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.

Recently, Harvard faculty voted to push back on grade inflation at the institution by capping the proportion of A’s given to students at 20%. But according to a new paper, Harvard’s new policy—and grade caps in general—are not the right solution.

In What Does a Grade Mean? Informativeness and Strategic Manipulation of Grading Systems, Scott Duke Kominers and Joshua S. Gans argue that to create better incentives for students and faculty, we need to change the current grading system itself.

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus speaks with Scott Duke Kominers about Harvard’s new grade inflation policy. Nat and Scott discuss grading at Harvard, how traditional grading creates bad incentives for students, why grade caps might make these incentives worse, the importance of communicating information about course difficulty, how a different grading system can create better incentives and lead to more learning, and more.

Scott Duke Kominers is the Sarofim-Rock Professor of Business Administration in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School; a Faculty Affiliate of the Harvard Department of Economics and the Harvard Center of Mathematical Sciences and Applications; and an a16z crypto Research Partner.

Show Notes:

What Does a Grade Mean? Informativeness and Strategic Manipulation of Grading Systems.

Grade Caps Fail the Game Theory Exam

When the Proposal Keeps Changing, It's Clear It Doesn't Make the Grade

70% of Faculty Vote to Overhaul Harvard Grading With A Cap

Enigmatic Puzzles

Historically, many didn’t consider Alabama to be at the forefront of education, but Alabama’s pandemic recovery may be among the best in the nation.

Perhaps most impressively, Alabama was the only state whose 4th-grade math NAEP scores were higher in 2024 than in 2019, and Alabama reports a chronic absenteeism rate that is the lowest in the nation—and the closest to its pre-pandemic levels of any state.

Are these results part of a broader story about how Alabama has changed the way it thinks about education? What changes have helped produce Alabama’s recent education gains? And where might education in the Yellowhammer State be headed next?

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these questions and more with Alabama State Superintendent of Education Eric Mackey.

Although the Trump administration’s efforts to reform education might not be making national headlines quite as often as they did one year ago, a lot has still happened in education over the last several months.

The Trump administration has continued its push to dismantle the Department of Education. Elite universities are making efforts to reform campus culture. The Department of Education released a major report on the future of the Institute of Education Sciences. And campaigns to limit phone use and, now, screen time in school continue to gain momentum.

To make sense of it all, on this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these developments, and more, with Andy Rotherham and Rick Hess.

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

Rick Hess is a senior fellow and the director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.

Show Notes:

Mend, Don’t End, the Institute of Education Sciences

Hope or Hype? What to Make of Yale’s Report on Trust in Higher Ed

The Trump Administration Has Mostly Dismantled the Ed. Dept. Should You Care?

Reimagining the Institute of Education Sciences

This podcast has covered AI in K–12 education a fair amount, but how will and how should AI change higher education?

Should any human instructors be replaced with AI? Should universities change what and how they teach to strengthen their value proposition? And in the age of AI, how should universities prepare their students for an unpredictable job market?

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

Hollis Robbins is a professor of English at the University of Utah, where she was formerly Dean of the College of Humanities. She writes about AI in higher education on her Substack, Anecdotal Value.

Show Notes:

It's Later Than You Think

Last Mile Education

Teaching Quality

The Two-Minute Mile Problem

What Should a University AI Czar Do?

My AI Thinks Civics Is Black Studies

Note: This episode originally aired in April 2025.

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus speaks with Eva Moskowitz, the founder and CEO of Success Academy. Nat and Eva discuss why COVID learning loss is a misnomer; whether chronically absent students should face consequences for their poor attendance; why, despite its strong academic performance, Success Academy decided to overhaul its curriculum; what Success Academy looks for when hiring new teachers; Success Academy’s potential expansion into Florida and Texas; the challenges Success Academy faced in expanding into high school; whether charter schools have lived up to their original promise; and what’s next for Success Academy.

