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 scho

#176 The Idaho Exception

19 days ago 42m 34s

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 activis

#175 Special Education is Under Threat

Apr 9th, 2024 49m 18s

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

#174 Religious Charter Schools are Coming. Be Worried.

Mar 19th, 2024 40m 31s

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

#173 Did You Hear the One About the Skills Gap?

Feb 29th, 2024 40m 39s

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

#172 Off of the Sidelines

Feb 15th, 2024 39m 8s

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 mo

#171 The Damage Done

Feb 1st, 2024 45m 24s

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

#170 Can We Please Stop Talking About Harvard?

Jan 18th, 2024 43m 40s

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,

#169 Can the Democrats Win on Education?

Dec 21st, 2023 45m 1s

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

#168 Coming to America

Nov 30th, 2023 37m 4s

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 st

#167 Public Education Needs More Democracy, Not Less

Nov 16th, 2023 37m 1s

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 sch

#166 The School Voucher Scam

Nov 2nd, 2023 42m 54s

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

#165 The Politics of State Takeovers

Oct 19th, 2023 38m 54s

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 sen

#164 Plutocratic Philanthropists are Bad for Schools–and Democracy

1 Oct 5th, 2023 35m 40s

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,” N

#163 How to Get Ahead in School Without Really Learning

Sep 21st, 2023 40m 36s

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

#162 State of Emergency

Aug 29th, 2023 49m 45s

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 tha

#161 AI Is Going to Upend Public Education. Or Maybe Not

1 Aug 8th, 2023 45m 45s

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 jo

#160 There’s No Way to Win the School Culture Wars

Jul 18th, 2023 38m 58s

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. Nee

#159 The John Birch Society was the Original Moms for Liberty

Jun 22nd, 2023 40m 56s

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

#158 If We Want to Save Public Education, We’ve Got to Talk About It Differently

Jun 8th, 2023 37m 25s

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. Bu

#157 Stopping the Privatization Train

May 24th, 2023 51m 32s

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 w

#156 Digging Deep into the Education Wars

May 4th, 2023 1h 41m

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 “wo

#155 Teachers Speak Out

Apr 20th, 2023 51m 24s

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

#154 High Stakes

Apr 6th, 2023 36m 50s

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 aga

#153 The Assault on Public Education is Escalating

1 Mar 23rd, 2023 1h 12m

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 scho