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 s...
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 neighborhoo...
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 scholarsh...
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.
