Education Next » Podcast

Ed Next Book Club: Michelle Rhee on Radical

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 13:14:13 +0000

Michelle Rhee is, without a doubt, America’s best known education reformer. Her new autobiography, Radical: Fighting to Put Students First, chronicles her upbringing as the daughter of Korean immigrants, her career trajectory from Teach For America corps member to Chancellor of the District of Columbia Public Schools, and now as founder and CEO of the political advocacy group Students First.

In this installment of the Education Next book club, host Mike Petrilli talks with Michelle Rhee about becoming Michelle Rhee, what she’s learned over these last tumultuous years, and what she thinks the future holds for education reform in America.

Additional installments of the Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

—Education Next

Ed Next Book Club: Tony Wagner on Creating Innovators

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 14:33:16 +0000

In this edition of the Ed Next Book Club, Mike Petrilli sits down with Tony Wagner to discuss his new book, Creating Innovators.

Business leaders, pundits, and politicians all seem to agree: America needs to get much better at nurturing innovation if we are to rebuild our economy, expand opportunity, and win a secure future for our children. But what exactly is innovation? And more importantly, how can parents and educators develop it in our young people? What can we learn from young adults of the Millennial generation who themselves are highly successful innovators and entrepreneurs? And what does all of this imply for education policy.

To answer these questions and more, Tony Wagner, the author of The Global Achievement Gap, and the first innovation education fellow at the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard University, interviewed more than 150 people. The result is his acclaimed and commercially successful recent book, Creating Innovators: The Making of Young People Who Will Change the World. In today’s edition of the Education Next Book Club, we speak with Tony about his book, innovation, and how schools across the world can help to light the spark of innovation within their students.

Additional installments of the Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

—Education Next

Ed Next Book Club: Andy Smarick on The Urban School System of the Future

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 16:05:07 +0000

In this edition of the Ed Next Book Club, Andy Smarick explains to host Mike Petrilli that to make urban schools work, a shift must be made from having districts run schools to letting schools lead the charge in innovation. Smarick tackles this issue and more in his new book, The Urban School System of the Future.

Mike McShane reviewed the book for Ed Next here.

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

What We’re Listening To: Mike Petrilli and Josh Starr on Whether the Brightest Students Are Being Challenged

Education Next — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:52:59 +0000

This week, Ed Next’s Mike Petrilli was a guest on What’s the Big Idea? a podcast hosted by Josh Starr, superintendent of schools in Montgomery County, Md.

Starr has been in the limelight because he has criticized the amount of standardized testing taking place in schools, arguing that there should be a three-year moratorium on testing while we put the new Common Core standards in place. Montgomery County is currently rolling out a new curriculum that is aligned with the Common Core standards.

Some parents in Montgomery County are unhappy that the county is hoping to limit tracking under the new curriculum. In the past, many students in the wealthy county were offered accelerated instruction in math, but Starr believes that because the new curriculum is more challenging, it should not be necessary to accelerate so many students. He also suggested (in the podcast) that some parents push for their children to receive accelerated math instruction for the wrong reasons.

In the podcast, Petrilli challenged Starr’s claim that students with a wide range of abilities (in math in particular) will be able to be taught effectively in the same classroom using the new curriculum. (The issue of how to ensure that all students are challenged in diverse classrooms is a focus of Petrilli’s new book, The Diverse Schools Dilemma.) Petrilli described his visit to an elementary school in Montgomery County (which was the subject of an Education Next article) that has been praised for its efforts to teach a diverse student body to high academic standards, and noted that the school practices a great deal of tracking and ability grouping to ensure that all learners are challenged. He also pointed out that one of the most prominent advocates of integration, Richard Kahlenberg, agrees that tracking and ability grouping are necessary.

-Education Next

Ed Next Book Club: David Cohen on Teaching and its Predicaments

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 12:49:50 +0000

For at least twenty-five years now, reformers in the United States and other developed countries have attempted a variety of strategies to ramp up the quality of teaching and learning. Yet little of it has had the desired effect. Tracking these efforts for just as long has been David Cohen, one of the most thoughtful, and dogged, education scholars in the country. In this episode of the Ed Next Book Club podcast, Ed Next talks with Professor Cohen about this depressing track record, what went wrong, and also why he’s hopeful that we might finally get it right—topics addressed in his latest book, Teaching and its Predicaments.

