Claim OwnershipEducation Beat
Subscribed: 19Played: 1,229
Subscribe
© @ 2025 EdSource
Description
A podcast that gets to the heart of schools in California and beyond, bringing you the personal stories behind the headlines, from preschool to college. Join the team at EdSource each week to hear the voices that are too often drowned out in the broader conversation: parents, teachers, and the students themselves.
216 Episodes
Reverse
Fresno Unified invested $30 million in services for children and families that go beyond traditional academics, from housing assistance and food pantries to digital music production and lunchtime sports programs.
Teachers say the programs are getting students excited about being at school, and addressing some of the barriers that made it hard for them to get to school or to learn once there.
Guests:
Eugene Reinor, Principal, Fort Miller Middle School, Fresno Unified School District
Hector Giovanni Romero, Music teacher, Lincoln Elementary School, Fresno Unified School District
Lasherica Thornton, Reporter, EdSource
Read more from EdSource: Fresno Unified's $30 million investment to support students is paying off
Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.
Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube
As a saxophonist in Boston’s Klezmer Conservatory Band in 1985, Merryl Goldberg traveled to the Soviet Union to meet up with another group of musicians, The Phantom Orchestra.
The Phantom Orchestra would be sharing more than good tunes with Merryl. They’d also pass along information, including the names of people who wanted to escape the Soviet Union, which Merryl and her friends would then smuggle back to the United States.
To do this, Merryl made up a secret code, hidden in sheet music.
Now Merryl’s spy days are long behind her. But she is still passionate about how music and other arts can enrich other fields, including cybersecurity.
Guests:
Merryl Goldberg, Professor, California State University San Marcos
Karen D’Souza, Reporter, EdSource
Read more from EdSource: Merryl Goldberg, a music professor on a mission to spread arts education
Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.
Fausto Lopez was arrested at 16 years old and ordered to spend seven years in a juvenile facility. But before he had even finished half of that time, he finished high school, got an associate degree and applied to attend a four-year college.
How did this young man find the drive and support to propel him to such academic success? Do other incarcerated young people have the same opportunities?
Guests:
Fausto Lopez, Student, Cal State San Bernardino
Betty Márquez Rosales, Reporter, EdSource
Read more from EdSource: How a young man serving a sentence in juvenile facilities made it out one class at a time
Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.
Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube
Heather Povinelli, a second grade teacher in Monrovia Unified, was named one of five California Teachers of the Year for 2026. But in college, she almost gave up on her dream of becoming a teacher because she worried that her dwarfism would stop her.
We visited Heather in her Monrovia classroom, where we spoke about how she got back into teaching, how she creates an inclusive classroom, and what she learned conducting research about other teachers with dwarfism.
Guest:
Heather Povinelli, teacher, Bradoaks Elementary Science Academy in Monrovia
Read more from EdSource:
Her dwarfism once scared her away from teaching — now it’s her strength
Education Beat is a weekly podcast. This week's episode was hosted by EdSource’s Emma Gallegos and produced by Coby McDonald.
Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube
It’s time for a new calendar, new year’s resolutions and new predictions from John Fensterwald.
John is a veteran reporter, with decades of experience reporting on education. At the turn of the year, we at EdSource turn to John to give us a sense of what we have to look forward to — or dread — in education.
Guest:
John Fensterwald, Editor-at-large, EdSource
Read more from EdSource:
Strikes, cuts, state superintendent race: Our 2026 California education predictions. What are yours?
Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.
Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube
This week we are honoring the life of Betty Reid Soskin, who was the nation’s oldest national park ranger and a civil rights icon. She passed away on December 21st at 104 years old.
To honor her, we are rebroadcasting an episode from 2021, about how a California school district came to rename a school after her.
Guests:
Anaya Zenad, Student, West Contra Costa Unified
Ali Tadayon, Reporter, EdSource
Read more EdSource stories on this topic:
East Bay middle school renamed to honor local 100-year-old park ranger and activist
How a California middle school’s history project led to name change
Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.
Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube
In the bilingual education world, José Medina is a superstar. A former teacher turned principal turned researcher, he spreads his message of respecting students' languages on social media and in schools across the country with a sassy, no-nonsense style, telenovela-level energy and strong research to back it up.
Listen to him tell his own story and how his own experiences in childhood fuel his fight for inclusion.
Guest: José Medina, Biliteracy and dual-language researcher
Read more: Meet the researcher using sass and social media to transform bilingual education
Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.
Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube
In California’s Central Valley, a small K–8 school district is getting big results. Livingston Union School District in Merced County was recently recognized by the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools for outperforming the state in key areas — reducing chronic absenteeism and suspensions while improving student well-being.
How did the district do this? By investing deeply in school counselors and pushing a comprehensive program that goes above and beyond what most schools offer in both academic and mental health support.
