On The Report Card, AEI’s education policy podcast, I interview education researchers, practitioners, and policymakers forging education policy solutions, conducting important research, and sharing their takes on the most important challenges facing schools, teachers, families, and students. Suffice it to say, 2022 provided plenty of education issues to cover. From assessing pandemic learning loss, to discussing the path forward on student debt, to gauging how cell phones impact students, we’ve certainly covered a lot of ground. As we come to the close of The Report Card’s fifth year, I flagged five of my favorite episodes from 2022. For long-time listeners, thank you for supporting the show, and for newcomers, these episodes are great ones to start with.

1. “Congresswoman Virginia Foxx on the Republican Vision for Higher Education Policy”—November 16

This summer, the Biden administration sent shockwaves through the higher education landscape with its big student loan forgiveness plans. Easily lost in the eye-popping proposed expenditures and objections to them (see: Beth Akers on Student Loan Forgiveness), was Republicans’ proposed higher education policies. To discuss them, Congresswoman Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the Republican Leader of the House Committee on Education and Labor, joined me to describe the Republican vision for higher education policy and the REAL Reforms Act released this summer. We covered the role of federal education policy, as well as how Dr. Foxx got into education policymaking and how her quintessential American life story shapes her work.

2. “Christina Brown and Heather Schofield on Cognitive Endurance”—July 27

When I read Christina Brown and Heather Schofield’s paper on cognitive endurance—our capacity to sustain attention on difficult tasks for extended periods of time—I knew I had to have them on the podcast: Not only does their work shed light on an important and under-discussed capacity of students, but they also use clever methods and convincing field experiments to do it. What they found deserves attention from educators across the country, and should shape how teachers teach and students learn.

3. “Tom Kane on NAEP, the Education Recovery Scorecard, and COVID Learning Loss”—November 3

The biggest story in education right now is still COVID learning loss. But how big were losses, and for which students? To what extent did remote learning play a role? National scores from NAEP tests painted a bleak picture of learning loss, but not a very detailed one. Fortunately, a collaboration between researchers at Harvard and Stanford Universities launched the Education Recovery Scorecard (ERS) to fill in some of the gaps. By linking up NAEP scores with state assessment results, the ERS gave us the first chance to really compare learning loss at the district level across the country and will surely prove a valuable tool for better understanding COVID learning loss. To discuss the ERS, I invited the inimitable Tom Kane, one of the projects leaders, onto the podcast.

4. “Nate Hilger on The Parent Trap”—July 13

Inequality is among the biggest and most persistent problems in American life, and many argue that to alleviate inequality we should focus on improving schools and eliminating discrimination. Nate Hilger, would not disagree with either of these aims, but he thinks there is a more effective tack, one that has the potential to make a much bigger impact. Hilger argues that the main problem lies at the intersection of parenting and skill building: Schools are pretty equal but parents’ skill-building abilities are not. Hilger says that, when it comes to skill building, we expect parents to do too much, and that expecting parents to build skills they don’t know how to build will only perpetuate inequalities. But how do we fix this? Should we take some of the burden off of parents? Or should we help parents become better at skill building?

5. “Doug Lemov on Cellphones in Schools”—September 7

Over the last number of years, our lives, our children’s lives, and their schools have been invaded by something widespread, life changing, and potentially harmful. No, I am not referring to COVID-19 or any political ideology, but something far more ubiquitous and influential: the smart phone. In his new book, Reconnect: Building School Culture for Meaning, Purpose, and Belonging, Doug Lemov argues we need to ban cell phone use in schools. Lemov argues cellphones are bad not only for academic development, but also for fostering the sort of welcoming and inclusive schools we need.

I am so grateful to these and the many other guests who made The Report Card successful this past year. For those looking for a full recap of education stories from the year, I will sneak in one last link, to 2022’s Year in Review episode, fresh from the studio with the Washington Post’s Laura Meckler, The 74’s Linda Jacobson, and the Chronicle’s Goldie Blumenstyk.

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