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

Ed Next Book Club: Nate Levenson on Smarter Budgets, Smarter Schools

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 14:38:49 +0000

It’s not exactly news that America’s school systems are facing their greatest fiscal challenges since the Great Depression. For the first time in decades, real per pupil spending will decline this year, forcing school districts to make painful budget choices—providing fewer services with their diminished resources. Or so goes the conventional wisdom. Is it possible, on the other hand, that this economic downturn could be seized as an opportunity to rethink how education is delivered and to find approaches that are dramatically more affordable—and effective? Nate Levenson thinks so. He’s the managing director of the District Management Council, a former superintendent in Arlington, Massachusetts, and a former business executive. He joins the Ed Next book club today to talk about his book, Smarter Budgets, Smarter Schools: How to Survive and Thrive in Tight Times—and the reception it’s received to date.

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

Ed Next Book Club: Paul Tough on How Children Succeed

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 18:53:48 +0000

Ever since ancient times, scholars and philosophers have posited that character—and not just smarts—is what makes people succeed. Now, cutting edge research is proving the ancients right. In his latest book, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, Paul Tough takes his readers on a tour of this research, and into the lives of educators and others who are experimenting with new ways of inculcating these attributes in our youngsters.

Paul joins us today at the Ed Next Book Club to talk about his book, the impact he hopes it will have on the education reform debate, and what it means for the broader war on poverty.

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here, including Mike Petrilli’s interview with Paul Tough about his earlier book, Whatever It Takes.

Ed Next Book Club: Michael Horn on Disrupting Class

Thu, 16 Aug 2012 16:03:36 +0000

In 2008, the book Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns set the education community on fire, with its bold predictions of the coming growth in online learning. In this Ed Next book club podcast, host Michael Petrilli talks with Michael Horn, one of the book’s co-authors, about the reception the book has received, the theories it introduces, how the world has changed since 2008, and the future of digital learning.

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

Ed Next Book Club: Peg Tyre’s The Good School

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 15:01:25 +0000

In the introduction to her new book, Peg Tyre quotes a Dad frustrated by the process of choosing a school. “It’s absurd. When you purchase a house, you get an inspector’s report. When you buy a sports car, at least you get to check under the hood. But now we are trying to do something that matters one thousand times more to our family than buying a house or purchasing a car—and what happens? We’re expected to attend the open house, shake hands with the principal, blindly enroll them, and have faith that everything will turn out all right. We don’t even get to look under the hood!” In The Good School, Tyre, a former Newsweek reporter and author of a best-selling book on boys, offers a look under the hood for harried parents worried about getting their children a top-notch education. In this edition of the Ed Next book club, Mike Petrilli talks with Tyre about parents’ concerns, the advice she gives them, and why it matters.

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

Ed Next Book Club: Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System

Education Next — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 20:03:35 +0000

It is very rare for an education policy book to become a best-seller, much less a national phenomenon. Diane Ravitch’s The Death and Life of the Great American School System has been both, in spades. A chronicle of Ravitch’s “radical change of heart,” and an impassioned argument against today’s dominant forms of school reform, it has become a bible of sorts for the anti-reform movement. Mike Petrilli talks with Diane about her book, the impact it’s had on the education policy debate, the reactions it has sparked, and her vision for the future.

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

Ed Next Book Club: Paul Tough’s Whatever it Takes

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:41:40 +0000

Geoffrey Canada, the founder and leader of the Harlem Children’s Zone, is one of education reform’s best known and most respected heroes. A child of the streets of the South Bronx, he created what might be the most intense, most integrated effort ever to combat poverty in one of the nation’s poorest communities. In Whatever it Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America, New York Times Magazine editor Paul Tough takes readers into the heart of the Children’s Zone—and into the passion and logic of Geoffrey Canada. We talk with Paul about Canada’s vision, the role that the Promise Academy Charter school is playing, and the evidence about whether the Zone is working to transform Harlem and the children who live there. Join us for today’s edition of The Education Next Book Club.

