Episode Details

Education journalist Liana Loewus joins Mike Petrilli and David Griffith to discuss her new Fordham report, Studying the Southern Surge: How Alabama Beat the Odds in Reading. For years, Alabama’s schools were dismissed as a lost cause, but the state has recently made some of the largest literacy gains in the nation. They discuss how Alabama’s reading reforms, including state-funded literacy coaches, evidence-based reading curricula, and a hands-on approach to supporting teachers, have helped turn things around. Can Alabama keep up the momentum, and what can other states learn from its success?

Then, on the Research Minute, Amber Northern shares a new study finding that access to AI tutoring in college courses may actually hurt students’ academic performance and engagement.

Recommended content:

• Studying the Southern Surge: How Alabama Beat the Odds in Reading — Liana Loewus, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
• From the Teacher’s Desk: A Science of Reading Progress Report —David Griffith and Brian R. Fitzpatrick, Thomas B. Fordham Institute
• New rules for state mandates —Michael J. Petrilli, SCHOOLED
• Is state leadership at odds with teacher buy-in? — Michael J. Petrilli, SCHOOLED
• The Effects of Course-Integrated AI Tutoring on Student Performance and Engagement: A Randomized University Trial —Jing Liu, Tracy Sweet, Marty Haoyuan Chen, Jonathan Engelberg, Megan Masters, Martyn Clark, Axel Persaud, Alia Lancaster, Jeffrey Hollingsworth, and Jennifer King Rice, Annenberg Institute at Brown University (2026)

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