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.

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.

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.

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.

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.