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

Click here for a free subscription to the Ed Next Book Club podcasts on iTunes.

Ed Next Book Club: Chester Finn’s Troublemaker: A Personal History of School Reform Since Sputnik

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 17:27:15 +0000

School reformers are a dime a dozen these days, with education policy a suddenly sexy field and more than a few people willing to challenge the status quo. But it wasn’t always so. Back in the 1960s, when Fordham Institute president Checker Finn got his start as an education gadfly, contrarian thinking was hard to come by. In Troublemaker: A Personal History of School Reform Since Sputnik, Finn takes readers on a magic bus ride through the most momentous twists and turns of the past 40 years of education history—many of which he found himself in the middle of. What lessons should today’s reformers take from past education battles? Which critical episodes are most often overlooked? And does Finn’s own life experience make him optimistic or pessimistic about America—and its schools—going forward?

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

Ed Next Book Club: Paul Peterson’s Saving Schools

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 18:27:34 +0000

For more than four decades, Paul Peterson has been one of America’s leading political scientists. And for two decades, he’s been one of the leading advocates for increased parental choice in education. In his latest book, Saving Schools: From Horace Mann to Virtual Learning, Peterson examines the history of American education through the lens of six great heroes. Today we’ll talk with Paul about these heroes, the impact they had on our schools, and his optimism that digital learning might finally succeed where so many other reform efforts failed.

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

Students in Affluent School Districts Post Mediocre Results

Jay P. Greene — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 04:02:15 +0000

In this interview, Jay Greene discusses his new study, which examines student achievement in virtually every school district in the United States and compares the performance of U.S. districts with the performance of students in 25 developed countries. Greene and his co-author, Josh McGee, find that even the most elite suburban school districts produce results that are mediocre when compared to those of global competitors.

The study, “When the Best is Mediocre,” by Jay Greene and Josh McGee, will appear in the Winter 2012 issue of Education Next, and is now available online.

Readers can check out the rankings of 13,636 U.S. school districts, and see how students in each district compare to students in 25 other nations, in a Global Report Card available on the website of the George W. Bush Institute. There readers can also find a detailed explanation of the methods used to conduct the analysis.

Power to the Principals

Paul E. Peterson — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 11:00:35 +0000

Paul Peterson and Chester Finn discuss Brian Jacob’s study examining what happened when some Chicago principals were given the power to choose which teachers to keep and which to fire.

A New Leader for New Orleans

Peter Meyer — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 14:18:34 +0000

This spring, Paul Vallas was replaced as head of New Orleans’s Recovery School District by John White, a 35-year-old Teach for America alum. White, a former deputy chancellor in New York City, spoke with Education Next’s Peter Meyer two days before starting his new job.

Peter Meyer’s profile of John White appears in the Fall 2011 issue of Ed Next.

The Spring 2011 issue of Education Next includes an article by Jed Horne, “New Schools in New Orleans,” about the state of the schools in the Big Easy.

Ed Next Book Club: Rick Hess’ The Same Thing Over and Over

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 14:02:23 +0000

One of America’s most prolific, provocative, and persuasive writers on education, Frederick M. Hess has published over a dozen tomes on schooling. Today we talk with Rick about his magnum opus, published by Harvard University Press: The Same Thing Over and Over: How School Reformers Get Stuck in Yesterday’s Ideas. In it, he provides the long view of education reform, detailing the history of the familiar institutions we take for granted today, and arguing for much more flexibility in our thinking and educational delivery.

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

Click here for a free subscription to the Ed Next Book Club podcasts on iTunes.

NCLB Waivers

Paul E. Peterson — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 17:15:08 +0000

Podcast: Paul Peterson and Chester Finn discuss efforts by Arne Duncan to give states some leeway with respect to NCLB.

