Have You Heard: Recent Episodes
Have You Heard
Occasionally funny and periodically informative, Have You Heard features journalist Jennifer Berkshire and scholar Jack Schneider as they explore the age-old quest to finally fix the nation's public schools, one policy issue at a time.
Despite working considerably more hours than their colleagues in other countries, teachers here say they don’t have enough time to do their jobs, leading to high rates of stress, burnout and teacher turnover. We hear from researchers and current and former teachers about the ‘time scarcity’ toll, and why any effort to ‘fix’ our schools must start by reckoning with the demands on teacher time.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Civic centers are all the rage on red state campuses. Designed to reclaim and “save” the humanities, reinstate ideological diversity in higher ed, and bring back the Great Books, these centers are growing rapidly, even as the old school humanities wither away. But when writer Ann Manov visited a new center at her alma mater, the University of Florida, the reality fell far short of the sales pitch.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Waste, fraud and abuse. That’s how education policy expert Jon Valant characterizes the new federal voucher program that was tucked into Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill last year. Valant walks us through the nuts and bolts of the program and explains how it undoes the federal commitment to civil rights and progressive education funding. Valant’s ultimate conclusion: Trump’s voucher program will be the greatest source of waste, fraud, and abuse that we have seen in our lifetimes in K-12 education.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
A steep decline in the birthrate means fewer students, and for a growing number of communities that means closing schools. We head to New Orleans where the ‘demographic cliff’ poses a unique problem for a market-based school system in which schools are constantly opening and closing. A recent decision by KIPP to close a school without consulting parents or students has set off an uproar and called new attention to the democracy deficit in New Orleans’ all-charter-school model.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Sarasota Florida was supposed to be the new capital of Magamerica. But a funny thing happened on the way to making this coastal community and its school board the epicenter of right wing activism. A whole lot of Sarasotans woke up to the reality that their schools, vulnerable students and indeed local democracy hung in the balance. Call it the backlash to the backlash or the revenge of the normies, the resistance is alive and well in southwest Florida.DescriptionThe financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
As Silicon Valley’s tentacles reach ever more deeply into the nation’s public schools, a provocative new book sounds an emphatic “stop”! We talk to Tim Scott, author of Schooling for Silicon Valley, about big tech’s dystopian vision for education, and what the sales pitch for personalized, adaptive and data-driven learning is really about.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
It isn’t just red states where books are being pulled from schools. In blue states, books have given way to out-of-context passages in the name of test and career prep. Add in new literacy laws that seek to tightly control how teachers teach reading and we’ve got a serious case of the blue state blues on our hands. Four current and former teachers join us to discuss what blue states keep getting wrong about public education. Special guests: John Downes-Angus, Annie Abrams, Nora De La Cour and Jeff Austin.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
What should kids learn about sex? Who should teach them? And if they learn too much, will they become deviants? According to Margaret Myers, the author of The Fight for Sex Ed, we’ve been fighting over these exact same questions for more than a century, obscuring the essential purpose of sex education. And Nawal Umar of the sex ed advocacy group SIECUS joins us to talk about the present day push to mandate the teaching of the so-called success sequence in schools. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Forget about ‘education freedom’ and ‘school choice.’ These conservative see the expansion of school vouchers as a government takeover of private and home schools. We head to Texas, where opposition to vouchers has emerged as a potent cause on the right, even as moderates are turned off by the GOP’s hostility to public schools. The result: an issue that could end up upending politics in the Lone Star State.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Decades before high school students were walking out of school to protest ICE, they embraced political activism against the Vietnam War and in favor of school desegration and expanding civil rights. In a new book, scholar Aaron G. Fountain Jr. unearths the largely forgotten history of high school student activism, locating student groups, and underground newspapers, in every part of the country. And just like today, adults often reacted with suspicion, warning that ‘outside agitators’ were manipulating children, even calling upon the FBI to surveil their own children.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Our ability to disagree has turned toxic, and frayed relationships are leaving Americans more isolated and lonely than ever. Can schools help? Educational psychologist Hunter Gehlbach is convinced that teachers hold the key by helping students learn how to disagree better. That is unless AI replaces all of the teachers first. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
In the schools of the (near) future, teachers will be replaced by robots and learning will be personalized, allowing each student to move at their own pace. AI refuser and self-described ‘ed tech Cassandra’ Audrey Watters says that the vision of education being peddled by Silicon Valley today is virtually indistinguishable from the Cold War fantasy of futuristic schools. Watters makes the case that seventy years after the Soviets launched Sputnik into space, the US and its schools remain trapped in a ‘Sputnik moment.’The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Every year more than 3 million kids march off to kindergarten, a mysterious world about which adults know very little. Research psychologist Susan Engel, who has spent a lifetime studying how children think, play and learn, set out to change that, shining a light on an experience that is nearly universal and yet little understood. Twenty-nine classrooms, thirteen states and countless tiny chairs later, Engel offers a glimpse into the reality that is American kindergarten. Surprising, concerning, funny and hopeful, Engel's depiction will forever change the way you think about the first year of school.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
The MAGA vision for public education isn’t just to dismantle it. Key parts of the coalition also want to reshape schools along religious and political lines. In this episode we hear from two experts about MAGA’s education project. Kevin Kumashiro tells us about the growing influence of Christian Nationalism, while Laura Fields, author of the new book Furious Minds, introduces us to the intellectuals of the ‘new right,’ for whom taking back America also entails taking back K-12 schools.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Forty plus years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that denying immigrant students access to public education would impose a lifetime of hardship on them. Today, that landmark decision remains on the books despite the Trump Administration’s harsh crackdown on immigrants. We start the episode in Chicago, where schools and students have been caught up in Operation Midway Blitz. Then we revisit the Plyler decision, why it matters, and why state level efforts to roll back its protections are so dangerous. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Have You Heard heads to Florida, where education policy is increasingly being determined by wealthy donors. We meet a billionaire who has been putting big bucks behind a very particular vision for the state’s education future. And we learn, yet again, that even the best laid plans have a way of going awry. Corporate influence exposer Jason Garcia and public education advocate Sue Woltanski take us on a tour of the Florida swamp, while Jack provides some answers to a question that many Floridians are asking these days: whatever happened to local control? The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Race science, with its noxious claims that ‘biology is destiny,’ comes roaring back during periods of social change. That’s the conclusion of a new book by historian Quinn Slobodian, tracing today’s obsessive focus on IQ back to the social tumult of the 1970’s and the revolt against ‘political correctness’ in the 1990’s. Regardless of the time period, the argument for race science is remarkably consistent: since destiny is baked into the genetic pie, what’s the point of costly public policy interventions, public education chief among them? The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Forget all that talk about education as the great equalizer. Public schools and inequality are joined at the hip. But must it be that way? We talk to the authors of a recent book called Schooled and Sorted, an eye-opening investigation into the ways sorting within schools translates into inequality in the larger world, and how to change that. And we head to Portland, Oregon for a close-up look at the most destructive sort of sorting in action, and meet some parents who are trying to do something about it. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Ohio’s billion dollar plus religious school voucher program is blatantly unconstitutional. So ruled a state judge this summer, putting political leaders and their increasing hostility towards public education on a collision course with Ohio’s constitution and the schools that are a backbone of this state. We talk to policy experts and school district leaders about the ruling, learn about the Northwest Ordinance (thanks Jack!), and hear from Ohioans who are equal parts terrified and hopeful about the future of both public education and democracy in this state.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Public schools are facing mounting money woes, and feeling the pinch of hostile policies coming from the state and federal government. But despite this bleak forecast, there are also pockets of possibility. School finance ‘whisperer’ David Backer returns to Have You Heard to help us understand the current landscape, and to make the case for healthy school finance vs the ‘toxic’ brand that currently rules. David’s brand of policy-focused organizing, a vision that’s been delivering some surprising wins, offers some desperately needed inspiration.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
We meet eight former prison inmates who are now attending college on campus at Boston College. These students in the BC Prison Education Program reflect on the transition from incarceration to college, what they make of their traditional undergrad peers, and the power of the liberal arts. As debates rage over the purpose of higher education and who it’s for, this episode reminds us of what learning for learning’s sake can still sound like.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Local democracy has never been more essential, so why does it so often disappoint us? Jack convenes an all-star cast to discuss the promise vs the reality of school boards as democratic institutions. Special guests Rachel White, Derek Gottlieb, Kathleen Knight Abowitz and Johann Neem make the case that, love them or hate them, school boards remain one of the last places where Americans can come together as neighbors as part of a community. Bonus: we meet one of the longest-serving school board members in the land.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
It’s the 200th episode of Have You Heard and we’ve assembled an all-star lineup to help us make sense of what the AI ‘revolution’ in education is really about. Audrey Watters, Ben Riley and John Warner view the over-heated claims being made about AI’s potential with extreme skepticism, reminding us of the long history of the ed tech sales pitch, and the dangers of a world in which tech titans have the money, power and influence to reshape education along reactionary lines.
