According to many in the Trump administration, closing the US Department of Education would increase efficiency, reduce bureaucracy, and give states more control over education.

But according to opponents of the move, closing the Department would create a bureaucratic web that would be confusing for states to navigate, weaken civil rights enforcement, and do little to raise student achievement.

Once abstract, these debates are now anything but. Since his second term began, President Trump has signed an executive order directing the Department to begin shutting itself down, the Department has cut about half of its staff, and the Department has announced several interagency agreements to shift certain federal programs to other agencies.

Against this backdrop, on this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus and four experts discuss and debate whether we should close the US Department of Education.

Note: This episode is adapted from the most recent installment of the American Enterprise Institute’s Education Policy Debate Series, which was held at AEI on September 2. A video recording of the debate can be found here.

Jim Blew is a co-founder of the Defense of Freedom Institute. Previously, he served as US assistant secretary for policy and budget under Betsy DeVos.

Lindsey Burke is the deputy chief of staff for policy and programs at the US Department of Education.

Ted Mitchell is the president of the American Council on Education. Previously, he served in the Obama administration as US under secretary of education.

Roberto J. Rodriguez is a Doris Duke Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. Previously, he served as assistant US secretary of education for policy and planning.

This episode was produced by Elli Lucas.

Many schools today offer mental health programming, but according to Carolyn Gorman, a lot of school mental health programming is not only wasteful and ineffective but also directionally misguided: School mental health programming often targets students who don’t need help, pathologizes ordinary emotions, and fails to adequately help students with the most severe mental health problems.

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus speaks with Carolyn Gorman about school-based mental health. Nat and Carolyn discuss whether and why student mental health has gotten worse, what we do and don’t know about school-based mental health programming, what K–12 schools should do when it comes to mental health, whether the mental health landscape in higher education is similar to the mental health landscape in K–12 schools, and how schools can promote student mental health through ordinary routines and orderly school environments.

Carolyn D. Gorman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, where her research examines how policy changes in the U.S. impact individuals with mental illness.

This episode was produced by Elli Lucas.

Show Notes:

School-Based Mental Health Initiatives Challenges and Considerations for Policymakers

The Tradition and Limits of Campus Mental Health

Congress Is Treating Schools like Mental-Health Clinics

It’s Time For Schools To Get Out Of The Mental Health Business

AI is transforming not only the way students work but also the way they read.

AI summarizes readings for students, changing the way they engage with texts, form judgments, and—perhaps—develop cognitively.

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus speaks with Naomi Baron about these changes and more.

Naomi Baron is Professor Emerita of Linguistics at American University and the author of Reader Bot: What Happens When AI Reads and Why It Matters.

This episode was produced by Elli Lucas.

Show Notes:

Reader Bot: What Happens When AI Reads and Why It Matters

Who Wrote This? How AI and the Lure of Efficiency Threaten Human Writing

The End of Reading Is Here

Is This What a Post-Literate Era Looks Like?

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus speaks with John White about state education leadership, how the education landscape has changed over the last few decades, innovation in education and where it tends to go wrong, the importance of school choice, the Southern Surge, why coherent systems matter, what we know about curriculum, and more.

John White is the CEO of Great Minds. Previously, he was the Louisiana State Superintendent of Education, Superintendent of the Louisiana Recovery School District, Deputy Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, and a Teach For America corps member.

This episode was produced by Elli Lucas.

During the pandemic, national chronic absenteeism rates surged across all demographics, but what has happened to chronic absenteeism rates since then?

Are chronic absenteeism rates back to pre-pandemic levels? Is chronic absenteeism less of a problem for students who weren’t yet in school during the pandemic? And where might chronic absenteeism rates end up when all the dust settles?

On this episode of The Report Card, Elli Lucas discusses these questions, and more, with Nat Malkus.

Nat Malkus is a senior fellow and the deputy director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and an affiliate of AEI’s James Q. Wilson Program in K–12 Education Studies. He is the creator of AEI’s Return to Learn Tracker, which tracked pandemic school closures and masking policies and currently tracks post-pandemic chronic absenteeism, and the host of the podcast The Report Card with Nat Malkus.

This episode was produced by Elli Lucas.