Ed Next Book Club: Terry Moe’s Special Interest

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 16:39:54 +0000

Decades in the making, Terry Moe’s Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America’s Public Schools appears destined to be the definitive scholarly work on the subject. Mike Petrilli talks with Moe about the book, the union’s rise to power, their influence on all facets of our education system, and whether changes within Democratic Party politics—and the emergence of online learning—create existential threats to these organizations. Join us for today’s edition of The Education Next Book Club.

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

Click here for a free subscription to the Ed Next Book Club podcasts on iTunes.

GOP Candidates on Education

Paul E. Peterson — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 04:01:13 +0000

Paul Peterson and Chester Finn discuss education policy and the Republican candidates (and probable candidates) for president.

For more on this topic, please see “The 2012 Republican Candidates So Far: What they’ve said and done on education in the past, and what they might do about our public schools if elected,” by Allison Sherry, which will appear in the Fall 2011 issue of Education Next and is now available online. The article is summarized in this press release.

Please also vote in our readers’ poll: Which presidential candidate would be best for K-12 education?

The Christian Brothers and their Public Schools

Peter Meyer — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 11:02:06 +0000

In Chicago, the Christian Brothers, one of the Catholic Church’s oldest orders, has launched and now runs two public schools. How did this come about? Arne Duncan, then the superintendent of Chicago Public Schools, asked them to.

The Christian Brothers educate nearly a million students in more than 80 countries. About 20,000 of those students are in the U.S. In the mid-90s, the Christian Brothers began opening a new set of free Catholic schools in low-income neighborhoods. Two of these San Miguel schools were in Chicago. The success of these schools caught the attention of Arne Duncan, who asked the Christian Brothers to start a charter school, and the rest is history.

A transcript of this podcast is available here.

To read the full story of the schools, please see “Catholic Ethos, Public Education,” by Peter Meyer, which appears in the Spring 2011 issue of Education Next.

Click here for a free subscription to the Education Next podcasts on iTunes.

Grounds for Dismissal

Martin West — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 04:01:39 +0000

In this podcast, Eric Hanushek and Marty West discuss two studies from the new issue of Ed Next that look at teacher dismissals.

“Managing the Teacher Workforce,” by Dan Goldhaber and Roddy Theobald, looks at which teachers in WA state are laid off when budget problems force districts to reduce their staff numbers, and at who would be laid off instead under policies based on effectiveness rather than experience.

“Principled Principals,” by Brian Jacob, looks at the decisions Chicago principals made when they were allowed to dismiss untenured teachers with minimal hassle.

As Eric Hanushek explains, very few studies have looked systematically at the issue of teacher dismissal before these, in part because there have been very few evaluations that have been meaningful, and very few related dismissals aimed at producing a higher quality teaching force.

A transcript of the conversation is available here.

Ed Next Book Club: Jay Mathews’ Work Hard, Be Nice

Wed, 13 Jul 2011 14:05:24 +0000

Jay Mathews, a longtime education reporter at the Washington Post and author of its Class Struggle column, is the rare journalist who seems to like telling hopeful stories. Decades ago he wrote Escalante: The Best Teacher in America, about the teacher who was later featured in the movie Stand and Deliver. And now he’s written another cheerful profile, this time of Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, the founders of the uber-successful KIPP schools. This week, Mike Petrilli talks with Jay about his book, Work Hard, Be Nice, about what KIPP means for the larger education reform debate, and whether Hollywood has bought the rights to his story. (An excerpt of Work Hard, Be Nice, was published in the Spring 2009 issue of Education Next.)

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

Click here for a free subscription to the Ed Next Book Club podcasts on iTunes.

Ed Next Book Club: David Whitman’s Sweating the Small Stuff

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 12:36:27 +0000

In 2008, longtime journalist and U.S. News reporter David Whitman wrote a provocatively titled book, Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism. His use of the word “paternalism” sparked a raucous debate among education reformers and reform critics about “No Excuses” schools like KIPP, Amistad Academy, and Cristo Rey. Were these schools to be celebrated for their prescriptiveness over matters of student behavior and character, or should they be criticized as racist, classist institutions, not unlike the old boarding schools for American Indian children? We talk with David about the book, the schools he profiled, and the still brewing debate about the meaning of the New Paternalism. Join us for today’s edition of The Education Next Book Club.

