Color Commentary

France just did something the United States never has. It ran a national experiment sorting middle schoolers into ability groups, the Choc des savoirs, watched its own inspectors, courts, and teachers reject it, and killed the policy in about two years. Dr. Charles Cole III lays out exactly what happened in France, then holds it up to the mirror: the US has sorted children by measured ability for generations under the name tracking, and the harm falls hardest on Black kids, with an estimated 771,000 missing from gifted programs in a single year. In the color, Dr. Cole gets into how serious countries respond when education harms kids, why we have to revisit the standard itself, and the line he will not move off of: you can feel however you want about tracking, but schools have to be honest, and in America we are lying to our students.

Find the show at EdPost's YouTube page: youtube.com/@EdPostVideo

We'd love to hear from you! Email Charles at [email protected]

And check out our merch here: charlescoleiii.com

Nikole Hannah-Jones's new essay on the school she chose for her daughter has become one of the biggest education stories of the year, and the reactions are still coming. In a different kind of episode, Dr. Charles Cole III gets put in the hot seat by his director. First a straight recap of the whole arc, the 2016 essay, the 2026 reckoning, and a fallout that pulled in the school-choice right, defenders, and a sharp response inside Black communities. Then the conversation: where Dr. Cole agrees, where he pushes back on parent choice, what his own Substack, Read Out Loud Day, argues about grit, agency, and the safety net most of our kids never had, and why he believes this article marks a turn in education policy. Honest, personal, and unfinished on purpose.

Find the show at EdPost's YouTube page: youtube.com/@EdPostVideo

We'd love to hear from you! Email Charles at [email protected]

And check out our merch here: charlescoleiii.com

Two education stories landed eight days apart this month, and they are really one story. Dr. Charles Cole III breaks down the New York Post front-page report on California high school GPAs climbing while college math skills fall, a piece he is quoted in, alongside Nikole Hannah-Jones's New York Times Magazine essay on the decade-long cost of the school she chose for her daughter. In the black and white, Dr. Cole lays out the data and the personal story straight down the middle. In the color commentary, he makes the case that both pieces expose the same broken promise, the gap between the grade and the learning, and he explains, with respect and real disagreement, where he and Hannah-Jones part ways on parent choice.

Find the show at EdPost's YouTube page: youtube.com/@EdPostVideo

We'd love to hear from you! Email Charles at [email protected]

And check out our merch here: charlescoleiii.com

This week on Color Commentary, Charles discussed Black political strategy, Democratic Party identity, and whether Black voters should continue voting as a unified bloc or diversify their political leverage.

We’d love to hear from you! Email Charles at [email protected]

And check out our merch here!

This week on Color Commentary, Dr. Charles Cole III starts with Lanterns, HBO's grounded, critically loved take on the Green Lantern mythos that finally puts John Stewart at the center of the story and turns a comic book into prestige television and a conversation about race in America. Then Dr. Cole shifts to a harder question: after sixty years voting as one bloc, is unified Black political power still the strongest play, or is it time to spread the leverage across both parties? Plus, a personal note on Color Commentary partnering back with 8BH, and where you can find the show now. 

**NOTE: Due to technical difficulties, half this show was accidentally not recorded. So, Charles will be returning next week to finish the conversation.

Find the show at EdPost's YouTube page: youtube.com/@EdPostVideo We'd love to hear from you!

Email Charles at colorcommentarypod.com

This week on Color Commentary, Dr. Charles Cole III starts with Lanterns, HBO's grounded, critically loved take on the Green Lantern mythos that finally puts John Stewart at the center of the story and turns a comic book into prestige television and a conversation about race in America. Then Dr. Cole shifts to a harder question: after sixty years voting as one bloc, is unified Black political power still the strongest play, or is it time to spread the leverage across both parties? Plus, a personal note on Color Commentary partnering back with 8BH, and where you can find the show now. 

**NOTE: Due to technical difficulties, half this show was accidentally not recorded. So, Charles will be returning next week to finish the conversation.

Find the show at EdPost's YouTube page: youtube.com/@EdPostVideo We'd love to hear from you!

Email Charles at [email protected] And check out our merch here: charlescoleiii.com

This week on Color Commentary centers on one big question: what are grades really measuring, and who gets harmed when grading practices drift away from actual learning? Dr. Charles Cole III and Educator Barnes break down grading inflation, participation grades, mastery-based retakes, and the gap between student performance and student proficiency.

They also widen the conversation to agency, teacher expectations, and what happens when education becomes a job instead of a vocation. The discussion closes with a sobering reflection on plagiarism, academic accountability, and how Black scholars are often treated differently when their work is questioned.

We’d love to hear from you! Email Charles at [email protected]

And check out our merch here!

This week on Color Commentary, Charles takes on two stories that turn out to be one. First, the viral video of a Houston teacher and influencer who broke down over seniors who could not read, and everything that came out after: the school's A rating, a former colleague's pushback, and the messenger's own history. Charles lays out the real literacy data, refuses to soften it, and asks what we owe kids who are being turned into content. Then he introduces Fannie Lou Hamer, a woman with a sixth grade education who became one of the most powerful voices in American history, and explains why she belongs in the same conversation.

We'd love to hear from you! Email Charles at [email protected]

A one-line dress code policy out of Tuskegee University, banning bonnets and durags in class and the cafeteria, set off an online firestorm. But is this really about clothes? This week on Color Commentary, Dr. Charles Cole III breaks down the facts, then sits down with educator and executive leadership coach Jubilee Ransome, founder of RestartED, to dig into professionalism versus respectability, what the discourse is drowning out, and who gets to decide what professional looks like for Black students. Going in, it looks like a story about a bonnet. It is about a lot more than that.

We would love to hear from you. Email Dr. Cole at [email protected], and shop at charlescoleiii.com.

This week on Color Commentary, Dr. Charles Cole III reviews Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, the record-shattering, IMAX-shot adaptation of Homer's epic starring Matt Damon as Odysseus. In the black and white, Dr. Cole runs the numbers on a film that has already become Nolan's biggest global debut and an instant Oscar front runner. Then, in full color, he digs into the themes that stuck with him: the meaning of the horse, guilt and accountability, the weight of leadership, a time to kill, and the casting controversy. Going in, he thought he knew this story. He came out seeing it differently.

We would love to hear from you. Email Dr. Cole at [email protected], and shop at charlescoleiii.com.