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In this episode Stephanie and Zac talk to Dr. Ji Son from Cal State Los Angeles to get a better understanding of why it's so hard to add complexity to information once we've got our minds made up as well as some helpful tricks to make new information stickier. Then, they dive in to the work of John Hattie and begin to examine how his attempts to share what's "effective" in education spread like wildfire.

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Stephanie and Zac talk with guests Katy Joseph and Sam Ames - the two most recent former chiefs of staff for the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR). They discuss OCR's origins, work, and possible future with a 50% reduction in staff and ever-increasing caseload.

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Stephanie and Zac unpack the of one of the most famous pyramids in education (Bloom's taxonomy) and attempt to draw a line from its post-WWII origins to the requirement of teachers writing their objectives on the board.

For the second half of the show, researcher Katherine McEldoon joins to offer an alternative way to figure out if students' (and adults') brains are doing the work we hope they are during learning.

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Meghan Whittaker, former chief of staff for the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services at the U.S. Department of Education joins Stephanie and Zac to explain IDEA. From their they look at what could be the national impact on 7.5 million students receiving special education services if Trump's skinny budget becomes a reality. Spoiler: It's not great.

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In this episode Dr. Jon Becker joins Stephanie and Zac to wrestle with another round of Head Start on the chopping block and the Supreme Court's impending decisions on what makes a public school...public...(or private?) and whether or not parents can opt their kids out of inclusive literature.

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Stephanie and Zac dig in to a couple of last week's slew of Executive Orders and examine their potential implications for public educators. They welcome guest Diana Laufenberg, executive director of Inquiry Schools (https://www.inquiryschools.org/) to pull apart recent rulings from around the country on the Trump Administration's attempts to make federal curriculum policy by weaponizing funding allocated for helping students in poverty.

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In this introduction to Academic Distinctions, Stephanie and Zac set the stage for the podcast and the season ahead promising discussion of education in the news, Bloom's, Hattie, PBIS, and a lot more.