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
Camille Leihulu Slagle is Native Hawaiian. She always knew she wanted to go away for college. Education would help her afford to stay in her homeland. Life in the islands is expensive. Camille wants to give back to her people through science, studying the volcanoes central to Hawaiʻi's landscape and culture. Audio documentary: Standing in Two Worlds
Aug 04, 2022•22 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
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
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
Today, more Black and Hispanic teachers enter the classroom through alternative pathways than through traditional teacher degree programs. The number of teachers of color in the United States has more than doubled since the 1980s in large part due to the growing number of preparation and certification pathways and recruitment efforts from the federal level down. But there's a catch: Many of these teachers won’t stay for long, further undermining efforts to get diversity in the teacher labor forc...
Jul 28, 2021•20 min
Critics of the rise in alternative and for-profit programs will claim teacher quality, and student learning, suffers when people are fast-tracked into the classroom without comprehensive training. But it’s hard to know for certain whether that’s true. The problem is, despite decades of trying, we haven’t agreed on how to measure teacher quality. There’s a lot of research that shows having a good teacher makes a huge difference in the outcomes of students, but it’s much less clear what makes a te...
Jul 28, 2021•22 min
Beginning in the early 1980s, a lot of states began to open up the pathways to becoming a teacher. People who already had a bachelor’s degree in something else didn’t need to go back to college to get trained in teaching. Policymakers hoped this would solve teacher shortages by getting more people into the profession, but it’s also opened up a whole new business model in educator preparation: Online for-profit teacher training programs have proliferated, and they’re growing fast. One program in ...
Jul 28, 2021•35 min
Every president since Eisenhower has talked about the need for more teachers, especially in certain rural and urban schools, and in subjects such as math and science. For decades, policies have been made and laws changed in order to recruit and train more and more teachers. But research shows we’ve been looking at the problem wrong, and that these efforts haven’t solved teacher shortages at all, but have created an oversize labor force with less training, less experience and high rates of turnov...
Jul 28, 2021•30 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
The coronavirus pandemic has left West Virginia schools particularly hard hit. The Us & Them podcast from West Virginia Public Radio brings us stories of teachers grappling with virtual classes for students who don't have access to the internet and how schools are trying, still, to keep kids fed.
May 30, 2020•12 min
Editor-in-chief of The Hechinger Report, Liz Willen, shares what she's heard from high school seniors who are feeling anxious and overwhelmed as they face pandemic-fueled challenges.
May 14, 2020•17 min
Teachers, students and families talk about how they've adapted while schools and campuses stay closed.
May 07, 2020•14 min
A federal court recently ruled that underfunded schools in Detroit violated students' right to a basic education. Advocates hope the case is the beginning of a trend.
Apr 30, 2020•22 min
Delece Smith-Barrow of The Hechinger Report shares some hopeful stories about education during the pandemic.
Apr 23, 2020•20 min
Sarah Garland of The Hechinger Report on how (and whether) education carries on while schools are closed.
Apr 16, 2020•17 min
A conversation with Hechinger Report higher education editor Jon Marcus on how learning and the college experience are changing, and what's yet to come.
Apr 09, 2020•28 min
As fewer college students opt to major in history, there's an effort by history departments to prove the practical value of their discipline.
Apr 02, 2020•19 min
The percentage of Native students graduating from the U of M has doubled in the past decade.
Mar 26, 2020•21 min
When it was time for me to enroll in a four-year college, I chose North Dakota State, a school that's mostly white, conservative and insular -- everything I wasn't. It was the hardest year of my life.
Mar 19, 2020•29 min
Some students say they want campuses to remain open.
Mar 14, 2020•28 min
Unlike protesters at many universities, activists at Harvard seek social justice reforms beyond campus.
Mar 12, 2020•28 min
After decades of declining enrollment, HBCUs are seeing an uptick in new applicants, especially among Latino and international students.
Mar 05, 2020•25 min
Most states and districts have adopted science standards that require teaching climate change. Teachers are left to get up to speed and help students understand the impacts.
Feb 27, 2020•22 min
A first of its kind review finds Lucy Calkins' materials don't align with the science of reading.
Jan 27, 2020•35 min
Several powerful people and organizations have weighed in on the national conversation prompted by APM Reports' podcast episodes.
Dec 20, 2019•46 min
Correspondent Emily Hanford talks about the latest NAEP results and what they say about the state of reading instruction in the U.S.
Nov 01, 2019•25 min
