Fake news education study

Researchers  found that interventions as simple as reading a short article or watching a three-and-a-half-minute long educational video can make an immediate difference in students' abilities to pick out fake news.
Bouyges, H. (2019). Fighting fake news. Paris, France: Reboot Foundation.
https://reboot-foundation.org/wp-content/uploads/_docs/Fake-News-Report.pdf

Media literacy education report

The U.S. Media Literacy Report 2020 provides a state-by-state progress report for media literacy education laws in K-12 schools. The report outlines both legislative successes and areas for improvement as well as recommendations to ensure that media literacy is an active part of every student’s education. 
U.S. Media Literacy Policy Report 2020. Waterton, MA: Media Literacy Now. 
https://medialiteracynow.org/mlnpolicyreport/ 

Warly reading study

A national study indicated that elementary special education and K-12 teachers (72 percent) say their schools use balanced literacy. The surveys also found that balanced literacy is the reading instruction philosophy embraced by most survey respondents, although significant generational gaps exist: The less experience they have in higher education, the more likely postsecondary instructors are to favor explicit, systematic phonics with language comprehension as a separate focus. And the more experience they have in the classroom, the more likely elementary teachers are to support balanced literacy. Nevertheless, most teachers focus on phonics. Students should learn how to sound out words rather than relay on pictures or context to cue them on the words.
Early reading instruction. (2020). Bethesda, MD: Education Week.
https://www.edweek.org/media/ed%20week%20reading%20instruction%20survey%20report-final%201.24.20.pdf?cmp=eml-enl-eu-news2&M=59027837&U=1673093&UUID=38915a68716182c0a0b20ace8b5219f7

News literacy study

In a report released in November, the researchers evaluated the ability of 3,446 students – from 16 urban and suburban school districts in 14 states – to judge the credibility and accuracy of digital sources of information.  Overall, on four of the assigned six tasks, over 90 percent of students received no credit at all. Out of all of the student responses, fewer than 3 percent earned full credit. Students continued to display a troubling tendency to accept websites at face value. A few of the lowlights from the report:

• Fifty-two percent of students believed a grainy video claiming to show ballot stuffing in the 2016 Democratic primaries constituted “strong evidence” of voter fraud in the U.S. The video was actually shot in Russia. Among more than 3,000 responses, only three students tracked down the source of the video –  even though a simple Google search would have quickly exposed the ruse.
• Two-thirds of students couldn’t tell the difference between news stories and ads (set off by the words “Sponsored Content”) on Slate’s homepage.
• Ninety-six percent of students did not consider why ties between a climate change website and the fossil fuel industry might lessen that website’s credibility. Instead of investigating who was behind the site, students focused on the site’s aesthetics, its top-level domain (.org or .com), or how it portrayed itself on the About page.

 Breakstone, J. et al. (2019). Students' civic online reasoning. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University. 
https://sheg.stanford.edu/students-civic-online-reasoning

Online information literacy study

An international study found that only 2% of 8th graders could critically assess information found online. Economic status and parents' education (i.e., bachelor's degree or higher) correlated significantly with competency.
International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. (2019). International Computer and Information Literacy Study. Amsterdam: Author.
http://www.iea.nl/publications/press-release/icils-2018-results-press-release