WonkyFolk

The president of the College Board on test blind admissions, AI cheating, and why nobody can tell what students actually know anymore.Andy opens with a deadpan welcome to an organization "that just everybody loves." Jeremy Singer, President of the College Board, doesn't miss a beat: "There's large groups on the right and the left that dislike us. So I think that's special for us."From a year of borscht in the former Soviet Union to running the SAT and its Bluebook testing app, Jeremy names the problem: an authenticity crisis. Grades are up and scores aren't, and essays come from parents, thousand-dollar-an-hour coaches and AI.In this episode:Why Jeremy thinks test blind admissions are "nuts"Add the SAT to high school GPA and you predict first-year college grades 22% better (38% for STEM)Cheating rings with someone "in a van down the block" taking the test for you, and the test-takers who suddenly got sick when handed a College Board laptopWhy AI detection is a dead end, and the comeback of the pop quizJed says reformers "screwed it up" on No Child Left Behind. Andy: "That's a caricature." Jeremy mostly sides with Andy.One state test score in 11th grade? Jed: "completely, utterly absurd"What college really costs after aid (70% of students get grants or scholarships)The College Board team loaned to the feds to rescue the FAFSAJeremy A/B tested his own twins. His advice: never do this.Show Notes & Resources:The Education Equation, Jeremy's podcastThe Education Equation with Dacia Toll (CourseMojo)Predictive validity of the SATCollege Board AI research briefsCollege Board, Education PaysCollege Board, Trends in College PricingCollege Board, Trends in Student AidTrends in College Pricing and Student Aid 2025 (PDF)Andy Rotherham in TIME (2011): "Our Love-Hate Relationship with the SATs"Freddie deBoer, "You Aren't Actually Mad at the SATs"Hundreds of UC faculty call to reinstate the SAT/ACT for STEM applicants (Daily Bruin)Natalie Wexler, "Yes, Writing Does Advance Thinking"Thomas Kane & Douglas Staiger, "Rigid Rules Will Damage Schools," NYT (2001)Tom Kane, Center for Education Policy Research at HarvardJeremy Singer in The 74 on fixing the FAFSAInside Higher Ed on the FAFSA turnaroundAaron Lemon-Strauss, "The Crisis We've Been Waiting For"AIR, Project Talent twins and siblings study1980s LeningradPrevious WonkyFolk, with Derrell BradfordCharterFolkHosts: Jed Wallace (CharterFolk) and Andy Rotherham (Co-Founder & Senior Partner, Bellwether)Guest: Jeremy Singer (President, College Board)Sponsor WonkyFolk: Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Sponsorship packages are available, including live WonkyFolk events. Reach out to Jed Wallace at [email protected] for more information.Watch the full video on YouTube.WonkyFolk is produced by CharterFolk.

Ten years ago, Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote about choosing a struggling, segregated public school for her daughter as a matter of principle. This month she wrote the sequel, and it did not go the way she hoped.Derrell Bradford read it at 6:30 on a Sunday morning and forwarded it to his mother with a text of his own: "Thank you for not doing this to me." Growing up in Southwest Baltimore, his family had debated whose address to borrow so he could escape the school he was zoned for.Here's the part that stings. Hannah-Jones spent ten years looking for a great school for her daughter. Success Academy, Achievement First, Uncommon and KIPP were, as Derrell puts it, "a 30-second walk away from PS 307." Sixty-three thousand Black families in New York City have already made that walk. She didn't. Derrell thinks he knows why: she doesn't like the policy that built them.Derrell, president of 50CAN, joins Jed Wallace and Andy Rotherham. Derrell calls