This Week with EdSurge is the essential weekly podcast that takes you past the headlines and deep into the fascinating, fast-evolving world of education. Hosted by Ira Apfel alongside our talented team of EdSurge contributors, each episode cuts through the hype to explore the human stories shaping our schools—from the rise of artificial intelligence in the classroom to student well-being, shifting policies, and the future of teaching. Whether you are a classroom educator, a district leader, an edtech innovator, or simply a curious mind, this show delivers the rigorous, empathetic, and trusted journalism you need to understand where education is...
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Sep 30, 2026 · 19:39
From tutoring tools to grading platforms, edtech vendors are frequently adding AI features to new and existing instructional materials. Almost every company selling these…
Sep 23, 2026 · 21:13
A new workforce survey finds that men now make up less than a quarter of public schoolteachers, and the ones who do stay often walk into assumptions before they even introduce…
Sep 16, 2026 · 24:57
The lowest-performing middle school readers aren't just behind, they're falling further behind every year, even as reading scores recover elsewhere. On This Week with EdSurge,…
Sep 9, 2026 · 28:17
Two Voices of Change Fellows had the same kind of moment this year, when a student comment that could have been brushed off as attitude turned out to be a warning sign. On This…
Sep 2, 2026 · 22:05
New guidance was supposed to help teachers make sense of screen time. New laws were supposed to keep phones out of the way. On This Week with EdSurge we look at what happens when…
Aug 26, 2026 · 21:22
The Department of Education just issued its first major classroom technology guidance in years, urging schools to judge tools by outcomes rather than screen time. Digital Promise…
Aug 19, 2026 · 26:16
This week, two guests trace the true cost of AI, one in the classroom and one behind the scenes. Michael Hernandez explains how he taught himself to code so he could build a free…
Aug 12, 2026 · 22:26
What does it actually take to support the adults who shape our youngest learners? Nicol Russell, chief academic officer at Teaching Strategies, argues that early educators…
Aug 5, 2026 · 22:35
Today on This Week with EdSurge, we look at AI policy from two very different vantage points. One guest spent a year coding AI policy from more than 100 school districts across…
Jul 29, 2026 · 27:52
This week, two educators arrive at the same question from very different directions. Nathan Kraai, Director of Innovation and Design Thinking at The Fenn School , explains what a…
Jul 22, 2026 · 21:31
Every few months, another headline declares the college degree dead. This Week with EdSurge puts that claim to the test with two guests defending something slow against something…
Jul 15, 2026 · 25:54
Microsoft just released the third edition of its global AI in Education report, and the numbers raise more questions than they answer. Ira Apfel sits down with Pat Yongpradit,…
Jul 8, 2026 · 18:15
Ira Apfel wraps up a whirlwind week at ISTELive 26 in Orlando with Sarah McKibben, Editor-in-Chief of EdSurge . Together they unpack the buzziest ideas to come out of the…
Jul 1, 2026 · 23:36
This week, two teachers take a hard look at what happens when you hand a problem to a tool and trust it to solve that problem. David Webb, a school teacher based in Jakarta,…
Jun 24, 2026 · 24:32
Two educators are reckoning with who is really in charge: technology or the teacher. First, a teacher notices her students are quietly forming their professional knowledge on…
Jun 17, 2026 · 23:23
Schools are racing to write AI policies, but what if the policy is not the first step? This week, we hear from Aleta Margolis , founder and president of the Center for Inspired…
Jun 10, 2026 · 19:01
Schools have been quietly chipping away at recess for nearly a decade, and a sweeping new report from the American Academy of Pediatrics says it is time to stop. Meanwhile, the…
Jun 3, 2026 · 22:34
Three-quarters of school districts now have AI guidelines, up sharply from just a year ago, yet 82 percent of teachers say they have never received formal guidance on how to use…
Jan 15, 2025 · 54:15
When the only school in Donora, Pennsylvania, closed a few years ago, it hit the town’s residents hard. Now the building may be the town’s best hope, as a community college…
Jan 7, 2025 · 58:01
One long-time expert on preventing student cheating argues that understanding why students cheat is key to making adjustments in teaching to prevent cheating with AI. It's the…
Dec 10, 2024 · 55:30
There’s a growing push to add AI literacy as a subject in schools and colleges. But what exactly is AI literacy, and can educators promote curiosity about the subject amid their…
Dec 4, 2024 · 43:22
We found the theme song for the EdSurge Podcast on a free music library years ago, after spending hours clicking around searching for the right sound. The music turns out to have…
Nov 20, 2024 · 34:45
