The Report Card with Nat Malkus

In classrooms across the nation, students and teachers are using AI—but should they be?

AI’s advocates argue that it can be used to individualize instruction and provide personalized feedback, but its critics contend that the adoption of AI in the classroom will get in the way of students acquiring critical thinking skills.

Who is right here? Can AI reverse a decade of falling test scores, or will it only exacerbate this trend? And even if AI in the classroom is the future, does that mean schools should adopt AI in the classroom today?

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus and four experts discuss and debate whether maximizing school improvement by 2035 means integrating AI into classrooms today.

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 December 8. A video recording of the debate can be found here.

Shanika Hope is the director of Americas & Knowledge, Skills, and Learning at Google.

Alex Kotran is the CEO of the AI Education Project.

Dan Meyer is the vice president of User Growth at Amplify.

Jake Tawney is the chief academic officer at Great Hearts Academies.

One of the hottest names in education right now is Alpha School. A network of high-end private schools founded in Texas but with additional locations elsewhere, Alpha School uses AI to implement mastery learning principles and incentives to accelerate student learning.

How well the Alpha model works is an open question: Alpha School graduated its first seniors—a class of twelve—just last year, and most of Alpha’s students come from wealthier families. That said, for anyone who complains about a lack of experimentation in the education sector or wonders what it might look like if schools took some of the boldest ideas in education more seriously, Alpha is a welcome antidote.

To learn more about the Alpha model, on this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus speaks with MacKenzie Price, cofounder of Alpha School.

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus, Rick Hess, and Andy Rotherham discuss what recent elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and New York City mean for education, the Trump administration’s Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, the latest in the Jim Ryan saga, and more.

(Note: This episode was recorded on Monday, before the Trump administration announced further plans to dismantle the Department of Education.)

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

Frederick M. Hess is a senior fellow and the director of education policy studies at AEI.

Show Notes:

Jim Ryan Letter

The Impoundment Wars, Begun They Have. Plus, Wait, What Just Happened at UVA?

"Patriotic Education" Isn't. Plus, The Vagueness of "No Kings."

What's The Forecast In Virginia? Plus Literacy, Des Moines, Cell Phone Bans, More...And Fish Pics.

VCU Changed Scholarship for Descendants of the Enslaved to Align with Anti-DEI Policies

Finding Common Ground on Trump’s College Compact

Campus Leaders Conveniently Find the Spines They Lost Years Ago

How Zohran Mamdani Could Kill New York’s Schools

Texas A&M Tightens Rules on Talking About Race and Gender in Classes

How to Really Know a Thing, Directed by Quentin Tarantino

For decades, there has been research showing that tutoring can be a highly effective mode of instruction, but before 2020, large, in-school tutoring programs were not widespread. Then the pandemic struck, and large tutoring programs cropped up in districts around the nation. In fact, according to the June 2025 School Pulse Panel, 85% of American public schools now offer tutoring, with 42% offering high-dosage tutoring.

Has this COVID-era experiment been successful? Should these tutoring programs stick around as the pandemic recedes further from view? And what might AI mean for the future of tutoring? On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these questions, and more, with Liz Cohen.

Liz Cohen is the vice president of policy at 50Can and the author of The Future of Tutoring: Lessons from 10,000 School District Tutoring Initiatives.

In August 2023, right after he took over as superintendent of Houston ISD, Mike Miles came on The Report Card to talk about his plans for Texas’s largest school district.

From changing teacher pay to overhauling curriculum, Miles’s plans for Houston were ambitious—and controversial—but would they work?

Two years later, Mike Miles comes back on The Report Card to speak with Nat Malkus about the progress Houston has made and whether Houston’s bold reform agenda has gone according to plan.

F. Mike Miles is the superintendent of Houston Independent School District. Previously, he was the founder and CEO of Third Future Schools, superintendent of Dallas Independent School District, and superintendent of the Harrison School District in Colorado Springs.

Show Notes:

Mike Miles on Houston ISD

The Last Hurrah

TikTok. Instagram. Constant notifications. Many worry that phones are destroying students’ ability to pay attention and, in turn, their ability to learn in the classroom. Indeed, even many adults say that they have trouble reading books because of the constant stream of distractions their phones provide.

But what does the research say? Are students actually less able to pay attention as a result of their phones? On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these questions and more with Dan Willingham.

Daniel Willingham is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and the author of several books on education. His recent article Pay Attention, Kid! explored the link between technology use and students’ ability to focus.

Show Notes:

Pay Attention, Kid!

Are Purported Causes of NAEP Score Decline Actually Symptoms?

