Emily Hanford introduces the first episode of her new podcast, Sold a Story. There's an idea about how children learn to read that's held sway in schools for more than a generation — even though it was proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago. Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read. In this podcast, Hanford investigates the influential authors who promote this idea and the company that sells their work. It's an exposé of how educators cam...
Oct 20, 2022•34 min
Producer DJ Cashmere spent seven years teaching Black and brown students at a Noble Street charter high school in Chicago. At the time, Noble followed a popular model called "no excuses." Its schools required strict discipline but promised low-income students a better shot at college. After DJ left the classroom to become a journalist, Noble disavowed its own policies — calling them "assimilationist, patriarchal, white supremacist, and anti-black." In this hour, DJ, who is white, revisits his ol...
Aug 09, 2022•52 min
Native American students are just a tiny fraction of all the college students in the United States. They come with different histories, confronting an education system once used to erase their languages and cultures. In this project, three Indigenous college students tell how they are using higher education to strengthen ties to their Native roots and support their people. Photos: See portraits of the students in this documentary...
Aug 02, 2022•50 min
Most scientists believe climate change is increasing the severity of the storms we experience, and how quickly they intensify. After suffering two hurricanes, a winter storm, and devastating flooding in less than a year, Lake Charles, Louisiana, offers a troubling view of the wrenching, disturbingly inequitable effects of climate change. In Deep: One City’s Year of Climate Chaos offers a rich journalistic portrait of a working-class city and its residents at a perilous moment in our planet’s exi...
Sep 03, 2021•51 min
Even before the pandemic, campus counselling services were reporting a marked uptick in the number of students with anxiety, clinical depression and other serious psychiatric problems. What is a college’s responsibility for helping students navigate mental health challenges, and how well are colleges rising to the task? Read more: Inside the college mental health crisis...
Aug 19, 2021•51 min
Many schools around the country are struggling to find enough teachers. Large numbers of teachers quit after a short time on the job, so schools are constantly struggling to replace them. The problem is particularly acute at rural schools and urban schools. The most common level of experience of teachers in the United States now is one year on the job. At the same time, enrollment in teacher training programs at colleges and universities is plummeting, and schools are looking to other sources to...
Aug 11, 2021•52 min
Colleges and universities in the United States attract more than a million international students a year. Higher education is one of America’s top service exports, generating $42 billion in revenue. But the money spigot is closing. The pandemic, visa restrictions, rising tuition and a perception of poor safety in America have driven new international student enrollment down by a jaw-dropping 72 percent. Read more: The U.S. may never regain its dominance as a destination for international student...
Aug 03, 2021•51 min
Sixteen-year-old Myon Burrell was sent to prison for life after a stray bullet killed an 11-year-old girl in Minneapolis in 2002. Amy Klobuchar, who was Minneapolis’ top prosecutor, brought first-degree murder charges as part of a national crackdown on gang violence — a crackdown that engulfed young men of color. Burrell maintained his innocence for 18 years in prison. AP reporter Robin McDowell spent a year looking into Burrell’s case and found that multiple people had lied about Burrell’s invo...
Apr 17, 2021•51 min
More than 40 states have sent their most vulnerable kids to facilities run by a for-profit company named Sequel. Many of those kids were abused there. Read more .
Nov 22, 2020•51 min
Lauren Brown says college was "culture shock." Most of the students at her high school were Black, but most of the students at the University of Missouri were white. And she got to the university in the fall of 2015, when Black students led protests in response to a string of racist incidents. The protests put Mizzou in the national news. But the news stories didn't match what Lauren saw. They made it seem like racism on campus was an aberration. And they made it seem like Black student organizi...
Aug 14, 2020•52 min
Everyone agrees that the goal of reading instruction is for children to understand what they read. The question is: how does a little kid get there? Emily Hanford explores what reading scientists have figured out about how reading comprehension works and why poverty and race can affect a child’s reading development. Read the full story .
Aug 06, 2020•52 min
The coronavirus pandemic represents the greatest challenge to American higher education in decades. Some small regional colleges that were already struggling won’t survive. Other schools, large and small, are rethinking how to offer an education while keeping people safe. This program explores how institutions are handling the crisis, and how students are trying to navigate a major disruption in their college years. Colleges on the brink The long tradition of students attending small, residentia...
