The Education Show

Justin Reich is a former high school history teacher, and an associate professor of digital media at MIT who hosts The Homework Machine, a podcast about AI in schools.

In this new interview, Reich describes how he no longer thinks device bans don’t work, complains about being inaccurately paraphrased by journalists who interview him, laments how browsers and productivity tools have become impossibly distracting — and explains why he now pushes back when called about Alpha School stories. “What about this small private school that serves a tiny number of super-affluent students is worthy of all of our attention?”

Watch the interview or read the transcript above (or on YouTube).

Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple.

Read Reich’s companion essay, Teaching in an age of tech-created distractions.

Previously from The Grade

How tech took over (with Audrey Watters)

How edtech lost its inevitability

How to immunize schools from bad tech (with Dan Meyer)

Education reporting in the age of AI (with Lee Gaines)

Skepticism — & nuance — needed in edtech coverage (with Greg Toppo)

Shut up about edtech opt-outs (The Principal’s Office)

Covering edtech like Big Pharma (with Natasha Singer)

We’ve ‘lost the plot’ on edtech, says tech reporter Taylor Lorenz

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexanderrusso.substack.com/subscribe

School-based sexual misconduct remains a serious problem that many states and districts have not yet taken seriously enough to prevent.

Despite a surge of high-quality media coverage, there’s still more to do. Expert Charol Shakeshaft calls on government agencies to take concerted action.

And she’s got one specific ingredient she wants reporters and editors to add to their stories: a phone number or website where school sexual misconduct can be reported.

“I think it would be really helpful at the end of those stories to say, ‘If you have concerns about something happening in your school, call this number or go to this website and get more information.’”

Watch the interview or read the transcript above (or on YouTube).

Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple.

Previously from The Grade

The heartbreaking work of covering school sexual misconduct (by Danielle DuClos)

Is K-12’s #MeToo moment finally here — & will journalism help play a role?

How I penetrated a wall of silence to document sexual abuse of Massachusetts students

Student reporters, classroom predators, & journalism ethics

Roundup: Sexual misconduct in schools

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexanderrusso.substack.com/subscribe

Thus far, only two states — Iowa and Tennessee — have enacted time- and grade-based limits.

Two other states — Utah and Alabama — have directed districts to limit screentime or to set screen time standards for early childhood programs.

Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma and Vermont also considered related legislation this year that did not become law.

In this new interview, ECS’s Lauren Bloomquist describes how state screen time limits are emerging as an issue that more states are interested in exploring.

Bloomquist will also appear at a September 30th ECS webinar.

Watch the interview or read the transcript above or on YouTube.

Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple.

From ECS:

State screen time policies (August 27, 2026)

How States Are Rethinking and Redefining Student Technology Use in Schools (May 11, 2026)

Ensuring School Districts Purchase Beneficial AI Tools (September 9, 2026)

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexanderrusso.substack.com/subscribe

Fresh from watching the New York City Council question school officials about the newly-implemented AI ban, NBC News’ Tyler Kingkade tells us what the various bans purport to do, what the Microsoft privacy deal could mean, and whether national limits on edtech or school AI bans are coming next.

Watch the interview or read the transcript above (or on YouTube). Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple.

What other districts besides LAUSD and NYC have taken action so far — and are they all in the same general direction? Will concerns about student privacy play as significant a role as concerns about cognitive offloading? Will political opponents band together to press for changes? Will the FCC stand down its efforts to revamp the E-Rate in order to align with the White House? Where does the Alpha School fit into the larger edtech/AI story?

Follow Tyler’s reporting here. Check out previous interviews, essays, and columns about the edtech backlash and how it’s being covered here.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexanderrusso.substack.com/subscribe

In his consulting work with school districts and at his Cognitive Resonance newsletter, Benjamin Riley has been helping people think through AI and school longer than many others.

A veteran of the NewSchools Venture Fund and other endeavors, Riley describes how he came to have questions about edtech effectiveness — and where he thinks things are going to go next.

“As I’m learning about how we actually use our minds and think and learn, I can now see why all of these ideas — though very well-intentioned by many — are not really going to work.”

Watch the interview or read the transcript above (or on YouTube).

Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple.

Recently from The Grade

How tech took over (with Audrey Watters)

Skepticism — & nuance — needed in edtech coverage (with The 74’s Greg Toppo)

Covering edtech like Big Pharma (with the New York Times’ Natasha Singer)

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexanderrusso.substack.com/subscribe

If you were thinking that the folks behind the backlash against school technology were going to seem unhinged or radical, Schools Beyond Screens’ national director Jodi Carreon is going to be a big disappointment.

