Every year, there are a fair few awards and honors handed out in the ed policy space, but none carry the same prestige or repute as the Yidan Prize.

On this episode of The Report Card with Nat Malkus, Rick Hanushek, winner of the 2021 Yidan Prize, discusses his past and future research and imparts some words of wisdom for young education researchers.

Americans have long viewed education as something that primarily happens in schools, and for good reason; since the introduction of the common school, most formal education has taken place in schools. But that all changed when the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered school buildings in March 2020, forcing the locus of education to switch from the classroom to the home.

So, how has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted homeschooling?

On this episode of The Report Card with Nat Malkus, Kerry McDonald discusses the homeschooling movement, its rise during the COVID-19 pandemic, and her book, Unschooling: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom.

The school grounds have been the site of many of America’s most contentious debates, and, after the tumultuous year we've had, it’d be easy to think that Americans are more divided than ever on education issues. But are Americans as divided as they seem?

On this episode of The Report Card with Nat Malkus, Dan Cox and Nat discuss their new report on American public opinion about COVID-19 mitigation, race, and religion in the classroom.

Read Nat and Dan’s report: Controversy and consensus: Perspectives on race, religion, and COVID-19 in public schools.

State assessments from this past spring are slowly coming out and, so far, they’ve all painted a similar picture: students are far behind where they should be in reading and math, and some student groups are further behind than others.

On this episode of The Report Card with Nat Malkus, Dr. Vlad Kogan and Dr. Stéphane Lavertu discuss their recent report on Ohio student test scores.

Read Dr. Kogan and Dr. Lavertu's report, How the COVID-19 Pandemic Affected Student Learning In Ohio: Analysis of Spring 2021 Ohio State Tests.

As students once again head back to school amid increasing Covid cases and hospilizations, can states and districts legally require eligible students and staff to receive the Covid-19 vaccine? Should they?

Lawrence Gostin, the Linda D. & Timothy J. O’Neill Professor of Global Health Law at the Georgetown University Law Center and the director of the WHO Collaborating Center on National and Global Health Law, weighs in on this episode of The Report Card with Nat Malkus.

In March, state and local governments were given an unprecedented $350 billion in flexible funding to reduce hardships caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. How can these funds best be used to address the needs of America’s students? In particular, how might these funds be used to send direct payments to students and families for private school tuition, tutoring, learning pods, and other educational expenses?

John Bailey, a nonresident senior fellow at AEI, weighs in on this episode of “The Report Card with Nat Malkus.”

Read John's recent CERN report: Education recovery benefits: Using coronavirus state and local fiscal recovery funds to address children’s academic, social, emotional, and mental health needs.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit late in the 2019-2020 school year, its impact on student learning didn’t take a summer vacation. One year later, with Covid retreating and vaccination efforts well underway, what does summer learning look like? And what effect might summer programing this year have on remediating Covid learning loss?

Christine Pitts, a resident policy fellow at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, discusses these questions and more on this episode of The Report Card with Nat Malkus.

Shownotes

Read Christine's analysis of summer learning programs at The 74.

Read CRPE's report on summer learning programs.

Visit CPRE's school district response tracker.

Back-to-school 2020 didn’t go as smoothly as hoped. Many districts that were slated to offer in-person learning abruptly changed to their reopening plans only weeks before the start of the year, and many of those that did reopen for in-person learning were forced to close for weeks at a time as Covid rates increased. With back-to-school 2021 just around the corner, what should parents and students expect schooling to look like this fall?

Dr. Joseph Allen, an associate professor of exposure assessment science at Harvard University, discusses the CDC's recently updated reopening guidance for schools, the importance of ventilation as a Covid mitigation strategy, and solutions for America's "sick" school buildings on this episode of The Report Card with Nat Malkus.

How did Critical Race Theory (CRT)—once relegated to graduate school seminars and academic journals—become one of the most hotly debated K-12 issues, seemingly overnight? What exactly is CRT? Should states be banning it from K-12 classrooms? AEI's Robert Pondiscio and Ian Rowe join Nat Malkus to discuss these questions and more on the latest episode of The Report Card.

As the Biden administration begins the process of rewriting Title IX regulations and undoing many of the changes to made under Secretary Betsy DeVos, host Nat Malkus dusts off a recording of a debate among leading law experts on the Trump-era changes to Title IX, which took place in front of a live audience at AEI in the summer of 2019.