The Report Card with Nat Malkus

It's a challenge for school systems to recruit and retain quality teachers, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. This challenge has spurred a number of creative solutions. One, announced earlier this year, is Tennessee's Teacher Occupation Apprenticeship program, also known as Grow Your Own. Tennessee's Grow Your Own program is based on 65 already existing Grow Your Own programs within the state.Here to discuss Grow Your Own with Nat are Penny Schwinn, Tennessee Education Commissioner, and Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality.Show Notes:Grow Your OwnUptick but no exodus: Despite stress, most teachers stay put

Two upcoming court cases, one a Supreme Court case on affirmative action at Harvard and the other a federal court case on financial aid price-fixing schemes at many of the nation's top colleges, promise to rock American higher education.Josh Dunn, professor of political science at the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, and Eric Hoover, senior writer at The Chronicle of Higher Education, join Nat Malkus to discuss these cases and their potential implications.Show Notes:Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College568 Presidents Group Lawsuit

Over the course of the pandemic, masking requirements—particularly school masking requirements—have been a flashpoint issue.So: what is going on in schools? Which school districts require masking and which don’t? And what demographic factors might help explain masking policies?Here to discuss is Nat Malkus, with John Bailey as guest host.Show notes:The Return to Learn Tracker: Mask Edition

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.