her a talented writer. The agreement ends there: whether the piece moves anything, why the charter movement stopped saying out loud what works, and whether the problem is courage, boredom, or plain politics.Along the way: why Derrell says "she's catching hell from Black people because Black people care about their kids," the "Bad Bet" Democrats made on education, a New York Times list of 30 school fixes that left out charter schools entirely, Jed's data putting Indianapolis charters off the charts, the daughter as the Shakespearean jester who tells the truth, and the question nobody is asking: no one has questioned her right to make that choice, so why deny it to everyone else?In this episode:Derrell's Sunday-morning read, and the text he sent his mother: "Thank you for not doing this to me"Southwest Baltimore, borrowed addresses, a scholarship to an all-boys day school, and why Derrell says "I lived it"Why Derrell thinks "the intent must have always been to write the second story"Nick Gillespie's point: compelling journalism, weak policy analysisAndy on what the article leaves out, from a school spending over $50 thousand a kid to No Child Left Behind, and why "everyone's not entitled to their own facts""She's catching hell from Black people because Black people care about their kids"Jed's two cognitive dissonances: "my kid's in a lousy school and I'm a good parent," and "I got my kid into a good school and I'm a good citizen""It's a mistake to build public policy that requires people not to act in the best interest of their own children," with Success Academy, Achievement First, Uncommon, and KIPP a 30-second walk from PS 307Derrell's "Bad Bet": Common Core, teacher eval, ESSA, Trump's first term, and Democrats trading their education agenda to win back the unionsThe New York Times' 30 ideas for fixing public schools, and why charter schools weren't one of themThe Newark school whose former principals went on to start North Star Academy and DSST, and why that history is missing from the front of the reform pipelineIndianapolis: integrated charter schools under one umbrella, new state data, and a context the rest of the country doesn't haveEmpathy for the kid, and the daughter as the Shakespearean jester who tells the truthBoredom, courage, or politics: why the sector went quiet, and what an alien would make of both parties"No one has questioned her right to make it," and a new scale lever: charters, ESAs, tax credits, and 1.6 million kids in open enrollmentShow Notes & Resources:Nikole Hannah-Jones, NYT Magazine (2016)Nikole Hannah-Jones, NYT Magazine (2026)Michael Harriott's Contraband Camp podcast, with Nikole Hannah-JonesDerrell Bradford in The 74Derrell Bradford in Vital City"Markets and Monopolies: The Faces of School Choice in 2025" — Derrell Bradford, PEPG"Say It Loud" — Derrell Bradford, CharterFolk"When Cognitive Dissonance Becomes Cognitive Offloading" — Jed Wallace, CharterFolk"An Education Conservative Is a Liberal Who's Had To Do Cafeteria Duty?" — Andy Rotherham, EduwonkReason Roundtable episode Andy referencedColeman Hughes, The Free PressThe NYT's 30 ideas for fixing schools, rankedEva Moskowitz: "I sent my children to the schools I founded. It wasn't a sacrifice."The Mind Trust on 2026 ILEARN results in IndianapolisTerrance Carroll's podcast with Peter GroffMike Petrilli's roundup of responsesCharterFolkHosts: Jed Wallace (CharterFolk) and Andy Rotherham (Co-Founder & Senior Partner, Bellwether)Guest: Derrell Bradford (President, 50CAN)Sponsor WonkyFolk: Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Sponsorship packages are available, including live WonkyFolk events. Reach out to Jed Wallace at [email protected] for more information.Watch the full video on YouTube.WonkyFolk is produced by CharterFolk.

