The Education Show

To be honest, I was pretty skeptical when folks started telling me to talk to Dan “Mathworlds” Meyer about education technology, given that he’s so closely involved. He developed a much-admired math program called Desmos. He works at Amplify. He gives talks at ASU+GSV! But it didn’t take long for Meyer to convince me that he’s more aware than most of the perils of ineffective edtech on kids and sc...

It’s always good to talk directly to the folks who are the center of a controversy, even if you don’t learn quite as much from them as you’d like. That was my experience speaking with Curriculum Associates CIO Ty Holmes , who has been quoted recently in Chalkbeat , NBC News , and WFAE public radio. However, the conversation did unearth a few useful tidbits. In case you’ve been living under a rock...

I knew I really wanted to talk with the New York Times’ Jessica Grose when I read her recent story, America’s First A.I. High School Is Great. But Not Because of A.I. , but I didn’t know that Grose, who writes for the Opinion section, would share so many other interesting thoughts and observations about other topics. As you’ll see, she doesn’t blame schools for marketing themselves to AI-intereste...

NBC News’ Tyler Kingkade has always been an interesting presence on the education beat, and lately he’s become even more so. Over the past six months, Kingkade has written roughly a dozen stories about the growing concerns about social media, screentime, and learning software being used in schools. They began appearing in December with Parents say school-issued iPads are causing chaos with their k...

It’s hard to think of someone better than Tony Wan to talk to about the current edtech backlash. First, he was a startup founder. Then he covered ed tech at EdSurge, the site that chronicled the rise of technology in schools. Currently, he’s an edtech investor at Reach Capital . In this new interview, Wan describes the current backlash as a bit of a hangover from the COVID era and a reaction to th...

As he crisscrosses the nation exploring a possible Presidential run, fixing schools has been Rahm Emanuel’s top issue. “You cannot be a party that professes an interest in equity and not care about academic failure,” he says. It’s a stark contrast to other Democratic leaders — and may help the former Chicago mayor and Obama chief of staff win public support. That hasn’t happen — yet. Emanuel says...

There’s nothing particularly new or sexy about YouTube, the video platform that’s been around forever. But it’s enormously popular, deeply addictive, very lightly regulated — and it’s everywhere in students’ lives. “American public schools are awash in YouTube,” according to Shalini Ramachandran’s Wall Street Journal investigation, How YouTube Took Over the American Classroom , which describes sch...

The current backlash against school technology has many sources, including among them frustrations with remote learning during COVID, the over-use of devices and software in schools, and the recent spread of school phone bans. But questions about computers in schools aren’t anything new. In fact, almost 30 years ago, Todd Oppenheimer wrote The Computer Delusion , a prescient cover story for what w...

The last time I got the chance to speak with AP data guru Sharon Lurye was a couple of years ago when she and others on the education team were finalists for a Pulitzer. These days, Lurye is hard at work on both data-driven stories like last week’s massive piece on the Education Scorecard and field-based stories like her coverage of the debate in Lower Merion, Pa. about whether schools should roll...

If you know education journalism, you probably know about the New Haven Independent, which has a long history of publishing high-quality coverage and hiring all-star reporters like Aliyya Swaby and Christopher Peak. Longtime Independent editor Paul Bass now runs the Online Journalism Project, which published the Independent and other publications. In this new interview, Bass shares insights and ex...

Earlier this week, the Banner won Pulitzer recognition for ‘ Missing the bus ,’ a multipart investigation into Baltimore’s particularly ineffective school transportation setup. As the series reveals, the problem isn’t lazy kids complaining about the same challenges that have faced schools nationwide. The combination of widespread choice, lack of yellow bus service after 5th grade, and lack of visi...

In case you hadn’t noticed, last year’s wave of school cellphone bans has turned into a widespread reconsideration of all things related to technology. Screen time, 1:1 devices, YouTube, social media, AI, and educational software programs like I-Ready and IXL are all getting a turn in the barrel. “We’re at this place where parents and teachers and school leaders are all starting to say, ‘Okay, we’...

