The Report Card with Nat Malkus

On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus speaks with Cass Sunstein about campus free speech. Nat and Cass discuss the legal considerations involved in campus protests, safe spaces, and the removal of sexually explicit books from elementary school libraries; how sectarian colleges should balance religious interests with free speech protections; when it is appropriate for universities to issu...

There’s a popular narrative according to which the financial benefits of going to college aren’t what they once were. College is increasingly unaffordable. College doesn’t pay off like it used to. And college is only worth it if you go to the most selective schools. But is this narrative right? Are college costs going up? How do college costs in the US compare with college costs in other countries...

On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus speaks with Brian Jacob about the ways in which the pandemic changed the grammar of schooling. Nat and Brian discuss the pandemic’s effects on student technology use, parent-teacher communication, and individualized instruction; why pandemic-era changes seem more durable in high schools and middle schools than in elementary schools; whether charter s...

On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus speaks with Carey Wright about her tenure as State Superintendent of Education in Mississippi and the work ahead of her as State Superintendent of Schools in Maryland. Nat and Carey discuss the Mississippi Miracle; how to get teachers to buy in to major interventions; professional development; the purpose of grade retention policies; math instruction...

Note: This episode originally aired in June 2023. What does a good school look like? How does a good school operate? What does a good school do differently? There are probably many correct answers to these questions, but on this episode of The Report Card we want to narrow it down and focus on one particular school, Michaela , that has a very particular set of answers to these questions. Located n...

During the pandemic, the federal government sent $190 billion in ESSER relief funding to America’s schools. Among other things, ESSER was intended to help students catch up from pandemic learning loss—but did it work? Did ESSER help kids catch up? Did it help some students more than others? And should the federal government spend more to address COVID learning loss? On this episode of The Report C...

Over the past couple years, the education world has seen a renewed push for phonics instruction, often called “the science of reading.” But how science-based is the science of reading movement? Will the current push for phonics last? And what do kids need so that the reading gains they experience from phonics don’t fade away by the time they reach eighth grade? On this episode of The Report Card ,...

In the spring, campuses saw a wave of protests erupt over the war in Gaza. These protests, along with the controversial ways in which universities handled them, raised important questions about free expression on campus, the role that university administrations play in maintaining and fostering a culture of free expression, and the role of university presidents. On this episode of The Report Card...

In March of 2023, shortly after Khan Academy launched Khanmigo, its AI tutor and teaching assistant, Sal Khan came on the podcast to discuss Khanmigo and his hopes for AI in education more generally. On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus speaks with Sal Khan again to hear what he has learned since launching Khanmigo and how his thoughts on AI in education have changed over the last year....

On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus speaks with Mark Schneider, who recently finished up his six-year tenure as Director of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES). Nat and Mark discuss the past, present, and future of IES; what’s wrong with the What Works Clearinghouse; student privacy protections; NAEP; the state of special education research; why education research isn’t replicate...

Are smartphones and social media bad for kids’ mental health? According to a number of recent books, articles, and op-eds, the answer is an emphatic yes : The rise of smartphones and social media corresponded not only to a rise in the incidence of mental health problems but to a decline in academic performance. Indeed, in popular media, there almost seems to be a consensus emerging: It’s the phone...

Over the past couple weeks, as campus protests and crackdowns on campus protests have captured the nation’s attention, it has become increasingly clear that something is wrong with the civic culture at universities. But how do we change course? How do we create a healthier civic culture on campus? And how can we train the next generation of Americans both to respect freedom of speech and be respec...

During the pandemic, the federal government sent $190 billion in COVID relief funds to America’s schools. These funds, known as ESSER (or the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund), changed school budgets across the country. But this September, ESSER will come to an end, meaning that—on average—schools will have to reduce their budgets by over $1,000 per student. How will schools r...

On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus speaks with David Steiner about coherence and fragmentation; why curricula, teacher training programs, and assessments should be aligned (and why they usually aren’t); SEL; where Common Core fell short; E.D. Hirsch and the importance of teaching content; why economics, music, and philosophy should be taken more seriously in secondary education than t...

Over the last couple years, a number of states have enacted new universal education savings account (ESA) programs. Republicans have led these efforts with near universal opposition from Democrats, but should more Democrats support ESAs, especially because ESAs would seem to more greatly benefit the urban areas that Democrats tend to represent than the rural areas that Republicans tend to represen...

On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus speaks with Rick Hess and Mike McShane about their new book, Getting Education Right: A Conservative Vision for Improving Early Childhood, K–12, and College . Nat, Rick, and Mike discuss what principles a conservative vision for education should be grounded in, whether No Child Left Behind was conservative, why family policy should be part of a conse...

During the pandemic, homeschooling rates spiked, reaching unprecedented levels. And although they have fallen some since then, homeschooling rates remain far higher than anything we saw before the pandemic. On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus speaks with Angela Watson about what is driving this change, what we can expect from homeschooling in the coming years, and what we know about ho...

On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus speaks with Tom Richards about the Florence Academy of Art, what serious art instruction looks like, how K–12 art education can be improved, the differences between music and art instruction, whether artistic talent is innate or can be taught, how art instruction has changed over the last 200 years, Velazquez, showing children art documentaries, why...

On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus speaks with Mike McShane about education savings account (ESA) programs. Nat and Mike discuss the sudden growth in ESA programs over the past year, how ESA programs work, the differences between ESAs and vouchers, the pandemic's effects on school choice, whether interest in ESAs solely comes from the right, the difficulty of starting charter schools,...

On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus speaks with Dylan Wiliam about the latest PISA results, education in the US vs. education in the UK, what tutors might learn that classroom teachers might not, where teacher improvement and professional development tend to go wrong, making learning responsive to students, formative assessment, learning English as a second language, charter schools, w...

On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus reviews the past year in education with Matt Barnum of The Wall Street Journal , Goldie Blumenstyk of The Chronicle of Higher Education , and Alyson Klein of Education Week . Nat, Matt, Goldie, and Alyson discuss AI in education; DEI in higher education; learning loss, chronic absenteeism, and the ESSER funding cliff; the end of race-based admissions...

On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus speaks with Brian Jacob and Vladimir Kogan about school board elections. Nat, Brian, and Vlad discuss how effective school board elections are at giving voters local democratic control, whether school board members are rewarded for good performance and punished for bad performance, the margin of victory in school board elections, who runs for school...

On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus speaks with Brooks Bowden about her recent paper The Unintended Consequences of Academic Leniency , co-authored by Viviana Rodriguez and Zach Weingarten. Nat and Brooks discuss how grading policies influence student effort and engagement, whether academic leniency helps low ability students, why North Carolina's changes to its grading policies led to...

On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus speaks with Ethan Hutt and Jack Schneider about their new book, Off the Mark: How Grades, Ratings, and Rankings Undermine Learning (but Don’t Have To) . Nat, Ethan, and Jack discuss grades, tests, and transcripts; whether grades do a good job of motivating student learning; how our current grading system came into existence; grading abroad; short-hau...

On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus speaks with Melissa Kearney about her new book, The Two-Parent Privilege: How Americans Stopped Getting Married and Started Falling Behind . Nat and Melissa discuss the decline in marriage among non-college-educated parents, why having two parents in the home matters for student outcomes, the stock of marriageable men, whether studying family structu...