Education

APM Reports has a long history of covering education and reading issues in the United States, dating back to the days of American RadioWorks, which produced several hour-long audio documentaries. Since 2022, the majority of the education reporting has been related to the investigative podcast Sold a Story, hosted by Emily Hanford.

September 3, 2015

From Boots to Books: Student Veterans and the New GI Bill

The longest war in American history is drawing to a close. Now, the men and women who served are coming home, and many hope to use higher education to build new, better lives.

August 27, 2015

Rethinking teacher preparation

In the United States, teaching isn't treated as a profession that requires extensive training like law or medicine. Teaching is seen as something you can figure out on your own, if you have a natural gift for it. But looking for gifted people won't work to fill the nation's classrooms with teachers who know what they're doing.

August 27, 2015

An American way of teaching

In 1993, a group of researchers set out to do something that had never been done before. They would hire a videographer to travel across the United States and record a random sample of eighth-grade math classes. What they found revealed a lot about American teaching.

August 27, 2015

Teaching Teachers

Research shows good teaching makes a big difference in how much kids learn. But the United States lacks an effective system for training new teachers or helping them get better once they're on the job.

August 26, 2015

Thinking about math from someone else’s perspective

"What you do when you’re teaching is you think about other people’s thinking. You don’t think about your own thinking; you think what other people think. That’s really hard." -Deborah Ball

August 26, 2015

A different approach to teacher learning: Lesson study

In the United States, we tend to think that improving education is about improving teachers - recruiting better ones, firing bad ones. But the Japanese think about improving teaching. It's a very different idea.

August 20, 2015

The reinvention of Paul Quinn College

Paul Quinn College was a sorry sight when Michael Sorrell, the school's fifth president in as many years, drove onto the Dallas campus to see what he was dealing with. As Sorrell looked around campus, he had one thought. How do you save a school that everyone thinks is already dead?

August 20, 2015

Lysious Ogolo: ‘I didn’t know what a historically black college was’

Lysious Ogolo is an audio production major at Howard University. He's originally from Nigeria, and moved to the United States with his family in 2008 when he was 18 years old.

August 20, 2015

Lilian Spriggs: ‘When I look at HBCUs, I think of independence’

Lilian Spriggs is an audio production major at Howard University, from Jackson, Mississippi. After graduation, she wants to work as an on-air personality at a radio station.

August 20, 2015

The history of HBCUs in America

Zach Hubert came out of slavery with an adage that he would pass on to his children, and his children's children, and their children down the line. "Get your education," he would always say to them when his family gathered together in later years. "It's the one thing they can't take away from you."

August 20, 2015

The Living Legacy: Black Colleges in the 21st Century

Before the civil rights movement, African Americans were largely barred from white-dominated institutions of higher education. And so black Americans, and their white supporters, founded their own schools, which came to be known as Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

September 17, 2014

A company short on skilled workers creates its own college-degree program

At a Toyota plant in Kentucky, young people are learning how to fix robots, earning associate's degrees and graduating with jobs that pay up to $80,000 a year.

September 11, 2014

A 21st-century vocational high school

For years, vocational education was seen as a lesser form of schooling, tracking some kids into programs that ended up limiting their future opportunities. Today, in the nation's best vocational programs, things are different.

September 11, 2014

Ready to Work: Reviving Vocational Ed

Vocational education was once a staple of American schooling, preparing some kids for blue-collar futures while others were put on a path to college. Many experts say it's time to bring back career and technical education.

September 10, 2014

Career academies: A new twist on vocational ed

Across the country, thousands of high schools are transforming into career academies. The idea is that students will be more engaged if they see how academics are connected to the world of work. And they’ll be more likely to get the postsecondary schooling they need to support themselves in today’s economy.

September 9, 2014

The troubled history of vocational education

Vocational education was once used to track low-income students off to work while wealthier kids went to college. But advocates for today's career and technical education say things have changed, and graduates of vocational programs may have the advantage over graduates of traditional high schools.

September 4, 2014

The New Face of College

Just 20 percent of college-goers fit the stereotype of being young, single, full-time students who finish a degree in four years. College students today are more likely to be older, part-time, working, and low-income than they were three decades ago.

September 3, 2014

Four-year institutions brace for population shifts

Colleges and universities are accepting many more students of color, many more students from working class and poor families, and many more people who are sometimes referred to as "nontraditional" students.

September 3, 2014

Heritage University: Bringing elite education to the most disadvantaged

Since 1982 Heritage University, in Eastern Washington's Yakima Valley, has made it its mission to educate some of the poorest, most isolated students in the country.

September 2, 2014

University of Texas at El Paso: Opportunity U.

University of Texas at El Paso President Diana Natalicio has a problem with the "nontraditional student." She doesn't like the term. "It suggests that you're not something, rather than that you are something new," she says.

September 1, 2014

Amherst College: An elite school reaches out

Routinely ranked among the top private schools, Amherst is leading the way among elite colleges in serving a much more diverse group of students.

August 31, 2014

Teachers embrace the Common Core

Teachers in Reno, Nevada, were skeptical of the Common Core at first. But they have embraced the new standards as a way to bring better education to students who are struggling in school -- and to kids who are ahead.

August 28, 2014

A teacher loses faith in the Common Core

New York teacher Kevin Glynn was once a big fan of the Common Core, but he says the standardized testing that's come along with it is reducing students to test scores and narrowing what gets taught in schools.

August 28, 2014

Greater Expectations: The Challenge of the Common Core

The United States is in the midst of a huge education reform. The Common Core State Standards are a new set of expectations for what students should learn each year in school.

$Are you smarter than a Common Core student? Try a Common Core test$

August 27, 2014

Are you smarter than a Common Core student? Try a Common Core test

New Common Core tests are supposed to measure students' ability to think critically, analyze information, and cite evidence as well as test their conceptual understanding of mathematics and their ability to apply math to the real world. See how you'd do on a Common Core test.

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