Guests:
Alma Lopez, school counseling coordinator, Livingston Union School District
Vani Sanganeria, reporter, EdSource
Read more from EdSource:
How school counselors reduced chronic absenteeism and suspensions at a California school district
Central Valley school counselor wins national award for ‘relentless’ work with students
Podcast: What it takes to be an award-winning counselor
Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.
Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube
The vast majority of students who graduated high school while detained in California's juvenile facilities in a five-year span between 2018 and 2023 did not pass a 12th grade reading assessment. In fact, over a fifth of them were reading at lower elementary-school grade levels.
Now California's finally doing something about it. A new literacy intervention program is now being rolled out in San Diego, Alameda, San Mateo and Riverside counties, to help teenagers in juvenile detention grasp the basics of reading.
Guests:
Rosie Leyva, Literacy specialist, Alameda County Court Schools
Betty Márquez Rosales, Reporter, EdSource
Read more from EdSource:
New multi-county initiative to tackle literacy gaps among detained high school students
In California's youth justice system, many high schoolers graduate with grade-school reading skills
An island of reading for youth in the California juvenile justice system
Related episodes:
How a library inside juvenile hall aims to break the prison pipeline
Could juvenile detention centers look like college campuses?
How schools can help formerly incarcerated students succeed
Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.
Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube
This week many listeners may be in their kitchens preparing a big meal for Thanksgiving, so we're rebroadcasting an episode from 2022, where we visit a kitchen in Davenport, California, a little seaside town, south of San Francisco, not far from Santa Cruz.
The town is home to a tiny district with just one school, nestled between ocean, farmland, and mountains. John Fensterwald is taking us there for lunch, cooked from scratch by the fifth and sixth graders.
Pacific Elementary’s unique Food Lab program is a boon for the district, boosting its enrollment by attracting students from nearby wealthier districts.
Guests:
Emelia Miguel, Food Service Director, Pacific Elementary School
Quinn Schromm, Moses O’Riordan, Shyon Johnson, Logan Franks, and other Student Chefs, Pacific Elementary School
Eric Gross, Principal, Pacific Elementary School
Doña Bumgarner, Parent and Librarian, Pacific Elementary School
John Fensterwald, Editor-at-large, EdSource
Read the EdSource article and watch the video:
Kid cooks and tasty lunches: One elementary school’s recipe for survival
Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.
Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube
Over the last ten years, San Luis Coastal Unified School District has changed up its menu, replacing packaged pizza and chicken nuggets with freshly baked chicken drumsticks, sweet potato, black bean chimichurri bowls and plates of coconut rice with a red lentil dal.
The district has done that in part through a federal grant program that helps school districts buy ingredients from local farms to make more nutritious school lunches from scratch.
Now, that federal program has been gutted, leaving many districts, especially smaller ones or those just starting out on the journey of making over their menus, without a crucial funding stream.
Guests:
Erin Primer, director of food and nutrition services, San Luis Coastal Unified School District
Mallika Seshadri, reporter, EdSource
Read more from EdSource: Schools, farms grapple with lost funds after federal program is gutted
Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.
Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube
Improve Your Tomorrow provides mentorship services to about 1,000 students at Stockton Unified School District, transforming struggling students into leaders prepared for college.
But funding is uncertain under the second Trump administration. Improve Your Tomorrow, like many mentoring and tutoring programs in K-12 schools, relies partially on federal grants through AmeriCorps — funding that President Donald Trump has proposed entirely eliminating.
Guests:
Nicole Davidson, program manager, Improve Your Tomorrow at Stockton Unified School District
Lasherica Thornton, reporter, EdSource
Read more from EdSource:
'Fewer children are able to thrive’: California AmeriCorps programs adapt to funding uncertainty
Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube
Education Beat is a weekly podcast. This week's episode was hosted by EdSource’s Emma Gallegos and produced by Coby McDonald.
As a kindergarten teacher, a big part of Violet Nye’s job is teaching kids how to read. But the way she teaches her students is very different from how she learned as a kid. She remembers being taught to memorize whole words.
Now, she's steeped in the practice of teaching kids how to sound out words, while also building up their vocabulary and helping them lift words off the page to imagine whole new worlds from stories.
A new law aims to get more California teachers to teach reading the way Violet does. It comes after years of advocacy and debate and required a significant amount of compromise.
Guests:
Violet Nye, Kindergarten teacher, San Juan Unified School District
Diana Lambert, Reporter, EdSource
Read more from EdSource: New law changes how California kids learn to read
Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.
Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube
Miliani Rodriguez is a senior at Coachella Valley High School. The school buildings are old, she says, and they show it. The air conditioning often breaks in over 100-degree heat. When it rains, the ceilings leak. The sinks in her ceramics classroom broke and flooded the classroom.
Miliani thought these kinds of things were normal, after attending school in the Coachella Valley Unified School District since kindergarten. But last year she visited her cousin’s high school, just a couple of miles away from her, and found modern buildings, spacious athletic fields, and working air conditioning.
