Editorial Staff

Ashley Berner of Johns Hopkins on Academic Quality, Educational Pluralism, & the Providence Public Schools

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This week on “The Learning Curve,” Cara and Gerard continue coverage of COVID-19’s impact on K-12 education, joined by Ashley Berner, Deputy Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy. Ashley discusses what America can learn from other countries about how to shift from a uniform system in which district schools focus on workforce skills, to one that embraces a liberal arts curriculum delivered by many different models to advance excellence and equity, and close achievement gaps. She reviews which districts and states are incentivizing the use of robust curricula, assessment, and teacher preparation, with successful outcomes, and discusses her team’s alarming report that made national headlines last year on the Providence, R.I. public school system. They also talk about the new NAEP results for history, geography, and civics; the Founding Fathers’ view of the liberal arts’ centrality to democratic citizenship; and how to reverse troubling knowledge gaps. Lastly, they explore what COVID-19 is teaching us about our nation’s readiness, relative to other countries, for the transition to remote learning, and socioeconomic inequities.

Stories of the Week: In Oklahoma, Gov. Kevin Stitt received criticism from the state’s schools superintendent and teacher union this week for announcing plans to use some federal CARES Act relief funds to support a tax credit program for scholarships that help low-income children attend private schools. In Utah, where only 40 percent of Navajo families have Internet access, schools are working to provide wireless hot spots for about 200 homes. Are issues with Wi-Fi access revealed by the COVID-19 crisis transforming the way we think about equity and states’ duty to educate all children?

The next episode will air on May 1st, 2020 with guest, John M. Barry, author of the New York Times best seller, The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.

Newsmaker Interview Guest:

Ashley Berner is Deputy Director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy and an Associate Professor at the Johns Hopkins School Education. She served previously as the Deputy Director of the CUNY Institute for Education Policy and the Director of the Education Program at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, UVA. Dr. Berner has published articles and book chapters on the relationship between educational structure and state funding in democratic nations, religious education and citizenship formation, and teacher preparation in different national contexts. Palgrave MacMillan published her book Pluralism and American Public Education: No One Way to School in 2017. She holds degrees from Davidson College (Honors A.B.) and from Oxford University (M.Litt. and D.Phil. in Modern History).

Tweet of the Week:

News Links:

The Oklahoman: Coronavirus in Oklahoma: Hofmeister, OEA ‘do not support’ federal aid to private schools

https://oklahoman.com/article/5660566/coronavirus-in-oklahoma-hofmeister-oea-do-not-support-federal-aid-to-private-schools

NPR: Navajo Families Without Internet Struggle To Home-School During COVID-19 Pandemic

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/22/839948923/navajo-families-without-internet-struggle-to-homeschool-during-covid-19-pandemic

Get Updates on Our Education Research

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This week on “The Learning Curve," Gerard and Cara talk with Loung Ung, a human-rights activist; the author of the bestselling books First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers, Lucky Child, and Lulu in the Sky; and a co-screenwriter of the 2017 Netflix Original Movie, First They Killed My Father. Ms. Ung shares her experiences living through genocide under Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979, which resulted in the deaths of nearly a quarter of Cambodia's population. 

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This week on “The Learning Curve," Gerard and Cara talk with Tommy Schultz, CEO-elect of the American Federation for Children (AFC). They discuss how COVID-19 school closures have increased the interest in alternatives to public schools, and what AFC's polling shows on shifts in attitudes toward school choice options in both urban and rural communities.

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This week on “The Learning Curve," Gerard and Cara talk with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, founder of the AHA Foundation, and author of the books Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women's Rights, Infidel: My Life, and Nomad: From Islam to America - A Personal Journey Through the Clash of Civilizations. 

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This week on “The Learning Curve," Cara and Gerard celebrate Black History Month with Professor Valerie Boyd, the Charlayne Hunter-Gault Distinguished Writer in Residence and Associate Professor of Journalism at the University of Georgia, and the definitive biographer of Zora Neale Hurston. Boyd discusses why Hurston is such an important novelist and cultural figure, and the influence of Hurston’s 1937 classic novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God, on American literature.

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This week on “The Learning Curve," Cara and Gerard celebrate National Catholic Schools Week with Tom Carroll, superintendent of schools for the Archdiocese of Boston. He shares his view of the value that Catholic schools add; the reasons for their success at improving student outcomes and creating a sense of community; and their commitment to serving children from underprivileged backgrounds, regardless of religious affiliation. 

AZ Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick on National School Choice Week

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This week on “The Learning Curve," Cara and Gerard kick off National School Choice Week with Arizona Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick, co-author with Kate Hardiman of a new book, Unshackled: Freeing America’s K–12 Education System. Justice Bolick shares his experiences serving on a state supreme court, and how it has shaped his understanding of America’s legal system.

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This week on “The Learning Curve," Cara and Gerard are joined by Taylor Branch, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of a landmark trilogy on the Civil Rights era, America in the King Years. They discuss the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, whose birthday the nation observed on Monday. They review Dr. King’s powerful, moving oratory, drawing on spiritual and civic ideals to promote nonviolent protest against racial injustice, and how, as head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, he shared leadership of the movement with organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

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This week on “The Learning Curve," Cara and Gerard talk with Ignat Solzhenitsyn, a pianist, conductor laureate of the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, principal guest conductor of the Moscow Symphony Orchestra, and son of the Nobel Prize-winning Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. They discuss his father’s legacy, his courageous work to debunk the Soviet Union’s utopian myths, and key lessons American educators and students should draw from his life, writings, and battle with Soviet communism.

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This week on “The Learning Curve," Cara and Gerard kick off the new year with Eva Moskowitz, CEO & Founder of Success Academy Charter Schools, a network of 47 schools enrolling 20,000 K-12 students in New York City. Eva shares her own education path, and how it influences her leadership and philosophy.

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This week on “The Learning Curve,” Cara and Gerard are joined by Caroline Hoxby, the Scott and Donya Bommer Professor of Economics at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution.

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