Editorial Staff

Press Release: Choice Media, Pioneer Institute, and Ricochet Announce New Education Podcast

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“The Learning Curve” to feature Bob Bowdon, Cara Candal, Ed.D.

BOSTON – The inaugural episode of the national podcast “The Learning Curve,” a partnership between Choice Media, Pioneer Institute, and Ricochet, debuting on September 6th, will offer straight talk about America’s hottest education stories.

Each week, co-hosts Bob Bowdon and Cara Stillings Candal will interview guests and provide provocative commentary on issues that impact students, parents, teachers, policy makers, and taxpayers throughout the country.

“We’re excited to begin this partnership on “The Learning Curve,” which will highlight K-12 education news and opinion from the schoolyard to the 2020 campaign trail,” said Jim Stergios, Executive Director of Pioneer Institute. “With thoughtful co-hosts, we’re sure to hear lively debate among noted school leaders, authors, and policy makers about how best to use education to prepare the next generation of intellectually engaged American citizens.”

Listeners can find “The Learning Curve” on iTunes (Apple Podcasts), Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and the Choice Media mobile app. They can also find it online at Ricochet and Pioneer Institute.

Tune in!

Bob Bowdon is a longtime broadcast journalist and executive director of Choice Media, a hub for K-12 education news. Cara Candal, an education researcher and writer, is a senior fellow at Pioneer Institute, a leading school reform research organization.

The inaugural episode of “The Learning Curve” features an interview with Gerard Robinson, Executive Director of the Center for Advancing Opportunity, on issues ranging from prison education, the future of parental choice, and diversity in classroom teaching to presidential politics, and more.

Listeners can find “The Learning Curve” on iTunes (Apple Podcasts), Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, and the Choice Media mobile app. They can also find it online at Ricochet and Pioneer Institute.

Bob Bowdon has been an engineer, television producer, reporter, filmmaker, and commentator. After years in television news as an anchor/reporter, which included six years with Bloomberg Television, Bowdon became a regular on-camera reporter for the Onion News Network, a comedic, satirical news outlet. Bowdon’s first involvement in the education space was as director of the documentary film, The Cartel. It won a national theatrical release, a dozen film festival awards and Warner Brothers distribution. Afterward, he founded Choice Media, an online news site focused on education issues. As an expert on education policy, Bowdon has since appeared on a wide range of national cable networks including the Fox News Channel, Fox Business Network, MSNBC, HLN, and Newsmax TV.

Cara Stillings Candal, Ed.D., serves as Senior Fellow with Pioneer Institute. Cara has spent the last 10 years working in education policy, including as a Senior Fellow with the Center for Education Reform. She was also a founding team member of the National Academy of Advanced Teacher Education (NAATE) and a research assistant professor at Boston University in the Department of Educational Leadership and Development. Cara has authored/edited more than 25 papers and three books on education policy. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Indiana University, a Masters of Arts in Social Science from the University of Chicago and a Doctorate of Education from Boston University. Cara is the author most recently of Pioneer Institute’s book, The Fight for the Best Charter Public Schools in the Nation.

Gerard Robinson is the Executive Director of the Center for Advancing Opportunity, a Washington, D.C.-based research and education initiative to address the most pressing education, entrepreneurship, and criminal justice issues in fragile communities throughout the U.S., in partnership with faculty and students at Historically Black Colleges and Universities and other postsecondary institutions. Robinson is a fellow with AEI, and was Commissioner of Education in Florida and Secretary of Education in Virginia.

About Pioneer Institute

Pioneer Institute is an independent, non-partisan, privately funded research organization that seeks to improve the quality of life in Massachusetts through civic discourse and intellectually rigorous, data-driven public policy solutions based on free market principles, individual liberty and responsibility, and the ideal of effective, limited and accountable government.

About Choice Media

Choice Media is the nation’s online hub for education news, featuring the most pertinent headlines from coast-to-coast, providing real-time analysis of developing stories, meeting with those making waves in the education world, and sharing the most important education news, opinion, video, podcasts and events.

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