Educate – Details, episodes & analysis

Emily Hanford introduces the first episode of her new podcast, Sold a Story.

There's an idea about how children learn to read that's held sway in schools for more than a generation — even though it was proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago. Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read. In this podcast, Hanford investigates the influential authors who promote this idea and the company that sells their work. It's an exposé of how educators came to believe in something that isn't true and are now reckoning with the consequences — children harmed, money wasted, an education system upended.

Subscribe: soldastory.org

Producer DJ Cashmere spent seven years teaching Black and brown students at a Noble Street charter high school in Chicago. At the time, Noble followed a popular model called "no excuses." Its schools required strict discipline but promised low-income students a better shot at college. After DJ left the classroom to become a journalist, Noble disavowed its own policies — calling them "assimilationist, patriarchal, white supremacist, and anti-black." In this hour, DJ, who is white, revisits his old school as it tries to reinvent itself as an anti-racist institution. And he seeks out his former students to ask them how they felt about being on the receiving end of all that education reform, and what they think now about the time they spent in his classroom.

Lauren Brown says college was "culture shock." Most of the students at her high school were Black, but most of the students at the University of Missouri were white. And she got to the university in the fall of 2015, when Black students led protests in response to a string of racist incidents. The protests put Mizzou in the national news.

But the news stories didn't match what Lauren saw. They made it seem like racism on campus was an aberration. And they made it seem like Black student organizing was new at Mizzou. What Lauren saw was "Black Mizzou," a thriving campus-within-a-campus that Black students have built over decades to make the university a more welcoming place.

An immigration law scholar says colleges have no business declaring their campuses "sanctuaries" for undocumented students.

Why African American teachers are leaving the profession faster than they're entering it.

Since 2012, many undocumented young people have been protected from the threat of deportation. With a new president, that may change.

Donald Trump's win was a surprise to many in the college-educated elite. Should it have been?

The next president could end temporary protections for undocumented college students.

Education has hardly been mentioned in the presidential debates. We look at where the candidates stand.

A new study finds that black and Latino students who experience racism have higher levels of cortisol, a hormone linked to stress, and one that is known to impact focus and learning.