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APM Reports Documentaries

The documentary unit of APM Reports (formerly American RadioWorks) has produced more than 140 programs on topics such as health, history, education and justice.

APM Reports

Emily Hanford introduces the first episode of her new podcast, 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.Subscribe: soldastory.org

Introducing: Sold a Story

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.

No Excuses: Race and Reckoning at a Chicago Charter School

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, three Indigenous college students tell how they are using higher education to strengthen ties to their Native roots and support their people.Photos: See portraits of the students in this documentary

Standing in Two Worlds: Native American College Diaries

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.In Deep: One City’s Year of Climate Chaos offers a rich journalistic portrait of a working-class city and its residents at a perilous moment in our planet’s existence.Read the story.

In Deep: One City's Year of Climate Chaos

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?Read more: Inside the college mental health crisis

Under Pressure: The College Mental Health Crisis

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. At the same time, enrollment in teacher training programs at colleges and universities is plummeting, and schools are looking to other sources to fill classrooms. In Nevada, a desperate need for teachers this year led to allowing people with just a high school diploma to fill in as substitutes. Oklahoma recently changed its law to allow people with a bachelor’s degree — in anything — to teach indefinitely on emergency teaching certificates. Schools in Texas are increasingly turning to for-profit teacher training programs. Data we obtained shows that nearly one in four of the teachers hired in Texas last year came through a single for-profit online program — one that’s now making its way into other states. We’ll look at the implications of these changes, both for children and for the teaching force.Read more: Texas company fuels rise of for-profit teacher training programs

Who Wants to Be a Teacher?

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 percent.Read more: The U.S. may never regain its dominance as a destination for international students. Here's why that matters.

Fading Beacon: Why America is Losing International Students

Sixteen-year-old Myon Burrell was sent to prison for life after a stray bullet killed an 11-year-old girl in Minneapolis in 2002. Amy Klobuchar, who was Minneapolis’ top prosecutor, brought first-degree murder charges as part of a national crackdown on gang violence — a crackdown that engulfed young men of color.   Burrell maintained his innocence for 18 years in prison. AP reporter Robin McDowell spent a year looking into Burrell’s case and found that multiple people had lied about Burrell’s involvement in the shooting, and police didn’t talk to his alibi witnesses. In December 2020, the state commuted Burrell’s sentence, allowing him to walk free. This end to a prison sentence is rare: Burrell’s case was the first time in at least 28 years that Minnesota commuted a sentence for a violent crime case. But the factors that put Burrell in prison are not rare at all. According to The Sentencing Project, there are 10,000 people serving life sentences in the U.S. for crimes committed when they were juveniles. Half of them are Black. Burrell’s longshot reveals just how difficult it is to right a wrong in our criminal justice system. How many other Myons are there? 

The Jail Tapes in the Dumpster

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.00:00:00 1. 'Youth were abused here'00:04:30 2. 'It looked good from the outside'00:18:21 3. 'We aren't equipped to handle that'00:20:49 4. 'A good business'00:31:11 5. 'Somebody's going to die'

The Bad Place

Lauren Brown says college was "culture shock." Most of the students at her high school were Black, but most of the students at the University of Missouri were white. And she got to the university in the fall of 2015, when Black students led protests in response to a string of racist incidents. The protests put Mizzou in the national news. But the news stories didn't match what Lauren saw. They made it seem like racism on campus was an aberration. And they made it seem like Black student organizing was new at Mizzou.  What Lauren saw was "Black Mizzou," a thriving campus-within-a-campus that Black students have built over decades to make the university a more welcoming place.

Black at Mizzou: Confronting race on campus

Everyone agrees that the goal of reading instruction is for children to understand what they read. The question is: how does a little kid get there? Emily Hanford explores what reading scientists have figured out about how reading comprehension works and why poverty and race can affect a child’s reading development. Read the full story.

