The Report Card with Nat Malkus is the education podcast of the American Enterprise Institute. It is a hub for discussing innovative work to improve education – from early childhood to higher education – and the lives of America’s children. It evaluates research, policy, and practice efforts to impr
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 a surprisingly large effect on district achievement trends. To find out more, on this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus speaks with Josh Goodman . Nat and Josh discuss what instruction looks…
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 sure ed tech actually gets used, whether schools need dedicated ed-tech staff, the educational benefits of using AI for language instruction, the logistical challenges of using AI for math…
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. Once abstract, these debates are now anything but. Since his second term began, President Trump has signed an executive order directing the Department to begin shutting itself down, the Department has…
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 episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus speaks with Carolyn Gorman about school-based mental health. Nat and Carolyn discuss whether and why student mental health has gotten worse, what we do and…
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 Reader Bot: What Happens When AI Reads and Why It Matters . This episode was produced by Elli Lucas. Show Notes: Reader Bot: What Happens When AI Reads and Why It Matters Who Wrote This? How AI and the…
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, he was the Louisiana State Superintendent of Education, Superintendent of the Louisiana Recovery School District, Deputy Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, and a Teach For…
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 episode of The Report Card , Elli Lucas discusses these questions, and more, with Nat Malkus . Nat Malkus is a senior fellow and the deputy director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise…
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 enough to prepare the next generation of Americans for self-governance. But what would better civic education look like? What subject matter should it consist of? What should its aims be? And how…
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 states ready to have education returned to them—whatever that might mean? On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus discusses these questions and more with Kirsten Baesler . Kirsten Baesler is…
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 better incentives for students and faculty, we need to change the current grading system itself. On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus speaks with Scott Duke Kominers about Harvard’s new…
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 state. Are these results part of a broader story about how Alabama has changed the way it thinks about education? What changes have helped produce Alabama’s recent education gains? And where might…
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 released a major report on the future of the Institute of Education Sciences. And campaigns to limit phone use and, now, screen time in school continue to gain momentum. To make sense of it all, on this…
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 Malkus discusses these questions and more with Hollis Robbins . Hollis Robbins is a professor of English at the University of Utah, where she was formerly Dean of the College of Humanities. She…
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 curriculum; what Success Academy looks for when hiring new teachers; Success Academy’s potential expansion into Florida and Texas; the challenges Success Academy faced in expanding into high school;…
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 , Nat Malkus discusses these questions and more with Jeff Denning . Jeffrey T. Denning is an associate professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin,…
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 achieved competency, or should teachers strive to teach each topic deeply, giving students many different strategies for solving problems? And if math education in America were dramatically improved,…
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 questions and more with Lee Bollinger . Nat and Lee discuss the purpose of large university endowments, the meaning of the Ivy League today, university hiring, whether elite universities should…
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 in early America, why some educators cared so much about imagination and self-culture, Horace Mann, pushback against education reformers, the difficulties of schooling in the young republic, the…
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 such as pensions, curriculum, and teacher autonomy? And is she actually the most dangerous person in the world? On this episode of The Report Card , Randi Weingarten joins Nat Malkus for a…
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 questions is yes: An adaptive learning platform that carefully determines what students already know and what they don’t know yet can radically improve math instruction for many students—and can do…
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 , and Eric Kelderman of The Chronicle of Higher Education . Show Notes: The Improbable Warrior Trump’s Attacks on DEI May Hurt Men in College Admission The Big Fail
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 it only exacerbate this trend? And even if AI in the classroom is the future, does that mean schools should adopt AI in the classroom today? On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus and four…
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, and most of Alpha’s students come from wealthier families. That said, for anyone who complains about a lack of experimentation in the education sector or wonders what it might look like if schools…
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 to dismantle the Department of Education.) Andrew J. Rotherham is a co-founder and senior partner at Bellwether and the author of the Eduwonk blog. Frederick M. Hess is a senior fellow and the…
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 high-dosage tutoring. Has this COVID-era experiment been successful? Should these tutoring programs stick around as the pandemic recedes further from view? And what might AI mean for the future of…
In August 2023, right after he took over as superintendent of Houston ISD, Mike Miles came on The Report Card to talk about his plans for Texas’s largest school district. From changing teacher pay to overhauling curriculum, Miles’s plans for Houston were ambitious—and controversial—but would they work? Two years later, Mike Miles comes back on The Report Card to speak with Nat Malkus about the progress Houston has made and whether Houston’s bold reform agenda has gone according to plan. F. Mike Miles is the superintendent of Houston Independent School District. Previously, he was the founder…
TikTok. Instagram. Constant notifications. Many worry that phones are destroying students’ ability to pay attention and, in turn, their ability to learn in the classroom. Indeed, even many adults say that they have trouble reading books because of the constant stream of distractions their phones provide. But what does the research say? Are students actually less able to pay attention as a result of their phones? On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus discusses these questions and more with Dan Willingham . Daniel Willingham is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia…
Earlier this month, 2024 NAEP scores came out for 8th grade science and 12th grade reading and math, and the results were not good, with students losing ground in each subject. But these declines are not new and they are not only the result of the pandemic: Across a number of tests and subjects, scores have been declining for over a decade, especially for low-performing students. Indeed, while achievement for the top 10 percent of students has remained roughly flat, achievement for the bottom 10 percent of students has fallen precipitously—on many assessments, by well over a year. What might…
A lot has happened in education over the last couple of months. A new school year started for students across the country. State governors began announcing whether they would be opting in to the new federal tax credit scholarship program. Penny Schwinn, former Education Commissioner of Tennessee, withdrew her nomination to be Linda McMahon’s number two at the Department of Education. A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration’s shutdown of the Comprehensive Centers and Regional Educational Laboratories was unlawful. And the Trump administration continued waging its battles with…
Many school choice proponents today focus on what choice does for the students who use it to leave traditional public schools. But one of the original arguments for choice was that, through competition, it would spur traditional public schools to improve. So: Has it? Do choice programs make traditional public schools better? Does the size of these competitive effects depend on the type of choice program? And what other factors might matter for the amount of competitive pressure that choice programs exert on traditional public schools? On this episode of The Report Card , Nat Malkus discusses…
About The Report Card with Nat Malkus
The Report Card with Nat Malkus is the education podcast of the American Enterprise Institute. It is a hub for discussing innovative work to improve education – from early childhood to higher education – and the lives of America’s children. It evaluates research, policy, and practice efforts to impr
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