Legal scholar Derek Black is a vocal critic of the Trump administration’s anti-DEI crusade, arguing that the effort to impose what he calls ‘loyalty oaths’ on schools is blatantly unconstitutional. Black argues that the attacks on public education are at the center of a larger project aimed at undermining the two central pillars of democracy: free speech and due process. The author of a new book, Dangerous Learning: The South's Long War on Black Literacy, Black draws parallels between the lead-up to the Civil War and today’s paranoia-fueled efforts to limit what teachers can teach and students can learn. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
We’re headed to California, where high school students will soon be required to complete an ethnic studies course in order to graduate. The policy has set off the predictable culture war response, with critics charging that ethnic studies is indoctrination, activism, DEI, CRT, etc. But lost in the fog of backlash are the impressive results that ethnic studies has shown for students who struggle in school, including boosting attendance, GPA, and engagement. So what’s the problem? It turns out that ethnic studies’ inherent activism is precisely why the course is so effective, and why it’s such a target these days.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
The vision of the future on offer from Donald Trump looks a lot like the past, when men were men, women stayed home, and just about everyone was less educated. To get a glimpse of what that future might look like we head to Indiana, one of the great ‘human capital anti-success stories of the 21st century,’ according to our guest, economist Michael Hicks. Hicks makes the case that Indiana has pursued a series of disastrous policy choices over the past decade, including slashing spending on K-12 schools and higher education, expanding school choice (while cutting school spending), and preparing kids for the jobs of the past.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
The best schools in the country may be run by - wait for it - the Defense Department. But as education researcher Kenneth Wong tells us, the schools’ success is a fairly recent development, reflecting a years-long overhaul centered on improving teaching and learning. Alas, the ‘what works’ era that would have once sent education experts rushing to the scene in search of the secret sauce is no more. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has priortized the crusade against DEI while his boss has ordered him to draw up a plan to voucher-ize the schools.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
We’re headed to Vermont where public schools are confronting a ‘perfect storm’ of challenges. Costs are rising in this largely rural state even as the student population is declining, fueling a taxpayer revolt. Meanwhile, thanks to a recent SCOTUS ruling, a tradition of funding private schools with public funds means that Vermont must now pay for religious education. Enter the state’s Republican governor with a bold plan to do education in Vermont completely differently. Will public education in the Green Mountain State survive? And how long before schools in your state face a similar precipice?The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Like just about everyone these days, our own Jack Schneider is troubled–make that frightened–by our political landscape. But however deep our divides may be, there’s one issue that can, if not bring us together, allow for at least a conversation. The dismantling of the public education system would be so obviously bad for all of us that maybe, just maybe, a shout from the other side of the partisan divide might actually be heard. In this Letter to a Trump Voter, Jack reminds us of all the important areas of aggreement Americans actually share when it comes to their public schools. "Maybe if we can agree to protect public education we can find other things to agree on."Music for the episode provided by the brilliant Francisco Rafart.Song list:- Caminito del Turia- Always with you- Andes Haze- Magic ConceptsLinks to music:Spotify https://open.spotify.com/artist/3EIxblOsWLuH54ZRWDuw1mWebsite https://rafartmusic.com/albumsThe financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Organizing in defense of public education at the local level has never been more vital. And yet in an era when even the most local elections are now nationalized, electing pro-public education candidates can be a heavy lift. In this episode, we hear from a group of parents in Souderton, Pennsylvania who have been slowly ‘moving the needle,’ making incremental gains in each election cycle. They’re hoping that 2025 will finally be the charm when it comes to convincing local voters to make the school board nonpartisan again.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
It’s common knowledge that every student has a learning style: visual, auditory or kinesthetic. But what if those classifications are not just inaccurate but dangerous? That’s the argument made by education historian Tom Fallace in his provocative new book, You Are Not a Kinesthetic Learner: The Troubled History of the Learning Style Idea. As Fallace documents, not only is the research behind learning styles flimsy, but the classifications end up lumping together whole racial and ethnic groups as kinesthetic learners.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Vouchers are not conservative. That’s what we heard again and again when we talked to Texans who consider themselves Republicans but oppose their party’s top education priority. We hear from rural Texans who are taking the attacks on their local schools very personally, and business minded Republicans who fear the consequences of privatizing education for workforce development. But the real lesson in this episode is political. The big money push to expand school vouchers, and expel voucher opponents, is spurring rising discontent within the ranks of the Republican party, including among some of Trump’s staunchest supporters.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Our biggest political divide these days isn’t race or gender but education - and that division is only getting worse. We talk to the co-author of a new book that offers the single best explanation we’ve come across regarding the role that education is playing in fueling our bitter political battles. David Hopkins, author (with Matthew Grossmann) of Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics, helps us makes sense of a profound shift in American politics, how K-12 teachers and university faculty came to be seen as the enemy by so many on the right, and what we can do about it.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
For decades the Republican mantra on public schools has been to make them ‘business like,’ driven by the belief that strong schools = a strong economy. No more. Today’s top priorities for the GOP are moving students into private religious schools and home schools, and infusing religion into public schools. How did such a dramatic shift occur? Political scientist Heath Brown, author of Homeschooling the Right, joins us to talk about the transformation of the Republican Party and its implications for education policy. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Donald Trump’s return to office is likely to have profound implications for the nation’s public schools. In this episode we start to grapple with five major policy areas that are likely to be impacted: immigration, school choice, teacher unions, student civil rights and religion. With the aid of experts Sophia Rodriguez, Jon Valant, Mimi Arnold Lyon, Derek Black and Ben Justice, Have You Heard gives you a sense of what to expect and how to prepare for what’s coming.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Schools are in for more chaos and conflict, whatever specific policies are enacted by a second Trump Administration. We talk to two scholars about just how much the politics of disruption are costing, in terms of the material costs to school district budgets and the erosion of community trust. The research of Rachel White, co-author of a new study, “The Cost of Conflict,” and Rebecca Jacobsen, co-author of the forthcoming “The Politics of Disruption” is a timely reminder that the consequences of our school wars are all too real.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Massachusetts voters will soon weigh in on whether to abandon the state’s de facto high school exit exam. That prospect has pitted elected officials and business leaders against teachers and their union, as well as a majority of voters, who’ve grown weary of schools’ focus on standardized testing. But the contentious debate also reflects a deep (and old) divide over the purpose of high school. We’re joined by education historian David Labaree who argues that high schools are not equipped (and never have been) to prepare students for the jobs of the future, and that policymakers and business leaders who insist on that goal have ended up dramatically narrowing the purpose of school.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
As long as we’ve had public schools, we’ve had ‘edu-grifters,’ slick salesmen armed with promises to provide education on the cheap. In this episode, we meet one of the OG edu-grifters, one Joseph Lancaster, who arrived on these shores in the 1820’s with an irresistible sales pitch: schools that were basically free because, wait for it, the kids taught themselves. Adam Laats, author of the amazing new book, Mr. Lancaster’s System, joins us to talk about the American addiction to education ‘silver bullets,’ the age-old resistance to investing in other people’s kids, and why the vision of school privatization on offer from Betsy DeVos failed the first time around. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
We head to Fort Collins, CO where a plan to shutter multiple schools and “rightsize” the school district ran into a wall of community opposition. A feel-good tale for our feel-bad times, Fort Collins’ example signals, not just resistance to school closures, but to the larger vision of school choice and competition that pits parents against one another, deepening disparities in the process. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
When Courtney Gore ran for school board in a deep red Texas county, she pledged to root out indoctrination. But once she got into office, Gore could find no evidence of indoctrination happening in the local schools. She has since disavowed the far-right platform she ran on and now argues that the school culture wars are being ginned up in order to build support for private school vouchers–and a growing number of local Republicans agree with her. Education journalist Karin Chenoweth interviewed Gore on her podcast, Democracy and Education, and gave us permission to share their conversation on Have You Heard. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
From the end of federal COVID relief money to declining enrollment, school districts are in a world of hurt right now. But while the causes for the rising tide of red ink are complex, the recommendations from school finance experts are always the same: cut, fire and close. Our guest, school district finance whisperer David Backer, takes serious issue with these supposed solutions and wants to arm teachers and public school advocates with the tools and knowledge necessary to fight back. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
This is a special episode of Have You Heard, and not just because co-host Jack Schneider is MIA. We’re paying tribute to Jennifer’s dad, Tom Berkshire, a tireless advocate for kids and for fixing the nation’s broken foster care system. We’re headed to a magical community in western Massachusetts called Treehouse that surrounds foster kids and their adoptive families with love while providing senior citizens with affordable housing. In other words, this is a feel good episode at a time when we could all use a little uplift. Special guest: journalist and educator Nora De La Cour. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
