Episode 9: Karen Vaites: How southern states surged ahead in K-12 reading

Show notes:

Today’s episode is the first in a two-part series on K-12 education. Many K-12 education outcomes in this country are heading in the wrong direction, and K-12 education is becoming an increasingly fraught and polarizing issue. Yet, most people agree on the core objectives of K-12 education. We all want our kids to learn to read and do math at school, even if we might disagree about what books our kids should read.

Which places are doing these things well, and what can we learn from them? That’s what these next two episodes will focus on.

First, we’ll take a look at an amazing success story in reading education in the southeastern U.S. called the Southern Surge. Over the past decade or so, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Alabama have gone from having some of the worst K-12 reading outcomes in the country to having some of the best. How they did this was not about being rich or blindly spending more money—these are some of the poorest states, with some of the most disadvantaged students, in the country. Instead, it’s a story about strong leadership, evidence-based policy and curricular reform, teacher support, and, perhaps most of all, an unwillingness to accept an unacceptable status quo.

To guide us through the Southern Surge story, we are very lucky to have Karen Vaites joining us.

Karen Vaites is an education entrepreneur, children’s advocate, author of the School Yourself newsletter on Substack, and contributor to the Curriculum Insight Project. She was an executive of several K-12 education start-ups before shifting her career towards advocacy work, where she focuses on writing about and promoting evidence-based teaching practices.

Don’t miss our next episode!

Make sure to subscribe, and stay tuned for our next episode, Episode 10, on how Quebec came to lead North America in K-12 math education. The episode will connect the research on what Quebec has done right to my own experience growing up there and attending great, socioeconomically diverse public schools. My guest will be announced when the episode is released.