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)

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, 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)

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

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]

This week, we’re marking a major milestone—Episode 1,000 of The Education Gadfly Show. Instead of focusing on a single topic, we’re branching out for a big-picture conversation about the state of education policy—past, present, and future—with Rick Hess and Tom Loveless, the original co-host of the show and its very first guest. In particular, we wonder whether we were too pessimistic back in the No Child Left Behind era, why education outcomes and other social indicators turned south in the 2010s, and how to kick start progress again.

Then, on the Research Minute, we’re thrilled to welcome Amber Northern back to the show after a long hiatus, as she reflects on what education research has taught us since we started podcasting in 2006—and how its use by policymakers has evolved.

Recommended content:

• SCHOOLED: Learning from Rod Paige, Jim Hunt, and Lou Gerstner —Michael J. Petrilli, Thomas B. Fordham Institute

Now’s a perfect time to catch up on episodes you may have missed. From advanced education and measuring school quality to reducing chronic absenteeism, you can find past episodes here:

https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/resource-types/podcast

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

This week, Mike Petrilli looks back at the highs and lows of education reform in 2025 as we wrap up our final episode of the year.

Then, on the Research Minute, David Griffith closes things out with a countdown of his top five studies of 2025—plus one bonus pick.

Recommended content:

• Wonkathon 2025: What will make science of reading laws succeed? —Thomas B. Fordham Institute
• 2025 Eddies —PIE Network
• Was 2025 a good year for education reform? —Michael J. Petrilli, SCHOOLED

Have you subscribed to Schooled? Don’t miss out on the education reform community’s hot takes! Click the link below:

https://schooledbymikepetrilli.substack.com/

David’s Top Research Minutes of 2025

5. Gender Gaps in the Early Grades: Questioning the Narrative that Schools are Poorly Suited to Young Boys

• Featured in Episode 988

4. How Test Optional Policies in College Admissions Disproportionately Harm High-Achieving Applicants from Disadvantaged Backgrounds

• Featured in Episode 955

3. When Decentralization Works: Leadership, Local Needs, and Student Achievement

• Featured in Episode 985

2. The Effects of Universal School Vouchers on Private School Tuition and Enrollment: A National Analysis

• Featured in Episode 986

1. Who Wants to Be a Teacher in America?

• Featured in Episode 992

Bonus: The Impact of Cell Phone Bans in Schools: Evidence From Florida

• See also: Cutting the cord: Early evidence on cellphone policy implementation —Alicia Anderson, Thomas B. Fordham Institute

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This week, we’re joined by Matt Barnum, Chalkbeat’s Ideas editor, to unpack whether college enrollment is truly declining—or whether the national narrative has gotten ahead of the data. 

Then, on the Research Minute, Fordham’s new national research manager Brian Fitzpatrick highlights evidence from D.C. Public Schools showing that teacher monitoring improves instruction and student outcomes—especially for teachers under pressure to raise test scores. 

Recommended content: 

• Is college enrollment really plummeting? — Matt Barnum, Chalkbeat Ideas
• It’s Too Early to Write Off College Degrees —Callum Borchers, The Wall Street Journal
• Does Monitoring Change Teacher Pedagogy and Student Outcomes? —Aaron Phipps, Journal of Labor Economics, The University of Chicago Press Journals (2025)

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This week, we’re joined by Wonkathon winner Eric Tucker—CEO and president of The Study Group—to talk about his first-place entry on what it will take for the science of reading laws to succeed.

Then, on the Research Minute, David Griffith highlights a study showing how much valuable information is lost when individual test questions are collapsed into a single score—and why states could produce better value-added measures by using the rich data they already collect.  

Recommended content: 

• Science of reading 2.0: Assessment in the service of learning as the backbone of science-powered reading improvement — Edmund W. Gordon and Eric Tucker for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
• Wonkathon 2025: What will make science of reading laws succeed? —Thomas B. Fordham Institute
• Do Test Scores Misrepresent Test Results? An Item-by-Item Analysis —Jesse Bruhn, Michael Gilraine, Jens Ludwig, and Sendhil Mullainathan, EdWorkingPapers (2025)

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Don’t miss our December 4 webinar, Implementation Is Where It’s At: What’s Next for the Science of Reading?, happening at 3:00 p.m. ET.

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This week, Mike Petrilli returns for a solo episode to dig into artificial intelligence—not classroom tools or teaching tips, but the big-picture implications of AI for what students need to learn as work, citizenship, and even human flourishing rapidly evolve.

Then, on the Research Minute, David Griffith highlights a study linking the recent rise in child labor violations to declining school attendance—especially among Black youth and students living on farms.

Recommended content: 

• A “Zero-Based Budgeting” Approach for High School Course Requirements in the Age of AI — Michael J. Petrilli for The Center on Reinventing Public Education
• The illusion of learning: The danger of artificial intelligence for education — Robert Pondiscio, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
• AI Will Transform The Workplace. Will Education Keep Up? — Matt Gandal, Forbes
• Contemporary Child Labor and Declining School Attendance in the U.S —Lucy C. Sorensen, Melissa Arnold Lyon, Ji Hyun Byeon, and Stephen B. Holt, EdWorkingPapers (2025)

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This week, we’re joined by longtime special education advocate Elizabeth Yancy Bostic to discuss what could happen for students with disabilities if federal oversight and enforcement of IDEA are scaled back. Drawing on more than two decades of experience supporting families, including her own, as they navigate services, Elizabeth explains why strong oversight matters and what is at risk for students and districts when those safeguards erode.

Then, on the Research Minute, David Griffith shares a study from Sweden that tracks the long-term outcomes of students attending for-profit versus nonprofit charter high schools.

Recommended content: 

• ‘Educational exile’: How Trump’s layoffs threaten students with disabilities — Susan Haas, Education Week
• CRPE on special education: Great diagnosis, wrong prescription — Chester E. Finn, Jr., Thomas B. Fordham Institute
• Schooling for Profit: Long-run Effects of Private Providers in Public Education —Petter Berg (2025) 

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This week, we’re joined by Ohio State’s Stéphane Lavertu, author of Fordham’s new study, The Leaky Pipeline: Assessing the college outcomes of Ohio’s high-achieving low-income students. The report examines the experiences of Ohio’s high-achieving, low-income—or “HALO”—students and finds that access to advanced learning opportunities plays a major role in whether they make it to four-year colleges.

Then, on the Research Minute, David Griffith spotlights a decades-long British study that followed the same individuals from childhood to age fifty—revealing how early cognitive skills shape lifelong outcomes, from education and occupation to wages.

Recommended content: 

• The Leaky Pipeline: Assessing the college outcomes of Ohio’s high-achieving low-income students —Stéphane Lavertu, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
• Excellence Gaps by Race and Socioeconomic Status —Meredith Coffey and Adam Tyner, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
• Building a Wider, More Diverse Pipeline of Advanced Learners —The National Working Group on Advanced Education
• Cognitive Skills Beyond Childhood —Uta Bolt, The Economic Journal (2025) 

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