In this new interview, Carreon takes the reasonable-sounding position that technology companies have basically taken over education in our school system, selling things to educators that aren’t helpful to learning.

“In a lot of ways, our school districts have ceded local control to big tech companies,” says Carreon, who’s also the parent of a school-aged child. And for a long time, “there was just sort of this resignation that this is just the way that school is now.”

Watch the interview or read the transcript above or on YouTube.

Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple.

In response, Schools Beyond Screens — with chapters in 165 school districts across 33 states — is advocating for a more intentional use of technology in our school systems — meaning “evidence-based, developmentally appropriate, and transparent.”

Even now, schools are not always able to make changes that they might want to make, says Carreon, such as turning off Google AI. “A school district does not have the enterprise solution in order to turn that off. And so these products have become so deeply enmeshed in our school systems that now school districts don’t necessarily have a choice.”

“What’s happened over the past decade is that we we sort of made this assumption that access is gonna be enough to build digital skills — or that students are gonna sort of pick up these digital skills through osmosis. But what we’re seeing is that has certainly not happened. There’s a lot of students graduating who don’t know how to type. They don’t know basic file structure. So what we would love to see is a more dedicated and it’s an explicit teaching of digital skills and digital literacy, and not trying to shoehorn it into every discipline where it doesn’t necessarily belong.”

What does Carreon want? She wants personal devices prohibited in schools through high school, and YouTube turned off for students. She wants a prohibition on the use of personal one-to-one devices in transitional kindergarten through second grade, a shared device or a cart or a laboratory model from grades three through eight, along with more intentional, limited use of one-to-one devices in high school.

What about social media? “No, there’s there’s really no reason for it.”

Resources: Here’s SBS’s library of podcasts, research, and media coverage, which is kind enough to include The Grade’s edtech series. Here’s a sample petition for parents concerned about school tech.

Asked after the video conversation about concerns about device bans leading to excessive discipline and that age restrictions reduce student privacy, Carreon responded by email that “restricting device access in schools should never be used as a punishment, and it’s the job of our public school districts and government agencies to protect all of our students, regardless of age.”

Asked about situations in which districts have balked at parents’ requests for information and/or some sort of rollback, Carreon writes “our coalition is working hard to create and provide publicly accessible resources so parents feel confident in their conversations with resistant district leaders. Ultimately, parents and students have the right to feel seen and heard, and our public school systems must protect all students under their care.”

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexanderrusso.substack.com/subscribe

After years of feeling like she was a lone voice in the wilderness, journalist Audrey Watters says she suddenly doesn’t feel alone in raising concerns about technology in schools (and other aspects of technology).

In this new interview, Watters describes how schools became so tech-infused even before the pandemic, why she stepped away from reporting on edtech during the pandemic, and what it’s like to be back on the story during such a tumultuous time.

Watch the interview or read the transcript above (or on YouTube).

Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexanderrusso.substack.com/subscribe

I’ve wanted to talk with The 74’s Greg Toppo ever since the backlash against education technology started a few months ago.

A veteran reporter and book author (as well as a longtime friend), Toppo has written frequently about new technology being used in schools — and he’s the author of an important 2015 book about games and learning.

And in this new interview, Toppo doesn’t disappoint, sharing his views on where the backlash has come from (parents’ desire for a sense of control) and how the conversation surrounding tech sometimes makes him nervous.

“When the coverage makes me nervous it’s the reporter not asking the kinds of questions that I would want to ask,” says Toppo. “Like I thought that Wall Street Journal piece about YouTube was amazing…[But] what else is happening that creates an opening? What is the thing that happened to make that happen?”

Reflecting on media coverage, Toppo’s view is that journalists have — finally — become adequately skeptical of edtech hype.

“I think we as an industry have absorbed Audrey Watters’ lessons,” he says. “I would in large part put myself in the group of people who didn’t really absorb that message very well. But I think I think now people have.”

Watch the interview or read the transcript above (or on YouTube). Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple. You can follow Greg at @gtoppo, read his stories here, and find his book here.

Key quotes:

“It feels like we are experiencing a kind of a culmination of the past at the least six years at most, maybe 10 or 15 years of parent anxiety about technology.”

“I think obviously the pandemic had a lot to do with it, putting devices in kids’ hands and that didn’t go very well. So there’s I think there’s a sense that a lot of parents have that you know they’re now kind of returning to schools and seeing, ‘Wait a minute, the devices are still here. I thought they were gonna disappear after 2022.’ I think there’s that shock of realization that kids are spending a lot of time on devices.”