To celebrate the release of The Education Wars, we’ve gathered a cast of thousands to help bring the book to life. Our special guests help us understand what’s driving the intense push to privatize schools, what we’ll lose when public schools are gone, and how we can fight to protect and transform public education in this country. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be inspired, you’ll want to buy the book–and then give it away. Special guests include Erik Anderson, Noliwe Rooks, Derek Gottlieb, Jess Piper, Heather DuBois Bourenane, Letha Muhammed, Nora Flanagan and Johann Neem. Our new book, The Education Wars: A Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual, is now out! You can buy it wherever you buy books. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Students who lived through court-ordered desegregation in the South grew up to become less conservative, more tolerant adults. That’s the finding of provocative research from education scholar Mark Chin, who compared students who attended integrated schools with their peers in the same county who didn’t. Mark says his research is a reminder to academics to think bigger than test scores when looking at the impact of education policy. But it also provides us with essential context for understanding today’s wave of school privatization in the South: an effort to produce kids who will be more conservative and less tolerant as adults.Our new book, The Education Wars: A Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual, will be out on July 2. You can pre-order it here: https://www.educationwarsbook.com/orderThe financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Raise your hand if you think that all of the partisan rancor over public education is bad for kids? That’s the premise of Braver Angels, a citizen’s group that aims to make America less crazy by getting people talking more and hating each other less. Co-founder Bill Doherty joins us to talk about why our debates over education are so pitched and polarized and what we can do about it. And Jack reminds us that even highly technocratic policy issues can become supercharged in an age of distrust and division. Our new book, The Education Wars: A Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual, will be out on July 2. You can pre-order it here: https://www.educationwarsbook.com/order The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Market-based education reform may be on the wane, but what’s the alternative? Our guest, Jonathan Gyurko, author of the provocative new book Publicization, argues that public education advocates need to rally around a goal of making public schools as public as possible. That means changing the way we think about funding, governance, accountability–indeed, the very purpose of school. If we want to move beyond decades of privatization, says Gyurko, we need a hopeful vision of what schools could be. Our new book, The Education Wars: A Citizen’s Guide and Defense Manual, is now availalbe for pre-order: https://www.educationwarsbook.com/order The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Private school vouchers flamed out in Idaho this legislative session. So how did Idahoans succeed in saying ‘no thanks’ to a controversial and expensive policy program that is now on the books in one state after another? We’re joined by activists and advocates who say that convincing lawmakers that vouchers aren’t conservative was key. And unlike most states, Idaho has an influential business group that is staunchly anti-voucher. Add in lots of organizing and a refusal to let lawmakers enact a sweeping new program behind closed doors and you get the ‘Idaho exception.’The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast Or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
From huge voucher programs that shift funding to private schools that don’t have to accept kids with disabilities to a backlash against funding, special education and the students who rely on it are newly vulnerable. In this powerful episode we hear from parents and advocates in six states about their concerns. And we’re reminded that the nation’s commitment to educating kids with special needs has always been tenuous.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast Or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
Last year Oklahoma approved the nation’s first tax-payer funded religious charter school. It won’t be the last, warns Rachel Laser of Americans United for Church and State. We’re joined by Laser and two plaintiffs in a legal effort to keep the school from opening. As our guests explain, the school is part of a larger project to roll back the clock on civil rights, disability rights and labor protections. Now for the good news: tearing down the separation between church and state turns out to be really unpopular.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast Or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
For decades we’ve been told that there is an urgent looming skills gap, and that unless our education system churns out more STEM grads, economic disaster looms. But what if it’s not true? In a provocative new book, Neil Kraus argues that this story is at the heart of what he calls the fantasy economy, a wrongheaded view of the labor market that has fueled decades of education reform. And we hear from Tim Schwab, author of an explosive new book about Bill Gates, whose deep pockets have helped to spin the fantasy economy narrative.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast Or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
In her new book School Moms, education journalist Laura Pappano traces the rise of what she calls the “war moms,” making the case that their emergence has spurred a broad resistance movement in defense of public schools. And reluctant school mom Ashley Daly joins us from Oklahoma, where the state’s education chief has emerged as one of the nation’s leading culture warriors. The result is a feel good episode with a feel bad caveat.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast Or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
Public schools are in the throes of multiple slow-moving crises: a teacher exodus, spiking student absenteeism and plunging literacy rates. Yet education reforms implemented as part of the Obama-era ‘theory of change’ have received little blame. Special guest Nora De La Cour, a former teacher who writes about education for Jacobin and other publications, says it’s long past time for an acknowledgment that test-centric reforms have drained the life from public schools. Such reforms have demoralized teachers and left students feeling like school has no purpose, argues De La Cour, and made public education much harder to defend against the right-wing push for private school vouchers and classical education. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
While the media focuses obsessively on Harvard, the state universities that the majority of American students actually attend are under attack. We’re joined by faculty at three universities, all reeling from a similar combination of austerity, vocationalizing and the growing right-wing hostility to higher education. What emerges is an old story with a new twist–the latest installment in a raging battle over what college is for, who gets to decide, and who gets to attend. Our all-star cast includes, Jon Shelton, UW Green Bay; Rose Casey, West Virginia University; Audrey Berlowitz, UNC Greensboro; and Will Bunch, author of After the Ivory Tower Falls.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
The recent elections issued a stinging rebuke to conservative culture warring candidates. But the Democratic Party has been largely MIA when it comes to articulating its own vision for public education. So what should that vision look like? We invited four experts–Randi Weingarten, Jon Valant, Rick Hess and Jamaal Bowman–to lay out a path forward for Democrats. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
We've been debating how schools should educate and "Americanize" immigrant students for more than a century. In her new book, Making Americans, history teacher Jessica Lander says that schools today are far more welcoming to immigrant-origin students than in the past. But even as star educators like Jessica, Carlos Beato, who co-founded a high school for immigrant students in Maryland, and Leah Juelke, the 2017 North Dakota Teacher of the Year, show us what truly welcoming schools and teaching look like, the rising tide of anti-immigrant rhetoric threatens their efforts, as well as the students they advocate for.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
Everybody loves to hate on school boards these days. But as education policy scholar Jonathan Collins reminds us, these beleaguered bodies are actually the most accessible entry points to democracy that we have. At a time when calls to make school oversight less democratic are coming from the right and education reformers, Collins makes an urgent case for using participatory local democracy to collectively solve our most pressing problems.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
We hand the mic to the brilliant podcasters behind the Voucher Scam, a limited series exposing the big money push to bring school vouchers to Texas and beyond. Claire Campos-O’Neal and Nicole Abshire of the Mothers for Democracy Institute visit a rural community where the elected representative is no longer, well, representing. Claire and Nicole do a masterful job connecting school privatization with the rise of Christian Nationalism and the erosion of democracy. We hope you appreciate their brilliant work as much as we did. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
Have You Heard heads to Houston, where the state now controls Texas’ largest school district. We’ll meet teachers and parents who say the takeover of the schools in this Democratic city is fundamentally about politics. And we’ll try to make sense of how the takeover fits into the efforts by Governor Greg Abbott to bring private school vouchers to the Lone Star state. Spoiler: it does.
The power of plutocrats to shape and limit public debate is on the increase. That’s bad for K-12 education and for democracy, argues Nora Reikosky, the winner of the 2023 Have You Heard Graduate Student Research Contest. As a young “Googler,” Nora witnessed first hand the power of corporate philanthropy and its slick sales pitch, an experience that shapes her research into what she calls “pipeline philanthropy.” The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
Get the right credentials to get ahead in the world. For many students and their families that IS the purpose of K-12 education. Even students who don’t have their sights set on selective colleges often see learning as secondary to the work of collecting badges and tokens. How did we get here? Why do grades and test scores exert such a powerful influence over our schools? In this episode, we talk with Jack's co-author Ethan Hutt about their new book Off the Mark: How Grades, Ratings, and Rankings Undermine Learning (But Don't Have To).The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper recently declared a state of emergency for public schools in that state, warning that the GOP-controlled legislature aims to “choke the life out of public education.” Our guests, a cast of thousands, argue that the attack on public schools is part of a right-wing takeover, one that seeks to take the state back to the pre-civil rights era. But this state of emergency also represents an organizing opportunity, say public education advocates. While the word “bleak” appears multiple times in this episode, it ends on a note of hope and optimism.
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AI is about to upend teaching and learning. So tell us the techno optimists who have made essentially the same claim about every technological innovation, dating back to the film strip. Our guest, historian Larry Cuban, predicts that AI will join a long list of tech ‘silver bullets’ that have been overhyped, only to fall short of the promised utopia. Cuban argues that tech boosters are prone to such overselling because they don’t understand the nature of teaching and its reliance on human connection.
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A wide segment of Americans now view public schools as partisan. That’s a major problem, argues historian Johann Neem, because the project of public education depends on ALL Americans seeing themselves and their interests represented there. Neem warns that the perception that schools are carrying out a political agenda is super-charging the privatization agenda and could undermine what’s left of our “common” schools entirely.
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Decades before Moms for Liberty launched a crusade to liberate schools from “indoctrination,” the John Birch Society introduced similar rhetoric and tactics. Have You Heard is joined by historian Matthew Dallek, author of Birchers: How the John Birch Society Radicalized the American Right. The ‘Birchers,’ he argues, sought to impose their vision of morality, Christianity and patriotism on public schools. And while the group would fade into obscurity, the Birchers’ vision and tactics inform the activism of today’s school culture warriors.
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For decades, the idea that education is the primary driver of economic opportunity has held sway. The education myth, as our guest Jon Shelton describes it, has attained the status of common sense, captivating politicians from left to right. But the overselling of education as the fix for economic inequality has been politically disastrous, not to mention bad for schools and teachers. Shelton argues that we desperately need a new way to talk about education, one that puts schools in a larger context of social democracy and economic security.
