EdTech

Shaping an EdTech Company From the Inside | Kennedy Davis & Taylor Shead

Guest Author

What does it look like when students are not just testing an edtech product but actually building it? In this episode, Stimuli founder Taylor Shead and Student League member Kennedy Davis pull back the curtain on a co-design process that shaped two products from the ground up, and Kennedy estimates students influenced 60 to 70 percent of the outcome. For education leaders thinking about equity, engagement, and what it means to center real learners, this conversation is essential listening.
Ed Policy

How Can Public Schools Benefit from the Education Freedom Tax Credit? | Antonio Parés

Guest Author

A landmark federal tax credit is arriving in 2027, and public schools may be the sector best positioned to benefit from it. In our latest podcast episode, Nate McClennen speaks with strategist Antonio Parés about the Education Freedom Tax Credit, how scholarship-granting organizations work, and what district leaders, school board members, and foundations should be building right now. This is a rare window where early action translates directly into community benefit, and Antonio explains exactly why waiting is a risk public education cannot afford to take.
EdTech

The Attention Span Myth: Ronald Yaros on What’s Really Failing Students

Guest Author

What if the attention span crisis is not a student problem but a design problem? In this episode of the Getting Smart Podcast, Mason Pashia speaks with Dr. Ronald Yaros of the University of Maryland's Digital Engagement Lab about why the way we structure content matters as much as the content itself. Dr. Yaros introduces the Smart Story Suite, an adaptive AI tool that restructures existing materials into selectable learning paths, and shares research showing that learners engaged more deeply and retained more when content was organized around their time, interests, and environment. For education leaders searching for evidence-based strategies to close the gap between how students naturally consume information and how schools deliver it, this conversation is a necessary listen.
Future of Learning

Are We Designing Schools for Systems or for People? | Jane Shore

Guest Author

What if the most powerful learning technology we have is other people? Dr. Jane Shore, founder of School of Thought PHL and author of People-Based Learning, joined Rebecca Midles on the Getting Smart Podcast to make the case that human connection is not a soft skill but a cognitive engine. Jane shares her connect, reflect, and affect framework alongside practical moves any leader can try tomorrow, from rethinking how staff introductions work to mapping the ripples of impact a single student conversation can create. This one is for every educator working inside an inherited system who wonders where to begin.

Students and instructors in lab coats working on robotics and electronics in a modern manufacturing workshop
Career & Technical Ed

What If Every Graduate Left School with a Credential That Actually Meant Something? | Edson Barton

Mason Pashia

What does it look like when a state mandates that every graduate leave school with a verified, stackable credential? In our latest podcast, Mason Pashia sits down with Edson Barton, CEO of YouScience, to explore how Utah's House Bill 260 is building a first-of-its-kind education-to-workforce infrastructure, and what that blueprint means for the rest of the country. From aptitude-driven career guidance to industry-recognized certifications at every step of a student's journey, this conversation challenges education leaders to move beyond vague career exploration toward verified, meaningful readiness. If you are a superintendent, principal, or CTE director wrestling with how to make credentials matter, this one is for you.
Future of Learning

Catching Up: Job Cliff, Enrollment Drop, and the Hidden Crisis No One Is Talking About?

Guest Author

In this episode of Catching Up, Nate McClennen and Mason Pashia wrestle with three of the most urgent tensions in education today: what a landmark study reveals about how AI-generated lesson materials are quietly eroding student motivation, why chronic absenteeism strategies keep ignoring the one lever that actually works, and how a looming job cliff is colliding with AI displacement in ways most school advisors are not yet discussing. This is the kind of layered, honest conversation that helps education leaders cut through the noise and design schools students genuinely want to attend.
Difference Making

From Invited to Included: Student-Led Changemaking at the International School of Düsseldorf

Guest Author

What does authentic student agency actually look like in practice? On the latest Getting Smart Podcast, Mason Pashia sits down with three Grade 11 students and their educator mentors from the International School of Düsseldorf to unpack how students planned, budgeted, and executed the Changemakers Conference, a 300-person, three-day event built around economy, society, nature, and well-being. From drafting legally binding speaker contracts to landing a keynote through their own network, these young leaders make a compelling case that the gap between being invited and being included is the most important design problem in education today.