Jul 29, 2020•52 min
During the Vietnam War, roughly one in five GIs actively opposed the conflict. Many servicemen and women came to believe they were not liberating the country from communism but acting as agents of tyranny. In the combat zone, they rebelled against their commanders' orders. At home, they staged massive protests. Soldiers for Peace offers a first-person look at how GIs were transformed by Vietnam, and the strategies veterans and active-duty personnel used to bring the war to an end.
Nov 07, 2019•52 min
In the 1950s, the United States came up with a plan to solve what it called the "Indian Problem." It would assimilate Native Americans by moving them to cities and eliminating reservations. The 20-year campaign failed to erase Native Americans, but its effects on Indian Country are still felt today.
Nov 01, 2019•53 min
In the 1970s, the founder of the National Institute on Aging convinced a nation that senility was really Alzheimer's and could be cured. Research money flowed to one theory, leaving alternatives unexamined — today it's come up short.
Oct 15, 2019•53 min
For decades, schools have taught children the strategies of struggling readers, using a theory about reading that cognitive scientists have repeatedly debunked. And many teachers and parents don't know there's anything wrong with it.
Aug 22, 2019•53 min
A growing body of research finds that repeatedly uprooted children are more likely to struggle in school and more likely to drop out. But there are ways to help them succeed.
Aug 14, 2019•52 min
At Georgia State in Atlanta, more students are graduating, and the school credits its use of predictive analytics. But critics worry that the algorithms may be invading students' privacy and reinforcing racial inequities.
Aug 06, 2019•52 min
Tasers have become an essential tool for police, but how effective are they? An APM Reports investigation finds that officers in some big cities rated Tasers as unreliable up to 40 percent of the time, and in three large departments, newer models were less effective than older ones. In 258 cases over three years, a Taser failed to subdue someone who was then shot and killed by police.
May 09, 2019•51 min
Scientific research has shown how children learn to read and how they should be taught. But many educators don't know the science and, in some cases, actively resist it. As a result, millions of kids are being set up to fail.
Sep 10, 2018•53 min
You might think apprenticeships are a relic from an earlier era, but a growing number of Americans are using them as a way into the middle class.
Sep 03, 2018•53 min
They bet that college would help them move up. Did it pay off?
Aug 27, 2018•52 min
Colleges have long offered a pathway to success for just about anyone. But new research shows that with the country growing ever more economically divided, colleges are not doing enough to help students from poor families achieve the American Dream.
Aug 20, 2018•53 min
At the end of 1944, the U.S. government lifted the order barring people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. Many people freed from camp faced racism and poverty as they tried to rebuild their lives.
Jul 11, 2018•53 min
At the beginning of World War Two, Japanese Americans not already in the military were declared ineligible for service. The government said it doubted their loyalty. But as the war dragged on, the need for manpower grew urgent.
Jul 11, 2018•53 min
Japanese warplanes bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Hours later, the FBI began rounding up people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast.
Jul 11, 2018•53 min
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is a major investor in Neurocore, a company based in Michigan that claims to help kids with various attention deficit disorders. Since taking office, she's kept her stake in the company and invested even more money in it. In the third and final installment of "Ethics Be Damned," APM Reports investigative journalist Tom Scheck joins Lizzie O'Leary of Marketplace Weekend to parse DeVos' potential conflicts of interest. Plus, what happens if watchdog groups use ethic...
Mar 19, 2018•11 min
It all started with a fur coat and an expensive rug. It ended with the resignation of President Eisenhower's chief of staff. That incident led to the government ethics system of today. In the second installment of our series, APM Reports investigative journalist Tom Scheck joins Lizzie O'Leary of Marketplace Weekend to discuss the history of U.S. ethics rules, and the complicated financial holdings of current Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. To read Tom's full investigation, visit apmreports.com/...
Mar 19, 2018•12 min
More than half of Trump's 20-person Cabinet has engaged in questionable or unethical conduct since taking office. The nation's top ethics official says "these are perilous times." In the first installment of "Ethics Be Damned," APM Reports investigative journalist Tom Scheck joins Lizzie O'Leary of Marketplace Weekend to discuss whether the federal ethics system is broken. To read Tom's full investigation, visit apmreports.com/ethics .
Mar 19, 2018•12 min
Public schools are denying children with dyslexia proper treatment and often failing to identify them in the first place.
Sep 11, 2017•52 min
