The Learning Curve

This week on “The Learning Curve,” Cara and Gerard engage in a candid conversation about education policymaking with Chris Stewart, Chief Executive Officer of Brightbeam, known to many by his popular Twitter & blog feeds as “Citizen Stewart.” Chris shares his background as a student, parent, school board member, and longtime activist, and how those experiences have shaped his outlook on the......

This week, Cara and Gerard talk with Margaret “Macke” Raymond, President of Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO). Macke describes CREDO’s unique role and methodology in analyzing a wealth of data from state education departments to quantify the effect of charter schools on the amount of learning a student receives in a year’s time. Source

Special thanks to Bob Bowdon & Choice Media for helping us launch “The Learning Curve”! On this episode of “The Learning Curve,” Cara welcomes new co-host Gerard Robinson and guest Neal McCluskey, Director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. They discuss America’s growing interest in school choice, with 500,000 children now attending private schools through vouchers... Sour...

This week on “The Learning Curve,” guest co-hosts Alisha Thomas Cromartie & Kerry McDonald talk with Julie Young, Deputy Vice President of Education Outreach and Student Services for Arizona State University and CEO of ASU Prep Digital High School. In 2019, 2.7 million K-12 students had an online schooling experience, an 80 percent increase since 2009, with 32 states offering fully online scho...

This week on “The Learning Curve,” Bob Bowdon & guest co-host Kerry McDonald talk with Susan Wise Bauer – writer, historian, homeschool parent, and author of The Well-Trained Mind: A Guide to Classical Education at Home, as well as numerous other books. They explore the impact of technological innovation, online tools and social media, and the plethora of resources now available to the... Sour...

On this episode of “The Learning Curve,” Bob & Cara are joined by Dick Komer, Senior Attorney with the Institute for Justice. Komer led the oral argument this week before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the plaintiffs in the high-profile school choice case, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue. They review the details of the Montana case and the nativist history of the Blaine amendmen...

This week on “The Learning Curve,” Bob Bowdon is joined by guest host Alisha Thomas Cromartie, personal growth coach, education leader, and former Georgia state legislator. They talk with Derrell Bradford, Executive Vice President of 50CAN, about the myth that school choice programs siphon funds away from traditional public schools, the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program, the impact of the 2016....

This week on “The Learning Curve,” Cara talks with Montse Alvarado, Vice President & Executive Director of the Becket Fund, about the implications of the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court school choice case, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, the pervasiveness of 19th-century, anti-Catholic Blaine amendments across the country, and some of Becket’s legal victories in high-profile religious.....

Happy New Year! Co-hosts Cara and Bob talk with Lance Izumi, Senior Director of the Center for Education at the Pacific Research Institute. He discusses his new book, Choosing Diversity, and the wide range of both the student populations served, and the variety of learning models offered, by the charter schools that he visited. Some schools were geared toward students suffering from autism... Sour...

Will Fitzhugh, founder and editor of The Concord Review, an international journal that has published high school students’ history essays for 30 years, joins “The Learning Curve” this week. He discusses the importance of assigning serious history research and writing, and reading non-fiction, in K-12 education. Will describes the diverse backgrounds and successful college and career paths of some....

Co-host Bob Bowdon talks with Joy Pullmann, executive editor of The Federalist, about the mediocre NAEP and PISA results, after a decade of the Common Core national education standards and the failed experiment with federal involvement in standards, curricula, and tests. They also discuss social emotional learning, parental involvement, and the media’s coverage of K-12 education policy issues. Sou...

Co-hosts Cara Candal and Bob Bowdon engage in a thought-provoking conversation with Professor E.D. Hirsch, Jr., founder and chairman of the Core Knowledge Foundation, professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, and acclaimed author. Professor Hirsch elaborates on his career-long thesis that the critical ingredient of academic achievement is the shared background knowledge needed for language...

Co-host Bob Bowdon talks with Steven Wilson, Founder and former CEO of Ascend Learning, a charter school network in Brooklyn, New York. They discuss the emergence of anti-intellectualism in K-12 schooling, the topic of a controversial blog post in which Steven raised concerns about the increasing politicization and radicalization of the curriculum. He argues that this troubling trend threatens our...