When students transfer from community colleges to four-year universities, there’s often culture shock. But those transfers are often more motivated and engaged in the classroom…
Nov 8, 2024 · 59:34
A new documentary project about Sacagawea, the young woman from the Shoshone tribe who helped guide the Lewis and Clark Expedition back in 1804, lets students chat with an…
Nov 4, 2024 · 47:38
Should kids wear smartwatches? Companies market the wearable devices to kids as young as 4 years old, while digital media experts and educators worry about potential downsides of…
Oct 27, 2024 · 57:31
ChatGPT and other chatbots are modeled after how the human brain works. And one of the pioneers of the technology, Terrence Sejnowski, says that what AI has made clear is that we…
Oct 21, 2024 · 37:41
Many school districts and states have enacted new restrictions on smartphones in classrooms during instructional time, in the name of increasing student engagement and…
Oct 13, 2024 · 32:39
College grads are facing a tough job market these days, with experts saying the college degree holds less of a premium in getting hired than in the past. And as it gets easier to…
Oct 6, 2024 · 44:08
When the web was new back in the late 1990s, Robert Ubell was among those pushing for its adoption to help students who couldn’t get to a campus — over the objections of…
Sep 29, 2024 · 1:04:00
Over the past few months, a group of educators has been designing and testing a system that uses ChatGPT to serve as an assistant to instructors as they build courses for…
Sep 23, 2024 · 1:02:33
As pandemic relief funds run out — which helped many students connect to the internet to keep up with their studies — there’s a danger that the “homework gap” could suddenly…
Sep 17, 2024 · 39:09
The high cost of college is changing how high schoolers think about whether or not to go. A new book, “Rethinking College,” argues for changing the narrative around higher…
Sep 11, 2024 · 33:52
A student who was just a few classes shy of graduating from Morehouse College was excited to try its new online program designed for students trying to finish their degrees. It…
Sep 3, 2024 · 49:55
A professor has been running an unusual experiment looking for signs of racial and gender bias in AI chatbots. And he has an idea for developing new guardrails that can check…
Aug 27, 2024 · 44:29
Two instructors made AI chatbot versions of themselves to help teach their classes, and they say class discussion improved as a result. But some teaching experts worry about the…
Aug 20, 2024 · 44:11
It’s still popular to prize students who have “grit,” who overcome tough odds to succeed. A book by Alissa Quart called “Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American…
Aug 13, 2024 · 43:42
The Rhodes Scholarship was designed to forge a network of people who would go on to rule the world. So who gets this opportunity? And how is the oldest and best-known graduate…
Aug 6, 2024 · 36:57
The SAT can feel very different to different students. While it can give any college applicant stress, some low-income and minority students see it as evidence that selective…
Jul 30, 2024 · 39:55
Our current grading system can be a way for kids to prove themselves and win college scholarships, or admission to selective colleges. It can also be a barrier, in sometimes…
Jul 23, 2024 · 42:38
Sometime early in elementary school, kids are put on one of two paths: regular or gifted. Where did this idea come from? The answer goes back more than a 100 years, to a…
Jul 16, 2024 · 34:56
What a debate about the admissions process at one of the best public high schools in the country says about who should get what in education. This first ran in 2021. Find out…
Jul 9, 2024 · 16:15
What the odd and surprising history of 'pulling yourself up by your bootstraps' says about educational equity. This is the first episode in our Bootstraps podcast series on…
Jun 25, 2024 · 58:27
As momentum grows to limit smartphone use in schools, some educators say that the education system can do even more to counter the negative health effects of social media. One…
Jun 11, 2024 · 42:09
As more students question the value of college, more high schools are bringing college options into their walls. In the latest installment of our Doubting College series, we…
Jun 5, 2024 · 55:28
Should AI chatbots be used as tutors? Sal Khan, founder of Khan Academy, has become one of the most vocal proponents of the idea, and he and his son are featured in a recent demo…
May 28, 2024 · 30:40
Professors are finding that they can’t just go back to teaching as they did before the pandemic and expect the same result. It takes more these days to hold student attention,…
May 21, 2024 · 42:12
One author who spent years researching what brain science says about adolescent learners says their behavior shouldn’t be seen as “deviant” or “immature,” but as a “time of…
May 14, 2024 · 25:45
Today’s high school students are asking more skeptical questions about whether to go to college, or when to go. For this week’s podcast, we visited a career fair at one public…
May 7, 2024 · 47:04