“The Jon Haidt ‘cellphones out of schools’ campaign showed the way, right? It showed that if you get enough parents very mad about a very specific, very kind of clear thing, that they can really make some headway. And so I think a lot of parents saw what was possible with that.”

“I think that word ‘control’ is a big deal that we don’t talk about. Parents want control and I think they feel like they don’t have it — and they want to get it back.”

“My sense is that every place is different, and I think we are just hearing from the worst. We’re hearing from the places where it’s where the tech is just, you know, to the roof. When you read these parents’ testimony and their interviews and their pleas, I mean, they really sound quite like grounded and reasonable and in a lot of ways, you know, they’re really like desperate pleas for people to do something different. I don’t think we can argue at that.”

“Every story I’ve ever read about this problem over the past year has the same anecdote, right? A parent realizes their kid watched something in school and is just blown away by the fact that, you know, Tuesday afternoon from one to three, they were watching some movie instead of attending to their schoolwork.”

“To me the the bigger question though is like what is happening in that school to that kid so that that kid has uninterrupted time to watch an entire movie with no ramifications? Where’s all this free time coming from?”

“I spent a lot of time like thinking about tech like more broadly and thinking about kind of how we as adults, like every generation, has this kind of weird relationship to tech — not just educational technology, but just tech in general.”

“I think a lot of the stuff that’s in kids’ schools is not gamification. It’s just a word people are hearing. There’s a difference between gamification and game based learning. And I think probably there’s some gamification, I’m gonna guess, but a lot of it is not gamification. A lot of it is actually game-based learning that’s sometimes really good, really effective.”

“When you get the internet, you get it all. Right? It’s a package deal. So you get, you know, you you get either get i-Ready, you get curriculum, but you also get Netflix and YouTube. You can’t separate these things out. I think that’s a really important thing in terms of the anxiety that parents are feeling to put that to put that context — that there’s a lot of nervousness about just the all-you-can-eat buffet of it.”

“I feel like sometimes the the fact that it’s all consolidated into this concern about tech and this campaign to to lower the level of tech, to me that feels like maybe it’s a little misplaced.”

“When the coverage makes me nervous it’s the reporter not asking the kinds of questions that I would want to ask. Like I thought that Wall Street Journal piece about YouTube was amazing. I thought the data on that was just like just jaw-dropping. But I also wanna go to a different place with it, which is like kind of the question I had before, which is like, ‘What else is happening that creates an opening?’ Like we we get the results. ‘What is the thing that happened to make that happen?’”

“I think there’s a lot of cool stuff out there,” says Toppo. “One of the things that was so fascinating to me about writing about that world was that there were a lot of people who cared a ton who were trying to do something different and weird and and really succeeded in my estimation and continue to succeed.”

“If you ask the people who make the cool creative stuff, they would say they don’t have the marketing or the lobbying power that the big guys do. They can’t go to state capitals during the legislative session and lobby the lawmakers to make their tool the only one that kids can use or the or get it onto the state list of approved curriculums.”

“The hype cycle is fast these days. I feel like people write about something like for instance, like Alpha School. To me, almost as soon as we got gleaming stories about how amazing this was, we got stories of what a hellscape it was. And they were sometimes happening like the same week.”

“I think we as an industry have absorbed Audrey Watters’ lessons. You know, years and years ago she was just kind of screaming from the rooftops ‘This s**t isn’t as all it’s said to be. These companies are not looking out for your kids’ best interests. There’s a dark side to all this.’”

“I would in large part put myself in the group of people who didn’t really absorb that message very well. But I think I think now people have for for a number of reasons, number one being her just absolute persistence and kind of amazing ability to bring all these strings together. But also I think Silicon Valley’s kind of reached its Sell By date for a lot of people.”

“I think if I wrote [my book] in 2026, I think it would be a slightly different book. I think we know more about how kids learn. I think I know more about a little bit of everything, and I’m a little more skeptical. I mean, I was skeptical going into it, but the way my skepticism expressed itself was I almost entirely wrote about tiny little efforts, like small studios.”

“I think it’s gonna change in some places. I don’t think it’s gonna change more broadly. I don’t think we’re gonna see like lots and lots of school districts, you know, with memos in the fall saying, ‘No more Chromebooks. No more iPads.’ I think there’s still gonna be a lot of that.”

“I’m gonna predict that people are on the ground are gonna be more focused on the money being spent. How is the money being spent? If anything, this has been an exercise in kind of opening opening up the process to a lot of people, opening up the books. ‘How much are we spending on iReady? How much are we spending on iPads?’ I think once that sort of revelation passes, I think maybe it’ll be a little more like data centric.”

