The Report Card with Nat Malkus

Kumon, Sylvan Learning, Mathnasium, and Huntington Learning Center—these private tutoring chains are familiar names, but they have received little attention from education researchers. According to recent research co-authored by Josh Goodman, however, this is an oversight. Not only has the number of private tutoring centers tripled since the late 1990s, but private tutoring centers also might have...

Proponents of education technology have often made big promises about its potential to transform schooling, but so far, ed tech has failed to live up to its promise. Will AI also fail to deliver, or will it finally be the education technology that breaks through? On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus and Philip Oreopoulos discuss this question and more. Nat and Philip discuss how to make...

According to many in the Trump administration, closing the US Department of Education would increase efficiency, reduce bureaucracy, and give states more control over education. But according to opponents of the move, closing the Department would create a bureaucratic web that would be confusing for states to navigate, weaken civil rights enforcement, and do little to raise student achievement. On...

Many schools today offer mental health programming, but according to Carolyn Gorman, a lot of school mental health programming is not only wasteful and ineffective but also directionally misguided: School mental health programming often targets students who don’t need help, pathologizes ordinary emotions, and fails to adequately help students with the most severe mental health problems. On this ep...

AI is transforming not only the way students work but also the way they read. AI summarizes readings for students, changing the way they engage with texts, form judgments, and—perhaps—develop cognitively. On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus speaks with Naomi Baron about these changes and more. Naomi Baron is Professor Emerita of Linguistics at American University and the author of Read...

On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus speaks with John White about state education leadership, how the education landscape has changed over the last few decades, innovation in education and where it tends to go wrong, the importance of school choice, the Southern Surge, why coherent systems matter, what we know about curriculum, and more. John White is the CEO of Great Minds. Previously,...

During the pandemic, national chronic absenteeism rates surged across all demographics, but what has happened to chronic absenteeism rates since then? Are chronic absenteeism rates back to pre-pandemic levels? Is chronic absenteeism less of a problem for students who weren’t yet in school during the pandemic? And where might chronic absenteeism rates end up when all the dust settles? On this episo...

In a few short days, we’ll be celebrating America’s 250th birthday, but rather than feeling uniformly triumphant and celebratory, America’s Semiquincentennial comes at a time when many worry about the state of our democracy and civic culture. Schools are central to this worry. Many are concerned that civic education in American schools is insufficient or misguided, and that schools are not doing e...

The Department of Education has said it is trying to return education to the states, but what does that mean for the federal role in education and for the states expected to take on more responsibility? What is the Department doing now to scale back the federal role in education? How does the Department think about its own education agenda as it tries to return education to the states? And are sta...

Recently, Harvard faculty voted to push back on grade inflation at the institution by capping the proportion of A’s given to students at 20%. But according to a new paper, Harvard’s new policy—and grade caps in general—are not the right solution. In What Does a Grade Mean? Informativeness and Strategic Manipulation of Grading Systems , Scott Duke Kominers and Joshua S. Gans argue that to create be...

Historically, many didn’t consider Alabama to be at the forefront of education, but Alabama’s pandemic recovery may be among the best in the nation. Perhaps most impressively, Alabama was the only state whose 4th-grade math NAEP scores were higher in 2024 than in 2019, and Alabama reports a chronic absenteeism rate that is the lowest in the nation—and the closest to its pre-pandemic levels of any...

Although the Trump administration’s efforts to reform education might not be making national headlines quite as often as they did one year ago, a lot has still happened in education over the last several months. The Trump administration has continued its push to dismantle the Department of Education. Elite universities are making efforts to reform campus culture. The Department of Education releas...

This podcast has covered AI in K–12 education a fair amount, but how will and how should AI change higher education? Should any human instructors be replaced with AI? Should universities change what and how they teach to strengthen their value proposition? And in the age of AI, how should universities prepare their students for an unpredictable job market? On this episode of The Report Card , Nat...

Note: This episode originally aired in April 2025. On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus speaks with Eva Moskowitz , the founder and CEO of Success Academy. Nat and Eva discuss why COVID learning loss is a misnomer; whether chronically absent students should face consequences for their poor attendance; why, despite its strong academic performance, Success Academy decided to overhaul its...

Recently, there has been a lot of handwringing over grade inflation both at the higher education and K–12 levels, but how big of a problem actually is grade inflation? What sort of effect does grade inflation have on student learning? Does grade inflation help or hurt college enrollment? And what impact, if any, does grade inflation have on lifetime earnings? On this episode of The Report Card , N...

Math is one of the subjects that gets the most attention in American education, but how well do we actually understand what good math instruction should look like? Should math classes consist of students solving problem after problem, or should math classes also include opportunities for discussion and group work? Should students learn a topic and then move on to the next topic after they have ach...

Over the past year, the Trump administration has rewritten the playbook for how Washington interacts with higher education, especially elite universities. How should universities respond to the Trump administration’s efforts? Have the Trump administration’s actions been legal? And how can universities better serve the American public? On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus discusses these...

To commemorate America’s 250th anniversary, The Report Card will be releasing a few episodes on the history of American education—both to discuss how we arrived at the education system we have today and how our education system has shaped America. On this episode, Nat Malkus and Johann Neem cover the period between the American Revolution and the Civil War. Nat and Johann discuss civics education...

On the right, teachers’ unions are often treated as the bogeyman, and no one today is more synonymous with teachers’ unions than Randi Weingarten. Indeed, in 2022 former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called Weingarten “the most dangerous person in the world.” But who is Randi Weingarten? What does she do on a day-to-day basis? How much power does she actually have? What are her views on topics su...

Can students learn math much faster than they typically do? Can students who feel like they have hit a wall in math instruction make steady progress again? And can math instruction be successfully delivered online through a platform that doesn’t even use video? Math Academy, an online learning platform that is serious about math instruction, is built on the premise that the answer to all of these...

We are now coming to the end of another year. What were the biggest stories in education this year? What stories didn’t get as much attention as they should have? And what can we expect in the coming year? On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus discusses these questions, and more, with three education journalists: Sarah Mervosh of The New York Times , Jill Barshay of The Hechinger Report...

In classrooms across the nation, students and teachers are using AI—but should they be? AI’s advocates argue that it can be used to individualize instruction and provide personalized feedback, but its critics contend that the adoption of AI in the classroom will get in the way of students acquiring critical thinking skills. Who is right here? Can AI reverse a decade of falling test scores, or will...

One of the hottest names in education right now is Alpha School . A network of high-end private schools founded in Texas but with additional locations elsewhere, Alpha School uses AI to implement mastery learning principles and incentives to accelerate student learning. How well the Alpha model works is an open question: Alpha School graduated its first seniors—a class of twelve—just last year, an...

On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus , Rick Hess , and Andy Rotherham discuss what recent elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York City mean for education, the Trump administration’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, the latest in the Jim Ryan saga, and more. ( Note : This episode was recorded on Monday, before the Trump administration announced further plans t...

For decades, there has been research showing that tutoring can be a highly effective mode of instruction, but before 2020, large, in-school tutoring programs were not widespread. Then the pandemic struck, and large tutoring programs cropped up in districts around the nation. In fact, according to the June 2025 School Pulse Panel, 85% of American public schools now offer tutoring, with 42% offering...