The Report Card with Nat Malkus
by AEI Podcasts
The Report Card with Nat Malkus is the education podcast of the American Enterprise Institute. It is a hub for discussing innovative work to improve education – from early childhood to higher education – and the lives of America’s children. It evaluates research, policy, and practice efforts to improve the lives of families, schools and students. The Report Card seeks to engage with everyone who is interested in education in an accessible way. It brings guests that are doing compelling work across a spectrum from high level policy changes to innovations at the classroom level, work that will start conversations about improving education and the lives of children more broadly. Each episode lets listeners – policymakers, teachers, and parents –learn relevant information that they can use in their efforts to improve education.
Episodes
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American Adolescence in 2026 (with Daniel A. Cox)
On The Report Card, we talk a lot about schools, but in this episode we do something a little different and talk about one of the populations schools serve: adolescents. How are technologies such as social media, AI, and location tracking affecting teenagers? What are gender relations like among...
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Private Tutoring Centers—A Bigger Deal than You Think (with Joshua Goodman)
Kumon, Sylvan Learning, Mathnasium, and Huntington Learning Center—these private tutoring chains are familiar names, but they have received little attention from education researchers. According to recent research co-authored by Josh Goodman, however, this is an oversight. Not only has the number...
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Implementing AI (with Philip Oreopoulos)
Proponents of education technology have often made big promises about its potential to transform schooling, but so far, ed tech has failed to live up to its promise. Will AI also fail to deliver, or will it finally be the education technology that breaks through? On this episode of The Report…
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Should We Close the US Department of Education?
According to many in the Trump administration, closing the US Department of Education would increase efficiency, reduce bureaucracy, and give states more control over education. But according to opponents of the move, closing the Department would create a bureaucratic web that would be confusing...
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How Schools Should Approach Mental Health (with Carolyn D. Gorman)
Many schools today offer mental health programming, but according to Carolyn Gorman, a lot of school mental health programming is not only wasteful and ineffective but also directionally misguided: School mental health programming often targets students who don’t need help, pathologizes ordinary...
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How AI and Screens Are Changing Reading (with Naomi Baron)
AI is transforming not only the way students work but also the way they read. AI summarizes readings for students, changing the way they engage with texts, form judgments, and—perhaps—develop cognitively. On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus speaks with Naomi Baron about these changes…
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Curriculum, Coherence, and Change (with John White)
On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus speaks with John White about state education leadership, how the education landscape has changed over the last few decades, innovation in education and where it tends to go wrong, the importance of school choice, the Southern Surge, why coherent...
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The Latest on Chronic Absenteeism (with Nat Malkus)
During the pandemic, national chronic absenteeism rates surged across all demographics, but what has happened to chronic absenteeism rates since then? Are chronic absenteeism rates back to pre-pandemic levels? Is chronic absenteeism less of a problem for students who weren’t yet in school during...
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The Semiquincentennial Edition (with Yuval Levin)
In a few short days, we’ll be celebrating America’s 250th birthday, but rather than feeling uniformly triumphant and celebratory, America’s Semiquincentennial comes at a time when many worry about the state of our democracy and civic culture. Schools are central to this worry. Many are concerned...
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Inside the Department of Education (with Kirsten Baesler)
The Department of Education has said it is trying to return education to the states, but what does that mean for the federal role in education and for the states expected to take on more responsibility? What is the Department doing now to scale back the federal role in education? How does the...
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What Harvard's New Grade Inflation Policy Gets Wrong (with Scott Duke Kominers)
Recently, Harvard faculty voted to push back on grade inflation at the institution by capping the proportion of A’s given to students at 20%. But according to a new paper, Harvard’s new policy—and grade caps in general—are not the right solution. In What Does a Grade Mean? Informativeness and...
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A Rising Tide in Alabama (with Eric Mackey)
Historically, many didn’t consider Alabama to be at the forefront of education, but Alabama’s pandemic recovery may be among the best in the nation. Perhaps most impressively, Alabama was the only state whose 4th-grade math NAEP scores were higher in 2024 than in 2019, and Alabama reports a…
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Education and the Second Trump Administration, 471 Days In
Although the Trump administration’s efforts to reform education might not be making national headlines quite as often as they did one year ago, a lot has still happened in education over the last several months. The Trump administration has continued its push to dismantle the Department of...