Show Notes:

From Attendance Crisis to Chronic Condition? Tracking Post-Pandemic Chronic Absenteeism into 2025

Please Excuse My Child: Unexcused Absences in Student Attendance and Achievement

Catching Absenteeism Early and Often: Introducing the AEI Absence Forecast

AEI Absence Forecast

What Stories Does Daily Attendance Tell? Student Attendance Patterns Before and After the COVID-19 Pandemic

AEI’s Chronic Absenteeism Research Working Group (CARWG)

Teacher and Student Absences Before and After the Pandemic

The 50% Challenge

In a few short days, we’ll be celebrating America’s 250th birthday, but rather than feeling uniformly triumphant and celebratory, America’s Semiquincentennial comes at a time when many worry about the state of our democracy and civic culture.

Schools are central to this worry. Many are concerned that civic education in American schools is insufficient or misguided, and that schools are not doing enough to prepare the next generation of Americans for self-governance. But what would better civic education look like?

What subject matter should it consist of? What should its aims be? And how much of it should happen in schools?

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these questions and more with Yuval Levin.

Yuval Levin is a senior fellow at AEI, where he is the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy; Director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies; and Editor in Chief of National Affairs. He is also the author of several books, including American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again.

The Department of Education has said it is trying to return education to the states, but what does that mean for the federal role in education and for the states expected to take on more responsibility?

What is the Department doing now to scale back the federal role in education? How does the Department think about its own education agenda as it tries to return education to the states? And are states ready to have education returned to them—whatever that might mean?

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these questions and more with Kirsten Baesler.

Kirsten Baesler is the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education. From 2013 until 2025, she served as the North Dakota Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Recently, Harvard faculty voted to push back on grade inflation at the institution by capping the proportion of A’s given to students at 20%. But according to a new paper, Harvard’s new policy—and grade caps in general—are not the right solution.

In What Does a Grade Mean? Informativeness and Strategic Manipulation of Grading Systems, Scott Duke Kominers and Joshua S. Gans argue that to create better incentives for students and faculty, we need to change the current grading system itself.

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus speaks with Scott Duke Kominers about Harvard’s new grade inflation policy. Nat and Scott discuss grading at Harvard, how traditional grading creates bad incentives for students, why grade caps might make these incentives worse, the importance of communicating information about course difficulty, how a different grading system can create better incentives and lead to more learning, and more.

Scott Duke Kominers is the Sarofim-Rock Professor of Business Administration in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School; a Faculty Affiliate of the Harvard Department of Economics and the Harvard Center of Mathematical Sciences and Applications; and an a16z crypto Research Partner.

Show Notes:

What Does a Grade Mean? Informativeness and Strategic Manipulation of Grading Systems.

Grade Caps Fail the Game Theory Exam

When the Proposal Keeps Changing, It's Clear It Doesn't Make the Grade

70% of Faculty Vote to Overhaul Harvard Grading With A Cap

Enigmatic Puzzles

Historically, many didn’t consider Alabama to be at the forefront of education, but Alabama’s pandemic recovery may be among the best in the nation.

Perhaps most impressively, Alabama was the only state whose 4th-grade math NAEP scores were higher in 2024 than in 2019, and Alabama reports a chronic absenteeism rate that is the lowest in the nation—and the closest to its pre-pandemic levels of any state.

Are these results part of a broader story about how Alabama has changed the way it thinks about education? What changes have helped produce Alabama’s recent education gains? And where might education in the Yellowhammer State be headed next?

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these questions and more with Alabama State Superintendent of Education Eric Mackey.

Although the Trump administration’s efforts to reform education might not be making national headlines quite as often as they did one year ago, a lot has still happened in education over the last several months.

The Trump administration has continued its push to dismantle the Department of Education. Elite universities are making efforts to reform campus culture. The Department of Education released a major report on the future of the Institute of Education Sciences. And campaigns to limit phone use and, now, screen time in school continue to gain momentum.

To make sense of it all, on this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these developments, and more, with Andy Rotherham and Rick Hess.

Andy Rotherham is a co-founder and senior partner at Bellwether and the author of the Eduwonk blog.

Rick Hess is a senior fellow and the director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Show Notes:

Mend, Don’t End, the Institute of Education Sciences

Hope or Hype? What to Make of Yale’s Report on Trust in Higher Ed

The Trump Administration Has Mostly Dismantled the Ed. Dept. Should You Care?

Reimagining the Institute of Education Sciences