What the Words Say

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.This program explores how institutions are handling the crisis, and how students are trying to navigate a major disruption in their college years.Colleges on the brinkThe long tradition of students attending small, residential liberal arts colleges around the country was already shaky before the pandemic. Students are choosing less expensive options and more practical degrees. Experts warn that 10 percent of American colleges — about 200 or more institutions — are on the verge of going under. The pandemic is accelerating that trend. A digital divideThe pandemic is making getting through college harder for students on the wrong side of the digital divide. In rural Arizona, when campuses closed, some students couldn’t log on from home, because they had no access to the internet. A local sheriff flew laptops and hotspots to community college students on the Navajo Nation.Reopening in a virus hotspotColleges and universities are under pressure to reopen, but bringing students back on campus safely means dealing with dizzying logistics. As the virus surges in Miami, a large commuter campus gets ready.

Covid on Campus

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.

Soldiers for Peace

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.

Uprooted: The 1950s plan to erase Indian Country

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.

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

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.

At a Loss for Words: What's wrong with how schools teach reading

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.

Students on the Move: Keeping uprooted kids in school

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.

Under a Watchful Eye: How colleges are tracking students to boost graduation

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.

When Tasers Fail

Scientific research has shown how children learn to read and how they should be taught. But many educators don't know the science and, in some cases, actively resist it. As a result, millions of kids are being set up to fail. 

Hard Words: Why Aren't Our Kids Being Taught to Read?

You might think apprenticeships are a relic from an earlier era, but a growing number of Americans are using them as a way into the middle class.

Old Idea, New Economy: Rediscovering Apprenticeships

They bet that college would help them move up. Did it pay off?

Still Rising: First-Generation College Students a Decade Later

Colleges have long offered a pathway to success for just about anyone. But new research shows that with the country growing ever more economically divided, colleges are not doing enough to help students from poor families achieve the American Dream.

Changing Class: Are Colleges Helping Americans Move Up?

At the end of 1944, the U.S. government lifted the order barring people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. Many people freed from camp faced racism and poverty as they tried to rebuild their lives.

Order 9066, Part 3: Leaving Camp

At the beginning of World War Two, Japanese Americans not already in the military were declared ineligible for service. The government said it doubted their loyalty. But as the war dragged on, the need for manpower grew urgent.

Order 9066, Part 2: Fighting for Freedom

Japanese warplanes bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Hours later, the FBI began rounding up people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast.

Order 9066, Part 1: The Roundup

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is a major investor in Neurocore, a company based in Michigan that claims to help kids with various attention deficit disorders. Since taking office, she's kept her stake in the company and invested even more money in it. In the third and final installment of "Ethics Be Damned," APM Reports investigative journalist Tom Scheck joins Lizzie O'Leary of Marketplace Weekend to parse DeVos' potential conflicts of interest. Plus, what happens if watchdog groups use ethics as a political weapon? To read Tom's full investigation, visit apmreports.com/ethics.

Ethics Be Damned, Part 3

It all started with a fur coat and an expensive rug. It ended with the resignation of President Eisenhower's chief of staff. That incident led to the government ethics system of today. In the second installment of our series, APM Reports investigative journalist Tom Scheck joins Lizzie O'Leary of Marketplace Weekend to discuss the history of U.S. ethics rules, and the complicated financial holdings of current Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. To read Tom's full investigation, visit apmreports.com/ethics.

Ethics Be Damned, Part 2

More than half of Trump's 20-person Cabinet has engaged in questionable or unethical conduct since taking office. The nation's top ethics official says "these are perilous times." In the first installment of "Ethics Be Damned," APM Reports investigative journalist Tom Scheck joins Lizzie O'Leary of Marketplace Weekend to discuss whether the federal ethics system is broken. To read Tom's full investigation, visit apmreports.com/ethics.

Ethics Be Damned, Part 1

President Trump is ending DACA, which allowed some 800,000 undocumented young people to stay and work in the United States. For some, that may mean the end of a dream of going to college. This program profiles DACA students and their opponents and examines a key court case and political forces that led to this moment. 

Shadow Class: College Dreamers in Trump's America

Public schools are denying children with dyslexia proper treatment and often failing to identify them in the first place.

Hard to Read: How American schools fail kids with dyslexia

Profits from slavery and related industries helped build some of the most prestigious schools in New England. This documentary focuses on three universities -- Harvard, Georgetown and the University of Virginia -- as they grapple with a deeply troubling chapter in their vaunted histories.

