The Report Card with Nat Malkus

The Department of Education has said it is trying to return education to the states, but what does that mean for the federal role in education and for the states expected to take on more responsibility?What is the Department doing now to scale back the federal role in education? How does the Department think about its own education agenda as it tries to return education to the states? And are states ready to have education returned to them—whatever that might mean?On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these questions and more with Kirsten Baesler.Kirsten Baesler is the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education at the U.S. Department of Education. From 2013 until 2025, she served as the North Dakota Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Recently, Harvard faculty voted to push back on grade inflation at the institution by capping the proportion of A’s given to students at 20%. But according to a new paper, Harvard’s new policy—and grade caps in general—are not the right solution.In What Does a Grade Mean? Informativeness and Strategic Manipulation of Grading Systems, Scott Duke Kominers and Joshua S. Gans argue that to create better incentives for students and faculty, we need to change the current grading system itself.On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus speaks with Scott Duke Kominers about Harvard’s new grade inflation policy. Nat and Scott discuss grading at Harvard, how traditional grading creates bad incentives for students, why grade caps might make these incentives worse, the importance of communicating information about course difficulty, how a different grading system can create better incentives and lead to more learning, and more.Scott Duke Kominers is the Sarofim-Rock Professor of Business Administration in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School; a Faculty Affiliate of the Harvard Department of Economics and the Harvard Center of Mathematical Sciences and Applications; and an a16z crypto Research Partner. Show Notes:What Does a Grade Mean? Informativeness and Strategic Manipulation of Grading Systems.Grade Caps Fail the Game Theory ExamWhen the Proposal Keeps Changing, It's Clear It Doesn't Make the Grade70% of Faculty Vote to Overhaul Harvard Grading With A CapEnigmatic Puzzles

Historically, many didn’t consider Alabama to be at the forefront of education, but Alabama’s pandemic recovery may be among the best in the nation.Perhaps most impressively, Alabama was the only state whose 4th-grade math NAEP scores were higher in 2024 than in 2019, and Alabama reports a chronic absenteeism rate that is the lowest in the nation—and the closest to its pre-pandemic levels of any state.Are these results part of a broader story about how Alabama has changed the way it thinks about education? What changes have helped produce Alabama’s recent education gains? And where might education in the Yellowhammer State be headed next?On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these questions and more with Alabama State Superintendent of Education Eric Mackey.

Although the Trump administration’s efforts to reform education might not be making national headlines quite as often as they did one year ago, a lot has still happened in education over the last several months.The Trump administration has continued its push to dismantle the Department of Education. Elite universities are making efforts to reform campus culture. The Department of Education released a major report on the future of the Institute of Education Sciences. And campaigns to limit phone use and, now, screen time in school continue to gain momentum.To make sense of it all, on this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these developments, and more, with Andy Rotherham and Rick Hess.Andy Rotherham is a co-founder and senior partner at Bellwether and the author of the Eduwonk blog.Rick Hess is a senior fellow and the director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute.Show Notes:Mend, Don’t End, the Institute of Education SciencesHope or Hype? What to Make of Yale’s Report on Trust in Higher EdThe Trump Administration Has Mostly Dismantled the Ed. Dept. Should You Care?Reimagining the Institute of Education Sciences

This podcast has covered AI in K–12 education a fair amount, but how will and how should AI change higher education?Should any human instructors be replaced with AI? Should universities change what and how they teach to strengthen their value proposition? And in the age of AI, how should universities prepare their students for an unpredictable job market?On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these questions and more with Hollis Robbins.Hollis Robbins is a professor of English at the University of Utah, where she was formerly Dean of the College of Humanities. She writes about AI in higher education on her Substack, Anecdotal Value.Show Notes:It's Later Than You ThinkLast Mile EducationTeaching QualityThe Two-Minute Mile ProblemWhat Should a University AI Czar Do?My AI Thinks Civics Is Black Studies