Catching Up: School Choice, AI & Humanity, and Bottom-Up Innovation

What do students want principals to know about feeling heard, and feeling safe enough to fail and try again? Mason Pashia talks with Clare Ann Harff, executive director of MAPS Media Institute, and MAPS students Mikaela Doney and Laurel De Groot. MAPS gives young people across Montana free, professional media arts education, with studios in the Bitterroot Valley, Helena and near the Fort Belknap Indian Community, plus client projects where students make real media for their communities. Mikaela and Laurel share what they've built, what they've learned about themselves, and their advice for principals and superintendents. 📬 Free weekly newsletter: https://www.gettingsmart.com/newsletter/ 🎧 More episodes + transcripts: https://www.gettingsmart.com/podcast/ 🍎 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/getting-smart-podcast/id1017984086 · 🟢 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2cUXLWi6LxdMxihgzzTntf Links MAPS Media Institute: https://mapsmediainstitute.com/ Education Reimagined: https://education-reimagined.org/

Ten years ago, a small team asked a wild question: could you actually pay people to learn? That question sent them around the world, and eventually to building the infrastructure behind digital credentials used by Scouts, schools, and employers everywhere. In this episode, host Mason Pashia talks with Jacksón Smith, co-founder and CTO of the Learning Economy Foundation, about why credentials alone aren't very persuasive on their own, what it means to treat data portability as a public good, and the three verbs, collect, understand, navigate, behind their open-source app LearnCard. They also get into peer endorsements, why stories carry more weight than certificates, and LearnCard's new "Learner GPS," a Google Maps for figuring out where to go next in your education or career. Resources Jacksón's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacksonsmithcurtis Learning Economy Foundation: https://www.learningeconomy.io/ LearnCard: https://www.learncard.com/ "Why Learner Wallets Will Fail (And How to Make Sure They Don't)": https://www.gettingsmart.com/2026/01/06/why-learner-wallets-will-fail-and-how-to-make-sure-they-dont/

What actually sticks with students twenty years after high school? Andrew Frishman, co-executive director of Big Picture Learning and host of the new podcast The Advisory, joins Mason Pashia to talk about reconnecting with the Met High School Class of 2006. He is joined by Natasha Luigui, a Met alum, and Daniela Moraes, a current Met student in Providence, Rhode Island. They talk about advisory, exhibitions, internships, and why test scores aren't the whole picture of student outcomes. Andrew's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewfrishman/ Big Picture Learning: https://www.bigpicture.org/ The Met High School: https://www.themethighschool.org/ For the blog Resources, you can also link Getting Smart's own Met school page: https://www.gettingsmart.com/school/metropolitan-regional-career-and-technical-center-met/

Can AI make math class more social? Britte Haugan Cheng (MenloEDU) and Ann Edwards (WestEd) of the AIMS Collaboratory join Nate McClennen to talk about how developers, researchers, teachers, and students build math edtech together, why implementation is harder than it looks, and what a network can share with the rest of the field. Links AIMS Collaboratory: https://www.aimscollaboratory.org/ Inventory of Public Goods: https://www.aimscollaboratory.org/resources AIMS EduData: https://digitalpromise.org/initiative/advancing-innovative-math-solutions-aims-home/ BUILD: https://build.org/about/ NCTM: https://www.nctm.org/

Can AI help students connect with people instead of replacing them? What does a real PISA question look like? And why is microschool research so hard to trust? Nate McClennen and Mason Pashia catch up on a new Christensen Institute report on building AI that connects students to people, plus a closer look at PISA, including Mason's attempt at a sample question. They also get into a new bipartisan push for an education R&D agency, what Arizona's ESA spending shows, why student motivation matters even more with AI in the picture, and a new public boarding school in Alabama. Stay for the song at the end. Links mentioned NEED Act reintroduction: https://www.bennet.senate.gov/2026/09/17/bennet-van-hollen-tillis-reintroduce-bipartisan-bill-to-boost-innovation-in-education/ Arizona ESA FY2026 Q3 report: https://www.azed.gov/sites/default/files/2026/06/ESA%20FY26%20Q3%20Executive%20_%20%20Legislative%20Report.pdf Prosocial Possibilities (Christensen Institute): https://www.christenseninstitute.org/publication/prosocial-possibilities/ MySky: https://newpublic.substack.com/p/meet-the-algorithm-you-can-actually Schools Have a Motivation Problem (The 74): https://www.the74million.org/article/schools-have-a-motivation-problem-ai-is-making-it-impossible-to-ignore/ The Disengaged Teen episode: https://www.gettingsmart.com/podcast/jenny-anderson-and-rebecca-winthrop-on-the-disengaged-teen/ Alabama School of Healthcare Sciences: https://alabamanewscenter.com/2025/10/20/alabama-school-of-healthcare-sciences-brings-transformative-approach-to-high-school-education/ The Hogeweyk: https://www.bethecareconcept.com/en/hogeweyk-dementia-village-hogeweyk-netherlands/