EdNext Podcast

Each year, millions of parents nationwide must make a seemingly life-altering decision for their soon-to-be kindergartener: to redshirt or not to redshirt. Many parents believe that so-called “academic redshirting,” or the act of delaying a student’s kindergarten entrance by one year, will give their children a leg up not only when they first enroll in school, but throughout their educational careers and later in life. But is redshirting preschoolers really advantageous? Could it do more harm than good?

In this week’s episode, Marty West talks with Diane Schanzenbach, about the down side of academic redshirting.

Read her article, "Is Your Child Ready for Kindergarten?," co-written with Stephanie Howard Larson, here:

http://educationnext.org/is-your-child-ready-kindergarten-redshirting-may-do-more-harm-than-good/

Could Hamilton have an impact on the teaching of U.S. History in American high schools? That’s the vision behind the Hamilton Project, a major new effort to get the musical in the hands of kids, first in New York City, and eventually nationwide.

Marty West talks with Wayne D’Orio, a veteran education journalist and the author of the article “Hamilton Goes to High School,” which is available at:

http://educationnext.org/hamilton-goes-high-school-how-students-learn-history-from-broadway-musical-lin-manuel-miranda/

It is hard to think of a more popular education policy proposal than reducing class size, but reducing class size on a large scale can have major unintended consequences.

Marty West talks with Bryan Hassel of Public Impact. Bryan is the co-author of a recent post on the EdNext blog with the provocative title “One More Time Now: Why Lowering Class Sizes Backfires," available at

http://educationnext.org/one-time-now-lowering-class-sizes-backfires/

Marty West talks with Shep Melnick about how the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights works and what is likely to change under the Trump administration.

Shep Melnick, the Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. Professor of American Politics at Boston College, is the author of a new post on the EdNext blog entitled “How civil rights enforcement got swept into the culture wars, and what a new administration can do about it.”

You can read it at http://educationnext.org/how-civil-rights-enforcement-got-swept-into-the-culture-wars-and-what-a-new-administration-can-do-about-it/

What should schools look like in order to succeed with blended learning? Marty West talks with Larry Kearns about how he and his team designed two charter schools to support their blended learning models.

For more, please read Kearns's article, “New Blueprints for K-12 Schools,” available at

http://educationnext.org/new-blueprints-k-12-schools-innovative-design-supports-blended-learning

With a major winter storm closing schools up and down the East Coast this week, it seemed like a good time to revisit this 2016 discussion of snow days.

In this episode, EdNext's Marty West talks with Josh Goodman, the author of “In Defense of Snow Days,” about research showing that declaring a snow day is better for students in the long run.

"In Defense of Snow Days" is available at

http://educationnext.org/defense-snow-days/

Can professional development for teachers be personalized?

Michael Horn joins EdNext editor-in-chief Marty West to discuss a new way of doing professional development. Teachers identify the skills they want to acquire, receive specialized training, and are certified as having these new competencies, receiving a micro-credential, something akin to a merit badge.

For more, read "Competency-Based Learning for Teachers," by Michael Horn and Thomas Arnett, here:

http://educationnext.org/competency-based-learning-teachers-micro-credentials-professional-development/

Arizona Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick has been poring over Neil Gorsuch’s opinions as a federal judge to learn how he might approach the steady stream of education cases that inevitably make their way before the Supreme Court

Bolick has a new Education Next article on this topic, available here:

http://educationnext.org/gorsuch-the-judicious-judge-supreme-court-education/

The Every Student Succeeds Act, the federal education law passed in 2015, is part of what would seem to be a dying breed: major pieces of domestic policy legislation passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. How did ESSA come to be? And what does it mean for American students?

In this episode of the podcast, Marty West is joined by Rick Hess, co-author of a new book, The Every Student Succeeds Act: What It Means for Schools, Systems, and States.

An excerpt from the book, “The Long Path to ESSA,” is now available at

http://educationnext.org/the-long-path-to-essa-every-student-succeeds-act-book-excerpt-hess-eden/

On January 11, 2017 the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the most important special education case in thirty-five years, Endrew F. v. Douglas County School District. At issue was the level of services federal law requires school districts to provide students with disabilities.

On this week's episode of the podcast, Marty West talks with Josh Dunn about the case.

His new article on the Endrew F. case is available at

http://educationnext.org/special-education-standards-supreme-court-raises-level-benefit-endrew-f-v-douglas-county/