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School privatization has been on a roll this year. But then the ‘fund students not systems’ express hit a wall in states like Kansas, Georgia and Idaho. So what happened? We talk to public education advocates in all three states and come away with some lessons in effective organizing, not to mention a much-needed dose of inspiration.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
Jack and Jennifer sit down with Daniel Denvir, host of the Dig podcast. And ‘dig’ is an accurate description. They go deep into origins of our current education wars, how bipartisan teacher bashing laid the groundwork for today’s attacks on “woke” educators, and what the recent victory of Brandon Johnson in Chicago can tell us about the state of the education reform movement.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
We’re joined by four former teachers of the year who are using their ‘teacher voices’ to push back against the tidal wave of legislation limiting what kids can learn and teachers can talk about. They’re speaking truth about kids, public schools, and teachers and hoping to inspire others to do the same. Special guests: Tracey Nance, Monica Washington, Chris Dier and Jena Nelson.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
Just eight states still require high school students to pass an exit exam in order to graduate. So why did a policy that once commanded bipartisan support fall by the wayside? And what accounts for the seeming paradox that the public turned against high-stakes tests for students while continuing to support high-stakes tests for schools? Special guests Ethan Hutt and Katie McDermott help guide us through the complex and ever-evolving world of high-stakes testing. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
If it feels like the assault on public education is escalating, that’s because it is. Jennifer joins historian Thomas Zimmer, host of the ‘Is this Democracy?’ podcast, to dive deep into the question of why the right is so focused on public schools right now. Zimmer, an historian at Georgetown University, argues that the push to dismantle public education and limit what teachers can teach and kids can learn is part of a broader effort to roll back the civil rights gains that have been made since the 1960’s. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
Two decades ago, phonics fever swept the land as George W. Bush made “scientifically-based reading instruction” a centerpiece of his education agenda. But despite its scale and huge price tag, Bush’s Reading First initiative has largely been forgotten. Have You Heard revisits the Bush-led effort to transform reading instruction, learning a familiar lesson along the way: history can’t teach us anything if no one remembers it.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
What does it feel like to be on the receiving end of a conservative plan to ‘take back the schools’? Have You Heard heads to Woodland Park, Colorado to talk to students, parents and teachers about how top-down culture war is rapidly - and radically - reshaping local schools.Note: this episode misstated the status of teacher Sara Lee. She has not left the district but is on medical leave due to negative health impacts caused by the actions of the BoE and Interim Superintendent. We regret the error.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
Are charter schools public or private? A case speeding towards the Supreme Court is likely to settle this age-old dispute once and for all by declaring charters as “non-state actors.” Peltier vs. Charter Day School Inc. is nominally about dress codes, chivalry and “fragile vessels.” But as special guests Bruce Baker and Preston Green explain, the real question here is whether students attending charter schools have the same civil rights and Constitutional protections as their public school peers. Among our most alarming episodes to date…The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
The teaching profession is in the worst shape of the past 50 years. That’s according to researchers Melissa Arnold Lyon and Matthew Kraft, who crunched a half century’s worth of data on indicators like whether students want to go into teaching, the prestige of teachers, and the job satisfaction of teachers themselves. What emerged were some striking historical patterns and a clear warning about the state of the teaching profession.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
Young people, including students who aren't even old enough to vote, had a major impact in the midterm elections. In this episode, we meet some high school activists who are making their power felt, both in and out of schools, fighting against an array of policies driven by what they see as adult fear. And they’re just getting started. Next up: a campaign to lower the voting age for school board elections in Michigan to 16. Special guests: Syd Olthoff, Hafiza Khalique and Julia Cuneo of Detroit Area Youth Uniting Michigan.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
Supposed exposes about schools-gone-bad are a staple of US education discourse. But the COVID era and the waning of school accountability have given the “rhetoric of reveal” new life and potency. Special guest Mark Hlavacik breaks down the politics of the big reveal at a time of real danger for public education.The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
The story of college success in the US often conflates distance with quality and separation from family and community as a rite of passage. But when Corinne Kentor, the runner up in our 2022 Grad Student Research Contest, began looking at how students who’ve grown up in families with mixed immigration status view higher education, she saw something very different: an understanding of college as a collective project. Her research raises big questions about how we view college and “success” in a time of deepening education polarization.
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Accusations that schools were indoctrinating children via something called Critical Race Theory seemed to come out of nowhere. By the summer of 2021, legislators across the country were rushing to enact bans against something they could barely define. So how did the narrative about CRT take hold so quickly and resonate so deeply? The winners of the 2022 Have You Heard Graduate Research Contest, Annie Gensterblum, Ariell Bertrand, and Sandy Frost Waldron, have some answers that may surprise you.
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GOP-dominated states have seen a blitz of legislation targeting trans students. What’s behind these attacks? While this anti-trans hysteria represents just the latest in a long-line of conservative “panics,” today’s furor also signifies an ominous development in the public school culture wars: an effort by the right to roll back the expansion of civil rights. Special guests: parent activist Robert Chevaleau and pediatric psychologist Natasha Poulopoulos.
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What if data doesn’t matter? That’s the question that has been weighing on education researcher Josh Cowen. After spending two decades studying school vouchers, Cowen has concluded that the data is too stark to justify spending public dollars on private tuition. And yet school choice advocates are proposing - and increasingly winning - massive expansions of these programs. That seeming contradiction has spurred Cowen to speak out, and he hopes that other academics will join him–-before it’s too late.
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Will Bunch joins us to talk about his impossibly timely new book: After the Ivory Tower Falls: How College Broke the American Dream and Blew Up Our Politics—and How to Fix It. Discussed in this episode: how college almost became a public good (and could again); how the right fanned the flames of culture war to push higher education privatization; and why we should be so concerned that the GOP is now using the same playbook to target K-12. Also, is Biden’s student debt relief plan a blip or does it mark a move away from the vision of education as human capital development?
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Have You Heard heads to New Orleans, home to the first all-charter-school system in the country. In a provocative new book, Tulane University political scientist Celeste Lay argues that New Orleans' charter school experiment has undermined democracy, disenfranchising the very parents it was meant to empower. With school privatization on the march across the country, Lay’s account offers an urgent and timely warning.
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The movement of students and parents to end harsh discipline and dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline in their local schools made major gains. Then came the pandemic. Now, with calls for returning police to schools and “hardening” them in response to shooting threats, the movement’s success may be in jeopardy. Special guests: Mark Warren, author of Willful Defiance, and Jonathan Stith, the national director of the Alliance for Educational Justice.
Long before Moms for Liberty or Parents Defending Education, conservative mothers in the 1950's led a crusade to free the schools from communism. These activists waged fierce battles to resist the red menace, which they saw everywhere, including in the emerging field of mental health and in "progressive education"--any effort made to influence the way that children thought. Special guest: Michelle Nickerson, authors of Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right.
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The attachment of rural communities to their local schools is intense. But that commitment may be fraying in a time of culture war, education populism and teacher shortages. Have You Heard visits western Kansas where rural school advocates are passionate about their local schools even as they fear for their future. Special guests: Matthew Clay, Krysten Clay, Stephanie Wick and Scott Gregory.
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Jack and Jennifer are joined by sociologist Beth Popp Berman, author of the new book Thinking Like an Economist. Berman chronicles how economists and their style of reasoning (think ‘competition,’ ‘choice’ and efficiency’) took over one domain after another beginning in the 1960’s, constraining Democrats’ policy visions in the process.
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Have You Heard heads to Croydon, New Hampshire to listen in on an epic battle playing out over the future of public education in the state. In March, members of the Free State Project, a libertarian movement that wields increasing influence in the state, voted to slash the local school budget by half. Under the plan, Croydon’s one-room schoolhouse would be converted into a for-profit microschool with students learning online under the supervision of an unlicensed guide, and parents would foot the bill for tuition at local schools that exceeded the new budget constraints. But a funny thing happened on the way to phasing out public education in this small NH town. The residents of Croydon revolted, restoring faith in local democracy in the process.
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Jennifer and Jack are joined by journalist Kathryn Joyce to discuss the right’s newfound fondness for an old cause: classical education. Today’s version comes in a new form–publicly funded classical charter schools–and has a decidedly conservative cast. Joyce, an investigative reporter for Salon, argues that the growing push for schools that teach conservative values must be understood as part of the right’s new-found fondness for using state power to enforce religious morality.
Recommended reading Kathryn Joyce, “Salon investigates: The war on public schools is being fought from Hillsdale College,” https://www.salon.com/2022/03/16/salon-investigates-the-on-public-schools-is-being-fought-from-hillsdale-college/
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We’re headed back to the Clinton-era to understand the origins of the Democrats’ fondness for market-based solutions to social and economic problems. We’re joined by historian Lily Geismer, author of the new book Left Behind: The Democrats' Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality. Geismer tells the story of how Clinton and other “new” Democrats moved away from using government and economic redistribution to address poverty and inequality. Instead, they embraced market-based solutions, like microfinance and charter schools. Fast forward forty years and inequality now threatens the social fabric, while the Democrats decision to distance themselves from organized labor seems increasingly misguided.
And in our In the Weeds segment for Patreon subscribers, Jack and Jennifer dig into the repeated claims that angry parents will power the GOP into a midterm route. Subscribe on Patreon to listen in. https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
What should schools do about climate change? To get some perspective on this big, even existential, question, Have You Heard is joined summons an all-star cast. Oren Pizmony-Levy, the director of the Center for Sustainable Futures at Teachers College, Columbia University, breaks down the big debates regarding schools and climate change. Investigative journalist Katie Worth, author of Miseducation, reports from her deep dive into climate change education around the country. And Elissa Levy, who teaches physics and computer science at the High School for Climate Justice in East Harlem, NY, tells us about the first public school in the nation with “climate” in its name.
And in our In the Weeds segment for Patreon subscribers, Jack and Jennifer wonder ‘what ever happened to the opt-out movement?’ For access, reading lists and more, go to Patreon.com/haveyouheardpodcast to become a supporter.