Eva Moskowitz is the founder and CEO of Success Academy Charter Schools, a network of 57 schools in New York City educating 22,000 students. Despite 72% of its students being economically disadvantaged, Success Academy ranked first on the 2024 New York State Grade 3–8 math exam.

Recently, there has been a lot of handwringing over grade inflation both at the higher education and K–12 levels, but how big of a problem actually is grade inflation?

What sort of effect does grade inflation have on student learning? Does grade inflation help or hurt college enrollment? And what impact, if any, does grade inflation have on lifetime earnings?

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

Jeffrey T. Denning is an associate professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, and—along with Rachel L. Nesbit, Nolan G. Pope, and Merrill Warnick—is the author of a new paper: Easy A’s, Less Pay: The Long-Term Effects of Grade Inflation.

Math is one of the subjects that gets the most attention in American education, but how well do we actually understand what good math instruction should look like?

Should math classes consist of students solving problem after problem, or should math classes also include opportunities for discussion and group work? Should students learn a topic and then move on to the next topic after they have achieved competency, or should teachers strive to teach each topic deeply, giving students many different strategies for solving problems? And if math education in America were dramatically improved, just how good could it be?

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these questions, and more, with Jon Star. Nat and Jon discuss conceptual understanding and procedural fluency, whether constructivism has a place in the classroom, the value of worked examples, online curricula and the importance of curricular coherence, what mathematical flexibility is and why it matters, whether students can understand problem-solving strategies more or less well, whether math makes students better problem-solvers more generally, Chinese math education, Jon’s experience teaching middle school math and how being a researcher informs his teaching, whether math education research is sufficiently accessible to teachers, how to improve American math education, and how good American math education could be.

Jon Star is the Carl H. Pforzheimer, Jr. Professor of Teaching and Learning at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a middle school math teacher.

Over the past year, the Trump administration has rewritten the playbook for how Washington interacts with higher education, especially elite universities.

How should universities respond to the Trump administration’s efforts? Have the Trump administration’s actions been legal? And how can universities better serve the American public?

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these questions and more with Lee Bollinger. Nat and Lee discuss the purpose of large university endowments, the meaning of the Ivy League today, university hiring, whether elite universities should double their undergraduate enrollments, the scholarly temperament, whether there is a tension between serving the public and the research missions of universities, the relationship between Washington and universities in the pre-Trump era, how universities can better convey their value to the American people, and the best evidence in favor of affirmative action.

Lee Bollinger is the Seth Low Professor at Columbia University and the author of University: A Reckoning. Previously, he was President of Columbia University and President of the University of Michigan.

To commemorate America’s 250th anniversary, The Report Card will be releasing a few episodes on the history of American education—both to discuss how we arrived at the education system we have today and how our education system has shaped America.

On this episode, Nat Malkus and Johann Neem cover the period between the American Revolution and the Civil War. Nat and Johann discuss civics education in early America, why some educators cared so much about imagination and self-culture, Horace Mann, pushback against education reformers, the difficulties of schooling in the young republic, the spread of the common schools movement, and more.

Johann Neem is Professor of History at Western Washington University, editor of the Journal of the Early Republic, and the author of Democracy’s Schools: The Rise of Public Education in America.

On the right, teachers’ unions are often treated as the bogeyman, and no one today is more synonymous with teachers’ unions than Randi Weingarten. Indeed, in 2022 former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called Weingarten “the most dangerous person in the world.”

But who is Randi Weingarten? What does she do on a day-to-day basis? How much power does she actually have? What are her views on topics such as pensions, curriculum, and teacher autonomy? And is she actually the most dangerous person in the world?

On this episode of The Report Card, Randi Weingarten joins Nat Malkus for a wide-ranging conversation on many of the biggest topics in American education.

Randi Weingarten is the president of the American Federation of Teachers and the author of Why Fascists Fear Teachers: Public Education and the Future of Democracy.