Audio Documentaries

The APM Reports documentary unit, formerly American RadioWorks, produces programs about education, history, justice and more.

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October 20, 2022

Introducing: Sold a Story

There's an idea about how children learn to read that's held sway in schools for more than a generation — even though it was proven wrong by cognitive scientists decades ago. Teaching methods based on this idea can make it harder for children to learn how to read. In this podcast, Hanford investigates the influential authors who promote this idea and the company that sells their work. It's an exposé of how educators came to believe in something that isn't true and are now reckoning with the consequences — children harmed, money wasted, an education system upended.

August 9, 2022

No Excuses: Race and Reckoning at a Chicago Charter School

Producer DJ Cashmere spent seven years teaching Black and brown students at a Noble Street charter high school in Chicago. At the time, Noble followed a popular model called "no excuses." Its schools required strict discipline but promised low-income students a better shot at college. After DJ left the classroom to become a journalist, Noble disavowed its own policies — calling them "assimilationist, patriarchal, white supremacist, and anti-black." In this hour, DJ, who is white, revisits his old school as it tries to reinvent itself as an anti-racist institution. And he seeks out his former students to ask them how they felt about being on the receiving end of all that education reform, and what they think now about the time they spent in his classroom.

August 2, 2022

Standing in Two Worlds: Native American College Diaries

Native American students are just a tiny fraction of all the college students in the United States. They come with different histories, confronting an education system once used to erase their languages and cultures. In this project, four Indigenous college students tell how they are using higher education to strengthen ties to their Native roots and support their people.

September 3, 2021

In Deep: One City's Year of Climate Chaos

Most scientists believe climate change is increasing the severity of the storms we experience, and how quickly they intensify. After suffering two hurricanes, a winter storm, and devastating flooding in less than a year, Lake Charles, Louisiana, offers a troubling view of the wrenching, disturbingly inequitable effects of climate change.

August 19, 2021

Under Pressure: The College Mental Health Crisis

Even before the pandemic, campus counselling services were reporting a marked uptick in the number of students with anxiety, clinical depression and other serious psychiatric problems. What is a college’s responsibility for helping students navigate mental health challenges, and how well are colleges rising to the task?

August 11, 2021

Who Wants to Be a Teacher?

Many schools around the country are struggling to find enough teachers. Large numbers of teachers quit after a short time on the job, so schools are constantly struggling to replace them. The problem is particularly acute at rural schools and urban schools. The most common level of experience of teachers in the United States now is one year on the job.

August 3, 2021

Fading Beacon: Why America is Losing International Students

Colleges and universities in the United States attract more than a million international students a year. Higher education is one of America’s top service exports, generating $42 billion in revenue. But the money spigot is closing. The pandemic, visa restrictions, rising tuition and a perception of poor safety in America have driven new international student enrollment down by a jaw-dropping 72%.

April 17, 2021

The Jail Tapes in the Dumpster

A murder conviction sent Myon Burrell to prison for life when he was a teenager. An investigative reporter dug into what seemed a hopeless case. What she found helped free him.

November 22, 2020

The Bad Place

More than 40 states have sent their most vulnerable kids to facilities run by a for-profit company named Sequel. Many of those kids were abused there.

August 14, 2020

Black at Mizzou: Confronting Race on Campus

"Black Mizzou" is a thriving campus-within-a-campus that Black students have built over decades to make the University of Missouri a more welcoming place.

August 6, 2020

What the Words Say

A false assumption about what it takes to be a skilled reader has created deep inequalities among U.S. children, putting many on a difficult path in life.

July 29, 2020

Covid on Campus

The coronavirus pandemic represents the greatest challenge to American higher education in decades. Some small regional colleges that were already struggling won’t survive. Other schools, large and small, are rethinking how to offer an education while keeping people safe.

November 7, 2019

Soldiers for Peace

During the Vietnam War, roughly one in five GIs actively opposed the conflict. Many servicemen and women came to believe they were not liberating the country from communism but acting as agents of tyranny. In the combat zone, they rebelled against their commanders' orders. At home, they staged massive protests. Soldiers for Peace offers a first-person look at how GIs were transformed by Vietnam, and the strategies veterans and active-duty personnel used to bring the war to an end.

November 1, 2019

Uprooted: The 1950s Plan to Erase Indian Country

In the 1950s, the United States came up with a plan to solve what it called the "Indian Problem." It would assimilate Native Americans by moving them to cities and eliminating reservations. The 20-year campaign failed to erase Native Americans, but its effects on Indian Country are still felt today.

October 15, 2019

Fading Minds: Why There's Still No Cure for Alzheimer's

In the 1970s, the founder of the National Institute on Aging convinced a nation that senility was really Alzheimer's and could be cured. Research money flowed to one theory, leaving alternatives unexamined — today it's come up short.

August 22, 2019

At a Loss for Words: What's Wrong with How Schools Teach Reading

For decades, schools have taught children the strategies of struggling readers, using a theory about reading that cognitive scientists have repeatedly debunked. And many teachers and parents don't know there's anything wrong with it.

August 14, 2019

Students on the Move: Keeping Uprooted Kids in School

Moving a lot is hard on school kids. And millions of children in the United States have unstable housing. A growing body of research finds that repeatedly uprooted children are more likely to struggle in school and more likely to drop out. But there are ways to help them succeed.

August 6, 2019

Under a Watchful Eye: How Colleges Are Tracking Students to Boost Graduation

At Georgia State in Atlanta, more students are graduating, and the school credits its use of predictive analytics. But critics worry that the algorithms may be invading students' privacy and reinforcing racial inequities.

May 9, 2019

When Tasers Fail

Tasers have become an essential tool for police, but how effective are they? An APM Reports investigation finds that officers in some big cities rated Tasers as unreliable up to 40 percent of the time, and in three large departments, newer models were less effective than older ones. In 258 cases over three years, a Taser failed to subdue someone who was then shot and killed by police.