When Jeff Sharlet reviewed Florida’s new “Don’t Say Gay” law, it felt a bit too familiar. That's because Sharlet spent years reporting on the anti-LGBTQ crusade in Putin's Russia. The Florida law, along with a wave of anti-trans legislation across the country, seeks to create what Sharlet describes as an "enemy within."
And in our In the Weeds segment for Patreon subscribers, Jack and Jennifer dig into the question of whether teachers are or are not fleeing the profession, and why the data may not matter as much as the pundits keep saying. Subscribe on Patreon to listen in. https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
Thirty years into the great charter experiment, the question of just how public these schools are remains unresolved. We’re joined by Wagma Mommandi and Kevin Welner, author of a new book on how charter schools control access and shape enrollment. Mommandi, a former Washington DC public school teacher, and Welner, who directs the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder, make the case that charter advocates and policy makers have consistently tilted the rules that govern charter schools towards privateness. That has major implications for equity as we move towards a system where schools choose students.
And in our In the Weeds segment for Patreon subscribers, we discuss a hot new charter school trend and a very old cause: patriotic education and the dream of reengineering youngsters to be little conservatives. Subscribe on Patreon to join the fun. https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
When a proposal to “reimagine” Charleston, South Carolina’s schools suddenly surfaced late last year, it prompted a furious backlash. Community groups and public education advocates warned that the plan, backed by a deep-pocketed foundation, was a fast-track to privatization disguised in the language of innovation. In other words, the vision being offered up for the city’s schools wasn’t new at all but the same one embraced by business interests, civic leaders and philanthropists for decades now. Jennifer “travels” to Charleston to hear from parents, activists and educators about the complicated politics of school reform in a city that can’t or won’t grapple with its past. And Jack stays closer to home while traveling back in time to help us understand the enduring appeal of school takeovers and makeovers.
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Jennifer joins forces with the hosts of the popular podcast Know Your Enemy to discuss why almost every big culture-war battle of the moment—from "Critical Race Theory" to COVID mandates—is being fought in America's schools. Meanwhile, Democrats, anxious about a midterm rout driven by angry Republican parents, too often are conceding these battles to the right, adopting their rhetoric and their terms of debate, and have been for a long time—despite supposedly being the party of teachers' unions. Does it have to be this way?
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The impulse to reform American schools is as old as the nation itself. And so too is the impulse to "forget" all of the fixes we've tried before. Have You Heard is joined by the eminent emeritus education historian Larry Cuban to discuss his new book, Confessions of a School Reformer. Among the topics taken on in this episode: the remarkable constancy of American schooling, what's old about the new, and the education historian's dilemma.
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Even before Omicron swamped schools, teachers were feeling beleaguered. In this episode we catch up with four teachers who appeared on Have You Heard last year to learn about how they’re surviving education gag orders and a culture that regards them as heroes one minute and villains the next. The bad news: two of our special guests are no longer teaching. But there’s also plenty of inspiration to be found in this episode. Starring Selena Carrion, Misty Crompton, Nick Covington and Jessica Piper.
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The sudden passion for all things parents’ rights may seem like it came out of nowhere. But as education historian Jon Hale explains, it’s the latest in a steady erosion of the idea of public education as a public good. From white parents pulling away from ‘that public’ in the aftermath of the Brown. Vs Board of Education decision in 1954, to the hardening of school district boundaries post Milliken vs. Bradley, we’ve been whittling away at the public good for decades. Oh, and did we mention that the purpose of schooling has shifted over time, becoming increasingly about social mobility? The end result is that it’s increasingly difficult to make the case for public-ness. But Jon Hale, author of The Choice We Face: How Segregation, Race, and Power Have Shaped America's Most Controversial Education Reform Movement does his best.
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Even before the pandemic, schools were struggling to meet the needs of students in special education programs. Now, a long-standing special education staffing shortage threatens to become something more dire. Special guest: Nate Jones, associate professor of special education at Boston University.
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Students in Southlake, Texas pushed school district officials to do something about racism in the schools. Then came the backlash. We hear what’s really at stake in the battles over Southlake’s schools from current and former students—and why they remain hopeful about the future. And Jack climbs into the time machine to tour some of the not-so-great education backlashes of yore.
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Vocational education has been rebranded and retooled as career and technical education. But beneath CTE's 21st century veneer lurks an age-old problem: tailoring students' education too closely to the demands of employers may end up limiting their future options, not expanding them.
In this special episode, Have You Heard remembers the extraordinary Mike Rose. Special guests Erika Kitzmiller, Janelle Scott, Chris Buttimer, Michael Moses and Rema Reynolds help us recall Mike as a scholar, mentor and builder of worlds.
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The claim that standardized testing has racist - even eugenicist - roots is oft repeated these days. But is it true? In an episode guaranteed to please no one, friend of the show Ethan Hutt walks us through the multiple and tangled histories of testing. And special guest Akil Bello does a dramatic reading of headlines foretelling doom and disaster should testing wither away.
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The culture wars found a new target in 2021: trans youth. More than 100 laws were proposed to restrict the rights of trans individuals, especially kids. In this episode of Have You Heard, we’re joined by teacher, trans activist and co-host of the Southern Queeries podcast Aubree Calvin. Aubree helps us understand the origins of the right’s war on trans youth, and why the restriction of their access to health care and education is an issue that should concern every public education advocate.
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Black students who are taught by teachers who attended an Historically Black College or University or HBCU fare better than their peers. That’s what Lavar Edmonds found as he dug into a trove of data from North Carolina schools. More intriguing still: while students with Black teachers show the biggest gains, the effect also held with white teachers who graduated from HBCUs. Edmonds, the runner up in the Have You Heard Graduate Student Research Contest, explains what he thinks is the “secret sauce” at HBCUs, and why his findings challenge some of the central assumptions of so-called “role-model effects” in education.
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Why are the same states that are rolling back democracy also intent on dismantling public education? We assembled an all-star cast to get some answers. Special guests: Derek Black, author of Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy; and Noliwe Rooks, author of Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education.
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If you know anything about higher education in prison, it's that these programs "pay off" for taxpayers in the form of tax savings and lower rates of recidivism. But the economic justification for college behind bars misses a far more profound value, says Patrick Conway, winner of the 2021 Have You Heard Graduate Student Research Contest. Conway's research raises essential and relevant questions - about who is entitled to be educated at tax-payer expense, what kind of education they should receive, and how we view crime.
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Five decades after Boston's bitter battles over busing helped stall the push for school desegregation, the issue is once again a policy priority in Massachusetts. What happened? Chalk it up to a generational shift, a racial reckoning, and a long-overdue acknowledgment that addressing the problem of Massachusetts’ increasingly segregated schools will also require tackling housing and transportation issues. Special guests: State Senator Brendan Crighton and METCO CEO Milly Arbaje-Thomas.
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Suddenly education is THE hot topic. But where there’s heat, light doesn’t necessarily follow. Jennifer and Jack discuss what’s missing from the coverage of the backlash against Critical Race Theory, as well as some stories that should be getting more attention, including the Biden Administration’s missing education policy and the quiet collapse of Obama-era education reform.
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Recommended readings: Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider, “What’s Joe Biden’s Plan for Education?” https://www.thenation.com/article/society/biden-education-policy-poverty/
Jennifer Berkshire, “Culture War in the K-12 Classroom” https://www.thenation.com/article/society/culture-war-classroom-teachers/
Community colleges get a bad rap. But recent graduates of Maryland’s Frederick Community College say that stigma is undeserved. These new and soon-to-be-teachers make a powerful case for learning - and teaching - close to home. Warning: this episode may upend preexisting notions about the relationship between education and place, not to mention how we define “smart.”
Special guests: Professor Sarah Bigham, Frederick Community College and an all-star cast of FCC grads.
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The public school culture wars are raging more intensely than at any time since the Reagan era. Fueled by intense political polarization and the continued fallout from pandemic school closures, the culture wars now threaten public education. Special guests: four teachers who are on the front lines of the battle over what gets taught.
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Inefficient. Ineffective. Outdated. Outmoded. Unrepresentative. Sure, local school boards are deserving of all of these criticisms (and more), but they are also seedbeds of local democracy at a time when democracy is under attack. Special guests: school board member and scholar Rachel White, and school committee member Roberto Jimenez Rivera.
Like this podcast? Consider leaving us a five star rating and a pithy review. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
Two decades ago, the Free State Project announced an audacious plan to make New Hampshire a utopia for libertarians. Now one of their central goals - privatizing education - appears within reach. Have You Heard heads to the Granite State to explore New Hampshire’s shifting political terrain and why what began as a fringe political movement is no laughing matter. Guests: Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling, author, A Libertarian Walks Into a Bear.
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Jack and Jennifer’s book, A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, is out and available wherever you buy books: https://www.wolfattheschoolhousedoor.com/
The pandemic gave the education technology industry the opportunity to FINALLY deliver on the bold promises it has been making for decades. What happened instead was just another failure to disrupt, says MIT's Justin Reich.
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Students from Boston tell Have You Heard what they've lost during this year of pandemic learning. Spoiler: what you'll hear bears little resemblance to the discussion of "learning loss" that's atop the agenda of policy makers right now. Special guest Boston teacher Neema Avashia helps us make sense of the gap between how students are feeling and how adults with power are talking.
