Mike Petrilli takes a solo turn to tackle teacher diversity, a topic at the center of today’s debates over DEI. Should schools recruit teachers whose backgrounds reflect those of their students? What does the research say about how shared life experiences shape student outcomes? And how can schools promote diversity while maintaining high standards for academic excellence?

Then on the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines new research on Arkansas’s LEARNS Act, which raised the state’s minimum teacher salary to $50,000, and what it reveals about teacher pay and retention.

Recommended content:

• The Right Way to Boost Teacher Diversity —Michael J. Petrilli for AEI
• Can left and right find middle ground on teacher diversity? —Michael J. Petrilli, SCHOOLED
• In defense of teacher diversity —Michael J. Petrilli, SCHOOLED
• Raising the Floor: Teacher Retention Effects of a Statewide Minimum Salary Increase —Gema Zamarro, Andrew M. Camp, Josh McGee, Taylor Wilson, and Miranda Vernon, CALDER (2026)

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Robin Lake, director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, joins the Education Gadfly Show to discuss the rapid evolution of artificial intelligence and what it could mean for schools. As AI tools grow more powerful, do schools need to fundamentally rethink how they prepare students for the future of work?

Then on the Research Minute, Amber Northern looks at evidence from New Jersey on whether raising teacher salaries improves student outcomes, highlighting research that links salary increases to gains in test scores, graduation rates, and college enrollment.

Recommended content:

• Agentic AI and the Future of Work —Robin Lake, Think Forward: Learning with AI, The Center on Reinventing Public Education
• AI-assisted learning stumbles on the evidence —Daniel Buck and Anna Low, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
• What Happens When We Pay Our Teachers More? Evidence from New Jersey Public Schools —Prasiddha Shakya, Institute of Education Sciences, EdWorking Papers (2024)
• Raising the Floor: Teacher Retention Effects of a Statewide Minimum Salary Increase —Gema Zamarro, Andrew M. Camp, Josh McGee, Taylor Wilson, and Miranda Vernon, CALDER (2026)

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Drew Bailey, professor at the University of California, Irvine, joins The Education Gadfly Show to discuss the fadeout effect across education interventions. Why do early treatment effects shrink over time, and what does that mean for judging program success, especially when test score gains diminish but long-term outcomes like graduation rates and earnings persist? We also debate the role of test scores in accountability, the evidence linking school value-added to real-world success, and what this all means for the role of testing in school choice initiatives.

Then on the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines new data on how states define “proficiency” in reading and math and what NAEP reveals about rigor, transparency, and the debate over standards.

Recommended content:

• Why Do Most Education Interventions Fade Out Over Time? —Drew Bailey, Tyler Watts, and Emma Hart, Education Next
• School Choice, Test Scores and Long-Term Outcomes: The Evidence Is Ambiguous —Michael J Petrilli, Education Next
• Reducing Inequality through Dynamic Complementarity: Evidence from Head Start and Public School Spending —Rucker C. Johnson and C. Kirabo Johnson, American Economic Journal
• A future for IES? —Chester E. Finn, Jr., Thomas B. Fordham Institute
• Mapping State Proficiency Standards Onto the NAEP Scales Results From the 2022 NAEP Reading and Mathematics Assessments —Darrick Shen-Wei Yee and Brian Cramer, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics (2026)

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Karen Vaites, founder of The Curriculum Insight Project, joins us to discuss the evolving debate over curriculum reviews and state adoption policies. As more states look to third-party evaluations to guide decisions—and some consider mandating state-approved lists—how can policymakers avoid making costly mistakes?

Then on the Research Minute, Amber Northern examines new evidence on whether teacher effectiveness truly transfers when high-performing educators move into lower-achieving schools.

Recommended content:

• Educators Were Sold a Story About Phonemic Awareness —Karen Vaites, The Curriculum Insight Project
• What American Education Reformers Can Learn from England — Helen Baxendale, Education Next
• Is Teacher Effectiveness Fully Portable? Evidence from the Random Assignment of Transfer Incentives —Matthew A. Kraft, John P. Papay, Jessalynn James and Manuel Monti-Nussbaum, EdWorkingPapers (2026)

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This week on The Education Gadfly Show, Mike Petrilli goes solo to talk about grade inflation—what it means, how it’s changed over time, and why tougher grading standards help students learn more. He argues that easier grades don’t serve students well—and explores what states can do about it.

Then, on the Research Minute, Amber Northern shares new evidence from Texas showing that distance from public colleges—especially community colleges—strongly shapes whether students enroll in and complete college, with particularly stark effects for lower-income and Hispanic students.

Recommended content: 

• Grade Inflation in High Schools (2005–2016) —Seth Gershenson, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
• Great Expectations: The Impact of Rigorous Grading Practices on Student Achievement —Seth Gershenson, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
• “Equitable” Grading Through the Eyes of Teachers —David Griffith and Adam Tyner, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
• Easy A’s, lower pay: Grade inflation’s hidden damage —Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report
• Distance to degrees: How college proximity shapes students’ enrollment choices and attainment across race-ethnicity and socioeconomic status —Riley Acton, Kalena E. Cortes, Lois Miller, and Camila Morales, Economics of Education Review (2025)

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This week on The Education Gadfly Show, we’re joined by Elliot Regenstein, partner at Foresight Law + Policy and author of Readiness: Preparing State Early Childhood Systems for a Brighter Future, to talk about early childhood education and care—and why state systems are so often fragmented and hard to navigate. We discuss who makes key decisions, why coordination is so difficult, and what it would take to build more coherent early childhood systems going forward.

