Welcome back to the Ten Blocks podcast. This is Brian Anderson, the editor of City Journal. Today we're

joined by Nitu Arnold to discuss changes that some public school districts are making to recover

from the learning losses of the COVID years. NITU is a Paulson policy analyst at the Manhattan

Institute, and her focus is typically on K-12 and higher education.

Her writing has appeared not only in City Journal, but in the Wall Street Journal, Unheard,

and Tablet, and other outlets.

Previously, she was a research fellow at the National Association of Scholars, where she

published reports on college affordability

and foreign influence in universities. So welcome. Good to have you on 10 blocks.

Thank you, Brian. It's a pleasure to be here. You've recently written a very interesting

report in City Journal that looks at the new superintendent of the Houston

public schools, Mike Miles, whose approach to the classroom has resulted in what seemed to be

very substantial improvements among the worst performing schools in Houston in a district that had struggled in recent years. As you

note, federal data released this year show that Houston is now halted its pandemic-era

learning loss in both reading and math. What you describe is, in part, what Miles is calling

a new education system in NES, and it's based on a curriculum

that's incorporating direct instruction, which is a method, a pedagogy developed in the 1960s,

that we've written about quite favorably at City Journal over the years. To start with, if you could describe what the NES is, what is this new education system, and what is it that is at the heart of direct instruction that may be working here?

The improvements we're seeing in Houston is a big deal, especially when it comes to urban education. A lot of the improvements

that we're seeing in Houston, it's not something many districts can say. And when you look at the data

even closely for reading and math, you see improvements not only for the highest performing students,

but even the lower performing students. And that was not a general

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