The Education Gadfly Show

On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast (listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify), Erica Green, national education reporter at the New York Times, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss schools’ struggle to support teens’ mental health and respond to increasing misbehavior. Then, on the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines a study on whether improving access to dual-enrollment courses raises participation.Recommended content:Erica Green’s New York Times piece about students at Liberty High: “The Students Returned, but the Fallout From a Long Disruption Remained”Mike Petrilli’s thoughts on the federal response to this issue in The Dispatch: “Now Is Not the Time to Meddle in School Disciplinary Policy”Fordham’s 2019 teacher survey on discipline policies: Discipline Reform through the Eyes of TeachersThe study that Amber reviewed on the Research Minute: Steven W. Hemelt and Tom Swiderski, “College Comes to High School: Participation and Performance in Tennessee’s Innovative Wave of Dual-Credit Courses,” Center for Education Policy Analysis (November 2021).Feedback welcome!Have ideas or feedback on our podcast? Send them to our podcast producer Pedro Enamorado at penamorado@fordhaminstitute.org.

On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast (listen on Apple Podcasts and Spotify), Checker Finn, Fordham’s senior fellow and president emeritus, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss the big education issues of the past year and look ahead to 2022. Then, on the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines a study showing that Black and Hispanic students are less likely to major in lucrative fields.Feedback welcome!Have ideas or feedback on our podcast? Send them to our podcast producer Pedro Enamorado at penamorado@fordhaminstitute.org.

On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Jennifer Frey, associate professor at the University of South Carolina and a regular guest writer for Fordham’s Flypaper blog, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss why and how we should incorporate virtue education in classrooms. Then, on the Research Minute, Amber Northern runs down the best education research of 2021. You can find this and every episode on all major podcast platforms, as well as share it with friends.Recommended content:Jennifer’s ongoing Flypaper blog post series on virtue education: “Reconnecting knowledge and virtue”“What is virtue and why does it matter?”“Teaching gratitude beyond Thanksgiving”“Civility, democracy, and education”Amber’s list of the top six studies she reviewed this past year on the Research Minute.Feedback welcome!Have ideas or feedback on our podcast? Send them to our podcast producer Pedro Enamorado at penamorado@fordhaminstitute.org.

On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Elliot Regenstein, partner at Foresight Law + Policy and former member of Illinois’s Early Childhood Funding Commission, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss how the Build Back Better plan would affect pre-k and child care. Then, on the Research Minute, Amber Northern covers a study that examines why students of color benefit from having teachers of the same race and ethnicity. Amber's Research Minute: David Blazar, “Teachers of Color, Culturally Responsive Teaching, and Student Outcomes: Experimental Evidence from the Random Assignment of Teachers to Classes,” Annenberg Institute at Brown University (December 2021).Feedback welcome!Have ideas or feedback on our podcast? Send them to our podcast producer Pedro Enamorado at penamorado@fordhaminstitute.org.

On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Adam Tyner, Fordham’s Associate Director of Research, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss our new analysis, America’s Best and Worst Metro Areas for School Quality, some of which may surprise you. And on the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines the effectiveness of efforts to diversify the teacher workforce.Recommended content:Fordham’s new report at metro.fordhaminstitute.org.More of our work on metro areas:What You Make Depends on Where You Live: College Earnings Across States and Metropolitan Areas.How Aligned is Career and Technical Education to Local Labor Markets?The study that Amber reviewed on the Research Minute: Dan Goldhaber and Etai Mizrav, “The Prospective Teacher Pipeline: Simulation Evidence on Levers to Influence Teacher Diversity,” CALDER Working Papers (December 2021).Feedback welcome!Have ideas or feedback on our podcast? Send them to our podcast producer Pedro Enamorado at penamorado@fordhaminstitute.org.

On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Sandi Jacobs, Principal at EdCounsel and former Senior Education Program Specialist for Reading First at the U.S. Department of Education, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss why reading programs based on debunked science persist in schools. Her answer: It’s complicated. Educators, in part, may struggle with the idea that they’ve been teaching something incorrectly. And strong, evidence-backed replacements programs can lack hefty marketing budgets. After this discussion, on the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines a study on how dual-language education affects math and reading outcomes.Feedback welcome!Have ideas or feedback on our podcast? Send them to our podcast producer Pedro Enamorado at penamorado@fordhaminstitute.org.

On this week’s show, Andrew Rotherham, cofounder and partner at Bellwether Education partners, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss Glenn Youngkin’s election and what it means for education politics. He shared his thoughts about this on an interview for The 74, where he described the problem with Democrats ignoring parental concerns, in Virginia and nationally, about gifted education, Covid protocols, and how race is discussed in schools. But he also cautioned that Republicans shouldn’t misread the situation and overreach. After this discussion, on the Research Minute, Adam Tyner examines a study  looking at the effectiveness of credit recovery courses.Feedback welcome!Have ideas or feedback on our podcast? Send them to our podcast producer Pedro Enamorado at penamorado@fordhaminstitute.org.

On this week’s Education Gadfly Show podcast, Dale Chu, senior visiting fellow at Fordham and independent education consultant, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to make the case for K–2 standardized testing. He wrote about this same topic earlier this month, noting that widespread distaste for such assessments would make implementing this change challenging. But he argued that the alternative is to continue burying our heads in the sand about our children’s most formative years, which would be unfair to students and teachers. Then on the Research Minute, Amber Northern discusses a CALDER study examining the effects of remedial English language arts courses in middle school on postsecondary outcomes.Amber's Research Minute:Umut Özek, “The Effects of Middle School Remediation on Postsecondary Success: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Florida,” CALDER Working Papers (September 2021). Have ideas or feedback on our podcast? Send them to our podcast producer Pedro Enamorado at penamorado@fordhaminstitute.org.

On this week’s podcast, Lindsey Burke, director of the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss what the Democrats' still-in-the-works “social infrastructure” bill may mean for pre-K and childcare. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines how differences in parental beliefs across socioeconomic backgrounds affect educational inequities.Amber's Research Minute:John A. List, Julie Pernaudet, and Dana Suskind, "It All Starts with Beliefs: Addressing the Roots of Educational Inequities by Shifting Parental Beliefs," NBER Working Paper #29394 (October 2021). Have questions or feedback about the podcast? Email penamorado@fordhaminstitute.org.

On this week’s podcast, Tom Toch, director of Future Ed, joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss D.C.’s teacher-hiring strategy, and why other districts can and should follow suit. On the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines how teacher specialization in elementary schools affects student achievement.Amber's Research MinuteNaYoung Hwang and Brian Kisida, "Spread Too Thin: The Effects of Teacher Specialization on Student Achievement," retrieved from Annenberg Institute at Brown University (October 2021).