Have You Heard

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. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Please donate at Patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast

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. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Please donate at Patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast

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. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Please donate at Patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast

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. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Please donate at Patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast

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. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going. Please donate at Patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast

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 The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast alive. Please donate at Patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast

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. The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast alive. Please donate at Patreon.com/HaveYouHeardPodcast

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'...)