Shackled Legacy: Universities and the Slave Trade

There may be nothing more important in the educational life of a child than having effective teachers. But the United States is struggling to attract and keep teachers.

Keeping Teachers

The Question of Black Identity, Black Love Stories

Historically Black, Part 3

Tracking Down a Slave's Bill of Sale, The Path to Founding an HBCU, The Fiddler who Charmed Missouri

Historically Black, Part 2

NASA's Human Computers, Harlem Through James Van Der Zee's Lens, The Spirit of the Million Man March

Historically Black, Part 1

After an abrupt reversal 20 years ago, some prisons and colleges try to maintain college education for prisoners.

Rewriting the Sentence: College Behind Bars

The nation's high school graduation rate is at an all-time high, but high-poverty schools face a stubborn challenge. Schools in Miami and Pasadena are trying to do things differently.

What It Takes: Chasing Graduation at High-Poverty High Schools

A get-tough attitude prevailed among educators in the 1980s and 1990s, but research shows that zero-tolerance policies don't make schools safer and lead to disproportionate discipline for students of color.

Spare the Rod: Reforming School Discipline

A system meant to give college students a better shot at succeeding is actually getting in the way of many, costing them time and money and taking a particular toll on students of color.

Stuck at Square One: The Remedial Education Trap

Advocates for kids are pushing for a new approach to combating underage prostitution: treating young people caught up in sex trafficking as victims, not delinquents.

Bought and Sold: The New Fight Against Teen Sex Trafficking

Scientists say most people on Earth will first experience climate change in terms of water — either too much or too little.

Thirsty Planet

This documentary explores the "Expeditionary Learning" approach, traces the history of ideas that led to its inception, and investigates what American schools could learn from its success.

Beyond the Blackboard: Building Character in Public Schools

The longest war in American history is drawing to a close. Now, the men and women who served are coming home, and many hope to use higher education to build new, better lives.

From Boots to Books: Student Veterans and the New GI Bill

Research shows good teaching makes a big difference in how much kids learn. But the United States lacks an effective system for training new teachers or helping them get better once they're on the job.

Teaching Teachers

Before the civil rights movement, African Americans were largely barred from white-dominated institutions of higher education. And so black Americans, and their white supporters, founded their own schools, which came to be known as Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

The Living Legacy: Black Colleges in the 21st Century

When Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president in 1932, he and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt both used the new medium of radio to reach into American homes like never before.

The First Family of Radio: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt's Historic Broadcasts

Vocational education was once a staple of American schooling, preparing some kids for blue-collar futures while others were put on a path to college. Many experts say it's time to bring back career and technical education.

Ready to Work: Reviving Vocational Ed

Just 20 percent of college-goers fit the stereotype of being young, single, full-time students who finish a degree in four years. College students today are more likely to be older, part-time, working, and low-income than they were three decades ago.

The New Face of College

The United States is in the midst of a huge education reform. The Common Core State Standards are a new set of expectations for what students should learn each year in school.

Greater Expectations: The Challenge of the Common Core

Researchers have long been searching for better ways to learn. In recent decades, experts working in cognitive science, psychology, and neuroscience have opened new windows into how the brain works, and how we can learn to learn better.

The Science of Smart

Most test-takers hope the GED will lead to a better job or more education. But critics say the GED encourages some students to drop out of school. And research shows the credential is of little value to most people who get one.

Second-Chance Diploma: Examining the GED

Learning with a personal tutor is one of the oldest and best ways to learn. Hiring a tutor for every student was never a realistic option. Now, new computer programs can customize education for each child.

One Child at a Time: Custom Learning in the Digital Age

Digital technologies and the Internet are changing how many Americans go to college. From online learning to simulation programs to smart-machine mentors, the 21st-century student will be taught in fundamentally new ways.

Keyboard College: How Technology is Revolutionizing Higher Education

For-profit colleges have deep roots in American history, but until recently they were a tiny part of the higher education landscape. Now they are big players.

The Rise of Phoenix: For-Profit Universities Shake Up the Academy

More people are going to college than ever before, but a lot of them aren't finishing. Low-income students, in particular, struggle to get to graduation.

