The Report Card with Nat Malkus

Recently, there has been a lot of handwringing over grade inflation both at the higher education and K–12 levels, but how big of a problem actually is grade inflation? What sort of effect does grade inflation have on student learning? Does grade inflation help or hurt college enrollment? And what impact, if any, does grade inflation have on lifetime earnings?On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these questions and more with Jeff Denning.Jeffrey T. Denning is an associate professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, and—along with Rachel L. Nesbit, Nolan G. Pope, and Merrill Warnick—is the author of a new paper: Easy A’s, Less Pay: The Long-Term Effects of Grade Inflation.

Math is one of the subjects that gets the most attention in American education, but how well do we actually understand what good math instruction should look like?Should math classes consist of students solving problem after problem, or should math classes also include opportunities for discussion and group work? Should students learn a topic and then move on to the next topic after they have achieved competency, or should teachers strive to teach each topic deeply, giving students many different strategies for solving problems? And if math education in America were dramatically improved, just how good could it be?On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these questions, and more, with Jon Star. Nat and Jon discuss conceptual understanding and procedural fluency, whether constructivism has a place in the classroom, the value of worked examples, online curricula and the importance of curricular coherence, what mathematical flexibility is and why it matters, whether students can understand problem-solving strategies more or less well, whether math makes students better problem-solvers more generally, Chinese math education, Jon’s experience teaching middle school math and how being a researcher informs his teaching, whether math education research is sufficiently accessible to teachers, how to improve American math education, and how good American math education could be.Jon Star is the Carl H. Pforzheimer, Jr. Professor of Teaching and Learning at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a middle school math teacher.

Over the past year, the Trump administration has rewritten the playbook for how Washington interacts with higher education, especially elite universities.How should universities respond to the Trump administration’s efforts? Have the Trump administration’s actions been legal? And how can universities better serve the American public?On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these questions and more with Lee Bollinger. Nat and Lee discuss the purpose of large university endowments, the meaning of the Ivy League today, university hiring, whether elite universities should double their undergraduate enrollments, the scholarly temperament, whether there is a tension between serving the public and the research missions of universities, the relationship between Washington and universities in the pre-Trump era, how universities can better convey their value to the American people, and the best evidence in favor of affirmative action.Lee Bollinger is the Seth Low Professor at Columbia University and the author of University: A Reckoning. Previously, he was President of Columbia University and President of the University of Michigan.

To commemorate America’s 250th anniversary, The Report Card will be releasing a few episodes on the history of American education—both to discuss how we arrived at the education system we have today and how our education system has shaped America.On this episode, Nat Malkus and Johann Neem cover the period between the American Revolution and the Civil War. Nat and Johann discuss civics education in early America, why some educators cared so much about imagination and self-culture, Horace Mann, pushback against education reformers, the difficulties of schooling in the young republic, the spread of the common schools movement, and more.Johann Neem is Professor of History at Western Washington University, editor of the Journal of the Early Republic, and the author of Democracy’s Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America.

On the right, teachers’ unions are often treated as the bogeyman, and no one today is more synonymous with teachers’ unions than Randi Weingarten. Indeed, in 2022 former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called Weingarten “the most dangerous person in the world.”But who is Randi Weingarten? What does she do on a day-to-day basis? How much power does she actually have? What are her views on topics such as pensions, curriculum, and teacher autonomy? And is she actually the most dangerous person in the world?On this episode of The Report Card, Randi Weingarten joins Nat Malkus for a wide-ranging conversation on many of the biggest topics in American education.Randi Weingarten is the president of the American Federation of Teachers and the author of Why Fascists Fear Teachers: Public Education and the Future of Democracy.

Can students learn math much faster than they typically do? Can students who feel like they have hit a wall in math instruction make steady progress again? And can math instruction be successfully delivered online through a platform that doesn’t even use video?Math Academy, an online learning platform that is serious about math instruction, is built on the premise that the answer to all of these questions is yes: An adaptive learning platform that carefully determines what students already know and what they don’t know yet can radically improve math instruction for many students—and can do so without many of the bells and whistles that are typical of education technology.On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus speaks with Jason Roberts and Justin Skycak about how Math Academy works, why many of Math Academy’s users are adults, and whether middle school students can really learn calculus.Jason Roberts is the co-founder of Math Academy.Justin Skycak is the chief quant and director of analytics at Math Academy.Show Notes:Math AcademyHow Math Academy Works

Sarah Mervosh, an education reporter at The New York Times, covers K-12 policy, while Eric Kelderman focuses on higher education for The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Jill Barshay reports for The Hechinger Report, emphasizing student learning. They delve into the Trump administration’s impact on education, alarming declines in reading, and rising absenteeism. They analyze cuts to education funding and discuss the looming challenges of graduation rates and FAFSA processing, highlighting crucial under-reported stories affecting schools.

In classrooms across the nation, students and teachers are using AI—but should they be?AI’s advocates argue that it can be used to individualize instruction and provide personalized feedback, but its critics contend that the adoption of AI in the classroom will get in the way of students acquiring critical thinking skills.Who is right here? Can AI reverse a decade of falling test scores, or will it only exacerbate this trend? And even if AI in the classroom is the future, does that mean schools should adopt AI in the classroom today?On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus and four experts discuss and debate whether maximizing school improvement by 2035 means integrating AI into classrooms today.Note: This episode is adapted from the most recent installment of the American Enterprise Institute’s Education Policy Debate Series, which was held at AEI on December 8. A video recording of the debate can be found here.Shanika Hope is the director of Americas & Knowledge, Skills, and Learning at Google.Alex Kotran is the CEO of the AI Education Project.Dan Meyer is the vice president of User Growth at Amplify.Jake Tawney is the chief academic officer at Great Hearts Academies.

One of the hottest names in education right now is Alpha School. A network of high-end private schools founded in Texas but with additional locations elsewhere, Alpha School uses AI to implement mastery learning principles and incentives to accelerate student learning.How well the Alpha model works is an open question: Alpha School graduated its first seniors—a class of twelve—just last year, and most of Alpha’s students come from wealthier families. That said, for anyone who complains about a lack of experimentation in the education sector or wonders what it might look like if schools took some of the boldest ideas in education more seriously, Alpha is a welcome antidote. To learn more about the Alpha model, on this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus speaks with MacKenzie Price, cofounder of Alpha School.

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus, Rick Hess, and Andy Rotherham discuss what recent elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York City mean for education, the Trump administration’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, the latest in the Jim Ryan saga, and more. (Note: This episode was recorded on Monday, before the Trump administration announced further plans to dismantle the Department of Education.)Andrew J. Rotherham is a co-founder and senior partner at Bellwether and the author of the Eduwonk blog.Frederick M. Hess is a senior fellow and the director of education policy studies at AEI.Show Notes:Jim Ryan LetterThe Impoundment Wars, Begun They Have. Plus, Wait, What Just Happened at UVA?"Patriotic Education" Isn't. Plus, The Vagueness of "No Kings."What's The Forecast In Virginia? Plus Literacy, Des Moines, Cell Phone Bans, More...And Fish Pics.VCU Changed Scholarship for Descendants of the Enslaved to Align with Anti-DEI PoliciesFinding Common Ground on Trump’s College CompactCampus Leaders Conveniently Find the Spines They Lost Years AgoHow Zohran Mamdani Could Kill New York’s SchoolsTexas A&M Tightens Rules on Talking About Race and Gender in ClassesHow to Really Know a Thing, Directed by Quentin Tarantino