According to Gintautas “Gin” Dumcius, journalism’s current era features a lot of different ways for folks to get the news — as well as a lot of dubious information. The newsletter he launched and now runs, called MASSterlist, is tightly focused on “ people, politics, and power ” in the state. In this new interview, Dumcius talks about the need for any reporter or publication to know precisely who...

If you hadn’t seen or heard much of USC education professor Morgan Polikoff lately, you’re not alone. He’s off Twitter (for now) and on sabbatical. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have anything to say, and a recent Kelsey Piper rant in The Argument about the lamentable state of education research generated a sharp rebuke from Polikoff: Ill-Informed Essays About Education Research are Weak and Slo...

With a dozen years on the beat under his belt, Cory Turner is one of the most experienced national education reporters out there, and in this new interview he’s generous enough to share his thoughts about covering two important education stories: the Biden-era student debt relief effort and the present-day explosion of school choice. His most recent major piece is a deep dive into school choice in...

Stefan Merrill Block started writing “ Homeschooled ” — a memoir of the five years he spent at home after his mother pulled him out of school — as a healing exercise after his mother’s death. He thought it might generate material for a fourth novel. But after writing down hundreds of pages of memories, something else came out: “When I was reading my own story as a reader, I started to find that I...

Interviewed during last her few days on the job, the Chronicle’s Emma Pettit talks about the many parallels between the critique of higher education that’s been her beat these past two years and the critique of traditional journalism currently swirling around the education beat. Her beat this past two years has been what she calls ‘the critique’ of higher education — most often but not exclusively...

A self-described angry mom who ran for office and sends her kids to NYC public schools, Danyela Souza Egorov is now a fellow at the Manhattan Institute whose work often appears in City Journal . “I was one of those very angry moms,” says Egorov in this new interview. “And that’s what really got me into writing because I was very frustrated with the coverage of public schools during COVID.” Asked h...

Getting rid of Chromebooks isn’t McPherson Middle School principal Inge Esping’s first time helping her school reconsider well-intended but ultimately unhelpful education technology — and based on this new conversation it might not be her last. Four years ago, McPherson banned cellphones during the day. Then in December, the school eliminated the 1:1 Chromebook program that had been in place for r...

If you know the name Steven Waldman, it’s probably because of his involvement in helping create Report for America , the nearly decade-old nonprofit endeavor to match ambitious journalists with growing newsrooms that at times has funded 30-40 reporters covering the education beat alone. What you may not know is that Waldman is now growing a new organization called Rebuild Local News , an even more...

Alan Gottlieb has deep, deep roots in education journalism, having founded or co-founded several education news outlets over the years: Education News Colorado, Chalkbeat, and now Boardhawk. In this new interview, Gottlieb shares his take on Colorado’s “Balkanized” education news ecosystem, the much-diminished number of reporters covering schools in Colorado, and the coverage being produced by Cha...

You may recall news coming out last month that longtime education journalist Kavitha Cardoza had won a $100,000 journalism award from the Heising-Simons Foundation. But Cardoza wasn’t the only winner. The other prizewinner that day was unknown-to-me freelance journalist Oliver Whang — or should I say former journalist. “I don’t know if it’s accurate to say that I’m not in journalism,” says Whang i...

Hard to believe, but it was just a week ago when the Baltimore Banner published Everyone has seen Baltimore’s missing boy. So why can’t authorities find him? , a deep and vivid investigative story that includes U.S. Marshalls tromping through a neighborhood in search of a little boy and a city agency that mistakenly closes the case instead of prioritizing it. Readers like me spent half their time...

It won’t take long for you to get hooked on Adults in the Room , a new eight-episode series from KUOW Seattle Public Radio about a charismatic high school teacher named Tom Hudson and the two student journalists whose accusations of improper conduct lead to his suspension and who eventually committed suicide. One of the two self-described best friends became a lawyer. The other became a journalist...

If the name James Traub sound familiar to you, there’s a reason for that. A prolific author of several books including CITY ON A HILL , Traub has also written several memorable education-focused magazine articles for the New York Times magazine and other national publications. In this new interview, Traub discusses his latest book, THE CRADLE OF CITIZENSHIP , about the Classical schools model and...