Grit, Luck and Money: Preparing Kids for College and Getting Them Through

College students spend a lot of time listening to lectures. But research shows there are better ways to learn. And experts say students need to learn better because the 21st century economy demands more well-educated workers.

Don't Lecture Me: Rethinking the Way College Students Learn

The most popular college major in America these days is business. Some students think it doesn't pay to study philosophy or history. But advocates of liberal arts programs say their graduates are still among the most likely to become leaders, and that a healthy democracy depends on citizens with a broad and deep education.

Who Needs an English Major?

In an economy that increasingly demands workers with knowledge and skills, many college dropouts are being left behind.

Some College, No Degree: Getting Adults Back to School

The production of electricity in America pumps out more greenhouse gases than all of our cars, trucks, planes, and ships combined, and half of our electricity comes from burning coal.

Power and Smoke: A Nation Built on Coal

Equal access to transportation was once a central issue of the Civil Rights Movement. But today, disparities still persist.

Back of the Bus: Mass Transit, Race and Inequality

Mississippi led the South in an extraordinary battle to maintain racial segregation. Whites set up powerful citizens groups and state agencies to fight the civil rights movement. Their tactics were fierce and, for a time, very effective.

State of Siege: Mississippi Whites and the Civil Rights Movement

Titled after the classic 1969 James Brown anthem, "Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud," this anthology illuminates the ideas and debates pulsing through the black freedom struggle from the 1960s to the present. These arguments are suffused with basic questions about what it means to be black in America.

Say It Loud: A Century of Great African-American Speeches

Spanning the 20th century, this collection is a vivid account of how African Americans sounded the charge against racial injustice, exhorting the country to live up to its democratic principles.

Say It Plain: A Century of Great African-American Speeches

Teachers matter. A lot. Studies show that students with the best teachers learn three times as much as students with the worst teachers. Researchers say the achievement gap between poor children and their higher-income peers could disappear if poor kids got better teachers.

Testing Teachers

When Lyndon B. Johnson became president after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, he put the power of his presidency behind a remarkable series of reform initiatives. The legislation was geared toward boosting economic opportunity, a theme captured by his administration's catchphrase, the Great Society.

War on Poverty

What should children learn in school? It's a question that's stirred debate for decades, and in 1974 it led to violent protests in West Virginia. Schools were hit by dynamite, buses were riddled with bullets, and coal mines were shut down. The fight was over a new set of textbooks.

The Great Textbook War

A new movement turns conventional wisdom on its head, and makes a job the ticket to an education. The idea is to turn workplaces into classrooms and marginal students into productive workers.

Workplace U

The United States is facing a dramatic demographic challenge: Young Latinos are the fastest-growing segment of the population, and they are the least likely to graduate from college.

Rising By Degrees

The Perry Preschool Project is one of the most famous education experiments of the last 50 years. The study asked a question: Can preschool boost the IQ scores of poor African-American children and prevent them from failing in school?

Early Lessons

Producer Laurie Stern talks with Stephen Smith about wrapping up their documentary Hard Times in Middletown.

Behind the Scenes: Hard Times in Middletown Debrief

Producer Catherine Winter talks with Stephen Smith about wrapping up the documentary Bridge to Somewhere.

Behind the Scenes: Bridge to Somewhere Debrief

Producers Kate Ellis and Ellen Guettler talk with Stephen Smith about wrapping up their documentary A Better Life: Creating the […]

Behind the Scenes: A Better Life Debrief

Producer Krissy Clark talks with Stephen Smith about life after the her documentary.

Behind the Scenes: Foreclosure City Debrief

President Barack Obama wants to create jobs by building infrastructure. So did another president. Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to put people to work by building roads, bridges, dams, sewers, schools, hospitals and even ski jumps. The structures that New Deal agencies built transformed America.

Bridge to Somewhere

ARW editor Peter Clowney talks with Stephen Smith about the processing of editing radio documentaries.

Behind the Scenes: Editing

The "American dream" has powered the hopes and aspirations of Americans for generations. But what exactly is the American dream? How did we come to define it? And is it changing?

