The Report Card with Nat Malkus

We've talked a lot on the show about school choice. But it's not often we discuss intra-district choice - choice between schools in the same district. Starting in 2012, Los Angeles' Zones of Choice program creates small local markets with High Schools in neighborhoods throuhgout LA, but leaves traditional attendance-zone boundaries in place. In application, this means that about 30-40% of LAUSD is a Zone of Choice.Here to discuss the success of LA's Zones of Choice program is Christopher Campos and John Deasy.Shownotes:The Impact of Neighborhood School Choice: Evidence from Los Angeles' Zones of Choice Program.

American schooling has been on a bumpy road the past few years. COVID-19 is the obvious issues here, but it's not only that. Students have increasingly faced mental health issues and that preceded the pandemic. All the while, we've seen one polarizing issue after another shaking classrooms across the country. This bumpy road has been eloquently summarized in a new piece by Robert Pondiscio in the lead essay for the March issue of Commentary Magazine, titled: The unbearable bleakness in American schooling.

In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic put a halt to traditional schooling. In response to the, then, relatively unknown threat of COVID-19, Congress sent emergency relief funding to schools. They did so again, sending much more money. Then, they did so again, sending much much more money. These funds, known as the Elementary and Secondary Schooling Emergency Relief funds, or ESSER for short, totaled nearly $200 billion, making it the largest federal expenditure for public education in American history.So, where did these funds go, and for what? Here to discuss is the Director of Georgetown University's Edunomics Lab, Marguerite Roza. Show notes:Marguerite's latest Education Next article: Punishment for Making Hard Choices in a Crisis: Federal Prison

The COVID-19 pandemic has seemingly touched everything in education policy, and school choice is no exception. Since the start of the pandemic and, particularly in the 2020-2021 academic year, over 1 million students left their traditional pubic school, charter school enrollment surged, and state-after-state either expanded or created a new school choice programs.        The growing enrollment and expansion of these programs over the past year has led some to refer to 2021 as “The Year of School Choice.” So, why was school choice so popular in 2021, and what did its rise look like?Here to discuss is Nina Rees and Patrick Wolf. Nina is the President and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Previously, Nina served as the first Deputy Under Secretary for Innovation and Improvement at the Department of Education. Patrick Wolf is a Distinguished Professor of Education Policy and the 21st Century Endowed Chair in School Choice at the University of Arkansas’ Dept. of Education Reform.

Done well, Career and Technical Education, better known as CTE, provides articled pathways to post-secondary education and high-demand, high-wage careers within specified career clusters. There's certainty a lot to like about CTE, but we still have much to learn about it in terms of its impact on post-K-12 outcomes and, especially, how those outcomes vary among different career clusters that fall under the CTE umbrella. Here to discuss these issues with Nat are Walt Ecton and Shaun Dougherty. Show notes:Link to Walt and Shaun's report, titled: Heterogeneity in High School Career and Technical Education Outcomes.

To put it lightly, 2021 has been an eventful year in education. From heated school board meetings over class curriculum to fierce (and currently ongoing) debates regarding mask and vaccine mandates in schools, we’ve certainly had no shortage of education headlines over the past year.For The Report Card with Nat Malkus' last episode of 2021, Nat looked back at these highlights and discussed 2021's biggest stories in education, what stories didn't get that much attention, and what 2022 has in store for us.Of course, who better to discuss education’s biggest stories in 2021 than those who wrote about them? On this episode, we are joined by three talented reporters, Erica Green, Laura Meckler, and Eesha Pendharkar.

Every year, it seems, national and local press talk a lot about the "teacher shortage," and the reports are often accompanied with words like "emergency" and "crisis." The frequency of these reports might garner skepticism by some but, this year, talks around the teacher shortage are different.After nearly two years of COVID-19, and with the labor markets currently in flux, could it be that reports around the teacher shortage this year are different than before? Here to discuss is Dan Goldhaber and Gema Zamarro.Gema is a Professor in Education Reform and Economics at the University of Arkansas and the author of a recent report, titled: Understanding how COVID-19 has Changed Teachers’ Chances of Remaining in the Classroom.Dan is the Director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data (CALDER) in Education Research at the American Institutes for Research and the author of a new report on school district staffing, titled: School District Staffing Challenges in a Rapidly Recovering Economy.

Increasingly, political intolerance and polarization is infiltrating college campuses. The impact of these occurrences are growing in prevalence and, to some, are perverting the original purpose of the university: the pursuit of truth.On this episode of The Report Card with Nat Malkus, Pano Kanelos , a founding trustee of the University of Austin, joins the podcast to discuss.

College is expensive. Despite this, every year, millions of students enroll in college. For many, this decision is primarily based on the expectation that they will receive a positive positive return on their investment.Given this logic, it’d be easy to think that the choice of whether to attend college is the most important predictor of ones’ financial future. But, what if that logic is flawed? What if, instead, which college, and which degree in that college, is actually more important to financial success than the decision to attend college at all?On this episode of The Report Card with Nat Malkus, Preston Cooper and Carlo Salerno to join Nat to answer this question and more.

School choice is one of the most controversial issues in education, and it has been for some time. Since the 1990s, support for private school choice has become increasingly politicized – with Republicans making it central to their campaign and Democrats largely in opposition. Despite this, Republicans have approached school choice legislation in a bipartisan fashion.But, does school choice legislation need to be bipartisan, and should it?On this episode of The Report Card with Nat Malkus, Jay Greene discusses the legislative record of school choice legislation, its meaning, and how legislators can and should approach school choice legislation.