AEI Podcasts
195 episodes listed below
Education policy, slowed down and examined.
The Report Card with Nat Malkus treats education as a policy field where details matter. Its conversations move from classroom practice to pressure on universities, asking how incentives, evidence, leadership, and institutional design shape students’ lives.
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The Report Card with Nat Malkus is an education-policy interview show built around careful sequencing. It starts with a problem, names the competing pressures, and then asks guests to make the mechanics plain. The style is steady. It does not turn every issue into a spectacle. Recent episodes move across K-12 schools, higher education, education history, and classroom practice, with enough patience to define terms and enough skepticism to keep asking what the evidence actually shows. A conversation with Eva Moskowitz looks at Success Academy, charter schools, curriculum coherence, learning loss, chronic absenteeism, and the future of the sector. A discussion with Jeff Denning examines grade inflation, test scores, college enrollment, earnings, and how teacher discretion can change student incentives. Math receives close attention. Jon Star talks through mathematical flexibility, procedural knowledge, conceptual understanding, curriculum quality, and the limits of improving instruction by exhortation alone. Jason Roberts and Justin Skysack explain Math Academy as an adaptive online platform that diagnoses what students know and builds from there. The show also treats education as a political and civic institution. Lee Bollinger discusses universities, the Trump administration, legal questions, and public trust. Randy Weingarten is invited to explain the practical work and views of the president of the American Federation of Teachers, including pensions, curriculum, and teacher autonomy. Johann Neem places American schooling in the period from the American Revolution to the Civil War, reminding listeners that today’s assumptions about school attendance had to be built over time. Year-end panels with education journalists widen the frame to federal policy, Title VI, budget fights, elite universities, and overlooked stories. The show suits listeners who want education arguments slowed down enough to inspect. Its best moments come when a large public debate becomes a series of testable questions: what changed, who decides, what incentive follows, and what students experience as a result.
Made for: For listeners who follow schools, universities, curriculum, teaching, and public policy, especially those who prefer structured questioning to ideological performance.
What sets it apart: It gives education debates procedural clarity: terms are defined, evidence is situated, and guests are pressed toward mechanisms rather than slogans.
The Report Card with Nat Malkus is the education podcast of the American Enterprise Institute. It is a hub for discussing innovative work to improve education – from early childhood to higher education – and the lives of America’s children. It evaluates research, policy, and practice efforts to improve the lives of families, schools and students. The Report Card seeks to engage with everyone who is interested in education in an accessible way. It brings guests that are doing compelling work across a spectrum from high level policy changes to innovations at the classroom level, work that will start conversations about improv...
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Nat Malkus turns education disputes into structured debates and evidence-minded interviews that clarify the choices hiding inside policy language.
Nat Malkus starts with a disputed question, establishes the stakes, and gives guests room to test the terms of the argument. The Report Card moves between moderated debates and focused interviews, covering religious charter schools, college sports governance, math instruction,…
A religious charter school debate changes the audience vote; keep an eraser near your opinions.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A plainspoken argument for why school results start with design.
Eva Moskowitz treats school performance as a design problem, and the conversation keeps coming back to how curriculum, recovery after the pandemic, absenteeism, and the fading of the charter boom fit together.
A careful look at grade inflation and what it may mean for students, enrollment, and earnings.
Grade inflation is treated here as a real measurement problem, and Nat Malkus and Jeff Denning keep the discussion close to what the data can actually support.
A grounded case for treating math as both procedural and conceptual work.
This episode keeps returning to a basic math-teaching question: should students learn procedures, ideas, or both? Nat Malkus and John Starr talk through multiple solution strategies, the line between memorization and procedural fluency, and when a student should slow down…
A clear look at whether a religious charter school fits inside public-school law.
The episode treats the coming Supreme Court argument in St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond as a useful test of where charter-school policy ends and religious education begins.
A civil, policy-minded debate about the NCAA's bid for an antitrust exemption.
This episode turns the NCAA's request for an antitrust exemption into a careful, civil argument about how college sports got here after NCAA v. Alston.