Previously from The Grade

Immunizing schools from bad edtech (with Amplify’s Dan Meyer)

Covering Edtech Like Big Pharma (with the NYT’s Natasha Singer)

The case for i-Ready (with Curriculum Associates’ Ty Holmes)

Why so many parents hate AI right now (with NYT opinion writer Jessica Grose)

How one reporter latched onto the edtech backlash (with NBC’s Tyler Kingkade)

In defense of education technology (with former EdSurge editor Tony Wan)

Why are schools awash in YouTube? (with the WSJ’s Shalini Ramachandran)

Education, technology, & the media (roundup of previous coverage)

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexanderrusso.substack.com/subscribe

A few years ago now, Jenny Abamu left the education beat — and journalism — for what she thought was going to be forever.

On her way out the door, she gave The Grade a frank interview about her experiences on the job — an illustration of her insight and candor that remains valuable to this day.

Eventually, Abamu returned to journalism — this time as a politics and government reporter — and last year she launched a TikTok to supplement her coverage and published a piece about why she was making the move.

A year later, Abamu is back to talk about the challenges and — mostly — successes that she’s experienced making vertical videos as part of her coverage.

She’s got nearly 14,000 followers on TikTok, and her most popular videos have generated tens of thousands of views.

Watch the interview or read the transcript above (or on YouTube).

Listen to the conversation on Spotify or Apple.

Among the many lessons that Abamu shared from her experience:

People want to know what you’ve found out; they just don’t want to have to look elsewhere for it.

Daily or near-daily videos help build momentum and community.

Vertical video helps win readers and generate new sources and story ideas.

Ninety seconds is a good length for vertical video — not too long, not too short.

Original stories work a lot better than roundups.

Writing a script takes time — but it also can save time (and prevent mistakes).

Putting something out on social media can help generate tips, sources, and inform the final product.

Set a time limit for working on each video or you’ll edit it all night.

Don’t worry about being scooped; it doesn’t happen (or matter) as much as you may think.

Be prepared to be recognized in public, and maybe even hugged?

Don’t start with fancy equipment or try to make too many edits.

It’s OK — or even good — to be doing something else (cooking, walking to the car) while you’re talking to your audience.

People want to feel like they know you through your videos.

Think about vertical video as telling a story to an interested friend, not the anonymous masses.

If you want to get fancy, pull in a screenshot of the story you’re talking about — or a meme you find relevant and amusing.

The first few seconds of your video are the hook that determines whether folks stay or keep scrolling, so pay attention like you would to a good headline.

The initial awkwardness of recording yourself on camera can turn into a kind of intimacy with your audience.

Your videos will generate sources, tidbits, and scoops.

Previously from The Grade

Why I finally joined TikTok (and you probably should, too)

Star reporter Jenny Abamu explains why she left journalism — and ways to fix education news

Mandy McLaren, the education beat’s TikTok star

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexanderrusso.substack.com/subscribe

The first thing you need to know about Freddie deBoer, the enfant terrible of Substack, is that he’s actually quite friendly in person — or at least he was to me when I had the chance to interview him.

If deBoer’s name sounds familiar, there’s a reason for that. He’s got a very popular Substack. He is eloquent and vulnerable on many topics, including mental health and masculinity. He is frequently and fascinatingly wrong on education, at least according to me. He once took great exception to a piece I’d asked him to write then killed.

Watch above or on YouTube.

Listen on Spotify or Apple.

The occasion for our late-June conversation was No, American schools aren’t failing, deBoer’s recent Boston Globe oped arguing that schools are generally doing much better than we think they are — with the exception of communities that are so marginalized that improving schools will not alone do much to help.

“Educational outcomes are dominantly the product of on the group level, socioeconomic and cultural factors that schools and teachers can’t control — and on the individual level, individual talent differences between individual students that schools and teachers can’t control.”

On the topic of media coverage, deBoer’s main complaint is what he describes as liberal incoherence about what schools are supposed to accomplish.

“The New York Times is not what I would call a staunchly anti-union or or pro-firing sort of place, but they exemplify a certain kind of incoherence,” says deBoer. ‘The Times will talk about like ‘better’ or ‘worse’ schools, but sometimes they think that the best students should go to the best schools, and sometimes the worst students should go to the worst schools.”

You can subscribe to Freddie’s Substack here. You can read about his forthcoming book here.

Previously from The Grade

Journalism should help debunk the education myth it created (Jim Shelton)

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit alexanderrusso.substack.com/subscribe