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What Can AI Replace in Higher Education? (with Hollis Robbins)
This podcast has covered AI in K–12 education a fair amount, but how will and how should AI change higher education? Should any human instructors be replaced with AI? Should universities change what and how they teach to strengthen their value proposition? And in the age of AI, how should...
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Best Of: Eva Moskowitz on Success Academy
Note: This episode originally aired in April 2025. On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus speaks with Eva Moskowitz, the founder and CEO of Success Academy. Nat and Eva discuss why COVID learning loss is a misnomer; whether chronically absent students should face consequences for their…
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The Effects of Grade Inflation (with Jeff Denning)
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...
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Mathematical Flexibility and Teaching Middle School Math (with Jon Star)
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…
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Lee Bollinger on Universities and the Trump Administration
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...
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The Making of America’s Schools: From Revolution to Civil War (with Johann Neem)
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...
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Randi Weingarten on the Teaching Profession
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…
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Math Academy (with Jason Roberts and Justin Skycak)
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...
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2025 in Review
We are now coming to the end of another year. What were the biggest stories in education this year? What stories didn’t get as much attention as they should have? And what can we expect in the coming year? On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these questions, and more, with...
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Should AI Be Used in Classrooms Today?
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…
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Alpha School (with MacKenzie Price)
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...
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Education and the Second Trump Administration, 303 Days In
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....
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Lessons from Pandemic-Era Tutoring (with Liz Cohen)
For decades, there has been research showing that tutoring can be a highly effective mode of instruction, but before 2020, large, in-school tutoring programs were not widespread. Then the pandemic struck, and large tutoring programs cropped up in districts around the nation. In fact, according to...
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Houston, We Have a Solution (with Mike Miles)
In August 2023, right after he took over as superintendent of Houston ISD, Mike Miles came on The Report Card to talk about his plans for Texas’s largest school district. From changing teacher pay to overhauling curriculum, Miles’s plans for Houston were ambitious—and controversial—but would they...
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Do Phones Make Students Less Able to Focus? (with Dan Willingham)
TikTok. Instagram. Constant notifications. Many worry that phones are destroying students’ ability to pay attention and, in turn, their ability to learn in the classroom. Indeed, even many adults say that they have trouble reading books because of the constant stream of distractions their phones...
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Why Are Test Scores Falling? (with James Wyckoff and Chad Aldeman)
Earlier this month, 2024 NAEP scores came out for 8th grade science and 12th grade reading and math, and the results were not good, with students losing ground in each subject. But these declines are not new and they are not only the result of the pandemic: Across a number of tests and subjects,...
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Education and the Second Trump Administration, 233 Days In
A lot has happened in education over the last couple of months. A new school year started for students across the country. State governors began announcing whether they would be opting in to the new federal tax credit scholarship program. Penny Schwinn, former Education Commissioner of Tennessee,...
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The Competitive Effects of School Choice (with Sarah Cordes)
Many school choice proponents today focus on what choice does for the students who use it to leave traditional public schools. But one of the original arguments for choice was that, through competition, it would spur traditional public schools to improve. So: Has it? Do choice programs make...
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Adult Interests vs. Student Needs (with Vlad Kogan)
Over the past decade, schools increasingly have become a battleground for political fights and culture wars that distract from student learning. But, according to a new book, these political fights and culture wars are just one aspect of a much larger and more longstanding problem: schooling is...
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AI Lessons from Nigeria (with Martín De Simone)
Some say AI is the future of education, but there are reasons for skepticism, especially if we limit the conversation to the US and other wealthy countries. However, for many regions of the world—particularly for many low- and middle-income countries—there is strong reason to believe that AI has...
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Education and the Second Trump Administration, 177 Days In
A lot has happened in education over the last few weeks. Among other things, Congress passed a national school choice program and reshaped the student loan system. The Justice Department pressured the University of Virginia’s president to step down. And the Trump administration began withholding...
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Big Changes to Student Lending in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (with Preston Cooper)
About one month ago, the House passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a massive bill aimed at advancing President Trump’s domestic policy agenda. Now, the bill is with the Senate. Included in the bill are huge changes to student lending. In particular, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act would make...
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The Unintended Effects of Increased Technology Access (with Jared Schachner)
When schools went remote during the pandemic, internet access became essential, but not all students had access to a high-quality connection. So, in the summer of 2020, Chicago launched Chicago Connected to provide free broadband for students in the city who needed it most. But, according to a...
