The Report Card with Nat Malkus

AI is transforming not only the way students work but also the way they read.
AI summarizes readings for students, changing the way they engage with texts, form judgments, and—perhaps—develop cognitively.
On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus speaks with Naomi Baron about these changes and more.
Naomi Baron is Professor Emerita of Linguistics at American University and the author of Reader Bot: What Happens When AI Reads and Why It Matters.
This episode was produced by Elli Lucas.
Show Notes:
Reader Bot: What Happens When AI Reads and Why It Matters
Who Wrote This? How AI and the Lure of Efficiency Threaten Human Writing
The End of Reading Is Here
Is This What a Post-Literate Era Looks Like?

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus speaks with John White about state education leadership, how the education landscape has changed over the last few decades, innovation in education and where it tends to go wrong, the importance of school choice, the Southern Surge, why coherent systems matter, what we know about curriculum, and more.
John White is the CEO of Great Minds. Previously, he was the Louisiana State Superintendent of Education, Superintendent of the Louisiana Recovery School District, Deputy Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education, and a Teach For America corps member.
This episode was produced by Elli Lucas.

During the pandemic, national chronic absenteeism rates surged across all demographics, but what has happened to chronic absenteeism rates since then?
Are chronic absenteeism rates back to pre-pandemic levels? Is chronic absenteeism less of a problem for students who weren’t yet in school during the pandemic? And where might chronic absenteeism rates end up when all the dust settles?
On this episode of The Report Card, Elli Lucas discusses these questions, and more, with Nat Malkus.
Nat Malkus is a senior fellow and the deputy director of education policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and an affiliate of AEI’s James Q. Wilson Program in K–12 Education Studies. He is the creator of AEI’s Return to Learn Tracker, which tracked pandemic school closures and masking policies and currently tracks post-pandemic chronic absenteeism, and the host of the podcast The Report Card with Nat Malkus.
This episode was produced by Elli Lucas.
Show Notes:
From Attendance Crisis to Chronic Condition? Tracking Post-Pandemic Chronic Absenteeism into 2025
Please Excuse My Child: Unexcused Absences in Student Attendance and Achievement
Catching Absenteeism Early and Often: Introducing the AEI Absence Forecast
AEI Absence Forecast
What Stories Does Daily Attendance Tell? Student Attendance Patterns Before and After the COVID-19 Pandemic
AEI’s Chronic Absenteeism Research Working Group (CARWG)
Teacher and Student Absences Before and After the Pandemic
The 50% Challenge

In a few short days, we’ll be celebrating America’s 250th birthday, but rather than feeling uniformly triumphant and celebratory, America’s Semiquincentennial comes at a time when many worry about the state of our democracy and civic culture.
Schools are central to this worry. Many are concerned that civic education in American schools is insufficient or misguided, and that schools are not doing enough to prepare the next generation of Americans for self-governance. But what would better civic education look like?
What subject matter should it consist of? What should its aims be? And how much of it should happen in schools?
On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these questions and more with Yuval Levin.
Yuval Levin is a senior fellow at AEI, where he is the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy; Director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies; and Editor in Chief of National Affairs. He is also the author of several books, including American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again.

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.