The Delta

For more than 40 years, every child in America has had the right to attend public schools regardless of immigration status.In this week's Delta, Jessica Baghian sits down with Hanseul Kang to talk about pending legislation in Oklahoma, Texas, and Tennessee that would require schools to verify students' immigration status at enrollment.Hanseul has held some of the most demanding jobs in public education, as former DC State Superintendent and former Chief of Staff at the Tennessee Department of Education.She also spent part of her own childhood undocumented, which gives her a vantage point on this debate that very few people have.

Most teachers are women. So why aren’t most superintendents?We’re continuing our Women’s History Month series with Dr. Julia Rafal-Baer, CEO of ILO Group and Women Leading Ed, to take a closer look at what’s driving the gender gap in education leadership.We’ve made significant strides to close the gap in recent years, and more women than ever are stepping into education leadership, but the path is still uphill.

The education field talks a lot about preparing students for the future. But what do students think they need to be prepared?In this week’s Delta, Kaya Henderson, Executive Vice President and Executive Director at the Aspen Institute’s Center for Rising Generations, shares what she’s learning from young people—and how different the conversation looks when they’re brought in as partners, not just participants.

In this week’s Delta, Jessica Baghian sits down with Heather Peske, President of The National Council on Teacher Quality, who puts it plainly: If we are serious about improving outcomes for students, we have to be equally serious about the experience of the adults who make those outcomes possible.This conversation takes a deep dive into the day-to-day decisions teachers are making—from housing to parental leave—and what states can do differently to support them.

In this Women’s History Month conversation, Kunjan Narechania sits down with Frances Messano, CEO of NewSchools Venture Fund, to talk about why this is not a moment for small adjustments in education.Drawing on Frances’ recent manifesto, Building Anew, Not Rebuilding, the two explore why the traditional K–12 model no longer fits the world young people are entering, what AI and a shifting labor market mean for schools, and what it will take to build a more coherent, purpose-driven future for students.

Watershed Advisors President Jessica Baghian sits down with Lindsay Fryer, President of Lodestone DC and former senior advisor on federal education policy, to unpack what’s changing in Washington—and what it means for states and education leaders.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, which made landfall in Louisiana on August 29, 2005. As we reflect on this defining moment for Louisiana and the country, we’re sharing our first-ever podcast edition of The Delta.Join Kunjan Narechania and Jessica Baghian for a conversation about lessons learned from the disaster recovery and what has changed in the 20 years since Katrina. 

Cell phone use in schools has become one of the most persistent, and complicated, challenges educators are navigating right now.In this episode of the Delta, Kunjan Narechania sits down with Angela Duckworth to discuss early insights from Phones in Focus, a national survey capturing what tens of thousands of teachers are seeing in classrooms across the country.The conversation explores why some phone policies work better than others, how implementation shapes outcomes, and why collective action matters when schools are trying to protect attention and instructional time.

When the internet entered classrooms, leaders had to learn new tools and build guardrails for their students at the same time.We’re in a similar moment with AI, and state leaders are once again being asked to make policy at a moment of rapid technological change.In this episode of the Delta, Jessica Baghian sits down with John Bailey, former Director of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education and founder of Vestigo Partners (acquired by Broadstone), to explore how states can approach AI with both caution and curiosity, keeping humans firmly in the loop while embracing opportunity.