The Harvard EdCast

What is driving an increase in college completion rates? It's not student characteristics or higher student enrollments, says Jeff Denning, an associate professor at Brigham Young University. Denning, an economist noticed the increasing trend started in the 1990s, and upon looking deeper discovered grade inflation is driving numbers up. In this episode, Denning explains this change and what it might mean for higher education. 

COVID has challenged many education systems worldwide. This is especially true for developing countries that faced significant learning issues prior to COVID. How far did COVID set these education systems back? How can countries like Brazil move forward? Claudia Costin, the founder and director of the Center for Excellence and Innovation in Education Policies at Getulio Vargas Foundation in Brazil, discusses how COVID has impacted education in Brazil and offers a path forward.

Math class doesn't seem the likely place to practice gratitude, but Michael Fauteux discovered that it had the power to change it. While teaching a 9th grade math class, Fauteux begin implementing moments of gratitude and soon started to see impacts on student learning. Through Fauteux's non-profit GiveThx that uses digital thank you notes and research based lessons to nurture mental health and improve academic success, he's sharing the practice in classrooms around the country. Since its launch in 2018, there have been over 300,000 gratitude notes sent by over 20,000 students. In this episode, he discusses what motivated him to launch the nonprofit and how gratitude can help student social emotional learning and more. 

Christopher Emdin wants schools to embraces a whole student's identity. For far too long, public education has been stuck where it was not designed for all students, especially students of color, he says. Emdin, an associate professor at Teachers College, has long focused on issues of race, class, and diversity in education. Now, he's proposing a new educational model to help teachers and students celebrate ratchet identity in the classroom. He reimagines schools where educators use authenticity as a driving factor in their work. In this episode, Emdin shares his philosophy on being ratchetdemic, how educators can become ratchetdemic, and why it matters. 

What are children learning about climate change in American schools? That question set award winning journalist Katie Worth to uncover how climate change education is being taught. As part of her research, she visited several states, talked to teachers, scoured text books, and spoke to students and their families. It turns out climate change education is just as contentious in the classroom as it is in politics. In this episode, she shares points of friction happening between teachers within the same schools and how students are often unable to connect environmental disasters in their own communities with climate change. Additionally, Worth discusses how the fossil fuel industry sometimes plays a firsthand role in children's education. She shares the potential repercussions of raising a generation of children unable to understand the effects of climate change on their world. 

Mistakes are supposed to be part of learning. However, Maleka Donaldson knows how we convey mistakes and respond to them as educators can significantly impact a child's learning experience. Donaldson is an assistant professor at Smith College where she studies teacher-student interactions and responding to mistakes in early learning. In her book, "From Oops to Aha: Portraits of Learning from Mistakes in Kindergarten," she examines instruction in the classrooms of four public school kindergarten teachers showing the varied ways these interactions happen, and how factors beyond the teachers’ control shape their approaches to teaching and contribute to structural inequities.

Higher education needs major change and reinvention to provide more opportunity and social mobility for everyone. This is what Paul LeBlanc hopes to see in the future. As the president of Southern New Hampshire University for 18 years, LeBlanc has led tremendous change including becoming the largest nonprofit provider of online higher education and to offer a full competency-based degree program. In this episode of the EdCast, LeBlanc shares insight into why and how the institution made these groundbreaking changes. He also discusses the future of higher education and a need to get back to some of the initial focus that drove higher education in America – its students and opportunity. 

The school nurse's job encompasses much more than you'd think. Even before COVID, the school nurse was the "health hub" of the school. Yet 25.2% of schools don't even have a nurse. Linda Mendonca, the president of the National Association of School Nurses, discusses the need for school nurses and how they are doing much more than most of us realize. She offers guidance for the school community, especially administrators, on how to make sure your school nurse is a part of important conversations. 

It's a contentious time to be a school board member in America. Michael Casserly, a strategic adviser for the Council of the Great City Schools, reflects on the current state of school board meetings happening around the country. He also provides insight regarding the purpose of school boards, what a board needs to do to function well, and how to manage controversy. 

There's a lot of conversation in education about how to use this summer to make up for lost academic time in COVID. But depending on the student and the situation -- summer school may or may not be the right solution. Catherine Augustine, a senior policy researcher at RAND Corporation, has spent many years examining what makes summer school effective. She advises that while summer school isn't magic, it can also be beneficial for some children. Additionally, she breaks down some of the differences between summer school and extended learning, and offers guidance to families trying to figure out what to do with their children this summer.