October is National Co-op Month, and we’re excited that it marks five years of , a partnership between the CHS Foundation and Ģ����ý! Over the course of those five years, over 1 million students have learned about agricultural co-ops and explored the business model behind their success. They’ve worked on skills they need to collaborate with others who share the same interests. And they’ve taken that bring different aspects of agriculture and agricultural co-ops to life in engaging ways.

It seems especially appropriate to celebrate this anniversary when fall harvest season is in full swing across the U.S. Depending on the region, right now include pumpkins and gourds, cabbage, sweet potatoes, pears, apples, tomatoes, sweet corn, grapes, and melons. While students may understand the seasonal nature of food availability, they may not understand the role that agricultural co-ops play in growing crops and getting them from farms to the marketplace.

As students move from elementary to middle school and then high school, the focus of social studies instruction naturally changes. It starts with building a foundational understanding of civics, history, and community and then moves to developing critical-thinking skills and civil discourse abilities while diving into more complex issues and historical studies. Are you confident that your teams have what they need to deliver social studies instruction that has a real impact on learners?

Based on , a majority of educators are looking for high-quality resources and supports, including “high-leverage instructional practices and guidance.” An effective social studies program should provide those and more, but what to look for may not always be clear. In this article, we’ll walk through how to evaluate a K–12 social studies curriculum as you try to meet your school or district’s unique needs.

Teaching children about safety is one of the most valuable and important jobs we have as parents and families, caregivers, and educators. And fire safety is always one of the top concerns on everyone’s list, for good reason. shows an average of over 74,000 non-fatal burn injuries annually for U.S. children less than 1 to 19 years old. 90% of these come from flames, hot surfaces, hot liquids, steam, and chemicals. Unfortunately, nearly 300 more children die from their injuries.

How does this happen? We know children are naturally curious, but that curiosity may work against them in potentially harmful situations. They may not recognize the danger and react properly to what’s happening. The good news is that educators can play a role in reducing the number of injuries and preventing deaths by teaching children about fire safety in the home.

Like other education leaders across the U.S., you may be searching for a K–8 math program that can boost student math achievement. The program could be core curriculum or supplemental resources, but either way, the evaluation process and criteria will be much the same. In this article, we’ll walk through important ways to evaluate a K–8 math program as you try to meet your school or district’s unique needs.

Who among us has followed a perfectly straight career path? When I reflect on my professional journey from college coaching to nonprofit leadership to Ģ����ý, I’m reminded how important it is for students to have the same freedom to explore their interests and learn about different careers. And that exploration should start early. Not because students need to choose an occupation sooner, but because they deserve the time and experiences to discover what matters to them and where they want to make a difference. Many of today’s students will follow their own uniquely winding path, and all would benefit from a clearer sense of the terrain ahead.

If you could identify a period of time or experience that had a strong influence on your choice of career, would middle school come to mind? It’s certainly a time of significant changes and growth, physically and mentally, for students. Teaching and learning also look quite different from elementary, with added depth that can nurture curiosity while challenging understanding. But based on middle school student responses in the 2026-2027 Education Insights Report, career connections are not commonly visible in instruction—only 10% reported frequently learning about careers in class.

We know from research that students aren’t waiting until high school to imagine future possibilities. They start noticing different careers, forming interests, and asking questions about what professional options they might have as early as elementary grades. Looking at our report data on when students said they discovered a career of interest, 78% of the time it was elementary or middle school.

While early career interest is welcome, educators and the students themselves are concerned that they don’t have enough information before high school to really understand all of the choices they can make. Let’s explore why middle school is a missing link to stronger career readiness and spotlight some practical ways that educators can add career exploration to instruction.

Our 2026-2027 Education Insights Report states that 56% of educators surveyed put “STEM, computer science, or IT among the top three career paths for today’s students.” This certainly makes sense, given that technology and the science, math, and engineering behind it play a huge role in shaping our personal and professional lives. What’s more, workplace projections identify the greatest job growth and strongest wage expectations for STEM and technology-related fields in the next 10 years.����

Does this translate into high student interest? Research tells us that although many students do express interest in STEM careers, fewer would rate this as their first choice. Depending on the grade level of students, the percentage varies. For example, high school students are over six times more likely to say they want to go into technology or software development than elementary students.����

This suggests that more consistent exposure to STEM career possibilities would help students understand what STEM work requires, gain confidence in their ability to develop key skills, and imagine themselves in those careers.����

Every year Ģ����ý conducts research into a topic that’s particularly relevant in K–12 education and turns that research into our Education Insights Report. It guides us as we continue to develop programs and resources to support effective teaching and learning, and we hope education leaders will also find it valuable.��

This year we partnered with Hanover, a third-party research organization, to ask over 1,000 educators, education leaders, families, and students about their experiences with and opinions on the state of K–12 education. What we found in their responses—and what we’ve also seen in education-related articles, government policies, and teaching communities—was a strong interest in prioritizing career readiness. We can also see this in the fact that over 40 states reported at least one career-focused indicator in either federal or state accountability systems in 2025, up from 14 states in 2014.��

As we examined the research further, it became clear that perception gaps about career readiness exist among the different groups in education.��