Some educators are trying a different approach to guarding against AI cheating — a “linguistic fingerprinting” technique that borrows a page from the playbook of criminal…
Apr 30, 2024 · 47:34
Felecia Russell was born in Jamaica but moved to Los Angeles as a kid. It wasn’t until she started to apply for college that she learned that she was undocumented, which she…
Apr 23, 2024 · 1:06:20
When a professor’s research showed that standard methods of teaching problem-solving weren’t working, he set out to figure out what led to more student thinking. His resulting…
Apr 16, 2024 · 43:46
Two years ago the metaverse was getting all the buzz in education circles (and hardly anyone was talking about AI). We checked back in with two educators at the forefront of…
Apr 9, 2024 · 51:53
The biggest reason to use VR in education is to tap into a student’s emotional response through immersive experiences, argues Maya Georgieva, director of The New School’s…
Apr 2, 2024 · 43:10
There’s a growing movement to drop letter grades in favor of new systems that focus on mastery of material rather than chasing points. But opponents worry about losing rigor. A…
Mar 26, 2024 · 56:04
Social studies has been ‘deprioritized’ for decades, in favor of STEM fields, according to some educators. Could AI essay grading help improve the quality of civics and social…
Mar 20, 2024 · 54:34
There are key junctures in education that are especially important for helping students feel they belong in school or college. And new research points to better ways to…
Mar 12, 2024 · 1:04:51
There’s growing skepticism of higher education, complete with popular memes on social media that “college is a scam.” Experts in policy and marketing have some suggestions on how…
Mar 5, 2024 · 57:49
A longtime educator worries that the raging culture wars in education create toxic environments that hurt academic learning. He’s started a podcast that brings together people…
Feb 27, 2024 · 38:59
Could virtual reality be the key to teaching indigenous ways of knowing to a broad population of students? Jared Ten Brink, a doctoral student in education, is trying to record…
Feb 21, 2024 · 34:11
In part two of our podcast series Doubting College, which explores the growing skepticism of higher ed, we talk to students and counselors at a public high school about how…
Feb 13, 2024 · 45:01
A recent study ranked the top professions that are likely to be disrupted by ChatGPT and other new AI technologies, and most of them require college degrees. How does higher ed…
Feb 7, 2024 · 48:08
Did the education theories that drive today’s schools and teaching practices get off track and do they need a reset — one that gets back to earlier days of oral storytelling?…
Jan 30, 2024 · 28:00
It can be harder than ever for teachers to manage their relationships with parents, even though digital tools make interactions more frequent. This week’s EdSurge podcast looks…
Jan 24, 2024 · 53:54
There’s a growing push to add AI literacy as a subject in schools and colleges. But what exactly is AI literacy, and can educators promote curiosity about the subject amid their…
Jan 17, 2024 · 1:00:19
Holding student attention may be harder than ever. Even if educators make students put away their smartphones, internet-connected devices have changed the way people relate to…
Jan 9, 2024 · 1:03:09
Experts have described this as a 'golden age' of discovery in the area of learning science, with new insights emerging regularly on how humans learn. So what can educators,…
Jan 2, 2024 · 56:10
What were the biggest surprises and trends in education in 2023? Hear from five EdSurge reporters as they give their highlights and analysis and also talk about what they’re…
Dec 26, 2023 · 48:13
“Why do some schools get better quickly, and others get stuck?” That question drove MIT professor of digital media Justin Reich to write a new book about what he’s learned as a…
Dec 20, 2023 · 53:32
Paul LeBlanc grew Southern New Hampshire University to an online education powerhouse with more than 200,000 students. This month he announced that he’ll step down as president…
Dec 13, 2023 · 47:55
When the libertarian billionaire Peter Thiel started a fellowship 13 years ago that pays young people $100,000 each to not go to college for two years, it made a splash and drew…
Dec 5, 2023 · 48:20
Students these days are under constant watch with digital tools — whether it’s friends posting pictures on social media, or learning management systems sending parents alerts…
Nov 29, 2023 · 30:48
Schools of education are working harder at recruiting these days, in response to enrollment declines. Can more people — and more people from a variety of backgrounds — be…
Nov 21, 2023 · 51:11
It’s important to nurture philosophical thinking in kids throughout school and college. So argues a philosophy professor who wrote a book that highlights the natural tendencies…
Nov 14, 2023 · 52:20
The rise of generative AI technology such as ChatGPT could rapidly reshape knowledge work in the next few years. A trio of education researchers recently sat down to map out what…
Nov 8, 2023 · 1:04:23
