In this week’s episode of The Learning Curve, co-hosts Prof. Albert Cheng of Ohio State University and Pioneer Senior Fellow Charlie Chieppo speak with NYT-bestselling author Jane Leavy about Hall of Fame pitcher Sandy Koufax. She traces his journey from a Jewish upbringing in Brooklyn to becoming one of baseball’s most dominant players and one of the 20th century’s most principled public figures. Leavy discusses Koufax’s brief collegiate career, his raw but electric pitching style, and his leap to the Brooklyn Dodgers with no minor league experience. She explores his early inconsistency and control issues, and his transformation into a power pitcher who led the National League in strikeouts by 1961. She highlights his legendary peak from 1962–1966, including multiple Cy Young Awards, four no-hitters, and World Series brilliance. Leavy also revisits his iconic decision to sit out Game 1 of the 1965 World Series on Yom Kippur, his forced retirement due to arthritis at age 30, and his enduring legacy as a symbol of excellence, integrity, and cultural identity in American sports history itself. In closing, she reads a passage from Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy.

In this week’s episode of The Learning Curve, co-hosts Center for Strong Public Schools’ Alisha Searcy and Dr. Helen Baxendale of Great Hearts Academies interview Dr. David Steiner, Executive Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and former New York State Commissioner of Education. Dr. Steiner discusses the importance of an academic content-rich, liberal arts education rooted in Western democratic principles and compares the strengths and challenges of British and American K-12 education and teacher preparation. He examines the relationship between school choice, academic quality, teacher effectiveness, and accountability drawing on his recent The 74 op-ed to argue that expanding educational options must be matched by rigorous curricula and high-quality teaching. Dr. Steiner also explores the science of reading, persistent achievement gaps, and the impact of smartphones, social media, and AI on today's students. He concludes by offering recommendations for governors and state leaders to strengthen academic excellence and improve long-term student outcomes across American education.

As America marks the 250th anniversary of the Revolution, a key question still deserves our attention: how did a loose collection of North American colonies defeat the most powerful empire on earth?

In this special episode of The Learning Curve, co-hosts Prof. Albert Cheng of Ohio State University and Massachusetts state champion U.S. history and civics teacher Kelley Brown explore that question with Pulitzer Prize winner Joseph Ellis, author of His Excellency: George Washington and the new The Great Contradiction: The Tragic Side of the American Founding. Their conversation centers on George Washington, the figure historians consider indispensable to American independence.

Among the topics they explore:

• A general who won by not losing: Washington lost more individual battles than he won, but by Valley Forge he understood he needed only to outlast the British, fighting a "war of posts" and engaging only when he held the advantage.
• A leader defined by surrendering power: Prof. Ellis shares that Washington never overtly sought to lead the Continental Army, or become president, and that precisely because he did not want power, he could be trusted with it.
• A presence that made the U.S. Constitution possible: Washington didn’t speak until the last day at the Constitutional Convention, yet his presence alone lent the effort its legitimacy. As Prof. Ellis puts it: without Washington, no war won, no Constitution, and no nation.
• A reckoning with the Founding's failures: Drawing on his latest book, Prof. Ellis examines the two great tragedies of the Founding, slavery and the mistreatment of Native Americans, and where Washington, who chose to free the enslaved people he owned, stood on each topic.

Tune in to hear this fascinating conversation about why George Washington's example remains relevant today.

In this week’s episode of The Learning Curve, co-hosts Alisha Searcy of Strong Public Schools for Students and retired Milwaukee County Court Commissioner, Lindsey Draper, speak with Dr. Lerone Martin, Director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University and author of Young King: The Making of Martin Luther King, Jr. Drawing on his new book, Dr. Martin offers a compelling look at the experiences that shaped the young Martin Luther King, Jr., from the influence of his family, the Black church, and Jim Crow Atlanta to his early encounters with racism, his education at Morehouse College, and his growing sense of purpose in the ministry. He also discusses King's relationship with Coretta Scott, the couple's early years in Montgomery, Alabama, and the events that sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Together, these formative experiences reveal how King's faith, character, and leadership developed long before he became one of the most influential figures of the American civil rights movement. Dr. Martin closes with a reading from Young King: The Making of Martin Luther King, Jr.

In this week’s episode of The Learning Curve, co-hosts Prof. Albert Cheng of Ohio State University and Alisha Searcy of the Center for Strong Public Schools speak with Doug Tuthill, a longtime Florida K-12 education reform leader whose career in teaching and school choice policy spans nearly five decades. Beginning as a classroom teacher in 1977, Mr. Tuthill has been a college professor, newspaper executive, teacher union president, and president of Step Up For Students, the nation’s largest education choice organization. He discusses the origins of his commitment to school choice, Florida’s gradual rise as the nation’s leading choice state, and the lessons other states can learn from its success. He also explores the future of education savings accounts, accountability and academic outcomes, the challenges of expanding high-quality educational options, and how state and federal leaders can use school choice policymaking to improve student achievement and strengthen K–12 education for families across the country.