Daniel Willingham on Outsmarting Your Brain

Earlier this month, 2024 NAEP scores came out for 8th grade science and 12th grade reading and math, and the results were not good, with students losing ground in each subject. But these declines are not new and they are not only the result of the pandemic: Across a number of tests and subjects, scores have been declining for over a decade, especially for low-performing students. Indeed, while achievement for the top 10 percent of students has remained roughly flat, achievement for the bottom 10 percent of students has fallen precipitously—on many assessments, by well over a year.

What might be causing these declines? Is it the rise of phones? The fall of No Child Left Behind? The aftereffects of the Great Recession? A change in the culture of schooling? On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus explores these questions and more with James Wyckoff and Chad Aldeman.

James Wyckoff is the Memorial Professor of Education and Professor of Public Policy Emeritus at the University of Virginia.

Chad Aldeman is the founder of Read Not Guess, the author of Aldeman on Education, and a regular columnist for The 74.

Show Notes:

Testing Theories of Why: Four Keys to Interpreting US Student Achievement Trends

Puzzling Over Declining Academic Achievement

Interactive: See How Student Achievement Gaps Are Growing in Your State

Don't Blame the Subgroups

Student Achievement Is Down Overall—But Kids at the Bottom Are Sinking Faster

A lot has happened in education over the last couple of months. A new school year started for students across the country. State governors began announcing whether they would be opting in to the new federal tax credit scholarship program. Penny Schwinn, former Education Commissioner of Tennessee, withdrew her nomination to be Linda McMahon’s number two at the Department of Education. A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration’s shutdown of the Comprehensive Centers and Regional Educational Laboratories was unlawful. And the Trump administration continued waging its battles with elite universities.

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these developments, and more, with Andy Rotherham and Rick Hess.

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

Frederick M. Hess is a senior fellow and the director of education policy studies at AEI.

Show Notes:

Why Did Penny Schwinn Withdraw Her Bid to Be No. 2 in Trump’s Ed. Dept.?

The Greatest Trick Randi Weingarten Ever Pulled. Plus, What’s the Freezing Temperature in Trump World? A Penny for Your Thoughts. Dems in Voucher Disarray.

Everyone’s a Hypocrite

Restoring Free Inquiry on Campus

Tear Down This Wall: The Case for a Radical Overhaul of Teacher Certification

Breaking Down The New Federal School Choice Program With Shaka Mitchell

Commentary: Virginia Students Deserve Better. Close the ‘Honesty Gap'

PragerU Teacher Qualification Test

Is Online Sports Betting a Risk to Public Health?

Many school choice proponents today focus on what choice does for the students who use it to leave traditional public schools. But one of the original arguments for choice was that, through competition, it would spur traditional public schools to improve.

So: Has it?

Do choice programs make traditional public schools better? Does the size of these competitive effects depend on the type of choice program? And what other factors might matter for the amount of competitive pressure that choice programs exert on traditional public schools?

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these questions, and more, with Sarah Cordes. Nat and Sarah discuss ESAs and the new federal tax credit scholarship program, why school transportation matters so much for competitive effects, whether choice programs can be too large, how competition affects school principals, and what effect declining public school enrollments might have on school choice in the coming years.

Sarah Cordes is an associate professor of policy, organizational, and leadership studies at Temple University.

Show Notes:

Competition in Education Markets: Impacts, Perceptions, and Policy Contexts

The Effects of Charter Schools on Neighborhood and School Segregation: Evidence from New York City

In Pursuit of the Common Good: The Spillover Effects of Charter Schools on Public School Students in New York City

Over the past decade, schools increasingly have become a battleground for political fights and culture wars that distract from student learning. But, according to a new book, these political fights and culture wars are just one aspect of a much larger and more longstanding problem: schooling is often shaped by the interests of adults. From school boards to partisan identity, from teacher employment to property values, in No Adult Left Behind, Vlad Kogan traces the many ways in which the concerns of adults get in the way of student outcomes.

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these problems, and what to do about them, with Vlad Kogan. Nat and Vlad discuss school boards and state takeovers, how political identity shapes education debates, what the public gets wrong about the Scopes trial and the early twentieth-century push against teaching evolution in schools, why parents seem to undervalue education quality, closing schools with falling enrollments, how racial equity concerns for adults can conflict with racial equity concerns for children, what charter schools can teach us about district governance, and more.

Vladimir Kogan is a professor of political science at The Ohio State University and the author of No Adult Left Behind: How Politics Hijacks Education Policy and Hurts Kids.