When a professor’s research showed that standard methods of teaching problem-solving weren’t working, he set out to figure out what led to more student thinking. His resulting…
Oct 31, 2023 · 50:14
More educators are wondering whether the grading system hinders many students rather than helps them learn. For this week’s podcast, we’re rebroadcasting an episode from this…
Oct 24, 2023 · 43:35
It’s statistically harder to get into a selective college these days, and who gets in and why can feel like a mystery. So students are turning to TikTok and other social media…
Oct 17, 2023 · 54:44
Since winning the Nobel Prize for physics in 2001, Carl Wieman has devoted the bulk of his energies to trying to improve teaching. That has led him to promote active learning –…
Oct 10, 2023 · 46:07
Students these days are terrible at sorting facts from misinformation online and on social media. But they can improve with just a few simple strategies, argues information…
Oct 3, 2023 · 59:31
Can educators continue to teach troubling but worthwhile texts in this time of polarization and culture wars? And how can instructors make classrooms a welcoming place for debate…
Sep 26, 2023 · 27:04
What if Rodin’s famous sculpture of the thinking man sitting holding his chin gives us the wrong idea about how people think? A growing body of research suggests that thinking is…
Sep 20, 2023 · 34:15
Could cutting-edge virtual reality tech help to spread classical education models and alternatives to traditional public schools? That’s what one proponent is hoping, and she’s…
Sep 12, 2023 · 44:54
A mockumentary web series made by undergraduates makes some timely observations about college admissions, and about student life after the pandemic — when students sometimes…
Sep 6, 2023 · 49:14
The pandemic has sparked more-nuanced conversations about kids and tech, getting away from simple questions of how much screen time to allow. Now, one researcher argues, it’s…
Aug 29, 2023 · 58:13
EdSurge recently took a microphone to a university campus and asked several students to share their group project horror stories. Every student we talked to had one. Then we ran…
Aug 22, 2023 · 34:19
For more than a decade, the nonprofit behind the popular storytelling podcast The Moth has run workshops in schools to help students share impactful stories from their lives. Now…
Aug 15, 2023 · 45:19
A new documentary follows an educator and activist pushing to require schools to offer reading instruction that has been proven effective, calling it a matter of civil rights.…
Aug 8, 2023 · 33:17
A professor of urban education dug into the history of school reform in Philadelphia, and came away with questions of what motivates large-scale efforts to change schooling.
Aug 1, 2023 · 30:32
The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down the consideration of race in college admissions has sparked a strong push to also end the consideration of enrollment legacy…
Jul 25, 2023 · 57:22
Scholars have taken to podcasting, interviewing each other about ideas and sharing their favorite areas of knowledge. Even when audiences are small, this new way of spreading…
Jul 18, 2023 · 48:32
As colleges think about diversity on their campuses, they need to consider issues of class as well as race. Because especially among Black students at selective colleges, there…
Jul 11, 2023 · 52:08
A group of researchers developed a tool that uses AI to test and improve digital course materials. On this week’s EdSurge Podcast, two of those researchers talk about how their…
Jul 4, 2023 · 36:34
A Drexel University professor has been researching how to make children’s media more inclusive. And lately he’s been putting his ideas into practice as a creative producer of a…
Jun 27, 2023 · 50:04
“Why do some schools get better quickly, and others get stuck?” That question drove MIT professor of digital media Justin Reich to write a new book about what he’s learned as a…
Jun 20, 2023 · 54:22
When their school implemented a new policy requiring students to lock their phones in pouches during the school day, the students had some concerns. This week on the EdSurge…
Jun 13, 2023 · 55:33
Since the pandemic, more professors are reporting they’re having trouble connecting with their students. That’s according to Bonni Stachowiak, dean of teaching and learning at…
Jun 6, 2023 · 52:15
It’s important to nurture philosophical thinking in kids throughout school and college. So argues a philosophy professor who wrote a book that highlights the natural tendencies…
May 30, 2023 · 31:06
Professors are finding that they can’t just go back to teaching as they did before the pandemic and expect the same result. It takes more these days to hold student attention,…
May 23, 2023 · 42:46
For decades, proponents of open access scholarship have worked to make the research in scholarly journals freely readable to all. Will this moment of AI chatbots accelerate the…
May 16, 2023 · 31:53
In 2015, a video went viral showing a white school resource officer violently flipping over a Black student in her desk and dragging her across the room before arresting her. It…
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