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

Teachers routinely locate and use ready-made lesson plans. Reviewers evaluated more than 300 resources from three online platforms—ReadWriteThink, Share My Lesson, and Teachers Pay Teachers—for alignment to the Common Core State Standards and overall quality. Most of the materials, 64 percent, received an overall rating of very poor or mediocre. In many cases, these supplemental resources are coming from crowdsourced marketplaces, where teachers don't have access to independent reviews of the materials they're downloading.
Polikoff, N., & Dean, J. (2019). The supplemental curriculum bazaar: Is what's on line any good?  New York, NY: Fordham Institute.
https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/research/supplemental-curriculum-bazaar

Emotional Self-Regulation Study

Emotional intelligence is an important part of academic success—from kindergarten into college—according to a new study. In particular, students who understand and can manage their emotions earn higher grades and do better on standardized tests.  The findings help bolster the growing consensus among researchers that skills such as emotional intelligence are not just important for future workplace success, but also students' academic success in the here and now. The results are also likely to help schools make the case that investing in teaching social-emotional skills will bring a payoff in improved student achievement.
McCann, C. et al. (2019). Emotional intelligence predicts academic performance: A meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 1-36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/bul0000219
https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/bul-bul0000219.pdf