The Report Card with Nat Malkus

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat speaks with Melissa Arnold Lyon and Matthew Kraft about perceptions of the teaching profession. Nat, Mimi, and Matt discuss why the status and prestige of the teaching profession are at their lowest points in fifty years, why this matters for student learning, how perceptions of the teaching profession have changed over time, the extent to which current declines preceded the pandemic, Mimi and Matt's own job satisfaction when they were teachers, how the prestige of K-12 teaching compares with the prestige of college teaching, the effectiveness of teacher strikes, teachers unions, teacher pay, what can be done to improve the status of the teaching profession, and more.Show Notes:The Rise and Fall of the Teaching Profession: Prestige, Interest, Preparation, and Satisfaction over the Last Half CenturySustaining a Sense of Success: The Protective Role of Teacher Working Conditions During the COVID-19 PandemicElevating Education in Politics: How Teacher Strikes Shape Congressional Election CampaignsCan We Tutor Our Way out of Covid Learning Loss?

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat speaks with Congresswoman Virginia Foxx (NC), the Republican Leader of the House Committee on Education and Labor. Nat and Dr. Foxx discuss student loan forgiveness, the REAL Reforms Act, community colleges, credentialism, serving on a school board, spelling bees, the role of federal education policy, and more.Show Notes:The REAL Reforms ActPress Release for the REAL Reforms ActDr. Foxx Bio

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat speaks with Tom Kane, the Walter H. Gale Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, the faculty director of CEPR, and one of the project leaders of the Education Recovery Scorecard. Nat and Tom discuss NAEP results, the Education Recovery Scorecard, COVID learning loss, pandemic recovery, and more.A collaboration of the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University, the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard, and Stanford CEPA, the Education Recovery Scorecard links NAEP scores with state assessment results, giving us the first chance to really compare learning loss at the district level across the country.Show Notes:The Education Recovery ScorecardTom KaneNAEP

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat speaks with Po-Shen Loh, professor of mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University and coach of the United States' International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) team. Nat and Po discuss the difference between teaching problem solving and teaching computation, the limitations of mastery learning, the potential of online learning, math outreach, IMO, Hagoromo chalk, how to make math instruction simultaneously more engaging and more challenging, whether educators should discuss the usefulness of math, a scalable program to teach problem solving to advanced students live online, calculators, and more.Show Notes:Po's Personal WebsitePo's Academic WebsiteInternational Mathematical OlympiadLive.PoShenLohPo on Quadratic EquationsNOVIDPo's Speaking Tour

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat speaks with Richard Reeves, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It. Nat and Richard discuss redshirting, changing gender disparities, why many education interventions don't help men, Jordan Peterson, conscientiousness, why boys' standardized test scores are better than their grades, Bernard Williams, meritocracy, the modern male's need for a better life script, the prefrontal cortex, monarchy, the feminization of schooling, and more.Show Notes:Of Boys and Men: Why the Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about ItRedshirt the BoysDream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About ItIlana Horwitz on the Impact of Religion on Student OutcomesTruth and Truthfulness

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat interviews Freeman Hrabowski. Nat and Freeman discuss Black students in STEM, the state of free speech on college campuses, university spending and how to keep costs down, whether high schools are doing a good enough job of preparing students for college, the NCAA tournament, campus culture, the value of collaborative teamwork, how to improve graduation rates, multibillion-dollar university endowments, and more.Freeman Hrabowski served as president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) from 1992 until earlier this year. Under his leadership, UMBC became the nation’s number one college in terms of the number of Black students it graduates who later earn a Ph.D. in the natural sciences and engineering—an especially impressive feat when you consider that UMBC’s undergraduate enrollment is only about 11,000 and that Black students make up slightly less than 20% of that number. During Hrabowski's tenure, UMBC also more than doubled graduation rates, earned the #1 ranking in US News's list of up and coming universities for six consecutive years, and won the biggest upset in the history of March Madness.Show Notes:Meyerhoff Scholars ProgramReplicating Meyerhoff for Inclusive Excellence in STEMMeyerhoff at Berkeley and UCSDFreeman Hrabowski on 60 MinutesThe Empowered UniversityHolding Fast to DreamsOvercoming the OddsBeating the OddsUMBC Upsets UVA