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Education and the Second Trump Administration, 135 Days In
A lot has happened over the past couple of weeks. The Trump administration announced that it would go after Harvard’s ability to enroll international students. A judge ordered the Department of Education to rehire the employees it had fired. And the Supreme Court split 4–4 on Oklahoma’s religious...
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Jonathan Haidt on Childhood, Play, and Social Media
Kids spend hours a day on their phones scrolling through social media. Many have debated whether all this social media use is bad for mental health, but there’s a more basic question that needs to be asked: Does all this social media use promote healthy development? Does it help kids develop into...
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Education and the Second Trump Administration, 121 Days In
On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus, Andy Rotherham, and Rick Hess break down the latest on the education policy landscape. Nat, Andy, and Rick discuss budget reconciliation, what the creation of a national tax credit scholarship program would mean for school choice, how potential...
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Pandemic School Closures, Five Years Later (with David Zweig)
Five years ago, schools shut down for the COVID-19 pandemic. Schooling was remote for the rest of the year, and many schools would remain remote for much of the following year. Europe took a different approach. In many European countries, schools reopened that first pandemic spring, only weeks...
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Education and the Second Trump Administration, 107 Days In
It’s day 107 of the second Trump administration, and a lot has happened over the last two weeks. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two cases that sit at the intersection of schooling and religious liberty. Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed a massive ESA bill into law. President Trump…
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Religious Charter Schools?
On April 30, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond, in which a virtual school in Oklahoma is attempting to become the nation’s first religious charter school. On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus and four experts discuss...
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Education and the Second Trump Administration, 93 Days In
It’s day 93 of the Trump administration, and the education landscape hasn’t yet calmed down. The Trump administration has gone after Harvard, and Harvard is fighting back. The Trump administration has revoked the visas of hundreds of international students. NAEP is being scaled back. Iowa…
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Success (with Eva Moskowitz)
On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus speaks with Eva Moskowitz, the founder and CEO of Success Academy. Nat and Eva discuss why COVID learning loss is a misnomer; whether chronically absent students should face consequences for their poor attendance; why, despite its strong academic...
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Education and the Second Trump Administration, 79 Days In
A lot has happened in the education world over the last few weeks. President Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education. The Trump administration has taken aggressive actions targeting elite universities and has threatened to withhold funding from K–12 schools over…
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Talking Math Instruction (with Anna Stokke)
In the education world over the past few years, a lot of attention has been paid to phonics and balanced literacy and the ways in which reading instruction practices often don’t align with what we know about how students learn to read. Are there any obvious parallels in math instruction? Are…
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Education and the Second Trump Administration, 58 Days In
Last week, more than 1,300 individuals at the Department of Education were laid off, including over 300 at Federal Student Aid, nearly 250 at the Office for Civil Rights, and over 100 at the Institute of Education Sciences. All told, since Trump took office, the workforce at the Department of...
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Should Congress Grant the NCAA an Antitrust Exemption?
Since the Supreme Court’s 2021 decision in NCAA v. Alston paved the way for universities to pay student-athletes, college sports have changed dramatically. Now, the NCAA is asking for an antitrust exemption to help navigate these changes. The NCAA is surely facing a complex set of challenges, but...
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Credit Recovery (with Carolyn J. Heinrich)
Graduation rates have been rising for over a decade. Indeed, even during the pandemic, as students learned less and chronic absenteeism exploded, graduation rates continued to rise. One important part of this story might be the rise of credit recovery programs. Each year, credit recovery programs...
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The NAEP 2024 Rundown (with Marty West and Mark Schneider)
On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus speaks with Marty West and Mark Schneider about 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results in 4th and 8th grade reading and math. Nat, Marty, and Mark discuss why math scores went up or stayed flat while reading scores declined;...
About this show
The Report Card with Nat Malkus is the education podcast of the American Enterprise Institute. It is a hub for discussing innovative work to improve education – from early childhood to higher education – and the lives of America’s children. It evaluates research, policy, and practice efforts to improve the lives of families, schools and students. The Report Card seeks to engage with everyone who is interested in education in an accessible way. It brings guests that are doing compelling work across a spectrum from high level policy changes to innovations at the classroom level, work that will start conversations about improving education and the lives of children more broadly. Each episode lets listeners – policymakers, teachers, and parents –learn relevant information that they can use in their efforts to improve education.
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AEI Podcasts