Author: Jerry Leger

Hours before anyone was expected to arrive, on Wednesday afternoon, the parking lot in front of Brick Memorial High School began to fill up. A few parents were standing close to their cars, chatting softly and avoiding eye contact. A small bouquet of flowers had been left by someone close to the curb. It’s the kind of detail that, even before anything has officially started, makes a place feel different. Following a collision that claimed the life of a 15-year-old freshman on Tuesday morning, a vigil was scheduled for 7 p.m. In a GoFundMe page created to assist with funeral…

When most students hear the term “AP Seminar exam,” they envision something expansive—the kind of test that takes up an entire school day and leaves you blinking at three in the afternoon under fluorescent lights. The reality is shorter, and in some way, this shortness contributes to people’s confusion. The two-hour AP Seminar exam is given at the end of the course. That’s all. Sitting in front of a screen for 120 minutes while using the Bluebook testing app, a timer moves in a way that feels both too fast and too slow. On Monday, May 11, 2026, the exam…

The 120-minute duration of the AP Psychology exam conceals a lot of nuance. When you’re looking at a syllabus in March, two hours seems like a long time. Around question seventy in May, when your pencil is sweating against your fingers and a passage about operant conditioning suddenly reads like a foreign language, it feels much shorter. The sound of the proctor’s footsteps, the soft scratch of graphite, and someone flipping a page too forcefully two desks away all contribute to the unique silence in those rooms. Those who have witnessed it recall the quiet more than the questions. The…

You could sense something old and familiar emerging in the town on a gloomy May morning when the email reached Kirklees College and the alarms started to sound, forcing students out of their classrooms. Be concerned. Doubt. the feeling that an unplanned announcement is never beneficial. Parents in Huddersfield refreshed local news pages and waited for two hours after the sites went into precautionary lockdown at 10:30 AM. The lockdown was lifted at 12:30 PM after the police described it as a hoax and a malevolent act of theater. Life continued. But when something goes wrong, it’s difficult to ignore…

The Year 11 students can be seen shuffling across the parking lot of any secondary school in England in late May. They have clear pencil cases and that distinct expression of someone who hasn’t slept well in a week. Typically, they carry a scientific calculator—the same Casio model that has been subtly taking over British classrooms for more than 20 years. And the question that looms over the majority of them—including those who have made revisions—is surprisingly simple. In reality, how long will this last? Three papers totaling four and a half hours make up the short answer. Each one…

Zach Yadegari’s rejection list, which he shared with X on the final day of March 2025, is notable for its apparent cleanliness. Three green checks and eighteen schools make up a neat column of red Xs. Yes, Stanford, but not Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, or Georgia Tech. The type of grid you would anticipate from a young person with a 2.9 and a part-time job at the mall, not from an 18-year-old managing an app that he claims generates $30 million annually. That’s what drew people in. After he published the essay, the conversation’s tone completely changed in a matter…

Walking past a public high school gym on a Friday night in late autumn gives you a certain feeling. The bleachers smell slightly of floor polish and old wood, the parking lot is half full, and a parent is arguing about a missed call somewhere close to the concession stand. It seems to have been around for ages. However, the trophies inside those gyms are becoming more and more dusty, while buses leaving campuses with well-kept lawns and annual tuition costs exceeding $20,000 are transporting the brand-new ones home. In American high school athletics, something has changed and has been…

The vote took place on a Tuesday, just like the majority of events in New Hampshire do: in a school gym with folding chairs, under slightly humming fluorescent lights. The town had decided to eliminate its school budget by the time the total was announced. Don’t cut it. Don’t make it tighter. Reduce its length until it is near the bone. Cuts totaling three million dollars, a closed school building, and a faculty lounge that has reportedly been becoming more and more empty ever since. These days, you see things like this in Rochester. It was evident in Concord, where…

The email appeared in inboxes on a Tuesday, as is the case with most policy changes these days. It featured a friendly product video and mild language. Google, the company that surreptitiously infiltrated almost every American classroom between the 2020 pandemic scramble and the Chromebook rollouts, announced a comprehensive update to how its educational tools will function. Before the first bell rang, teachers, half of whom were still sipping lukewarm coffee in shared staff rooms, found themselves attempting to understand what it truly meant. Despite the announcement’s seeming modesty, the change is significant. Google is reorganizing how Workspace for Education…

Antonio Luna thought he had discovered his next chapter when he left his base in North Carolina. Because recruiters were permitted to enter his base and make direct student pitches, he enrolled at DeVry University after serving in the Marines and earning his benefits. He remembered that particular detail. They had to be legitimate if the military allowed them entry. He realized that trust had cost him four years by 2018, when he had a bachelor’s degree but was unemployed in his field. His tale is not unique. It resembles a template. The reasons behind for-profit colleges’ decades-long construction of…