The Report Card with Nat Malkus

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

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat interviews Nate Hilger, author of The Parent Trap: How to Stop Overloading Parents and Fix Our Inequality Crisis. Prior to writing The Parent Trap, Nate was a professor of economics at Brown University, a Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a lead policy consultant on early childhood and non-K12 child development issues for Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign. Nat and Nate discuss why disparities in life outcomes are not mainly attributable to disparities in schools, why relying too heavily on parents to develop skills in children will perpetuate inequalities, big data in education, the lessons of Perry Preschool and Abecedarian, skill transmission in Asian American communities, why we need to spend more on education R&D, Cora Hillis, what a study about the management practices of businesses in India can teach us about parenting, the IRS databank, Childcare with a capital 'C', the decision to have five or more kids, universal pre-k, and more.Show Notes:The Parent Trap: How to Stop Overloading Parents and Fix Our Inequality CrisisWhy do we provide so much more support to the old than the young?The 100-year legacy of America’s first big national investment in familiesHow Does Your Kindergarten Classroom Affect Your Earnings? Evidence from Project StarParental Job Loss and Children's Long-Term Outcomes: Evidence from 7 Million Fathers' Layoffs

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat interviews Kymyona Burk, Senior Policy Fellow at ExcelinEd, and Emily Hanford, Senior Producer and Correspondent at American Public Media. Nat, Kymyona, and Emily discuss the reading wars, what's wrong with balanced literacy, Mississippi's rising reading scores, why reading isn't natural, Lucy Calkins, phonics, HBCUs, the science of reading, spelling bees, three cueing, the importance of proper teacher education, and more.Show Notes:In the Fight Over How to Teach Reading, This Guru Makes a Major RetreatHard Words: Why aren't kids being taught to read?Comprehensive How-To Guide: Approaches to Implementing Early Literacy PoliciesNew research shows controversial Reading Recovery program eventually had a negative impact on childrenStruggling readers need standards and structure based on the science of readingInfluential authors Fountas and Pinnell stand behind disproven reading theoryWhat the Words Say: Many kids struggle with reading – and children of color are far less likely to get the help they need

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat interviews Ian Rowe, senior fellow at AEI, cofounder of Vertex Partnership Academies, and the author of Agency: The Four Point Plan (F.R.E.E.) for ALL Children to Overcome the Victimhood Narrative and Discover Their Pathway to Power. Nat and Ian discuss what the "blame the victim" and the "blame the system" narratives get wrong, Teach for America, the importance of mediating institutions in developing agency within the individual, the state of music videos, why young people want to be taught the success sequence, charter schools, Ian's parents' education in Jamaica, what students can learn from investing in the stock market, MLK, why morality must be a part of agency, F.R.E.E., why family and entrepreneurship broadly understood are important for building agency, why it is harmful when teachers overemphasize systemic racism, and much more.Show Notes:Agency: The Four Point Plan (F.R.E.E.) for ALL Children to Overcome the Victimhood Narrative and Discover Their Pathway to PowerHere’s why all students need agency rather than ‘equity’Vertex Partnership AcademiesBuilding Successful High Schools

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat interviews Beth Akers, senior fellow at AEI and the coauthor of Game of Loans: The Rhetoric and Reality of Student Debt. Nat and Beth discuss student loans, student loan forgiveness, why student loan forgiveness might make college more expensive, whether student loan forgiveness would be a good way to address the racial wealth gap, whether it makes sense to forgive student loans in order to encourage entrepreneurship, the dangers of working during college, how to fix income-driven repayment, the benefits of income share agreements, whether for-profit colleges can be good, and what President Biden should do on student loans.Show Notes:Making College Pay: An Economist Explains How to Make a Smart Bet on Higher EducationGame of Loans: The Rhetoric and Reality of Student DebtFAQ: Student Loan Cancellation EditionStudent Loan Cancellation Will Backfire Without Additional ReformAnticipated Executive Order Cancelling Student Loans Unpopular on Right and LeftAnother Extension of the Student-loan-repayment Freeze Is Bad Policy

On the latest episode of The Report Card, Nat interviews Emily Morton and Dan Goldhaber about their new paper The Consequences of Remote and Hybrid Instruction During the Pandemic, which uses testing data from 2.1 million students in 10,000 schools in 49 states to investigate the role of remote and hybrid instruction in widening achievement gaps. Show Notes:The Consequences of Remote and Hybrid Instruction During the PandemicA Comprehensive Picture of Achievement Across the COVID-19 Pandemic Years: Examining Variation in Test Levels and Growth Across Districts, Schools, Grades, and StudentsEffects of Four-Day School Weeks on School Finance and Achievement: Evidence From OklahomaReturn 2 Learn Tracker‘Not Good for Learning’

On the latest episode of The Report Card, Nat interviews Ilana Horwitz, Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Sociology at Tulane, about her new book, God, Grades, and Graduation. Nat and Ilana discuss the impact of religion on student outcomes, why religion helps working class kids get better grades and graduate from college at higher rates, the educational benefits of summer camp, Palo Alto, whether the boys are alright, the academy's understanding of American religious life, why religion helps boys academically more than it helps girls, education in the Soviet Union, why atheists also do better in school, how religion combats despair in working class America, why religious kids might not learn more even though they get better grades, religious girls and undermatching, the trajectory of evangelical Christianity in America, the importance of social capital, the logic of religious restraint, and why Jewish girls do well academically.Also in this episode? The debut of Grade It. Show Notes:God, Grades, and GraduationI Followed the Lives of 3,290 Teenagers. This Is What I Learned About Religion and Education.The Future of Higher Education Needs to Embrace ReligionFrom Bat Mitzvah to the Bar: Religious Habitus, Self-Concept, and Women’s Educational Outcomes