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How bad are things in US education? Why does it seem that educational progress has stagnated? What parts of the US education system should be reformed? Is it better to group students by skill level or by age? How useful are standardized tests? Why is there so commonly a disconnect between what cognitive science tells us about how people learn and the practices that are actually implemented in classrooms? How much do we know about what it's like in schools today? What did the No Child Left Behind act get wrong? What should educational incentive structures look like? Is individual student progress constrained more by interest or intelligence? In the grand scheme of things, how big of a problem is classroom management? What happened in the FAA hiring scandal? Did it increase the risks associated with flying? How could the FAA have better achieved its own ends?

Jack Despain Zhou, also known online as Tracing Woodgrains, is the cofounder of the Center for Educational Progress, a nonprofit focused on reorienting education around a culture of excellence. Elsewhere, he is known for his coverage of institutional crises and online history, particularly the FAA's hiring scandal and Wikipedia abuse, and for cultural and political commentary from an ex-Mormon centrist perspective. He previously helped produce Blocked and Reported, a podcast about internet nonsense. He can be found on Substack as Tracing Woodgrains or on Twitter as @tracewoodgrains.

Further reading

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Sponsor ✨

This episode is sponsored by Animal Charity Evaluators.

Staff

Spencer Greenberg — Host / Director
Josh Castle — Producer
Ryan Kessler — Audio Engineer
Uri Bram — Factotum
WeAmplify — Transcriptionists

Music

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