This blog post is part of AEI’s Best Podcasts of 2019 series. Click here to see other AEI podcast hosts’ favorite episodes of the year.
The Report Card includes my conversations with educators, experts and policymakers about a wide range of critical efforts to improve schools and the lives of the students attending them. In 2019, we covered a lot of ground in both K-12 and higher education, from controversies over college admissions to the teen vaping epidemic. In each episode, I bring on guests who have expertise and a compelling viewpoint about pressing education issues.
Here are five of my favorite episodes from 2019. Thanks for listening.
1. Elite College Admissions with Richard Reeves & Frank Neville — April 4
The world of college admissions made front page news in
2019. In “Operation Varsity Blues,” fifty people were charged with committing
fraud to get their children into selective colleges. In this episode of The
Report Card, I spoke to Brookings’ Richard Reeves and Frank Neville of George
Mason University about what the scandal tells us and what it misses about the
broader controversy over elite college admissions.
2. Debate Edition: The right direction on Title IX Sexual Harassment regulations — July 11
In a special edition of The Report Card, we featured an
education policy debate that took place before a live audience at AEI in June.
It dealt with the controversial topic of how colleges and universities should
be required to deal with sexual harassment and assault cases. Four experts energetically
and productively debated the motion: DeVos’
Title IX regulations are a step in the right direction, and the audience
voted to decide the winner.
3. Is the achievement gap actually a knowledge gap? With Natalie Wexler & Ashley Berner — September 20
What is the relative importance of knowledge and skills in ensuring students’ success? In this episode, I spoke with author Natalie Wexler, who argues in her new book The Knowledge Gap that American schools have paid insufficient attention to teaching content knowledge, to children’s detriment. I also talked to Ashley Berner, whose team at Johns Hopkins has created a tool that allows districts to identify the omissions in their ELA curricula.
4. Free College in New York with Elsa Magee & Christopher Barto — November 27
Free college continues to be a rallying cry for higher education reform from Democratic candidates in 2020, as it was in the last cycle. Less well known is that in 2017, New York State took a big step forward, making 2- and 4-year college free for families earning up to $125,000. I spoke with the president of LIM College, Christopher Barto, and Elsa Magee of the New York State Higher Education Services Corporation to get a better sense of what “free college” looks like in the first state to promise it.
5. Teen Vaping with Scott Gottlieb, Mila Vascones-Gatski, & Evie Blad — December 12
In 2019, we saw a lot of alarm about the dramatic rise in teen vaping. In this episode, former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD, discussed his views on how policy can effectively combat the epidemic. I rounded out the episode with a conversation about the struggles with vaping on the ground in schools with substance abuse counselor Mila-Vascones-Gatski and EdWeek’s Evie Blad.
The post Top 5 podcasts of 2019: “The Report Card” with Nat Malkus appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.