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

Click here for a free subscription to the Ed Next Book Club podcasts on iTunes.

Ed Next Book Club: Gene Maeroff’s School Boards in America

Mon, 09 May 2011 16:13:53 +0000

Former New York Times education correspondent Gene Maeroff decided to get his hands dirty when he ran for his local school board in central New Jersey. Maeroff shares some hard-earned lessons and wisdom about these Toquevillian institutions in his new book, School Boards in America: A Flawed Exercise in Democracy. Education Next’s Mike Petrilli talks with Gene about his experience as a school board member—and now, school board president—and whether he sees a future for this last bastion of local control. Mike wonders whether Gene is right when he says that “Anyone seeking to improve schools ignores the power of school boards at some peril.”

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

Click here for a free subscription to the Ed Next Book Club podcasts on iTunes.

Ed Next Book Club: John Merrow’s The Influence of Teachers

Mon, 25 Apr 2011 19:43:27 +0000

John Merrow has been covering education for more than thirty-five years—first as a reporter for NPR and now as a correspondent for PBS’s NewsHour. In his latest book, The Influence of Teachers, Merrow tackles many of today’s hot-button issues, from teacher tenure, to charter schools, to controversial leaders such as Michelle Rhee and Paul Vallas. Along the way, he leavens his observations with humor, wit, and wisdom from his own personal experience as a teacher. Today Ed Next’s Mike Petrilli talks with John about his book—and what he’s learned from the countless hours he’s spent as a reporter in America’s classrooms. Join us for today’s edition of The Education Next Book Club.

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

Click here for a free subscription to the Ed Next Book Club podcasts on iTunes.

More Lecturing, More Learning

Guido Schwerdt — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 04:03:58 +0000

In this podcast, Guido Schwerdt talks with Ed Next’s Paul Peterson about his new study finding that students learn more math and science when their teachers devote more time to lecturing and less time to problem-solving activities.

Today, on average, teachers spend more time on problem-solving activities than they do making lecture-style presentations. If teachers were to spend 10 percent more time lecturing, this would be associated with a rise in test scores comparable to about 1 or two months of additional learning in a year.

Ed Next Book Club: Alexander Russo’s Stray Dogs, Saints, and Saviors

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 16:47:56 +0000

Turning around low-performing schools is one of the most vital–and least glamorous–efforts in education, the unwanted job, argues Alexander Russo in his new book, Stray Dogs, Saints, and Saviors; Fighting for the Soul of America’s Toughest High School. In it, he chronicles the efforts of Green Dot Public Schools and its charismatic leader, Steve Barr, to transform South Central Los Angeles’s deeply troubled Locke High School. In this podcast, Mike Petrilli talks with Alexander about the Locke saga, how the media got the story wrong, the people at the center of the storm, and what all of this means for President Obama’s hopes for turning around the nation’s dropout factories.

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

Click here for a free subscription to the Ed Next Book Club podcasts on iTunes.

Taking the Measure of Michelle Rhee

Paul E. Peterson — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 02:44:52 +0000

In this podcast, Paul Peterson analyzes two new reports on Michelle Rhee’s performance as D.C.’s Schools Chancellor and describes his new findings on the gains made by D.C. students.

Two separate studies, one by Alan Ginsburg and one by an NRC committee, argue that D.C. students did not make very impressive gains when the schools were under Michelle Rhee’s leadership.

A closer look at the data, however, reveals that Rhee has outperformed her predecessors.

For more information, please read “The Case Against Michelle Rhee.”

How Valuable Is an Effective Teacher?

Eric A. Hanushek — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 04:01:45 +0000

In this podcast, Rick Hanushek talks with Ed Next’s Paul Peterson about his new study estimating the economic impact of teachers who produce higher than average gains in student learning.