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Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is creating a network of tuition-free Montessori-inspired preschools for low-income students. But his vision of schools that nurture the autonomy and creativity of kids is on a collision course with the Amazon workplaces Bezos has engineered for adults. Special guest: Mira Debs, author of Diverse Families, Desirable Schools: Public Montessori in the Era of School Choice.
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Jennifer and Jack’s book, A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, is out and available wherever you buy books!
The idea that more education is the way to help workers get ahead is a cherished American principle. In fact, this "human capital" view of education dates all the way back to another period of roaring inequality in the US: the Gilded Age. Historian Cristina Groeger joins us to discuss the origins of the "education fix," and why the idea of educating our way out of inequality has always been doomed to fail.
The brutal pessimism of school rankings and ratings, starring Akil Bello, Senior Director of Advocacy and Advancement at FairTest.
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Have You Heard wades into the pitched debate about reopening schools. We hear from an epidemiologist, then tour the land to talk to parents and teachers who are trying to navigate an impossibly complex situation.
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What does the selection of Miguel Cardona for Secretary of Education portend for K-12 education? Kevin Welner, head of the National Education Policy Center, joins Jack and Jennifer to discuss how Cardona is likely to differ from Betsy DeVos - and Arne Duncan.
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Rick Perstein, author of Reaganland, joins us to discuss why schools were at the very center of the 1970's culture war that ushered Ronald Reagan into office and powered a "right turn" in American politics.
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The pandemic pivot to online learning has amped up accusations that teachers are indoctrinating students, as parents “see” what their kids are being taught. We talk to teacher Christina Torres about why politics belongs in the classroom now more than ever. And historian Jon Zimmerman walks us through the long tradition of parents pushing back against classroom content - for good and ill.
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Jennifer and Jack’s forthcoming book, A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, is now out and available wherever you buy books.
Long before the Hoover Institution was casting doubt on masks, its ‘experts’ were undermining the case for investing in public education. Special guest Bruce Baker joins Have You Heard to shed light on what’s behind the claim that school funding doesn’t matter.
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Jennifer and Jack’s forthcoming book, A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, will be out on November 17 and is now available for pre-order.
Our book, A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, is finally (almost) out. To celebrate its publication, and the 100th episode of Have You Heard, we asked an expert—a former lobbyist for a conservative free-market think tank—to read the book and tell us what we got right & wrong. His main takeaway: our predictions about the future aren't bleak enough.
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Have You Heard talks with legal scholar Derek Black about his new book Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy. Despite the title (not to mention the charred pencil imagery) Black’s story of the centrality of public education to the country’s founding and its post-civil war recovery is inspiring and hopeful. Public education, argues Black, is as central to American democracy as the right to vote.
The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
Jennifer and Jack’s forthcoming book, A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, will be out on November 17 and is now available for pre-order wherever you buy books.
There is a vast gulf between the public education priorities of most voters and the favored policies of the very wealthy. Nowhere is that gap more visible than in Arizona, where support for public education has emerged as a central issue in 2020.
The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
Jennifer and Jack’s forthcoming book, A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, will be out on November 17 and is now available for pre-order: https://www.wolfattheschoolhousedoor.com
A consensus between Republicans and centrist Democrats around charter schools has been at the very center of education policy for the past three decades. Guest David Menefee-Libey joins us to talk about the formation of the charter school “treaty,” why it unraveled and what happens next.
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Jennifer and Jack’s forthcoming book A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School, is now available for preorder. https://bookshop.org/books/a-wolf-at-the-schoolhouse-door-the-dismantling-of-public-education-and-the-future-of-school/9781620974940
The achievement gap has driven education reform for the past twenty years. Guest David Stevens says it’s time to stop talking about the achievement gap and focus instead on the “headwinds” and “tailwinds” that hold some students back while pushing others along. With the pandemic exacerbating the inequality between students, Stevens’ alternative approach, what he calls the Academic Support Index, has never been more relevant. You’ll be inspired and encouraged, and you’ll understand exactly why Stevens is the winner of the 2020 Have You Heard Graduate Student Research Contest.
The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Subscribe on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast or donate on PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/haveyouheardpodcast
Jennifer and Jack’s forthcoming book A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School, is now available for preorder. https://bookshop.org/books/a-wolf-at-the-schoolhouse-door-the-dismantling-of-public-education-and-the-future-of-school/9781620974940
Teachers unions are the biggest impediments to fixing schools and improving student achievement. That mantra has been at the heart of school reform efforts for more than a decade - but is it true? Education researchers Adam Kirk Edgerton and Mimi Lyon both started their teaching careers at a time of peak hostility to unions. (Remember Waiting for Superman?) When they left the classroom to go back to school, both were intent on researching unionization in order to better understand its impact—on teachers, students, and on progressive policies in states where unionization has been hindered. Oh, and did we mention that Adam and Mimi are the runners up in the 2020 Have You Heard Graduate Student Research Contest?
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Private pandemic “pods” are the latest edu-craze to sweep the land. But turns out there’s nothing new about privileged parents fleeing the public school system—or using the threat of departure as leverage. Special guests Jessica Calarco, L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy and Jon Hale help us understand the implications of pods for public education.
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When the pandemic shuttered schools, it also put grades on hold. But suspending A-F grading also exposed the underlying flaws of a high-stakes system. Historian Ethan Hutt joins us to discuss the origins and often conflicting purposes of grading, and some possible fixes.
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Recommended reading: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/opinion/coronavirus-school-grades.html
Teach Like a Champion, the best-selling guide to effective teaching by Doug Lemov, has sold millions of copies. But is it racist? Have You Heard hears from teachers and researchers who argue that Lemov’s approach embodies “carceral” pedagogy. And because we have a thing about education history, we trace the concept all the way back to 1895. Special guests: Ilana Horn, Joe Truss and Layla Treuhaft-Ali.
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Recommended reading: “Teach Like it’s 1895,” by Layla Treuhaft-Ali: https://haveyouheardblog.com/teach-like-its-1895/
How exactly did cops end up in US schools in the first place? Our quest for answers takes us to three cities—Boston, Los Angeles and Chicago—and back 60 years to another era wracked by mass social protest: the 1960’s. Special guests: Matt Kautz, Judith Kafka and Louis Mercer.
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Students flailing without real teachers. Sky-high dropout rates. Aggressive sales pitches. Sound familiar? Have You Heard revisits America’s first great love affair with distance learning, the learn-by-mail craze that swept the nation 100+ years ago. The case for distance learning made by the original (for profit) edu-preneurs was virtually identical to what we’re hearing today. Special guests: education historian Bob Hampel and “Young Jack.”
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A looming budget calamity worse than the Great Recession could mean mass teacher layoffs and deep cuts to school spending. Have You Heard previews the bleak budget forecast, how it can be averted, and why the GOP seems intent on forcing states to go broke. Experts Bruce Baker, Sarah Reckhow and Jesse Rothstein weigh in. And in a sign of what’s to come, we meet a teacher whose alternative school is going online and for-profit next year.
The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Please donate at Patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast.
Have You Heard digs into the recent - and surprising - decision by a federal court declaring that there is in fact a constitutional right to education. One catch: the court defined that right very narrowly, as a “basic minimum education.” Jennifer and Jack explore the ruling and its implications with the help of an all star cast, including Noliwe Rooks, author of Cutting School; Michael Rebell, executive director of the Center for Educational Equity; and former Detroit teacher Stephanie Griffin.
The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Please donate at Patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast.
The gaps between the Internet haves and have-nots have never been more glaring. Christopher Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self Reliance helps us understand the origins of our digital divide and how to get to a system of high quality affordable internet for all.
The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Please donate at Patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast.
Have You Heard opens the proverbial phone lines to hear what listeners want to know about education in a time of pandemic. And an all-star cast of experts steps up to provide the answers.
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This isn't the first time schools have shuttered in response to a pandemic. Resident education historian Jack Schneider on what we can learn from school closures past. Meanwhile, the absence of schools seems to have awakened even their critics to how key they are. And what of the future? Resident paranoid Jennifer Berkshire says it's never too soon to start fretting over whether schools will ever reopen - especially in states where pols have been feverishly focused on dismantling them.
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Blaming teachers for the woes of US public schools and beyond is as old a pastime as public education itself. Historian Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz takes us through 100 years of teacher blaming and the love-hate relationship the US has with its teachers. You'll laugh! You'll cry! You'll want to pre-order her book, Blaming Teachers.
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Have You Heard heads to fast-growing north Texas to listen in on how support for public education is upending the state's politics. Part of our series on education and politics in 2020, this episode captures a trend with major implications for Texas and beyond.
The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going and enables us to hit the road. Please donate at Patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast
The raging debate about whether public money should fund private religious education is a very old one. What's new is the increasingly complex education landscape and the mainstreaming of once radical free market ideas. Education historian Ethan Hutt makes it all make sense.
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What are students learning about American history in these hyper-polarized times? That’s what New York Times reporter Dana Goldstein wanted to know. And so she set off on an epic reading adventure: 43 middle and high school American history textbooks, 4,800 pages in all. Have You Heard talks to Dana about how our divided nation shows up on the pages of these books on subjects such as immigration, the economy and suburbanization. Also, Jack revisits the great debate in the 1990’s over history standards.
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Have You Heard heads to rural Wisconsin to investigate a puzzle. Communities in the "reddest" parts of the state keep voting to hike their own taxes to pay for schools, even as they elect and re-elect politicians who enact cuts to school funding. What gives? The answers are complicated and surprising.
