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14: The Cuts
Aug 21, 2025 37 min

14: The Cuts

Education research is at a turning point in the United States. The Trump administration is slashing government funding for science and dismantling the Department of Education. We look at what the c...

13: The List
Mar 06, 2025 33 min

13: The List

Steubenville became a model of reading success. Then a new law in Ohio put it all at risk. In this episode, we look at the "science of reading" lists some states are making, why the program Steuben...

12: The Evidence
Feb 27, 2025 30 min

12: The Evidence

There’s a name for the program at the heart of Steubenville’s remarkable reading results. It’s called Success for All. It’s been around for decades, and numerous studies have shown it’s effective. ...

11: The Outlier
Feb 20, 2025 31 min

11: The Outlier

There’s a school district in eastern Ohio where virtually all the students become good readers by the time they finish third grade. Many of the wealthiest places in the country can’t even say that....

The podcast that's changing education
Nov 01, 2024 3 min

The podcast that's changing education

Nationally acclaimed journalist Emily Hanford's work is changing the ways schools around the country teach reading. In this award-winning podcast, she investigates why so many schools use an approa...

10: The Details
Apr 11, 2024 31 min

10: The Details

Some of the teachers, students, parents and researchers we met in Sold a Story talk about the impact the podcast has had on their lives and in schools — and share some of their hopes and concerns a...

9: The Aftermath
Apr 04, 2024 27 min

9: The Aftermath

Schools around the country are changing the way they teach reading. And that is having major consequences for people who sold the flawed idea we investigated in Sold a Story. But Lucy Calkins, Iren...

Introducing: Sold a Story en español
Mar 19, 2024 6 min

Introducing: Sold a Story en español

A Spanish adaptation of Sold a Story is now available. Hosted by journalist Valeria Fernández, the podcast is condensed into one 58-minute episode, plus a conversation between Fernández a...

8: The Impact
May 18, 2023 24 min

8: The Impact

Across the country, school districts are dropping textbooks, state legislatures are going so far as to ban teaching methods, and everyone, it seems, is talking about "the science of reading." Thing...

7: Your Words
May 11, 2023 25 min

7: Your Words

Voicemails, emails, tweets: We got a lot of messages from people after they heard Sold a Story. In this episode, we bring you some of their voices. A 10-year-old figures out why he has struggled to...

Brains On: How Do We Learn to Read — and Why is It Hard?
Apr 11, 2023 37 min

Brains On: How Do We Learn to Read — and Why is It Hard?

This week we have an episode of a show called Brains On. It’s a science podcast for kids from our colleagues at APM. In this episode, Emily joins the Brains On hosts to talk about how people learn ...

What the Words Say
Apr 06, 2023 53 min

What the Words Say

There are kids like C.J. all over the country. Schools tell their parents they are reading at grade level, but the kids are not. And whether they ever get the help they need can depend a lot on the...

Hard Words: Why Aren't Our Kids Being Taught to Read?
Mar 23, 2023 52 min

Hard Words: Why Aren't Our Kids Being Taught to Read?

Jack Silva had a problem. He was the chief academic officer of a school district in Pennsylvania, and more than 40% of the kids in his district were not proficient readers. He didn't know much abou...

Hard to Read: How American Schools Fail Kids with Dyslexia
Mar 16, 2023 53 min

Hard to Read: How American Schools Fail Kids with Dyslexia

The parents knew something wasn’t right. The school said everything would be fine. But their kids weren’t learning how to read. In this documentary, originally published in September 2017, we look ...

6: The Reckoning
Nov 17, 2022 42 min

6: The Reckoning

Lucy Calkins says she has learned from the science of reading. She's revised her materials. Fountas and Pinnell have not revised theirs. Their publisher, Heinemann, is still selling some products t...

5: The Company
Nov 10, 2022 47 min

5: The Company

Teachers call books published by Heinemann their bibles. The company's products are in schools all over the country. Some of the products used to teach reading are rooted in a debunked idea about h...

4: The Superstar
Nov 03, 2022 33 min

4: The Superstar

Teachers sing songs about Lucy Calkins. The longtime professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College is one of the most influential people in American elementary education today. Her admirers c...

3: The Battle
Oct 27, 2022 41 min

3: The Battle

President George W. Bush made improving reading instruction a priority. He got Congress to provide money to schools that used reading programs supported by scientific research. But backers of Marie...