Then, on the Research Minute, Amber Northern shares new evidence on achievement gaps across different types of schools, showing that inequality has grown fastest in traditional public schools, while charter schools show more positive trends over time.

Recommended content:

• Readiness: Preparing State Early Childhood Systems for a Brighter Future —Elliot Regenstein
• The Best American School System —Tim Daly, The Education Daly
• The Nation’s Achievement Inequality Report Card: An Assessment of Test Score and Equality Trends in Traditional Public, Charter, Catholic, and Department of Defense Schools —M. Danish Shakeel, Misty Gallo, and Patrick J. Wolf, EdWorkingPapers (2026)

Feedback Welcome: Have ideas for improving our show in 2026? We would love to hear them. Send them to [email protected]

This week on The Education Gadfly Show, we’re joined by Karin Chenoweth, founder of Democracy and Education and author of Schools that Succeed, to talk about what she’s learned from years of visiting successful classrooms, schools, and districts across the country. We explore a deceptively simple question: Why don’t educators, policymakers, and researchers spend more time studying success?

Then, on the Research Minute, Amber Northern highlights new evidence from New York City showing that small public high schools significantly boost graduation rates and college enrollment, especially for disadvantaged students.

Recommended content: 

• Schools that Succeed —Karin Chenoweth
• Learning from greatness: The conversation continues —Holly Korbey, The Bell Ringer
• Best practices are the worst —Jay P. Greene, Education Next
• Effects of New York City’s small schools of choice on postsecondary degree attainment and employment —Rebecca Unterman and Miki Shih, MDRC (2026)

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This week on The Education Gadfly Show, we’re marking National School Choice Week with a conversation with Shelby Doyle of the National School Choice Awareness Foundation. We talk about why the movement emphasizes school choice rather than educational choice—and whether the growing focus on education savings accounts is a good development for the movement.

Then, on the Research Minute, Amber Northern breaks down new evidence on how disability identification varies by student family income, raising important questions about equity, access to services, and how schools classify and support students.

Recommended content: 

• National School Choice Week 2026 — National School Choice Awareness Foundation
• Education savings accounts: Boffo or bonkers? | Episode 1002 of The Education Gadfly Show
• Educational choice is giving new hope to Catholic schools —Mike McShane for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
• School-based disability identification varies by student family income — Nicholas Ainsworth, Christopher Cleveland, Leah R. Clark, Jacob Hibel, Quentin Brummet, Andrew Saultz, Emily Penner, Michelle Spiegel, Paul Yoo, Juan Camilo Cristancho, Paul Hanselman, and Andrew Penner, EdWorking Papers (2026)
• Minorities Are disproportionately underrepresented in special education —Morgan, Paul L.; Farkas, George; Hillemeier, Marianne M.; Mattison, Richard; Maczuga, Steve; Li, Hui; Cook, Michael, Educational Researcher (2015)

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This week on The Education Gadfly Show, Mike Petrilli goes solo. After recently playing ESA skeptic at an international school choice conference, Mike walks through where he now stands on Education Savings Accounts—laying out the strongest arguments in their favor and explaining why he’s increasingly unconvinced the tradeoffs are worth it.

Then, on the Research Minute, Amber Northern highlights new research using Michigan data to examine what happens when students with disabilities switch from traditional public schools to charter schools, focusing on changes in attendance and academic outcomes.

Recommended content:

• Joyful classrooms, but zero public transparency: Inside an ESA micro-school | Episode 987 of The Education Gadfly Show —Thomas B. Fordham Institute
• Rethinking ESA policy design — Katherine Bathgate, EdChoice
• How Do Charter Schools Serve Students with Disabilities? Lessons from Michigan —Scott Imberman and Andrew Johnson, REACH (2026)

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This week, we’re joined by Liz Cohen, vice president of policy at 50CAN, to discuss her book, The Future of Tutoring. Mike and David ask her some tough questions on whether tutoring is worth the investment, and she provides some excellent answers.

Then on the Research Minute, Amber highlights new evidence showing that students’ family background plays a key role not just in college major choice, but also in who goes on to graduate school and how earnings unfold over time.

Recommended content: 

• The Future of Tutoring, Lessons from 10,000 School District Tutoring Initiatives —Liz Cohen
• SCHOOLED: Should tutoring play a big role in America’s schools going forward? —Michael J. Petrilli, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
• The narrow path to do it right: Lessons from vaccine making for high-dosage tutoring —Mike Goldstein and Bowen Paulle for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
• Family Background and College Major Choice: Evidence on Major Earnings Growth —Margaret Leighton, Education Finance and Policy (2026) 

Feedback Welcome: Have ideas for improving our show in 2026? We would love to hear them. Send them to [email protected]