Hanushek finds that the top 25 percent of teachers (teachers in the top quarter of the effectiveness distribution) contribute $16,000 per year in income to the average student (compared to what those students would earn if they had an average teacher). If a class has 25 students, that means that $400,000 in added income will accrue to students because they had a good teacher for one year.

If we could replace the bottom 5-8 percent of teachers with average teachers, we could perform as a nation near the top of the international math and science tests. In dollar terms, this would mean adding over $50 trillion to our nation’s gross domestic product.

For more, please see “Valuing Teachers,” by Eric Hanushek, which appears in the Summer 2011 issue of Education Next.

Click here for a free subscription to the Education Next podcasts on iTunes.

Ed Next Book Club: Richard Kahlenberg’s Tough Liberal

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 13:30:52 +0000

If Horace Mann was the key educational figure of the 19th century, and John Dewey of the first half of the 20th, then Al Shanker, the legendary leader of the American Federation of Teachers, deserves that title for the second half of the 20th century. So argues Richard Kahlenberg in his sweeping biography of Shanker, Tough Liberal. In this interview Mike Petrilli talks with Rick about the book, Shanker’s fascinating life, his role as a union leader, and whether he deserves the mantle of “education reformer.” And we’ll ponder: What would Al Shanker have thought of today’s reform conversation?

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

Click here for a free subscription to the Ed Next Book Club podcasts on iTunes.

Audio Excerpt: NurtureShock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman

Tue, 22 Mar 2011 11:10:05 +0000

Author Po Bronson reads an excerpt from his book NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children

Listen to the Excerpt

NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children
By Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
Published by Twelve (September 2, 2009)
ISBN-10: 0446504122
ISBN-13: 978-0446504126
Publisher’s Website

Additional Audio Book Excerpts Available Here

Ed Next Book Club: Dan Willingham’s Why Don’t Students Like School?

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 16:22:51 +0000

The Ed Next book club is back for round two.

Breakthroughs in cognitive science over the past 25 years have given rise to hope that a new era of brain-based teaching and learning may soon be upon us. Yet precious few advances have actually been made. Dan Willingham, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Virginia and author of the American Educator’s “ask the cognitive scientist” column, offers a bridge between the laboratory and the classroom in his volume, Why Don’t Students Like School: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for The Classroom. In today’s edition of the Education Next Book Club, we speak with Dan about his book, the responses he’s seeing in the field, and the indisputable cognitive principles that guide how humans learn.

Our first Ed Next book club podcast, on Richard Whitmire’s The Bee Eater, can be heard here.

Additional installments of our Ed Next Book Club podcast can be heard here.

Click here for a free subscription to the Ed Next Book Club podcasts on iTunes.

Ed Next Book Club: Richard Whitmire’s The Bee Eater

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 18:04:22 +0000

Check out the first ever Education Next Book Club Podcast!

Perhaps the most polarizing person in American education today is Michelle Rhee, the hard-charging former chancellor of the District of Columbia public schools. She’s the subject of a new book by Richard Whitmire called The Bee Eater. In this podcast, Mike Petrilli talks with Richard about Michelle’s upbringing, the reforms she brought to Washington, her successes, and the racial politics that led to her downfall.

Additional Book Club Podcasts Available Here

Click here for a free subscription to the Ed Next Book Club podcasts on iTunes.

Merit Pay in the U.S.

Thu, 24 Feb 2011 05:01:48 +0000

Eric Hanushek and Paul Peterson discuss why merit pay experiments in the U.S. tend not to last very long or work very well.

Two articles discussed in this podcast, “Blocked, Diluted, and Co-opted,” by Stuart Buck and Jay Greene and “Does Whole-School Performance Pay Improve Student Learning?” by Sarena Goodman and Lesley Turner, appear in the Spring 2011 issue of Education Next.

Click here for a free subscription to the Education Next podcasts on iTunes.

Merit Pay Around the Globe

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 19:55:07 +0000

Eric Hanushek talks with Ed Next’s Paul Peterson about a new study that finds that countries that reward teachers for effective teaching outperform countries that don’t.

