The Report Card with Nat Malkus

Many schools today offer mental health programming, but according to Carolyn Gorman, a lot of school mental health programming is not only wasteful and ineffective but also directionally misguided: School mental health programming often targets students who don’t need help, pathologizes ordinary emotions, and fails to adequately help students with the most severe mental health problems.
On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus speaks with Carolyn Gorman about school-based mental health. Nat and Carolyn discuss whether and why student mental health has gotten worse, what we do and don’t know about school-based mental health programming, what K–12 schools should do when it comes to mental health, whether the mental health landscape in higher education is similar to the mental health landscape in K–12 schools, and how schools can promote student mental health through ordinary routines and orderly school environments.
Carolyn D. Gorman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, where her research examines how policy changes in the U.S. impact individuals with mental illness.
This episode was produced by Elli Lucas.
Show Notes:
School-Based Mental Health Initiatives Challenges and Considerations for Policymakers
The Tradition and Limits of Campus Mental Health
Congress Is Treating Schools like Mental-Health Clinics
It’s Time For Schools To Get Out Of The Mental Health Business

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.