The Educate Podcast

The Educate podcast is all about education. We care about equity and opportunity and how people learn. We dig deep into education research. We're curious about how research translates into policy — or not. We think good teaching is hard. We think history has a lot to tell us about why things are the way they are. We believe in vivid storytelling.

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August 19, 2021

Under Pressure: The College Mental Health Crisis

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?

August 3, 2021

Fading Beacon: Why America is Losing International Students

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%.

July 28, 2021

Who wants to be a teacher? Episode 4: This very leaky pipeline

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 force to reflect the diversity of students in the United States.

July 28, 2021

Who wants to be a teacher? Episode 3: The trouble with grading teachers

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 teacher good.

July 28, 2021

Who wants to be a teacher? Episode 2: The rise of the for-profit teacher training industry

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 Texas has become the single largest educator preparation program in the United States by enrollment, and it’s expanding into other states.

July 28, 2021

Who wants to be a teacher? Episode 1: The teacher emergency

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 turnover.

August 14, 2020

Black at Mizzou: Confronting race on campus

"Black Mizzou" is a thriving campus-within-a-campus that Black students have built over decades to make the University of Missouri a more welcoming place.

August 6, 2020

What the Words Say

A false assumption about what it takes to be a skilled reader has created deep inequalities among U.S. children, putting many on a difficult path in life.

July 29, 2020

Covid on Campus

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.

May 29, 2020

Same Pandemic, Unequal Education (from Us & Them podcast)

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 14, 2020

Facing uncertain futures, high school seniors weigh tough college options and alternate paths

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 7, 2020

Listeners tell us how they're adapting to at-home education

Teachers, students and families talk about how they've adapted while schools and campuses stay closed.

April 30, 2020

Is learning to read a constitutional right?

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.

April 23, 2020

A few silver linings emerge in a dark time of closed schools

Delece Smith-Barrow of The Hechinger Report shares some hopeful stories about education during the pandemic.

April 16, 2020

'Everything has changed': A look at K-12 education under coronavirus

Sarah Garland of The Hechinger Report on how (and whether) education carries on while schools are closed.

April 9, 2020

College in the time of coronavirus

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.

April 2, 2020

What good is a history major?

As fewer college students opt to major in history, there's an effort by history departments to prove the practical value of their discipline.

March 26, 2020

Graduation rate for Native students surges at the University of Minnesota

The percentage of Native students graduating from the U of M has doubled in the past decade.

March 19, 2020

Black girl, white college

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.

March 14, 2020

College administrators struggle with whether to close their classrooms in response to COVID-19

Some students say they want campuses to remain open.

March 12, 2020

A conundrum for student advocates: change their school or change society?

Unlike protesters at many universities, activists at Harvard seek social justice reforms beyond campus.

March 5, 2020

At some HBCUs, enrollment rises from surprising applicants

After decades of declining enrollment, HBCUs are seeing an uptick in new applicants, especially among Latino and international students.

February 27, 2020

With more students demanding action on climate change, teachers try to keep up

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.

January 27, 2020

Experts say widely used reading curriculum is failing kids

A first of its kind review finds Lucy Calkins' materials don't align with the science of reading.

December 20, 2019

New salvos in the battles over reading instruction

Several powerful people and organizations have weighed in on the national conversation prompted by APM Reports' podcast episodes.

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