All of the Above Podcast

This Week: Not sure we were ever in style, to be honest.  But, some new data from SUNY Albany shows that the common assumption that the lack of male teachers -- nearly 90% of elementary teachers are female -- hurts boys in their earliest years of academic development, may in fact be wrong. Turns out that in this study, there is no difference in academic achievement between kids who had all female...

Today on AOTA Shorts: In a both groundbreaking and not at all surprising analysis of student test scores from a Florida community besieged by ICE terrorism and lawless detainment of community members, it turns out that this sort of madness has a negative effect on student learning . Who’d a thunk it? Will this deter the right wing extremists in power to change course?  Probably not. But, it’s even...

This Week: We begin with some highlights from members of the AOTA family. One listener responds to last week’s discussion about vouchers and reports from the dark side in FL about what it’s like for parents who can’t trust the education system under Desantis. Then, is the USDOE really trolling us online with their insane social media posts? Yes. Yes, they are. What an utter embarrassment to the of...

This Week: The state of Florida has distinguished itself in recent years as a true laboratory for right wing extremist policy in education. Well, the process continues as the impacts of vouchers and efforts to privatize public education are reaching new heights. As schools battle for “market share” and districts sell access to courses on an Amazon-like website, the public coffers are being drained...

Today on AOTA Shorts: Algorithmic bias is the technical term. Racism in, racism out. But in practice, the unthinkable nearly came to pass last week when a high school student in Baltimore County, MD was hanging outside his school and was soon confronted by armed police ordering him to the ground. The boy had finished a bag of Doritos, crumpled it up and placed it in his pocket, which the school’s...

This Week: The popular narrative in the American public discourse that teaching is somehow both super easy -- you get off at 3, you have summers off, it’s an easy profession to enter -- and also so hard and low paying that it’s a “noble” profession like the priesthood, still persists. Some new data from the 2025 RAND Corp’s American Teacher Survey tells a much more stark narrative about the stress...

Today on AOTA Shorts: You’ve probably thought about the consequences of AI in school -- cheating, making us dumber, rampant and undetectable plagiarism, making learning obsolete -- and if you’re on top of it, you’ve probably also thought about the devastating climate and ecological impacts on school communities. But a recent article explores a new facet of the challenges with AI, the deep erosion...

Today on AOTA Shorts: We’ve talked a lot about the potential costs to school systems (and taxpayers, of course) for the madness of book bans and laws allowing the challenging of “woke” content in schools. But a story out of a small district in Colorado offers, perhaps, new hope in the equation. Give em a dose of their own medicine. Elizabeth School District is facing a lawsuit from the ALCU and fa...

Today on AOTA Shorts: They said they were going to do it before the election. They began the process of death by 1000 cuts (or a few dozen cuts as it may be) in week one when they took office. And now that the government shutdown continues, the clearly unconstitutional goal of ending the US Department of Education has been made this week, with Trump and Linda McMahon laying off nearly every worker...

This Week: Everyone in education knows that chronic absenteeism is a big deal. While the numbers are improving slowly in recent years, we’ve still yet to return to pre-pandemic levels of students who miss multiple days of school each month. So what should schools do to address this issue? Well, California has finally repealed its law throwing criminal penalties at families for truancy, acknowledgi...

Today on AOTA Shorts: You’ve heard it all… summers off, your day ends at 3pm, so many holidays, what you do is so admirable, affirmations of the belief that we should pay teachers more (as they vote against the measures to do so). As we face national teacher shortages, attacks on public education from the right, and declining budgets, turns out the teacher pay gap has gotten worse than ever .  Com...

Today on AOTA Shorts: In what we can only think of as some new wave, reverse reverse racism nonsense, the Classic Standardized Test is gaining ground nationally as a competitor to the traditional college entrance exams. The test essentially does that the SAT and ACT do, but with longer, mostly whiter reading passages, supposedly rooted in the “classic” works that have shaped “our” (who exactly?) h...