Bob and Cara talk with Jason Bedrick, EdChoice’s director of policy, about New York’s controversial “substantial equivalency” proposal that would give the state Department of Education oversight of school curricula at yeshivas and other private and parochial academies to ensure parity with their public school counterparts. Jason explores the historical roots of “substantial equivalency” statutes.....

Dr. Lindsey Burke of the Heritage Foundation talks with co-host Bob Bowdon about her new book, The Not-So-Great-Society, co-edited with Jonathan Butcher, which includes contributions from top policy experts. They explore why Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” is an inflection point for federal intervention in local school policy. The constitutionally limited national role in K-12 education grew... S...

New Hampshire Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut joins “The Learning Curve” for a fascinating conversation about how to accelerate innovation in schooling and scale creative models, such as the New Hampshire Career Academy and the state’s education tax credit scholarship program. Bob and Commissioner Edelblut also discuss the new NAEP results, the importance of objective measures of student......

Andrew Campanella, president of National School Choice Week and author of the new book, The School Choice Roadmap: 7 Steps to Finding the Right School for Your Child, is the Newsmaker Interview guest this week on The Learning Curve. Bob talks with Andrew about the many school choice options available to parents, and the steps they can take to find the right educational environment for their... Sou...

Cara and Bob talk with the great Dr. Howard Fuller, Distinguished Professor of Education, in this week’s Newsmaker Interview, about his passionate activism on behalf of education reform, his concerns about the lack of support among Democratic presidential candidates for charter schools, the power of teacher unions, and recognition of the need to continue organizing and advocating for school choice...

In the Newsmaker Interview, Cara talks with Wilfred McClay, University of Oklahoma Professor and author of Land of Hope: An Invitation to the Great American Story, a new high school history textbook that seeks to provide an account of this nation’s rich and complex story that puts it in proper perspective, and that is both honest and inspiring. Stories of the Week: Are retirement benefits that are...

In their Newsmaker Interview, Bob & Cara talk with Natalie Wexler, author of The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America’s Broken Education System–And How to Fix It, about the shift in K-12 education, even in the Common Core era, from an emphasis on academic content to empty skills and strategies. Stories of the Week: 35,000 teachers and staff in Chicago’s three unions voted to go on strike...

In our Newsmaker Interview, Bob talks with Max Eden, Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, on the gravely misguided policies that he believes are contributing to shocking tragedies such as the Parkland school shooting, the subject of his new book, Why Meadow Died: The People and Policies That Created The Parkland Shooter and Endanger America’s Students. Stories of the Week: At Edison High... S...

In our Newsmaker Interview, Cara & Bob talk with Nina Rees, President and CEO of the National Alliance for Charter Public Schools on what Election 2020 presidential candidates are saying about charters, the diverse families being served by these schools, and the quest for excellence & equity. Stories of the Week: In Pennsylvania’s capital, protesting Governor Wolf’s crackdown on charter sc...

ChoiceMedia‘s Bob Bowdon and Pioneer Institute‘s Cara Candal talk about charter school authorizing in California and a recent bill that gives school districts rather than the state the authority to approve charter schools; good news for online learning programs in Oklahoma; and is there a shortage of teachers in American schools? Plus, Bob calls out Dale Russakoff for a selective New York Times......

In the inaugural episode of the new, national education podcast, “The Learning Curve,” co-hosts Bob Bowdon of Choice Media & Cara Candal of Pioneer Institute review the stories of the week – teacher pushback on school discipline reform in California, teaching hot-button social issues in Illinois and New Jersey schools, and scrapping gifted and talented programs in New York City. Source

“The Learning Curve” is where you’ll find straight talk about the nation’s hottest education stories – news and opinion from the schoolyard to the 2020 campaign trail. Co-hosts Bob Bowdon and Cara Candal serve up provocative commentary on the issues that impact parents and kids, teachers and students, political leaders, policymakers and taxpayers all across the country. “The Learning Curve”... Sou...