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It’s time to junk the international assessment of 15-year-olds known as the PISA test says scholar Oren Pizmony-Levy. And Have You Heard announces big plans for 2020.
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For more than a decade, Denver has been a model for a brand of school reform centered on closing low-performing schools, opening charter schools and rewarding teachers for boosting student test scores. But a diverse coalition of opponents says it’s time to put the brakes on that approach and showed its strength at the polls in November by “flipping” the Denver School Board.
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Why do progressive parents so often act to preserve their own privilege even as they say they're committed to challenging inequality? We talk to Margaret Hagerman, author of White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America.
Recommended reading: White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America
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The Democratic Party seems to be backing away from its decades-long embrace of charter schools. While pundits cite the influence of teachers unions within the party, our guest Jon Valant says more complicated forces are at play, starting with the unraveling of the unlikely liberal/conservative coalition that brought charters into being.
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Central Harlem in the late 1960's was home to a radical, and little known, experiment in alternative education. Historian Barry Goldenberg, runner up in the Have You Heard Graduate Student Research Contest, tells us the story of Harlem Prep and why it is so relevant today.
We talk with Christopher Leonard, author of the new bestseller Kochland, about the Koch family's vision for public education. (Hint: it doesn't involve the word 'public'...)
Theater teacher Quinn Strassel has seen first hand the impact that Betsy DeVos has had on Michigan’s public schools. And so he decided to fight back—by writing a musical.
School can be a tough, even traumatic place for students and teachers alike. Four teachers tell Have You Heard what they're doing to change that.
We delve into a charter school scam so enormous, so audacious that it requires charts and graphs to explain. Special guest: Voice of San Diego’s Will Huntsberry.
Economist Marshall Steinbaum talks free college, human capital theory, educationism and why it’s time to disrupt the individualized logic of higher education.
What happens when charter schools with progressive missions encounter an education marketplace where test scores and competition reign supreme? Elise Castillo, the winner of the first-ever Have You Heard graduate student research contest, breaks it down for us.
Have You Heard heads to Michigan to learn about a lesser-known part of the state’s free market education experiment: inter-district school choice. More than 100,000 Michigan students attend school in a district other than where they live. The outflow of students has pushed urban districts to the brink and spawned a competition for enrollment among rural and suburban districts.
White residents are moving into city neighborhoods they’ve long stayed away from. They’re arrival is driving up housing costs and displacing the neighborhoods’ previous residents. But what does it mean for urban schools? Have You Heard talks to Yawu Miller, senior editor of Boston’s African American newspaper, the Bay State Banner.
All of those Democratic presidential candidates keep talking about education. But why? Have You Heard goes beyond the headlines to explore why public education may just turn out to be this (endless) campaign season's hottest button issue.
High-end for-profit private schools are a growing segment of the education ‘marketplace.’ Mike Levy, a long-time teacher at Avenues World School in NYC, takes us behind the scenes of a growing network of schools for the global .01% where $60,000 in tuition also buys a healthy dose of free-market ideology.
No excuses-style charter schools, known for rigid discipline and a college prep focus have seen explosive growth in urban areas over the past decade. But do parents really want strict discipline for their kids? Researchers Mira Debs and Joanne Golann talked to parents at two very different kinds of schools: urban no excuses charters and public Montessori and what they found will surprise you.
Deep spending cuts and ballooning class sizes are coming to Ontario. Have You Heard talks to parents, students and teachers in Toronto about what controversial changes proposed by the new conservative government will mean for a public education system success story. Hint: nothing good...
Arizona is home to some of the most outrageous charter school shenanigans in the country. Have You Heard talks to award-winning reporter Craig Harris of the Arizona Republic about why his state's charter experiment seems to have gone off the rails.
The Atlanta school cheating scandal saw 11 Black educators convicted of racketeering. Shani Robinson was one of them. She joins Have You Heard to talk about the untold story behind the longest criminal trial in Georgia history.
There's big money lining up to bring the portfolio model to a school district near you. But what is it exactly? Scholar Katrina Bulkley helps Have You Heard plumb the depths of portfolio management.
As states disinvest from public higher education, universities are increasingly turning to corporate sponsors. Joshua Hunt, author of University of Nike, joins us to talk about who pays when corporate donors are footing the bill.
The smartest book Have You Heard has encountered on the limits of school reform in ages is a novel. Roxanna Elden's hilarious and pointed Adequate Yearly Progress is packed with real insights into what self-styled education reformers miss about the complex ecosystems of schools, and the complicated lives of teachers. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll buy the book!
Can listening to When I'm 64 make you younger (or smarter)? Have You Heard looks at the replication crisis in the social sciences and why education research is particularly susceptible to the problem of illusory results. Special guest: Hunter Gehlbach
Boston recently announced plans to begin rebuilding its schools. But in a fast-gentrifying city, who will these new schools be for? Jennifer travels to a school on the chopping block: McCormack Middle School in Dorchester to talk to teachers and students who are fighting to keep their school community together.
Have You Heard digs up the original "zombie" issue in education: schools of education and their [insert criticism here]. Jack and Jennifer are joined by education historian Lauren Lefty to explore why this particular zombie can never be slayed.
Teachers are running for office this year in unprecedented numbers. Have You Heard talks to some of them and looks at why this educator-turned-candidate phenomenon represents a unique phenomenon. Hint: it's not just teachers who are on the ballot but the future of public education.
Have You Heard talks to Anand Giridharadas about his new book, Winners Take All, a scathing indictment of billionaire change makers who seek to "disrupt" public education while leaving the structures of inequality untouched.
In 1977, Have You Heard co-host Jennifer Berkshire climbed aboard a school bus headed for a soon-to-be integrated school. In this episode she explores what did - and didn't happen - in Springfield, Illinois, and why our vision of what's possible today seems so much smaller than it did 40 years ago.
Americans are big believers in the power of education. But they are also a national of hustlers. Have You Heard explores the intersection of the two with Bob Hampel, author of Fast and Curious: a History of Short Cuts in American Education.
Have You Heard explores LeBron James' partnership with the Akron Public Schools - and what makes it different from other high wattage education reform ventures. Rann Miller, who is an educator, writer and expert in all things LeBron, joins the convo.
What will the Supreme Court's recent Janus ruling mean for the future of teachers unions? Jon Shelton, author of Teacher Strike! Public Education and the Making of a New American Political Order, joins Jennifer to "unpack" this complicated political moment.
Business journalist Andrea Gabor steps into the Have You Heard studio to make the case that education reform has learned all of the wrong lessons from the business world. She argues that the market-based measures and carrot-and-stick incentives that rule in schools today are wildly out of sync with the nurturing culture that the best schools foster.
A blockbuster book on the meteoric rise and implosion of the Silicon Valley blood-testing startup Theranos is chock full of lessons for education and those who would seek to disrupt it. Writer John Warner and host Jennifer Berkshire discuss Bad Blood, and what it tells us about "bad ed tech" and "bad ed reform."
Sociologist Carla Shedd steps into the Have You Heard studio to talk about the complicated interplay between school choice, segregation and gentrification in an unequal city.
Have You Heard talks to Audrey Watters, journalist and expert in all things #edtech, about "teaching machines," and the long (and almost completely ignored) history of efforts to automate the teaching profession.
Nearly a decade has passed since Scott Walker took on teachers and other public employees in Wisconsin, virtually eliminating their right to engage in collective bargaining. So what's the state of the state today? Public education and the question of how to fund it has emerged as a potent political issue and is driving what could be a big shift in the state's political makeup.
What does the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868 have to do with the wave of teacher walkouts sweeping the country today? More than you might think! Law professor Derek Black steps into the Have You Heard studio to talk about a forgotten history and why it's more relevant today than ever.
Have You Heard looks at what's behind state takeovers of school districts. As guest Domingo Morel explains, laws authorizing states to take over urban districts appeared as a direct response to Black power at the municipal level. Today, while takeovers come shrouded in the discourse of "achievement," the conservative logic behind them is unchanged: improving schools requires weakening the political power of the communities they are in.
Have You Heard discusses the rise of the "data boyz," the quantitative methodologists who increasingly determine what counts--and what doesn't--in education research. Special guest: UC Berkeley economist Jesse Rothstein.
Have You Heard talks to teachers in West Virginia (lots of them!) about the strike that shuttered schools in the Mountain State for nine days - and what they think teachers in other states can learn from their powerful example.
Student walkouts, strikes and protests have a long history of forcing real political change. We talk to historian Jon Zimmerman about what today's student protesters can learn from previous generations. And we hear from current students who are leading the protests against gun violence.
For working class students, "college" is defined as skills building and workforce development. But that's a narrow and ultimately limiting view of what higher education is for, guest Mike Rose tells us. The star of this episode: Maya Luna - a home health aide who went back to school in hopes of earning more money, and discovered that she is a star.
It's been one year since Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos squeaked into office via a tie-breaking vote courtesy of VP Mike Pence. Jack and Jennifer listened, read and watched their way through a year's worth of DeVos remarks - and lived to tell the tale. Their top takeaways: after 365 days of DeVos, she remains misunderstood and misunderestimated.
We talk to Rebecca Klein, education reporter for the Huffington Post, about her recent series on what students at voucher schools - private schools, overwhelmingly religious, that receive taxpayer dollars. Klein introduces us to three popular curricula used in the schools. As she explains, kids on the receiving end of these widely-used lessons are being schooled in an extreme religious and ideological worldview.
