The Report Card with Nat Malkus The AEI Podcast Channel

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat interviews Freeman Hrabowski. Nat and Freeman discuss Black students in STEM, the state of free speech on college campuses, university spending and how to keep costs down, whether high schools are doing a good enough job of preparing students for college, the NCAA tournament, campus culture, the value of collaborative teamwork, how to improve graduation rates, multibillion-dollar university endowments, and more.
Freeman Hrabowski served as president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) from 1992 until earlier this year. Under his leadership, UMBC became the nation’s number one college in terms of the number of Black students it graduates who later earn a Ph.D. in the natural sciences and engineering—an especially impressive feat when you consider that UMBC’s undergraduate enrollment is only about 11,000 and that Black students make up slightly less than 20% of that number. During Hrabowski's tenure, UMBC also more than doubled graduation rates, earned the #1 ranking in US News's list of up and coming universities for six consecutive years, and won the biggest upset in the history of March Madness.
Show Notes:
https://meyerhoff.umbc.edu (Meyerhoff Scholars Program)
https://www.science.org/doi/full/10.1126/science.aar5540 (Replicating Meyerhoff for Inclusive Excellence in STEM)
https://umbc.edu/stories/meyerhoff-czi/ (Meyerhoff at Berkeley and UCSD)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgTo4tslgwM (Freeman Hrabowski on 60 Minutes)
https://www.amazon.com/Empowered-University-Leadership-Culture-Academic/dp/1421432919/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2V7Y62ZWHLOT9andkeywords=freeman+hrabowskiandqid=1663753753andsprefix=freeman+hr%2Caps%2C63andsr=8-1 (The Empowered University)
https://www.amazon.com/Holding-Fast-Dreams-Empowering-Achievement/dp/0807003441/ref=sr_1_3?qid=1663753798andrefinements=p_27%3AFreeman+A.+Hrabowski+IIIands=booksandsr=1-3andtext=Freeman+A.+Hrabowski+III (Holding Fast to Dreams)
https://www.amazon.com/Overcoming-Odds-Academically-Successful-American-ebook/dp/B00VRJ3QL8/ref=sr_1_4?qid=1663753855andrefinements=p_27%3AFreeman+A.+Hrabowski+IIIands=booksandsr=1-4andtext=Freeman+A.+Hrabowski+III (Overcoming the Odds)
https://www.amazon.com/Beating-Odds-Academically-Successful-American/dp/0195102193/ref=sr_1_2?qid=1663753855andrefinements=p_27%3AFreeman+A.+Hrabowski+IIIands=booksandsr=1-2andtext=Freeman+A.+Hrabowski+III (Beating the Odds)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snISurWcFo8 (UMBC Upsets UVA)

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat interviews Doug Lemov. Nat and Doug discuss cellphones and social media, how they harm the academic and social development of students, how they make schools less inclusive, and what we can do about all of this. Nat and Doug also discuss online learning, school choice, the difficulty of creating schools with a coherent operating philosophy, the state of public schooling, The Scarlet Letter, the pandemic's effects on students, teacher professional development, the relationship between parenting and schooling, the idea that schooling sometimes has to be hard for students, and the crucial role that schools play in shaping students' habits of attention.
Doug Lemov is the author of Teach Like a Champion and the founder of the Teach Like a Champion organization. He was previously the managing director and one of the founders of Uncommon Schools. His new book, Reconnect: Building School Culture for Meaning, Purpose, and Belonging, hits shelves next month.
Show Notes:
https://www.educationnext.org/take-away-their-cellphones-rewire-schools-belonging-achievement/ (Take Away Their Cellphones)
https://www.amazon.com/Reconnect-Building-Culture-Meaning-Belonging/dp/1119739977/ref=sr_1_5?crid=2JTLDZ6QXSXKTandkeywords=doug+lemovandqid=1662498364andsprefix=d%2Caps%2C64andsr=8-5 (Reconnect: Building School Culture for Meaning, Purpose, and Belonging)
https://www.amazon.com/Teach-Like-Champion-Doug-Lemov/dp/1119712610/ref=sr_1_1?crid=31JKDDNTGQD7Eandkeywords=teach+like+a+championandqid=1662578477andsprefix=teach+like+a+champion%2Caps%2C61andsr=8-1 (Teach Like A Champion 3.0)
https://teachlikeachampion.org/about/meet-the-team/ (Teach Like A Champion)
https://www.amazon.com/iGen-Super-Connected-Rebellious-Happy-Adulthood/dp/1501152017/ref=sr_1_1?crid=320ENJQP1AXK0andkeywords=jean+twengeandqid=1662578568andsprefix=jean+twenge%2Caps%2C63andsr=8-1 (iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy--and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood--and What That Means for the Rest of Us)
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/05/opinion/social-media-parents-children.html (It Was a Mistake to Let Kids Onto Social Media Sites. Here’s What to Do Now.)

