The Report Card with Nat Malkus

On The Report Card, we talk a lot about schools, but in this episode we do something a little different and talk about one of the populations schools serve: adolescents.

How are technologies such as social media, AI, and location tracking affecting teenagers? What are gender relations like among high school students? And how do teens today think about family, religion, politics, and America?

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

Daniel A. Cox is the director of the Survey Center on American Life at the American Enterprise Institute. He is also the author of a recent report, A Digital Divide in American Adolescence: Gender, Class, and the New Teenage Experience, and a new book, Generation Uncoupled: America’s New Gender Divide and the Crisis of Human Connection.

This episode was produced by Elli Lucas.

Kumon, Sylvan Learning, Mathnasium, and Huntington Learning Center—these private tutoring chains are familiar names, but they have received little attention from education researchers.

According to recent research co-authored by Josh Goodman, however, this is an oversight. Not only has the number of private tutoring centers tripled since the late 1990s, but private tutoring centers also might have a surprisingly large effect on district achievement trends.

To find out more, on this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus speaks with Josh Goodman. Nat and Josh discuss what instruction looks like at private tutoring centers, which families send their children to private tutoring centers most often, whether tutoring might explain why East Asian countries do better on international assessments, why the number of private tutoring centers peaked in 2015, whether private tutoring centers might be insulating high-achieving students from downward achievement trends, what American schools can learn from private tutoring centers, whether giving families vouchers for private tutoring centers would have been an effective method for fighting pandemic learning loss, why big tutoring chains often outperform other tutoring centers, and why private tutoring centers might be a more cost-effective way to raise student achievement than most other interventions.

Joshua Goodman is a professor of education and economics at Boston University and the co-author of Kumon Up: Private Tutoring Centers and Student Achievement and Kumon In: The Recent, Rapid Rise of Private Tutoring Centers.

This episode was produced by Elli Lucas.

Proponents of education technology have often made big promises about its potential to transform schooling, but so far, ed tech has failed to live up to its promise.

Will AI also fail to deliver, or will it finally be the education technology that breaks through?

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus and Philip Oreopoulos discuss this question and more. Nat and Philip discuss how to make sure ed tech actually gets used, whether schools need dedicated ed-tech staff, the educational benefits of using AI for language instruction, the logistical challenges of using AI for math instruction, how much upside there is for AI tutoring, how AI can affect the amount of time students spend on material, and what teachers should know about effective ed-tech implementation.

Philip Oreopoulos is a professor of economics at the University of Toronto and the author of several recent papers on AI and education technology that examine the importance of implementation.

This episode was produced by Elli Lucas.

Show Notes:

One Click Away: AI Tutoring with Khanmigo in a Two-Year School Experiment

Making AI Tutoring Productive: Evidence from a Mastery-Based Math Practice Experiment

How In-School Supervised Ed-Tech Support Produces Massive Learning Gains: A Khan Academy Field Experiment in India

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.