The founder of Netflix says school is about to be unrecognizable. A former mayor is talking about reading scores. A teachers' union president is boycotting Target.Reed Hastings, Rahm Emanuel, and Randi Weingarten — Jed Wallace and Andy Rotherham take the three in turn.Reed Hastings makes the technologist's case, and Andy, who moderated his conversation with Mike Goldstein, isn't buying the analogy that carries it: personalized learning is not personalized medicine. Jed has a study out of China where homework quality soared and measured learning fell behind classrooms using no AI at all.Rahm Emanuel, meanwhile, is speaking common sense about schools at a moment when common sense sounds radical — and Andy thinks that lane is worth more than the endorsement everyone else is chasing.And Randi Weingarten is boycotting Target, which Andy suspects has almost nothing to do with Target, while Jed thinks it will cost the sector something real.In this episode:Andy on Reed Hastings the technologist — "for a lot of people in Silicon Valley, technology, it is a faith"Why Hastings' analogy to personalized cancer drugs struck Andy as "almost like a category error"The Economist's write-up of a Chinese dataset: homework quality up, measured learning down against classrooms without AIJed's daughter's clinical psychology program, where a bot now stands in for a first practicum clientWhy Andy thinks the biggest gains may be teacher-facing — training, screening, and remediation rather than student tutoringCognitive offloading, and why "a crappy lesson off of ChatGPT or Claude isn't any better than getting one off of Pinterest"Jed on AI as a force magnifier arriving exactly when adult ambivalence is at its worstThe techlash, and Andy's insistence that the first response to a sweeping declaration should be more questionsLiz Cohen's "Dry January for tech," and cell phone bans as "a white flag that we don't know what to do"Virginia: Nina's CharterFolk piece, a state with roughly seven charter schools, and a law that lets only localities authorizeYoungkin's twenty lab schools — shipbuilding, aerospace on the Eastern Shore — and the politics threatening themJed's California strategy: put a charter in all fifty-six counties and force the recordWhether the 2020 presidential primary locked in the Democratic Party's posture toward charters — and what a 2028 field might doRahm Emanuel "staking out the common sense lane," and why education reads to voters as a proxy for seriousnessEnrollment decline, the end of COVID funding, and Jed's 2021 thought exercise about Sacramento UnifiedRandi Weingarten's boycott of Target, Andy's late-night Walmart story, and a corporate sector that had already decided education was a no-win propositionShow Notes & Resources:The conversation behind this episode: Reed Hastings and Mike Goldstein, moderated by Andy Rotherham (Bellwether)Reed Hastings on the impact of AI on schools (The 74)Reed Hastings on what it will take for AI to be different from other ed tech (The 74)The Economist study on AI's impact on learningSal Khan re-evaluates the impact of AI in schools — ChalkbeatBellwether on artificial intelligence"Screen Bans Can Be Education's Dry January — Time for a Much-Needed Reset" — Liz Cohen, The 74Cell phone bans — Andy Rotherham, Eduwonk"The Best Answer To Many Education Questions? Another Question" — Andy Rotherham, EduwonkThe future of charter schools in an evolving school-choice landscape — AEI survey (AZ, FL, UT)Musical chairs — Andy Rotherham, EduwonkThe AFT, Target, and teachers' retirement funds — Wall Street Journal opinionThe PBA's letter to the teachers union — New York Post (2014)Learn about and support Andy's work for Dana-Farber Cancer InstituteEduwonkCharterFolkHosts: Jed Wallace (CharterFolk) and Andy Rotherham (Co-Founder & Senior Partner, Bellwether)Sponsor WonkyFolk: Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Sponsorship packages are available, including live WonkyFolk events. Reach out to Jed Wallace at [email protected] for more information.Watch the full video on YouTube.WonkyFolk is produced by CharterFolk.

