Show Logo

Programs Fall Education Docs

APM Reports’ award-winning documentary team has created four new education specials for fall 2018, available for broadcast beginning August 20.

These hour-long documentaries are available at no additional charge. APM Reports’ award-winning journalism is included in your affiliation fee. Air them as a series, or individually to meet the needs of your audience.

APM Reports is a collection of investigative journalists and documentary producers, editors, researchers and digital producers dedicated to producing high quality reporting on issues that are often shrouded from public view.

Host

Stephen Smith
Stephen Drury Smith is the executive editor and host of APM Reports. He has covered a wide range of international and domestic issues, including human rights, education, science and health, race relations and American history. His work has received many national journalism awards, including the duPont-Columbia University Gold and Silver Batons, the Robert F. Kennedy, Edward R. Murrow, Overseas Press Club, Investigative Reporters and Editors, International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Major Armstrong, Society of Professional Journalists and Scripps-Howard awards. Smith is a graduate of Macalester College, where he is a visiting instructor in English. He holds an M.A. from the University of Chicago, where he was a William Benton Fellow.

Length

One hour each.

Program Feeds

APM Reports documentaries are available exclusively to APM stations on ContentDepot

Show Clock

Download program clock

Producers

Sasha Aslanian
Emily Hanford

Digital assets and guidelines

Download Digital ads and assets

Resources

Listener Inquiries

contact@apmreports.org

Social Media

Broadcast Rights

Affiliate stations may carry these programs at no charge until July 1, 2019. Multiple broadcasts are allowed. Programs must be carried in their entirety; no excerpting is permitted.

Patrick Hughes of Queens, NY, is the son of Jamaican immigrants and an example of Stony Brook University’s success launching low-income students into profitable careers.
Download fullsized version

“Changing Class: Are Colleges Helping Americans Move Up?”

Broadcast window: August 20, 2018-June 30, 2019, with multiple airings permitted.
Rundown, preview audio, promos available: August 19, 2018

If you want to move up in America, go to college. That’s the advice people get. And there’s loads of evidence that a college degree will improve your economic prospects. But a new project by a group of economists shows that some colleges are doing a much better job than others when it comes to promoting social mobility. In fact, some colleges are doing more to exacerbate class divides than to help people move up. We visit a college coming to terms with its own role in perpetuating class divides and another that has long been a “mobility maker” – but is struggling to stay that way.

Mario Martinez, 29, and Katy Sorto, 28, were the first in their families to go to college when they started at Montgomery College in Maryland in 2008.
Download fullsized version

“Still Rising: First Generation College Students a Decade Later”

Broadcast window: August 27, 2018-June 30, 2019, with multiple airings permitted.
Rundown, preview audio, promos available: August 26, 2018

Mario Martinez and Katy Sorto were the first in their families to go to college. They started at community college in 2008 hoping to earn degrees, but the odds were against them. Both are from low-income families, they ended up in remedial classes, and they knew almost no one who had been to college. This APM Reports documentary tells their remarkable stories 10 years later and provides a rare window on the personal experience of trying to move up through education.

Sheniah Everson, 17, is part of a youth apprenticeship program in Charleston, SC, that’s giving her a jump on her nursing career.
Download fullsized version

“Old Idea, New Economy: Rediscovering Apprenticeships”

Broadcast window: September 3, 2018-June 30, 2019, with multiple airings permitted.
Rundown, preview audio, promos available: September 2, 2018

Apprenticeships are having a moment. Supporters on both the right and the left say the “earn while you learn” approach can help create a more skilled workforce, provide a path to solid, middle-class careers, and serve as a needed corrective to the “college for all” push that has left some students with piles of debt and no obvious career. In this APM Reports documentary, we ask: How can apprenticeships expand to include careers beyond the traditional trades and reach new populations searching for a foothold in the middle class?

Kindergartners in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The Bethlehem Area School District realized its reading instruction did not reflect what research shows about how children learn to read, so the schools have changed their approach.
Download fullsized version

“Why Aren't American Kids Being Taught to Read?”

Broadcast window: September 10, 2018-June 30, 2019, with multiple airings permitted.
Rundown, preview audio, promos available: September 9, 2018

For generations, educators have fought about how kids learn to read and what that means about how they should be taught. Now, there is definitive evidence from neuroscience on how the brain learns to read and it suggests very different approaches to reading instruction than those that are commonly found in schools. This APM Reports documentary explores why the reading science is not making its way into American classrooms – or teacher preparation programs – and what can be done about it.


Questions about carrying APM Reports programs? We’re here for you.