In this week’s episode of The Learning Curve, co-hosts Prof. Albert Cheng of Ohio State University and Alisha Searcy of the Center for Strong Public Schools speak with Dr. Suzanne Marrs, Professor Emerita of English at Millsaps College and acclaimed biographer of Eudora Welty, about the life, works, and enduring legacy of one of America’s greatest Southern writers. Prof. Marrs explores how Welty’s upbringing in Jackson, Mississippi, her family’s love of literature, and her mother’s devotion to Charles Dickens helped shape her imagination and literary voice. She discusses Welty’s travels throughout the South and her work as a Works Progress Administration photographer during the Great Depression, explaining how these experiences informed both her photography and fiction. She highlights celebrated short stories such as Death of a Traveling Salesman, A Worn Path, and Where Is the Voice Coming From?, as well as the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Optimist’s Daughter, examining their themes of memory, race, family, resilience, and love. Prof. Marrs concludes by reflecting on Welty’s National Historic site home in Jackson, Mississippi, and the timeless significance of her literary legacy in 21st-century America. She closes with a reading from Eudora Welty: A Biography.

In this week’s episode of The Learning Curve, co-hosts Alisha Searcy of the Center for Strong Public Schools and Jake Tawney of the Institute for Catholic Liberal Education speak with Dr. Snezana Lawrence, an independent scholar affiliated with Middlesex University London, about the origins and development of mathematics across human civilizations. Dr. Lawrence reflects on her work, including her book A Little History of Mathematics, tracing early counting systems and artifacts such as the Mesopotamian cuneiform and Egyptian mathematical practices. She explains how Greek thinkers like Pythagoras and Euclid shaped mathematics, geometry, and logical reasoning, while highlighting India’s development of zero and the later adoption of the Hindu-Arabic numeral system. She connects these mathematical traditions to modern science through Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and the Newton–Leibniz calculus controversy, underscoring mathematics as the language of science and discovery across time and diverse human civilizations. In closing, Dr. Lawrence reads a passage from her book, A Little History of Mathematics.

In this week’s episode of The Learning Curve, co-hosts Prof. Albert Cheng of the University of Arkansas and Alisha Searcy of the Center for Strong Public Schools speak with Leslie Hiner, Senior Advisor for Legal Policy at EdChoice, about the constitutional foundations and future of educational freedom in America. Hiner reflects on her distinguished career in law and public policy before examining the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decisions that have shaped the modern school choice movement. She discusses how Brown v. Board of Education’s promise of equal educational opportunity influenced later efforts to expand parental choice and educational access. Hiner then explores the significance of Zelman v. Simmons-Harris, Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, and Carson v. Makin, explaining how each expanded protections for families seeking religious and private educational options. She assesses the legal landscape following Carson, highlights key recent victories such as Loffman v. California Department of Education, and offers insights into the future of school choice litigation, educational tax credits, and parental rights nationwide. Finally, Hiner also examines current legal cases, including Hellman v. Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and they could mean for the future of school choice in Massachusetts.

In this week’s episode of The Learning Curve, co-hosts Prof. Albert Cheng of the University of Arkansas and Alisha Searcy of the Center for Strong Public Schools speak with Andrew Hadfield, Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Sussex and British Academy Fellow, about the life, works, and legacy of the great poet Edmund Spenser. Prof. Hadfield explains how Edmund Spenser’s uncertain family background and humanist education at Merchant Taylors’ School and Cambridge, grounded in Virgil, Ovid, Petrarch, and Chaucer, shaped his literary imagination within Elizabethan England. He situates Spenser amid the many political and religious tensions of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign, and traces Spenser’s rise through The Shepheardes Calender and patronage under the 4th Earl of Leicester, Robert Sidney. Then, Prof. Hadfield turns to The Faerie Queene, its epic allegorical knights, virtues, and the Spenserian stanza, all of which widely influenced British literature and ultimately the English language across the globe. He addresses Spenser’s controversial Irish writings and reflects on his enduring reputation as a foundational “poet’s poet.” Prof. Hadfield closes the interview with a reading from The Faerie Queene.

On this week’s episode of The Learning Curve, co-hosts Alisha Searcy of the Center for Strong Public Schools and Mary Tamer of MassPotential speak with Rachel Canter, Director of Education Policy for the Progressive Policy Institute’s Reinventing America’s Schools project and founder of Mississippi First, about Mississippi’s remarkable rise in K–12 student achievement and the policy reforms that helped drive it. Drawing on her experience as a former Teach For America teacher and longtime education advocate, Canter reflects on the leadership, accountability, and strategic reforms that helped Mississippi transform from one of the nation’s lowest-performing states to one of its fastest-improving on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. She discusses the science of reading, the debate between phonics and whole language instruction, and what schools must do to rebuild academic rigor in literacy, STEM, and civics. Canter also explores the importance of exposing students to great literature and roots music from William Faulkner and Delta bluesmen like Robert Johnson, drawing on Mississippi’s rich cultural legacy, and reflects on how lessons from Civil Rights era figures, including Emmett Till and Fannie Lou Hamer, can strengthen civics education today. She concludes by sharing policy recommendations for governors, legislators, educators, and parents seeking dramatic and lasting improvements in student outcomes nationwide.