Pat Brantley — CEO of Friendship Public Schools and a 2026 inductee into the National Charter School Hall of Fame — joins Jed Wallace and Andy Rotherham for a WonkyFolk conversation recorded live in front of an audience at Friendship's Armstrong campus in Washington, DC.Pat traces her path from Newark to Princeton to Dr. Dorothy Height's civil rights work to Friendship House — and the moment the idea for a charter school was born. From there: what she says to charter critics, why she sees the public vs. public-charter divide as the sector's greatest failure, how she weighs growth against proficiency, the line-by-line math behind DC's charter budget shortfall, why hitting 50% market share makes charters "a target" rather than a protection, the case for "adopting" struggling schools, and — in a live audience Q&A — the role of Black male educators and what charter leaders owe their communities heading into the DC elections.In this episode:Pat's path from Newark to Princeton to Dr. Dorothy Height's civil rights work — and how she landed at Friendship HouseDonald Hentz, Friendship House's reinvention "to be about children," and the birth of the charter school ideaBuilding Friendship into 15 campuses serving nearly 5,000 students across DCWhy Pat names schools for local history — Friendship Armstrong, Friendship Blow Pierce — rather than erasing itWhat she says to charter critics: "I'm not listening to the critics. I'm listening to the parents."Why the public vs. public-charter divide is, in her view, the sector's greatest failureGrowth vs. absolute proficiency — and why both have to matterWhy report cards and transparent accountability still matter, and DC's new accountability frameworkThe 25-year question: does DC have a North Star, and what Indianapolis got right — and at what costThe DC budget fight — Pat's line-by-line math on the per-pupil shortfall and $50 million in fixed costs shifted off DCPSWhy hitting 50% market share gives charters "visibility" and makes them "a target" — not protectionThe case for mergers — or "adoption" — of struggling schools, and the turnaround of Friendship IdealA live audience Q&A: the ecosystem responsibility of high-performing charters, the role of Black male educators, and what charter leaders owe their communities in an election yearDorothy Height's "fist" metaphor and "one Friendship, one band, one sound"Show Notes & Resources:Pat Brantley — bio (Friendship Public Schools Leadership Team)Friendship Public SchoolsDC Charter School AllianceDC Public Charter School BoardNational Alliance for Public Charter SchoolsBellwetherGuest: Pat Brantley — CEO, Friendship Public Schools; Chair, DC Charter School Alliance; 2026 National Charter School Hall of Fame inducteeHosts: Jed Wallace (CharterFolk) and Andy Rotherham (Co-Founder & Senior Partner, Bellwether)Watch the full video on YouTube.WonkyFolk is produced by CharterFolk.

Jorge Elorza — former mayor of Providence, now CEO of Democrats for Education Reform (DFER) — joins Jed Wallace and Andy Rotherham for a frank conversation about the federal scholarship tax credit, the Democratic Party’s education problem, and what a reset actually requires.They dig into how the new federal tax credit program actually works (and why Jorge and Arne Duncan called it a “no-brainer”), why more than thirty U.S. senators from the Dem Party are now trying to sunset the entire thing, and what that fight reveals about a Democratic brand that’s gotten badly out of step with the voters it claims to represent. Along the way: Providence’s 2.4% math proficiency, Detroit’s 80% of fourth-graders below basic, Rahm Emanuel’s urgency, Mikey Sherrill’s budget address, fake charter laws and fake science of reading bills, and why Jorge thinks the ideological map of the future isn’t left-vs-right — it’s liberalism vs. illiberalism.In this episode:Jorge’s journey from barely graduating high school to Providence mayor to DFER CEOWhat changed his mind about ed reform while in office — and his final press conference call to charterize the districtRhode Island’s most WonkyFolk fun fact: the Senate President is (or was) also the teachers union presidentHow the federal scholarship tax credit actually works — and why it’s not a voucher programWhy Jorge thinks governors have every reason to opt in, and what Jared Polis is modeling in ColoradoThe 30-senator push to sunset the program — and what it says about Democrats’ education reflexesWhy “money follows the child” is a distinctly progressive idea, not a conservative oneThe generational change Democrats need — and why Pelosi/Schumer aren’t built for itRahm Emanuel’s urgency, Mikey Sherrill’s budget address, and what real leadership on education sounds likeFake charter laws, fake science of reading bills, and the sector’s unwillingness to call balls and strikesLiberalism vs. illiberalism as the real ideological divide of the futureWhere DFER is headed: from a chapter/legislative model to executive/gubernatorial engagementShow Notes & Resources:Democrats for Education Reform (DFER)Jorge Elorza & Arne Duncan — Washington Post op-ed on the federal tax creditSenator Mark Kelly — effort to sunset the federal scholarship tax creditGovernor Jared Polis (CO) — opting Colorado into the programMatt Yglesias — Slow BoringEzra Klein & Derek Thompson — AbundanceGuest: Jorge Elorza — CEO, Democrats for Education Reform (DFER); former Mayor of Providence, RIHosts: Jed Wallace (CharterFolk) and Andy Rotherham (Co-Founder & Senior Partner, Bellwether)Watch the full video on YouTube.