A Better Life: Creating the American Dream

ARW producers Ellen Guettler and Kate Ellis discuss the “American dream.” It began as a plain but revolutionary notion: each […]

Behind the Scenes: A Better Life, Part 2

ARW Executive Editor Stephen Smith hosts a panel discussion on the political, financial, and cultural sides of America during the […]

Behind the Scenes: The Great Depression

For almost a century, Muncie, Indiana has been known as "Middletown," the quintessential American community. But now, as the rust-belt city grapples with deepening recession, many residents are losing their hold on the middle class.

Hard Times in Middletown

Producer Krissy Clark is moving on to the editing phase for her documentary on the devastating foreclosure crisis happening in […]

Behind the Scenes: Foreclosure City, Part 2

Last week, ARW producer Emily Hanford stopped by to talk about a trio of stories she’s been working on about […]

Behind the Scenes: Education and the Economy, Part 2

Until recently, Las Vegas was one of the few places where the American Dream still seemed widely possible. Each month, thousands of people flocked there, lured by the promise of good jobs and a chance to own a home. It was the fastest growing city in the country. But now, Las Vegas has a new distinction: the nation's highest foreclosure rate.

Foreclosure City

The effects of the economic downturn are far and wide. While slowdowns used to be a good time to return […]

Behind the Scenes: Education and the Economy

With the country’s economy in a tailspin, many Americans are calling for a new New Deal: an infusion of federal […]

Behind the Scenes: Bridge to Somewhere

To understand the American fascination with the stock market, you have to look at the American Dream and how it’s […]

Behind the Scenes: Stock Crazy

Millions of Americans are slipping from the middle class, and it’s no longer certain that savvy, hard-working parents can pave […]

Behind the Scenes: A Better Life

Muncie, Indiana, often thought of as the “typical American city,” has become a rust-belt city grappling with de-industrialization and deepening […]

Behind the Scenes: Hard Times in Middletown

Producer Krissy Clark has been finding scenes, meeting characters, and gathering tape in Las Vegas for her upcoming documentary on […]

Behind the Scenes: Foreclosure City

The 1968 presidential election was a watershed in American politics. After dominating the political landscape for more than a generation, the Democratic Party crumbled. Richard M. Nixon was elected president and a new era of Republican conservatism was born.

Campaign '68

Michael Whitehead lived in Chicago's Ida B. Wells housing project for nearly 50 years. In 2008, the Chicago Housing Authority closed down Wells, as part of its "Plan for Transformation," a city-wide public housing rehabilitation effort.

After the Projects

Sergeant Adam Gray made it home from Iraq only to die in his barracks. Investigating his death, American RadioWorks pieces together a story of soldiers suffering psychological scars - because they abused Iraqi prisoners.

What Killed Sergeant Gray

The nation's foreign-born population will soon surpass the 14.7 percent share reached in 1910, when the Statue of Liberty beckoned to Europe's "huddled masses yearning to breathe free." Most of the new immigrants are from Latin America.

Pueblo, USA

In January 2000, a German engineer living in South Africa met with a friend and business partner to hatch a deal. Gerald Wisser, a 61-year-old broker, visited his friend's pipe factory outside Johannesburg to see if his friend wanted to make a bid on a manufacturing project.

Business of the Bomb

Rene Enriquez was a leader in one of America's most violent gangs, the Mexican Mafia. He's serving 20 years to life in California for murders he committed for the gang.

Gangster Confidential

Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. Four decades later, King remains one of the most vivid symbols of hope for racial unity in America. But that's not the way he was viewed in the last year of his life.

King's Last March

New research is lending insight into why we want stuff that we don't need. It also explains why some people are what are called tightwads, while other people are spendthrifts. This site is about buying and selling. About why we buy, how designers and marketers influence what we buy, and how individuals are using market ideas, tricks, and tools to market themselves.

Design of Desire

Advocates for kids are trying to persuade more families to adopt teenagers. If teenagers in foster care don't find permanent families, they face a grim future. They "age out" of foster care, usually when they turn 18 years old, and many wind up on the streets. Every year, more than 24,000 American young people age out of foster care.

Wanted: Parents

America seemed united in fighting "The Good War" but not everyone fought in the same way.