Trending in Education
Richard Culatta
K12 Education
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Bridging Innovation and Pedagogy in K12 Education with Richard Culatta, CEO ISTE+ASCD

What if banning technology in schools is just like scratching a sunburn: it feels good now, and it comes back worse later?

Mike Palmer sits down with Richard Culatta, CEO of ⁠ISTE+ASCD⁠, the newly combined organization with ISTE now called the International Society for Transforming Education. Richard started out as a high school Spanish teacher and a teacher educator, then worked on education policy in the U.S. Senate, at the U.S. Department of Education, and at the state level before joining ISTE nearly a decade ago. He’s also the author of Digital for Good: Raising Kids to Thrive in an Online World.

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Eugene Kashuk
EdTech
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From Ukraine to EdTech | Brighterly’s Journey with Founder Eugene Kashuk

When AI can tutor anyone, anytime, why are parents still choosing human tutors?

Live from ⁠EdTech Week 2026⁠ at Teachers College’s ⁠Digital Futures Institute⁠, Mike Palmer sits down with Eugene Kashuk, founder of ⁠Brighterly⁠ and the show’s first guest from Ukraine. Eugene is a serial entrepreneur with a go-to-market and operations background. Over five years he has grown Brighterly into a direct-to-consumer platform with one-on-one live tutoring in math and reading for grades 1–9. It now serves more than 20,000 American families, with over 1,200 tutors and a team of more than 250 people around the world.

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Nick Ladany
EdTech
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Disrupting Higher Ed with SFBU President Nick Ladany

What would you build if someone handed you a university with almost no students and told you to start over?

We kick off our EdTech Week 2026 series live from Teachers College’s ⁠Digital Futures Institute⁠ with Dr. Nick Ladany, President of ⁠San Francisco Bay University (SFBU)⁠. Nick is a first-gen college student and a counseling psychologist by training. He worked his way from professor to dean across Maryland, Temple, Lehigh, Loyola Marymount, Santa Clara, and the University of San Diego, then served as president of Oglethorpe University. In 2023 he arrived at SFBU, a 40-year-old institution with a large unrestricted fund and a mandate to build a university from scratch.

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Karl Rectanus
EdTech
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Revolutionizing Literacy through Outcomes with Karl Rectanus CEO of Really Great Reading

What if schools stopped paying for books, licenses, and PD days, and started paying for kids learning to read?

Back on the show for round two, ⁠Really Great Reading⁠ CEO Karl Rectanus joins Mike Palmer live from ⁠EdTech Week 2026⁠ at Teachers College’s ⁠Digital Futures Institute⁠. Karl started out as a teacher and charter school CFO, taught overseas, and then founded LearnPlatform, whose rapid-cycle evaluation work helped shape the four levels of evidence in the Every Student Succeeds Act. After Instructure acquired LearnPlatform, Karl led K-12 and platform strategy there before taking the helm at Really Great Reading, a 20-year-old OG of the science of reading.

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Dan Goldstein
EdTech
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The Future of AI-Powered Assessment at Learnosity with Dan Goldstein

What if the most important edtech company in your classroom is one you’ve never heard of?

Live from ⁠EdTech Week 2026⁠ at Teachers College’s ⁠Digital Futures Institute⁠, Mike Palmer sits down with Dan Goldstein of ⁠Learnosity⁠, the assessment engine that powers some of the biggest names in education from behind the scenes. Dan’s path ran through College Board’s SpringBoard curriculum, where he led implementation across Texas and New Mexico, and district-facing sales at Cengage, before he joined Learnosity in 2019, just as the “beforetimes” ended.

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AJ Gutierrez and Susan Enfield
K12 Education
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No Invisible Kids | Reimagining K12 Education with AJ Gutierrez and Dr. Susan Enfield

What would change if schools knew their students the way the best companies know their customers?

Host Mike Palmer welcomes back Trending in Ed all-star AJ Gutierrez, CEO of Equal Opportunity Schools (EOS) and co-founder of Saga Education, for his first Bring a Friend episode. AJ’s friend is Dr. Susan Enfield, Executive Director of the Center for Educational Leadership at the University of Washington. Susan began her career as a high school English, journalism, and multilingual learner teacher and served as a superintendent for nearly 13 years, including a decade leading Highline Public Schools just south of Seattle.

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James Lane
Future of Work
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Framing the Teacher Shortage as a Workforce Design Problem | Dr. James Lane | Unlimited Instruction (UI)

What if the teacher shortage isn’t really a shortage of teachers?

Host Mike Palmer welcomes Dr. James Lane, CEO of Unlimited Instruction (UI), formerly University Instructors. James started as a middle school band director, and went on to be a principal, a superintendent in three Virginia districts, Virginia’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, and the leader of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education.

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Sal Khan
AI
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Sal Khan on AI Tutors, Durable Skills, and the Khan TED Institute | Trending in Ed w Mike Palmer

What happens when the original edtech pioneer gets an early look at GPT-4? Host Mike Palmer welcomes Sal Khan, founder and CEO of ⁠Khan Academy⁠, for a conversation spanning two decades of edtech. Sal traces his path from hedge fund analyst tutoring his cousin Nadia over Yahoo Messenger to YouTube videos his cousins liked better than him in person, to a nonprofit serving learners in 50+ languages. He explains why he leaves his mistakes in, and why that human quality will be hard for AI to replace.

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Janice Jackson
K12 Education
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Centering the Rising Generation: Dr. Janice Jackson on Screens, AI, and the Future of Schooling

Are screen bans solving the right problem, or just creating new ones? Host Mike Palmer welcomes Dr. Janice Jackson, Executive Director of the ⁠Education & Society Program at the Aspen Institute⁠ and former CEO of ⁠Chicago Public Schools⁠, for a conversation that trades hyperbole for nuance. Janice traces her path from CPS history teacher and debate coach to superintendent, then to founder of ⁠Hope Chicago⁠, and now to Aspen. There she helps lead the new ⁠Rising Generations Strategy Group⁠, a cross-sector, cross-partisan, intergenerational effort that puts young people at the center of the conversation, not just on the input list.

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Jeremy C. Young
Higher Education
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Advancing Public Trust in Higher Education | Jeremy C. Young | AAC&U | Trending in Higher Ed

How can higher education rebuild its relationship with the public in an era of heightened political polarization, shifting financial models, and rapid technological disruption? In this episode of Trending in Ed, host Mike Palmer welcomes back Jeremy C. Young, Senior Advisor at the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), to discuss the foundational new report: ⁠Advancing Public Trust in Higher Education: The Trust Agenda⁠.

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