We are now entering the fourth school year that will be affected by COVID-19. What can we expect? What have we learned so far? And does anyone still care?
What should we be keeping our eyes on as another year rolls around? Evolving safety protocols? School spending? Student behavior? Potential teacher shortages? New vaccines?
To discuss these questions and more, https://www.aei.org/profile/nathaniel-n-malkus/ (Nat) invited https://www.aei.org/profile/john-bailey/ (John Bailey) onto the podcast for a conversation. At AEI, John studies technology and education, and since the start of the pandemic he has written over 550 COVID-19 Policy Updates on his https://covid19policyupdate.substack.com (Substack).
Show Notes:
https://covid19policyupdate.substack.com (John's COVID-19 Policy Updates)
https://www.returntolearntracker.net (Nat's Return to Learn Tracker)
https://www.educationnext.org/reset-strategies-now-prepare-for-the-future-forum-covid-19-precautions-in-schools/ (Reset Strategies Now, Prepare for the Future)
https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/a-failure-to-respond-public-school-mask-mandates-in-the-2021-22-school-year/ (A Failure to Respond: Public School Mask Mandates in the 2021–22 School Year)
https://www.aei.org/research-products/report/pandemic-enrollment-fallout-school-district-enrollment-changes-across-covid-19-response/ (Pandemic Enrollment Fallout: School District Enrollment Changes Across COVID-19 Response)
https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/homeland/pandemic-influenza-implementation.html (Bush Pandemic Preparedness Plan)
https://ies.ed.gov/schoolsurvey/spp/ (2022 School Pulse Panel: Student Behavior)
https://www.nwea.org/research/publication/student-achievement-in-2021-22-cause-for-hope-and-continued-urgency/ (Student achievement in 2021-22: Cause for hope and continued urgency)

We at The Report Card are on summer break this week, so we are re-upping one of our favorite episodes from the past year: Bleakness in American Schooling with Robert Pondiscio.
Over the past few years, American schooling has been on a bumpy road. COVID-19 is the most obvious issue here, but it's not only that. As https://www.aei.org/profile/robert-pondiscio/ (Robert Pondiscio) argued in the March edition of https://www.commentary.org/articles/robert-pondiscio/american-schooling-bleak-broken/ (Commentary), American schools have become overcome by bleakness.
"We want children to grapple with 'honest history' starting in elementary school and to discover the power of their voices by writing authentic essays about their personal problems. Small wonder, then, that children are more depressed and medicated than ever before. A half-century of psychological research indicates that our beliefs about the world shape behavior and our sense of well-being. Whether one views the world as good or bad, safe or dangerous, enticing or dull, is correlated with outcomes such as life satisfaction or depression. We may think that we are doing children a good service by being 'real' with them, refusing to spare them from the unpleasant facts of the tired world they will soon inherit, thus inspiring them to seize the day and set the world right. But strong evidence is emerging that we are mostly succeeding in creating a generation of overwhelmed young people paralyzed into learned helplessness."
In this episode, Nat and Robert discuss this bleakness—its sources, its effects, and how we might overcome it.
Show Notes:
https://www.commentary.org/articles/robert-pondiscio/american-schooling-bleak-broken/ (The Unbearable Bleakness of American Schooling)
https://www.amazon.com/How-Other-Half-Learns-Excellence/dp/0525533737 (How The Other Half Learns: Equality, Excellence, and the Battle Over School Choice)
https://thedispatch.com/p/the-changing-face-of-social-breakdown (The Changing Face of Social Breakdown)