Now, she is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit, Miliani R. v. State of California, which claims the way the state subsidizes school renovations perpetuates vast inequalities for students, sending more money to districts that already have more property wealth, and locking out poor districts from accessing funding.
Guests:
Miliani Rodriguez, Lead plaintiff, Miliani R. v. State of California
John Fensterwald, Editor-at-large, EdSource
Read more from EdSource: California sued over bond program that sends more money to fix facilities in wealthy school districts
Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.
Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube
When Sarahi Sanchez Soto joined a dual-enrollment program at her high school in Dinuba, it allowed her to enroll in college-level computer science classes and jump-started her college career.
But that program is now in peril, after the Trump administration announced it’s eliminating grant programs for Hispanic-Serving Institutions, colleges where at least 25% of students are Latino, because they claim they are discriminatory.
These cuts hit California's community colleges hard, where the grants provided services meant to help all students get past early hurdles in their college journeys.
Guests:
Sarahi Sanchez Soto, Student, Reedley College,
Michael Burke, Reporter, EdSource
Read more from EdSource:
Student support programs in peril after federal cuts at Hispanic-serving community colleges
Trump administration to end grant funding for Hispanic-Serving Institutions, affecting many California colleges
California colleges worry about lawsuit challenging funding for campuses with many Hispanic students
Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.
Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube
For Chelsea Duran, returning to Maywood Academy High School this fall for her senior year means feeling like she has to be on high alert, watching over her shoulder for immigration enforcement agents.
Summer break started with the news that Chelsea's friend Johanna had been detained by immigration authorities. News of her arrest sent shock waves through the school. In the days that followed, the neighborhood around the school was thrust into the center of intense immigration enforcement activity, leaving students and teachers on edge.
Guests:
Chelsea Duran, Student, Maywood Academy High School
Betty Márquez Rosales, Reporter, EdSource
Read more from EdSource: A student deported and a summer of raids leave a school reeling
Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.
Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube
Saran Tugsjargal grew up with multiple disabilities. At school she received speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, and help with learning to understand social cues. But the support often felt isolating.
Making things even more difficult was the designation Saran received because of some of her behavioral challenges: emotional disturbance. She says it felt stigmatizing.
Saran found herself wondering who would stand up for students like her. Little did she know that she would become that person.
Guests:
Saran Tugsjargal, student commissioner, California's Advisory Commission on Special Education
Emma Gallegos, reporter, EdSource
Read more from EdSource: How this teen pushed California to change special education policy
Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.
Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube
Schools across California could lose hundreds of social workers, school counselors, mental health clinicians, wellness coaches and graduate student interns, after the Trump administration cut federal grants for mental health support.
In rural areas like Humboldt County, school districts have relied almost entirely on these federal grants to provide mental health workers for students, who are struggling with high rates of poverty, drug addiction, and suicide, and difficulty accessing care.
Guests:
Jane Huang, Wellness coach, Eureka High School
Cassandra Garcia-Gonzalez, Peer counselor, Eureka High School
Vani Sanganeria, Reporter, EdSource
Read more from EdSource: After federal cuts, California schools could lose hundreds of mental health clinicians
Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.
Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube
All high schools in California will be required to offer a semester of financial literacy to all students, beginning in the 2027-28 school year. The course will be required for graduation beginning with the class of 2031.
Some high schools are already offering the course.
Meet Allison Saiki, named teacher of the year from Sweetwater Union High School District, where she teaches students how to manage money, pay rent and open retirement accounts, all with a classroom currency she calls "Saiki Cents."
Guests:
Allison Saiki, Teacher, Olympian High School, Chula Vista
Mallika Seshadri, Reporter, EdSource
Read more from EdSource: Districts gear up for personal finance graduation requirement
Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.
Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube
Highlands Community Charter and Technical Schools opened in Sacramento in 2014 with high ideals — to help adult students, many formerly incarcerated or new immigrants, to earn a diploma, improve English language skills, or learn a trade. Now, the school is an example lawmakers and advocates point to as a reason for increasing charter school oversight.
A state audit found the charter received millions of dollars in funding for which it was not eligible, assigned teachers to classes they were not credentialed to teach, and avoided standardized testing, in addition to spending on non-education-related items such as a trip to Paris and leasing a semi-professional ballpark.
Guests:
Jacob Walker, Co-founder, Highlands Community Charter and Technical Schools
Diana Lambert, Reporter, EdSource
Read more from EdSource:
How a Sacramento charter school misused $180 million and became a poster child for reform
Former Sacramento superintendent takes charge at troubled charter school
Education Beat is a weekly podcast hosted by EdSource’s Zaidee Stavely and produced by Coby McDonald.
Subscribe: Apple, Spotify, SoundCloud, YouTube
Comments
Download from Google Play
Download from App Store
United States