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat interviews Doug Lemov. Nat and Doug discuss cellphones and social media, how they harm the academic and social development of students, how they make schools less inclusive, and what we can do about all of this. Nat and Doug also discuss online learning, school choice, the difficulty of creating schools with a coherent operating philosophy, the state of public schooling, The Scarlet Letter, the pandemic's effects on students, teacher professional development, the relationship between parenting and schooling, the idea that schooling sometimes has to be hard for students, and the crucial role that schools play in shaping students' habits of attention.Doug Lemov is the author of Teach Like a Champion and the founder of the Teach Like a Champion organization. He was previously the managing director and one of the founders of Uncommon Schools. His new book, Reconnect: Building School Culture for Meaning, Purpose, and Belonging, hits shelves next month.Show Notes:Take Away Their CellphonesReconnect: Building School Culture for Meaning, Purpose, and BelongingTeach Like A Champion 3.0Teach Like A ChampioniGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy--and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood--and What That Means for the Rest of UsIt Was a Mistake to Let Kids Onto Social Media Sites. Here’s What to Do Now.

We are now entering the fourth school year that will be affected by COVID-19. What can we expect? What have we learned so far? And does anyone still care?What should we be keeping our eyes on as another year rolls around? Evolving safety protocols? School spending? Student behavior? Potential teacher shortages? New vaccines?To discuss these questions and more, Nat invited John Bailey onto the podcast for a conversation. At AEI, John studies technology and education, and since the start of the pandemic he has written over 550 COVID-19 Policy Updates on his Substack.Show Notes:John's COVID-19 Policy UpdatesNat's Return to Learn TrackerReset Strategies Now, Prepare for the FutureA Failure to Respond: Public School Mask Mandates in the 2021–22 School YearPandemic Enrollment Fallout: School District Enrollment Changes Across COVID-19 ResponseBush Pandemic Preparedness Plan2022 School Pulse Panel: Student BehaviorStudent achievement in 2021-22: Cause for hope and continued urgency

We at The Report Card are on summer break this week, so we are re-upping one of our favorite episodes from the past year: Bleakness in American Schooling with Robert Pondiscio. Over the past few years, American schooling has been on a bumpy road. COVID-19 is the most obvious issue here, but it's not only that. As Robert Pondiscio argued in the March edition of Commentary, American schools have become overcome by bleakness."We want children to grapple with 'honest history' starting in elementary school and to discover the power of their voices by writing authentic essays about their personal problems. Small wonder, then, that children are more depressed and medicated than ever before. A half-century of psychological research indicates that our beliefs about the world shape behavior and our sense of well-being. Whether one views the world as good or bad, safe or dangerous, enticing or dull, is correlated with outcomes such as life satisfaction or depression. We may think that we are doing children a good service by being 'real' with them, refusing to spare them from the unpleasant facts of the tired world they will soon inherit, thus inspiring them to seize the day and set the world right. But strong evidence is emerging that we are mostly succeeding in creating a generation of overwhelmed young people paralyzed into learned helplessness."In this episode, Nat and Robert discuss this bleakness—its sources, its effects, and how we might overcome it. Show Notes:The Unbearable Bleakness of American SchoolingHow The Other Half Learns: Equality, Excellence, and the Battle Over School ChoiceThe Changing Face of Social Breakdown

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat interviews Christina Brown and Heather Schofield, two of the authors of Cognitive Endurance as Human Capital. Nat, Christina, and Heather discuss what cognitive endurance is and why it's important, PISA, an elaborate field experiment in India, disparities in American schools, shortening standardized tests, students in Pakistan, mazes and tangrams, what schools can do differently to build cognitive endurance in students, AP exams, long medical shifts, whether an extra year of schooling makes a difference for cognitive endurance, the ideal age to build cognitive endurance, and more.Christina Brown is a development economist who will be joining the University of Chicago’s Economics Department as an Assistant Professor in 2023, and Heather Schofield is an economist at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is currently an Assistant Professor in the Perelman School of Medicine and The Wharton School. Their coauthors on Cognitive Endurance as Human Capital are Supreet Kaur and Geeta Kingdon.Show Notes:Cognitive Endurance as Human CapitalInducing Positive Sorting through Performance Pay: Experimental Evidence from Pakistani SchoolsThe Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban PoorRamadan Fasting and Agricultural Output