Listen to the Podcast

To read the new study, please see “Merit Pay International,” by Ludger Woessmann, which appears in the Spring 2011 issue of Education Next.

Click here for a free subscription to the Education Next podcasts on iTunes.

Learning from Great Teachers

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 13:00:52 +0000

Doug Lemov, author of Teach Like a Champion, and Steven Farr, author of Teaching as Leadership, talk with Education Next about their efforts to identify what great teachers are doing in the classroom and to share these techniques with new teachers.

Listen to the Podcast

A transcript of the interview is available here.

For a review of Doug Lemov’s Teach Like a Champion, please see “Tools for Teachers” by Robert Pondiscio.
For a review of Steven Farr’s Teaching as Leadership, please see “Relentless Relentlessness” by Robert Pondiscio.

Click here for a free subscription to the Education Next podcasts on iTunes.

Audio Excerpt: The Black-White Achievement Gap

Tue, 01 Feb 2011 12:15:33 +0000

Former U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige reads an excerpt from his book
The Black-White Achievement Gap: Why Closing It Is the Greatest Civil Rights Issue of Our Time

Listen to the Excerpt

The Black-White Achievement Gap: Why Closing It Is the Greatest Civil Rights Issue of Our Time
By Rod Paige and Elaine Witty
Published by AMACOM (February 1, 2010)
ISBN-10: 0814415199
ISBN-13: 978-0814415191
Purchase the book from Amazon.com

Additional Audio Book Excerpts Available Here

Audio Excerpt: Why Boys Fail by Richard Whitmire

Sat, 25 Dec 2010 14:00:20 +0000

Author Richard Whitmire reads an excerpt from the introduction of his new book
Why Boys Fail: Saving Our Sons from an Educational System That’s Leaving Them Behind

Listen to the Excerpt

Why Boys Fail: Saving Our Sons from an Educational System That’s Leaving Them Behind
By Richard Whitmire
Published by AMACOM (January 13, 2010)
ISBN-10: 0814415342
ISBN-13: 978-0814415344
Purchase the book from Amazon.com

Additional Audio Book Excerpts Available Here

Grade Configuration Matters

Fri, 24 Dec 2010 15:12:03 +0000

Jonah Rockoff talks with Education Next about his new study, which finds that when students move to a middle school, their academic achievement declines substantially relative to students who continue to attend a K-8 school.

Listen to the Podcast

For more on this topic, please see “Stuck in the Middle,” by Jonah E. Rockoff and Benjamin B. Lockwood, which appears in the Fall 2010 issue of Education Next.

Click here for a free subscription to the Education Next podcasts on iTunes.

Pension Reform Would Be Good for Teachers

Robert M. Costrell — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 10:00:50 +0000

Robert Costrell and Michael Podgursky talk with Education Next about ways to eliminate the peculiar incentives built into current teacher pension systems.

Listen to the Podcast

Economists Bob Costrell of the University of Arkansas and Mike Podgursky of the University of Missouri are the authors of “Golden Handcuffs,” an article in the Winter 2010 issue of Education Next that looks at the high price paid in pension wealth by teachers who change jobs.

As Bob and Mike note in their article, many states are being forced to reevaluate their teacher pension plans. The unfunded liabilities of these plans are in the billions. But while most analysts are focused on the enormous cost of teacher pensions and their long-term sustainability, Bob and Mike have been looking at another aspect of teacher pensions: the perverse incentives embedded in these plans that interfere with the goal of attracting and retaining outstanding teachers. In this podcast, they talk about the findings of their most recent study, which examines the way that teacher pension systems concentrate benefits on those teachers who spend their entire careers in a single state, and punish teachers who are more mobile.

Click here for a free subscription to the Education Next podcasts on iTunes.