On this episode of The Report Card, https://www.aei.org/profile/nathaniel-n-malkus/ (Nat) interviews https://sites.google.com/site/christinabrownecon/ (Christina Brown) and https://heatherschofield.net (Heather Schofield), two of the authors of https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w30133/w30133.pdf (Cognitive Endurance as Human Capital). Nat, Christina, and Heather discuss what cognitive endurance is and why it's important, PISA, an elaborate field experiment in India, disparities in American schools, shortening standardized tests, students in Pakistan, mazes and tangrams, what schools can do differently to build cognitive endurance in students, AP exams, long medical shifts, whether an extra year of schooling makes a difference for cognitive endurance, the ideal age to build cognitive endurance, and more.
Christina Brown is a development economist who will be joining the University of Chicago’s Economics Department as an Assistant Professor in 2023, and Heather Schofield is an economist at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is currently an Assistant Professor in the Perelman School of Medicine and The Wharton School. Their coauthors on Cognitive Endurance as Human Capital are https://www.supreetkaur.com (Supreet Kaur) and https://iris.ucl.ac.uk/iris/browse/profile?upi=GGKIN45 (Geeta Kingdon).
Show Notes:
https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w30133/w30133.pdf (Cognitive Endurance as Human Capital)
https://christinalbrown.github.io/Christina_Brown_JMP_Teacher_Sorting.pdf (Inducing Positive Sorting through Performance Pay: Experimental Evidence from Pakistani Schools)
https://heatherschofield.files.wordpress.com/2021/04/revised_sleep_paper-16.pdf (The Economic Consequences of Increasing Sleep Among the Urban Poor)
https://heatherschofield.files.wordpress.com/2021/03/schofield-ramadan-and-agricultural-output.pdf (Ramadan Fasting and Agricultural Output)

On this episode of The Report Card, https://www.aei.org/profile/nathaniel-n-malkus/ (Nat) interviews https://www.natehilger.com/bio (Nate Hilger), author of https://www.amazon.com/Parent-Trap-Overloading-Parents-Inequality/dp/0262046687/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5MJ2CDZF2A8andkeywords=the+parent+trap+hilgerandqid=1657735366andsprefix=the+parent+trap+hilger%2Caps%2C42andsr=8-1 (The Parent Trap: How to Stop Overloading Parents and Fix Our Inequality Crisis). Prior to writing The Parent Trap, Nate was a professor of economics at Brown University, a Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a lead policy consultant on early childhood and non-K12 child development issues for Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign.
Nat and Nate discuss why disparities in life outcomes are not mainly attributable to disparities in schools, why relying too heavily on parents to develop skills in children will perpetuate inequalities, big data in education, the lessons of Perry Preschool and Abecedarian, skill transmission in Asian American communities, why we need to spend more on education RandD, Cora Hillis, what a study about the management practices of businesses in India can teach us about parenting, the IRS databank, Childcare with a capital 'C', the decision to have five or more kids, universal pre-k, and more.
Show Notes:
https://www.amazon.com/Parent-Trap-Overloading-Parents-Inequality/dp/0262046687/ref=sr_1_1?crid=5MJ2CDZF2A8andkeywords=the+parent+trap+hilgerandqid=1657735366andsprefix=the+parent+trap+hilger%2Caps%2C42andsr=8-1 (The Parent Trap: How to Stop Overloading Parents and Fix Our Inequality Crisis)
https://thehill.com/opinion/education/3257291-why-do-we-provide-so-much-more-support-to-the-old-than-the-young/ (Why do we provide so much more support to the old than the young?)
https://www.natehilger.com/blog/sheppard-towner (The 100-year legacy of America’s first big national investment in families)
https://academic.oup.com/qje/article-abstract/126/4/1593/1923939?redirectedFrom=fulltext (How Does Your Kindergarten Classroom Affect Your Earnings? Evidence from Project Star)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/app.20150295 (Parental Job Loss and Children's Long-Term Outcomes: Evidence from 7 Million Fathers' Layoffs)