task to collect and harmonize.
010
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 07/05/2026
Fellow data journos! Does anyone know an example of a newsroom AI guidance/ethics document specifically made for data journalism teams? I have found plenty of examples for newsrooms as a whole, but not data journalism-specific.
100
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
Black students were told they have a "powerful" "personal story," Hispanic students were told to use "proper" English and girls were told "I love your confidence!" -- fascinating writeup by @jillbarshay.bsky.social about how AI grades student essays hechingerreport.org/proof-points...
hechingerreport.org
AI gives more praise, less criticism to Black students
A Stanford experiment found that AI feedback shifts on identical essays depending upon the identity and characteristics of the student.
031
Reposted by Sharon Lurye
AP NewsGuild @apnewsguild.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
1/3 “News doesn’t reveal itself from a distance. It has to be witnessed.” AP Executive Editor Julie Pace affirmed the importance of “eyewitness journalism,” while AP is offering buyouts to more than 120 U.S. guild covered employees across multiple formats. How can AP be on the ground without us?
The whole page is a red background with a white border. The top has the logo for AP News Guild. 
Below the logo with white lettering, text reads:
“News doesn’t reveal itself from a distance. It has to be witnessed.” -Julie Pace, Associated Press Executive Editor. 
Then there is a white bar through the page. Below that white text reads: AP Executive Editor Julie Pace affirmed the importance of “being on the ground” and “eyewitness journalism,” at this year’s Overseas Press Club Awards, all while AP guts its news staff by offering buyouts to more than 120 U.S. guild covered employees across multiple formats. How can AP be on the ground without us? Who will witness the news?
1913
Reposted by Sharon Lurye
AP NewsGuild @apnewsguild.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
1/8
On a red background with white lettering and a logo for AP News Guild, the title card reads, "AP Buyouts by the numbers. What does this mean for The Associated Press and for you?"
1713
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
School districts across the Twin Cities area saw absenteeism spike during the ICE crackdown. In St. Paul, over 9,000 students were absent in mid-January; Minneapolis had over 8,000 students stay home in one day; Fridley saw attendance drop by nearly a third.
apnews.com
Minnesota districts ask judge to restore limits on immigration enforcement near schools
Two Minnesota school districts and the state’s main teachers union have asked a federal judge to block a Trump administration change in policy that gave immigration authorities a freer hand to conduct...
010
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
When you see Drs. Abbot, Shen or Ellis show up on the Pitt
010
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 09/04/2026
Do yourself a favor today and check out the STUNNING photos and videos in this AP story on Indonesia's coral reefs: apnews.com/article/clim...
apnews.com
Ocean protections clash with mining pressure in Indonesia's most diverse marine ecosystem
There is an explosion of color beneath the surface in Raja Ampat. The remote archipelago is in eastern Indonesia where sharks, reef mantas and sea turtles glide alongside vast schools of fish through ...
111
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
"The failures are the curriculum. The error messages are the syllabus. Every hour you spend confused is an hour you spend building the infrastructure inside your own head that will eventually let you do original work. There is no shortcut through that process that doesn't leave you diminished..."
021
Reposted by Sharon Lurye
Cameron Blevins @cblevins.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
This is so, so well-articulated.
People call this friction "grunt work." Schwartz uses exactly that phrase, and he's right that LLMs can remove it. What he doesn't say, because he already has decades of hard-won intuition and doesn't need the grunt work anymore, is that for someone who doesn't yet have that intuition, the grunt work is the work. The boring parts and the important parts are tangled together in a way that you can't separate in advance. You don't know which afternoon of debugging was the one that taught you something fundamental about your data until three years later, when you're working on a completely different problem and the insight surfaces. Serendipity doesn't come from efficiency. It comes from spending time in the space where the problem lives, getting your hands dirty, making mistakes that nobody asked you to make and learning things nobody assigned you to learn.
97107663882
Reposted by Sharon Lurye
Amanda Mull @amandamull.bsky.social · 02/04/2026
Genuinely one of the best parts of my job is that I get to wander around the Terminal. For instance I was testing out the mapping function and in the process learned that the Waffle House location with the highest revenue in the country is the one near Arizona State's campus
29115985
Reposted by Sharon Lurye
RJ Andrews @infowetrust.com · 02/04/2026
I went looking for one Japanese chart book and ended up with 19 prewar volumes, a new collecting method, and a stronger conviction that graphic history is far from fully known. www.chartography.net/p/ascending-...
chartography.net
Ascending into the Realm of Japanese Charts
A prewar collection crosses the Pacific.
44514
Reposted by Sharon Lurye
Matt Barnum @mattbarnum.bsky.social · 17/03/2026
New— The backlash to ed-tech is growing, with some prominent voices making the case that it's at the root of recent learning declines. I took a look at the evidence. www.chalkbeat.org/2026/03/17/j...
chalkbeat.org
A viral anti-screen argument is shaking schools. The evidence is more complicated.
A neuroscientist’s warning about ed-tech is spreading fast with parents and lawmakers. But the research is more nuanced and up for debate.
1236
Reposted by Sharon Lurye
Joshua Goodman @joshua-goodman.com · 30/03/2026
🚨New working paper alert! 🚨 The US spends huge $ on special education services for students with disabilities. Is that spending effective? Today we released a working paper suggesting it is. "Special Education Substantially Improves Learning: Evidence from Three States" Let me explain...
522291
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
I was using ChatGPT to help write some code, but when I pointed out an error, it bugged out and starting writing to me in Japanese. That’s what you call…the Ghost in the Shell.
021
Reposted by Sharon Lurye
Mark Hurst @markhurst.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
Now THAT's a headline. "The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents" fortune.com/2026/02/21/l...
fortune.com
The U.S. spent $30 billion to ditch textbooks for laptops and tablets: The result is the first generation less cognitively capable than their parents | Fortune
Neuroscientist Jared Cooney Horvath said older generations “screwed up” giving students access to so much technology: “I genuinely hope Gen Z quickly figures that out and gets mad.”
8025971136
Reposted by Sharon Lurye
e.w. niedermeyer @niedermeyer.online · 16/02/2026
US Government Deploys Elon Musk’s Grok as Nutrition Bot, Where It Immediately Gives Advice for Rectal Use of Vegetables ok, that's enough 2026 for today futurism.com/artificial-i...
futurism.com
US Government Deploys Elon Musk's Grok as Nutrition Bot, Where It Immediately Gives Advice for Rectal Use of Vegetables
The US government deployed xAI's Grok to give dietary advice -- and it's giving some eyebrow-raising advice.
1419252
Reposted by Sharon Lurye
Ann Owens @annowens.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
VERSION 2.0 of the Segregation Tracking Project is here! New data on racial and economic segregation between neighborhoods and schools over the last 30+ years for every school district, metro area, state, county, congressional district (new!), and more! edopportunity.org/segregation/
edopportunity.org
The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford | The Segregation Tracking Project
Use our visualizations to explore educational opportunity in your school & community.
112558
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 16/02/2026
If you feed a mess of notes into a machine, and you don't know what you want to say, you will produce confused garbage. If you know what you want to say, craft your notes in an organized fashion so that the machine produces a coherent article...that's writing. You've only saved yourself some typing.
150
Sharon Lurye @sharonlurye.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Wingspan, but make it data viz!
040