Héctor and Beto dissect Mexican grammar, slang, and news in native-speed Spanish conversations.
Small habit changes meet hands-on AI experiments.
A call-in helpline where listener questions turn into reported science and history investigations.
Josh Goodman of Boston University explains that roughly 4,000 chain tutoring centers, led by Kumon, Sylvan, Mathnasium and Huntington, operate in the US, with about 80% of chain storefronts belonging to those four.
Nat Malkus speaks with Eva Moskowitz about Success Academy and what its results mean after the pandemic.
Nat Malkus opens with a direct question: has grade inflation actually happened, and how much has it changed?
Nat Malkus talks with John Starr about what good math instruction should look like.
This episode features an interview with Lee Bollinger, former president of Columbia University, discussing how universities should respond to the Trump administration's policies on higher education.
This episode explores the history of American education from the American Revolution to the Civil War, discussing how common schooling was in colonial times and the development of public education.
Nat Malkus interviews AFT president Randy Weingarten about her role, views on education issues, and her new book on fascism and public education.
This episode explores Math Academy, an online adaptive math learning platform, and its potential to improve math instruction.
Education journalists discuss the biggest education stories of 2025, focusing on the Trump administration's impact on education.
A debate on whether AI should be used in K-12 classrooms, featuring experts discussing its potential benefits and drawbacks.
Interview with Alpha School co-founder Mackenzie Price about the AI-driven mastery learning model and its implications for education.
Nat Malkus interviews Liz Cohen about the effectiveness of large-scale tutoring programs post-pandemic and the potential role of AI.
Nat Malkus interviews Houston ISD superintendent Mike Miles about the progress and outcomes of his controversial school reforms two years into his tenure.
Host Nat Malkus discusses recent declines in NAEP scores and long-term achievement trends with education experts Jim Wyckoff and Chad Alderman.
This episode discusses a study on Chicago's free broadband program and its mixed effects on student engagement and achievement during the pandemic.
This episode discusses the prolonged school closures in the U.S.
Nat Malkus centers the conversation on a case heading to the Supreme Court.
Nat Malkus interviews math professor Anna Stocke about parallels between reading and math instruction, and how to improve math teaching.
The Report Card with Nat Malkus stages a debate over whether Congress should give the NCAA an antitrust exemption.
Host Nat Malkus interviews Carolyn Heinrich about credit recovery programs that help high school students who fail courses, discussing their effectiveness and potential improvements.
This episode analyzes the 2024 NAEP scores in 4th and 8th grade reading and math, discussing trends since 2022 and the pandemic's impact on American education with experts Marty West and Mark Schneider.
This episode features an interview with Emily Hanford about her podcast Sold a Story, its impact on literacy instruction and state reading laws, and how she became interested in education reporting.
Nat Malkus interviews Russ Roberts about the impact of the Gaza war on Israeli college campuses and the role of liberal arts education during conflict.
Three education journalists discuss the biggest stories in education for 2024, including the election's impact on policy, school choice, and campus protests over the Gaza war.
This episode explores how early mentors, particularly high school teachers, can identify and develop exceptional math talent in students.
Host Nat Malkus interviews Greg Ashman about why research-based practices like phonics often fail to reach classrooms and how schools can promote evidence-based instruction.
Nat Malkus interviews economist David Figlio about his research on school choice and its effects on traditional public schools.
Nat Malkus interviews College Board CEO David Coleman about the role of standardized tests like the SAT and AP exams in college admissions.
Nat Malkus interviews Cass Sunstein about free speech on campus, discussing legal and policy considerations for administrators.
Nat Malkus interviews Preston Cooper about the return on investment of college, examining how ROI varies by school, major, and degree type.
An interview with Brian Jacob discussing two papers on how the COVID-19 pandemic changed K-12 schooling.
Nat Malkus interviews Maryland State Superintendent Carrie Wright about her career and the Mississippi Miracle in education.
This episode discusses the effectiveness of ESSER relief funding in addressing pandemic learning loss in American schools, featuring an interview with researcher Dan Goldhaber.