The Education Gadfly Show

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)

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 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)

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 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.

Feedback Welcome: Have ideas for improving our show? Send them to [email protected]