Education reform is often referred to as the "civil rights issue of our time." But what would have happened if "edupreneurs" (like Mark Zuckerberg, Wendy Kopp or Dave Levin) had used their money, influence, connections and access to solve the riddle of why we can't integrate schools? Have You Heard talks "segrenomics" with Noliwe Rooks, author of Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education.
For decades, Republicans and Democrats alike have held out "college for all" as the key to social and economic mobility. Have You Heard talks to Joan Williams, author of White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness about the starkly different class-based attitudes towards college. On the one side: professional elites, who groom their kids for college from day 1. On the other: working class Americans, who often view college--not to mention "credentialed" elites--with suspicion.
Mihir Garud left a job as a stockbroker to teach personal finance at a Chicago charter school. He's also the treasurer of a union that now represents 25% of charter school teachers in the city. Garud, who sees unions as the "last brake" on a system of free market capitalism run amok, turns out to have a lot in common with the teachers in Chicago who organized the country's first just-for-teachers union back in 1897.
When questions produce quarrels, it can be easy to blame our current state of politics. But coping with contention is a learned skill—a skill that our schools have been actively avoiding for over a century. In this episode, we talk with historian Jon Zimmerman about the teaching of controversial issues: past, present, and future.
"Corporate education agenda" gets thrown around a lot - but what does it actually mean? Have You Heard talks to economist Gordon Lafer, who tracked the state-level legislation backed by the corporate lobbies, including the Chamber of Commerce and the American Legislative Exchange Council, in the wake of the Great Recession. Lafer paints a disturbing picture of the corporate vision for education, an agenda that remains deeply unpopular with voters. Perhaps the bleakest episode of Have You Heard so far!
Chicago shuttered some 50 schools in 2013. Since then, voter turnout and support for Democrats in the affected neighborhoods has plunged. What's the connection? Have You Heard talks to political scientist Sally Nuamah about the political fallout from the school closures--and what the debate about closing schools as a means of raising student achievement is missing.
Have You Heard listens in on the recent XQ Superschools extravaganza, the latest big money effort to "rethink" public education. We're joined by Megan Tompkins Stange, author of Policy Patrons: Philanthropy, Education Reform, and the Politics of Influence, who helps us see the world through the eyes of a billionaire school reformer
The claim that "your zip code shouldn't determine your education" is made by education experts of every stripe. And yet as Have You Heard guest Richard Rothstein, author of the Color of Law, explains here, our racially segregated zip codes were created by design, the result of federal housing policy. The legacy of those policies today is not just segregated schools but a stark racial wealth gap. And the solution to the problem isn't choosing schools, argues Rothstein, but integrating neighborhoods.
Bill Gates spent a fortune to remake high schools across the country into small learning communities. Michael Hobbes' Seattle alma mater was one of these, and he takes us deep into the story of his school. As Hobbes recounts, what happened at Hale High, and Gates' efforts to supersize the small schools experiment, is also a story of what education reform gets wrong - and why reformers make the same mistakes again and again.
Have You Heard talks to historian Harvey Kantor about how education came to be seen as THE fix for poverty. Hint: it all starts in the 1960’s with the advent of the Great Society programs. Fast forward to the present and our belief that education can reduce poverty and narrow the nation’s yawning inequality chasm is stronger than ever. And yet education, argues Kantor, is actually exacerbating income inequality.
In this episode, Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider discuss how test scores and other current metrics distort our picture of school quality, often fostering segregation in the process. What would a better set of measures include? Our intrepid hosts venture inside an urban elementary school to find out.
Jennifer Berkshire talks to Nancy MacLean, author of the best selling Democracy in Chains, about the Right's long crusade against what they call "government schools."
In this episode of Have You Heard, we hear from teachers who left their jobs - and wanted to tell the world why. They left "kicking and screaming" as Oklahoma Teacher of the Year Shawn Sheehan explains. These very public resignations are a form of activism, a way for teachers to articulate how and why teaching needs to change.
The push to "personalize" education is on, with more Silicon Valley disrupters jumping into the big money fray every week. But as Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider discuss with guest Bill Fitzgerald, the search for a technological cure for what ails our public schools goes way back. And by failing to heed the past, the new breed of disrupters--Mark Zuckerberg, Reed Hastings, et al--are poised to repeat it.
How did school boards became the must-have accessory of wealthy donors? Scholar Rebecca Jacobsen walks us through who and what is behind this big money trend. And by "big," we mean REALLY BIG. The recent school board election in Los Angeles was the most expensive in history, totaling some $17 million, much of it via untraceable "dark money" donations.
Did you hear the one about how charter schools were the brainchild of Albert Shanker, the legendary teachers union head? Writer Rachel Cohen did, but when she began tracing the tale back to its origins, she found that the real "father" of charter schools looks a lot like their biggest fans today: market-oriented reformers who aren't crazy about public institutions or labor unions.
A big new study finds having just one Black teacher makes it far more likely that Black students will remain in school. But there’s a problem. The percentage of Black teachers, particularly in urban areas, has been sinking like a stone. Guest Terrenda White explains the role that education reform has played in reducing the number of Black teachers, and why recruiting Black students to be future teachers is such a challenge when school can feel a lot like jail.
School marketing is a fast growing - and completely unregulated - byproduct of the education marketplace. Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire explore the world of "edvertising" with researcher Sarah Butler Jessen. To market, to market!
Tax credit scholarships are a complex, controversial way of sending taxpayer dollars to private religious schools, allowing wealthy donors and corporations to reap huge windfalls in the process. Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire explore the the origins of the wall between public money and private schools that these “neo vouchers” are intended to circumvent. They're joined by tax policy expert Carl Davis who They’re joined by tax policy expert Carl Davis who explains that tax credit scholarships have more in common with money laundering than with charitable giving.
Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider talk to Tressie McMillan Cottom about the rise of for-profit colleges, and risky higher ed that saddles low-income students with debt and questionable credentials. And we discuss the growing push to make K-12 similarly risky. Cottom is the author of Lower Ed and her sharp, insightful take on why markets and schooling don't match is a must hear.
Have You Heard heads to Detroit to hear from parents about how they're faring in the city's "education marketplace." We listen in as they describe neighborhoods that have become school deserts, and the chaos of dealing with schools that suddenly close their doors.
Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider talk to Michelle Rhee about the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers, whether the policies she's pushed for have led to teacher shortages, and what's next for the education reform movement in these Trumpian times.
The idea that schools can be fixed by firing teachers has become a fixation. Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider look at where the idea comes from and hear from three Boston teachers whose schools are about to be turned upside down. As scholar Tina Trujillo explains, the turn-and-churn model of school reform reflects a larger erosion of the idea that public education is public good.
The conservative love affair with vouchers dates back decades, held in check only by a skeptical public. Now with the GOP running, well, just about everything, school vouchers are back, baby. Jennifer Berkshire and Jack Schneider discuss the history of the voucher movement and its strange bedfellows, and mix it up with Travis Pillow, a voucher superfan.
When Maria Montessori developed a new teaching method for society’s “lost” children in the early 1900s, she had no idea it would become one of the go-to ways rich white parents educate their toddlers. But now, public urban Montessori schools are catching on in a big way and challenging some deeply held beliefs about how urban kids should be educated.
When Georgia voters go to the polls, they'll be deciding whether to create a statewide school district to take over troubled schools. But while the question is being sold as a way to help kids, the devil is in the details. Have you Heard heads to Atlanta to hear from voters and parents about why Amendment One has become the hot topic in Georgia politics.
Have You Heard heads west to visit a San Francisco high school where ninth grade social studies students are diving deep into a topic that concerns them directly: school lunch. They're part of a new ethnic studies curriculum that allows them to engage in their education in hopes that they’ll be more invested in school. And it's producing big results: the kind that have researchers salivating more than a kid excited for chicken nugget day in the cafeteria.
Have You Heard heads to college campuses to talk to three current and former students. They "get" what researchers are just beginning to understand: that going to college isn't the silver bullet to solving poverty. By saddling students with debt and degrees that aren't worth that much - if they finish at all - college may even be making the problem worse.
Have You Heard revisits the school busing wars that rocked the country in the 1960s and '70s. We talk to historian Matt Delmont, who argues that just about everything you think you know about busing is wrong - and that understanding what REALLY happened is key to finally doing something about school segregation.
It's the first Have You Heard road trip! For this edition of the podcast, we're in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the poorest city in the state. What we found, though, was a community of students rich in ideas who feel empowered to rethink education and rebuild their city.
Have You Heard heads to Boston for a look at the controversial trend of kindergarten suspension. We go behind the data to bring you the story of a mother and a five-year-old boy who, in his first four months as a kindergartner, was suspended 16 times. Hard to imagine? His mother thinks so too as she struggles to understand how her bright, creative little boy could end up in so much trouble so quickly.
Have You Heard heads to New Orleans, where there’s a rebellion brewing against the city’s decade-long experiment with urban education reform. We speak to the unlikely leader of the revolt to find out why residents of the Big Easy say that changes are being made “to them, not with them” and how this uprising could be heading to a city near you.
Have You Heard heads to Philadelphia to talk to African American parents who are opting their kids out of standardized tests. We listen in as they share their perspectives about a movement that’s been characterized as wealthy, white and suburban.
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