Audio Excerpt: Inside Urban Charter Schools by Kay Merseth

Sun, 12 Dec 2010 17:07:03 +0000

Author Kay Merseth reads an excerpt from her book
Inside Urban Charter Schools: Promising Practices and Strategies in Five High-Performing Schools

Listen to the Excerpt

Inside Urban Charter Schools: Promising Practices and Strategies in Five High-Performing Schools
By Katherine K. Merseth with Kristy Cooper, John Roberts, Mara Casey Tieken, Jon Valant, and Chris Wynne
Published by Harvard Education Press (January 27, 2009)
ISBN-10: 1934742104
ISBN-13: 978-1934742105
Purchase the book from Amazon.com

Additional Audio Book Excerpts Available Here

Audio Excerpt: The Dumbest Generation

Mark Bauerlein — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 16:03:53 +0000

Author Mark Bauerlein reads an excerpt from his book
The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30)

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The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future (Or, Don’t Trust Anyone Under 30)
By Mark Bauerlein
Published by Tarcher (May 15, 2008)
ISBN-10: 1585426393
ISBN-13: 978-1585426393
Purchase the book from Amazon.com
Additional Audio Book Excerpts Available Here

How Schools Respond to Competition

David Figlio — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 05:03:42 +0000

David Figlio talks with Education Next about his new study, which finds that public schools in Florida raise their performance when faced with the prospect of losing students to nearby private schools via the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program.

For more, read the study, “Does Competition Improve Public Schools?,” by David Figlio and Cassandra Hart, in the Winter 2011 issue of Education Next.

High-Achieving Math Students in the U.S. and Abroad

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 05:01:39 +0000

Paul Peterson and Eric Hanushek discuss their new study, which looks at how well the U.S. (and each individual state) is doing at producing high-achieving math students, as compared to other countries. The answer: not very well!

For more, please read “Teaching Math to the Talented,” which will appear in the Winter 2011 issue of Education Next and is now available online.

On November 10, 2010 at 12:30 pm, a webinar will take place at which the authors will discuss the study at greater length.

School Closures in New York City

Thu, 04 Nov 2010 13:51:46 +0000

Josh Dunn talks with Education Next about continuing efforts by New York City Chancellor Joel Klein to close chronically failing schools–despite a ruling by a state court that the closings could not proceed–using a federal School Improvement Grant.

For the article that inspired the podcast, please see “Educational Providence: State courts close one door, federal money opens another,” by Joshua Dunn, which will appear in the Winter 2011 issue of Education Next and is now available online.

Fighting Truancy: Voices from the Trenches

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 13:26:03 +0000

States and school districts vary in how they define truancy. In Wisconsin, a student who misses 5 days of school during a semester without an acceptable excuse is labeled as truant. In Washington, DC, you aren’t labeled a truant until you have missed 15 days of school without an excuse. Because of the variation in definitions, there are no nationwide statistics on truancy, but school districts report that anywhere from 15 to 25 percent of their high school students are truant.

On this podcast we talk about what causes truancy, and about different ways of fighting truancy. Joining us are Jessica Pinson Pennington, executive director of the Truancy Intervention Project in Georgia, and Barbara Babb and Gloria Danziger of the Truancy Court Program organized by the Center for Families, Children and the Courts at the University of Baltimore School of Law.

To learn more about truancy, please read “Truant,” an article by June Kronholz that appears in the winter 2011 issue of Education Next.

Accountability for Online Learning

Paul E. Peterson — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 17:41:38 +0000

Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week (October 21) about how online learning can solve its two accountability challenges – how to ensure that the student is submitting his own work, and how to ensure that courses are of high quality.

(Previous Peterson and Finn podcasts are available here.)

Republicans and Education

Paul E. Peterson — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 14:53:19 +0000

Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week (October 15) about what Republican victories in November might mean for education policy, particularly at the federal level. Will Republicans in Congress embrace Obama/Duncan education reforms or will they become the party of local (or state) control?

(Previous Peterson and Finn podcasts are available here.)

After Rhee

Paul E. Peterson — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 13:14:25 +0000

Education Next’s Paul Peterson and Chester E. Finn, Jr. talk this week (October 7) about what the defeat of Adrian Fenty in last month’s mayoral primary is likely to mean for education reform in Washington, D.C.

Peterson and Finn’s previous podcasts are available here.