The Report Card with Nat Malkus

In just three years, 45 states adopted the Common Core State Standards. By that metric alone, one might argue that the Common Core was a huge success. But on this episode of The Report Card with Nat Malkus, Tom Loveless and Morgan Polikoff argue that the Common Core has failed to move the needle on student learning and discuss the potential of standards-based reform going forward. Read Tom and Morgan's recently released books on the Common Core and content standards:Between the State and the Schoolhouse: Understanding the Failure of Common Core (Loveless, Harvard Education Press, 2021)Beyond Standards: The Fragmentation of Education Governance and the Promise of Curriculum Reform (Polikoff, Harvard Education Press, 2021)

College is expensive. How can students and parents make sure that it pays off? On this episode of The Report Card with Nat Malkus, Beth Akers, resident scholar in education policy at AEI, discusses her new book, Making College Pay: An Economist Explains How to Make a Smart Bet on Higher Education (Penguin Random House, 2021). You can purchase Making College Pay at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or your local bookstore.

Why have fewer Black and Hispanic students returned to their classrooms for full-time in-person learning relative to white students? And what effect will this have on the nation’s stubborn racial achievement gaps? Vlad Kogan, associate professor of political science at Ohio State, and Chris Stewart, CEO of brightbeam, weigh in on this episode of The Report Card with Nat Malkus. Read Vlad Kogan's AEI report, "What’s behind racial differences in attitudes toward school reopening (and what to do about them)."

While hybrid education may appear to be an invention of necessity spurred by the pandemic, splitting instruction between traditional brick-and-mortar schooling and homeschooling has been practiced—albeit on a limited scale—for quite some time. On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus talks with Ed Choice's Mike McShane about his recent book on hybrid homeschooling, "Hybrid Homeschooling: A Guide to the Future of Education.” Nat and Mike are also joined by Kathaleena Edward Monds (Center for Educational Opportunity), Allison L. Morgan (Classical Christian Conservatory of Alexandria), and Antonio Parés (Walnut Hill Workshop).

Enrollment in preschool and kindergarten programs has dropped significantly over the past year. What's behind Covid enrollment drops and how might they affect students, schools, and systems in the coming years? UVA post-doc Anna Shapiro and Virginia's Chief School Readiness Officer Jenna Conway discuss on this episode of The Report Card with Nat Malkus. To learn more about Covid enrollment drops, read Daphna Bassok and Anna Shapiro's recent Brookings Institute analysis, "Understanding COVID-19-era enrollment drops among early-grade public school students."

Students are months behind where they should be in their learning. Could a nation-wide tutoring program catch them up to speed? Moreover, what would it take to equalize access to high-quality tutoring over the long term? Matt Kraft of Brown University and Josh Goodman of Boston University discuss on this episode of "The Report Card with Nat Malkus."Read the working papers discussed on this episode:"A Blueprint for Scaling Tutoring Across Public Schools" by Matt Kraft and Grace Falken. "Kumon In: The Recent, Rapid Rise of Private Tutoring Centers" by Edward Kim, Josh Goodman, and Martin West.

It's been 12 months since the coronavirus pandemic sent the nation's students home. How many have returned to classrooms? That's a straightforward question, but one that's proven exceptionally difficult to answer. On this episode of "The Report Card," Nat Malkus discusses his newly launched Return to Learn Tracker (R2L), which monitors the instructional status of over 8,500 school districts on a weekly basis. Chris Marsicano, an assistant professor at Davidson College and the founding director of the College Crisis Initiative (C2i), also joins to share his work tracking colleges and universities' responses to Covid.

Over the past several decades, a considerable body of research has looked at whether charter schools benefit students who choose to enroll in them. More recently, researchers have turned their attention to a related question: Is the expansion of the charter school sector harming students who remain in traditional public schools? On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus asks two experts to weigh in: Mark Weber, a special analyst at the New Jersey Policy Perspective and a public school music teacher, and Marcus Winters, an associate professor at Boston University and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Read Mark Weber's recent Fordham Institute report, "Robbers or Victims? Charter Schools and District Finances"Read Marcus Winter's recent Manhatten Institute report, "Do Charter Schools Harm Traditional Public Schools? Years of Test-Score Data Suggest They Don’t"

Over the course of a weekend last March, students saw their day-to-day routines completely upended. Now, eleven months into the pandemic, how are students holding up? On this episode of "The Report Card," Nat Malkus talks with two school counselors about their work supporting students during the pandemic: 2020 School Counselor of the Year Laura Ross, the lead school counselor at Five Forks Middle School in Lawrenceville, Georgia, and 2016 School Counselor of the Year Kat Pastor-Lorents, a school counselor at Flagstaff High School in Flagstaff, Arizona.

Just about any parent could attest that remote learning hasn’t exactly been a one-to-one substitute for in-person learning. But just how far behind have students fallen over the past ten months? On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus talks with two experts: Megan Kuhfeld, a senior research scientist at NWEA, and McKinsey and Company's global education practice manager Emma Dorn.