Today on AOTA Shorts: Haters call them the “University of Spoiled Children” but USC isn’t doing themselves any favors these days with a brazen violation of the new CA law banning donor and legacy status being used as a factor in the college admissions process even at private universities in the state. USC will have to share data on legacy and donor admits, and will be placed on the state DOJ websi...

This Week: As the right wing war on higher education continues a climate of “fear and hopelessness ” sets in among the ranks of college faculty across the former confederate states in particular. One in four scholars in the south report applying to a job in another state, primarily states in the north and west where the restrictions on research, attacks on academic freedom, and repression of margi...

This Week: Educators across the country are facing investigations , professional sanctions , doxing, and being placed on public lists in states across the country for statements posted following the public execution of right wing leader Charlie Kirk. The chilling effect being felt by educators nationally, and especially in states like Florida , raises new concerns about the rights educators have t...

This Week: Jeff got a letter published in EdWeek this month, challenging the publication of right wing opinion pieces that are racist, and overtly hostile to the institution of public school. This brings us to today’s topic, the rising tide of normalization of the not normal in our world of education. From the absolutely insane move in Florida to end school vaccine mandates , even referring to the...

This Week: Here we are again. Another tragic school shooting , and the tone deaf, empty gestures of thoughts and prayers is all we’re left with from those in power. We can, and most, do better. Meanwhile, a federal judge in TX stops an obvious 1st Amendment violation which would require the 10 commandments be posted in all school classrooms (see decision ). But the state attorney general instructs...

This Week: As the school year begins across many parts of America, we welcome back our long time friend of the show and middle school literacy coach extraordinaire Genevieve DeBose. With some fascinating new survey data out from the Rand Corp. showing modest improvements in teachers' plans to remain in the profession, but persistent job related stress, we talk about how wily vets are staying motiv...

This Week: Despite deep “blue” California being poised to implement the first-in-the-nation, state-wide ethnic studies graduation requirement, the insidious efforts from within to undermine, co-opt, and whitewash the curriculum are still afoot. Earlier this year a coalition of state legislators tried passing AB 1468 as a naked attempt to gut ethnic studies. Now, they’re back with AB 715, complete ...

This Week: Sometimes research tells us something new, and sometimes it confirms what we thought we already knew. A new study from the Fordham Institute does both, showing that contrary to some popular lines of thinking, experienced teachers do in fact continue to improve their practice well into their 2nd decade of teaching. We also dive into a fascinating story about a teacher in Michigan who is...

This Week: Holy $#!&. Normally we don’t curse around these parts, but damn. It’s an abject mess of theocracy, authoritarianism, and outright attacks on rights, freedoms, and the nation’s public schools this week. On Friday the Court handed down the last of its rulings from the 2024 term, and there are several major implications for public education… all terrible. In Mahmoud v. Taylor they rule...

Data from both the US and UK shows that reading for pleasure is on the decline for kids of all ages, and adults too. For the youngest children, time reading with a loving adult is also on the decline, at the same time as screen time is rising sharply. In a world where a generation who grew up on screens themselves is now having children, is this just the way of the future, or are we losing somethi...

This Week: A fascinating piece in Chalkbeat breaks down some of the pros and cons of states adopting varied graduation pathways to a HS diploma. In a world where AI can do your homework, where it seems like we have no idea what the economic future will look like, and all but 6 states have dropped their HS exit exam requirements, what is - or should be - the purpose of a high school education? But...

This Week: The College Board casts its lot with the most regressive, racist actors in our society by stripping race from consideration in its National Recognition Program . The likely outcome of this decision will be a reduction in scholarship funds for Black, Latino, and Native American students, and a shifting of those funds to overrepresented Asian and white students. Here we go again. Plus, in...

This Week: Coming out of the pandemic, schools across the country implemented versions of more equitable grading practices. Today, as the immediate effects of the pandemic are behind us, new questions are coming up about whether the pendulum swung too far, and we should return to more traditional, and punitive grading practices. A piece out of Chalkbeat Chicago this week sums up the debate nicely...