Dr. Jack Schneider, Dwight W. Allen Distinguished Professor at UMass Amherst and and host of the Have You Heard podcast about education policy, joins us to break down the recent “schools are bad” media bonanza (links below). Dr. Schneider digs in to what’s flawed about the panic-inducing articles about the state of American public education, and shares tips on what to say to the person next to us at a dinner party who starts to s**t on our kids’ public school. Also, the questions to ask your kid if you really want to know if they’re school is good, and a thought-provoking take on Little Free Libraries.

Links:

* America’s Children Are Unwell. Are Schools Part of the Problem? From A.D.H.D. to anxiety, disorders have risen as the expectations of childhood have changed. By Jia Lynn Yang (New York Times)

* The Big Fail Student achievement has fallen off a cliff. And neither Trump nor the pandemic is to blame. By Andrew Rice (New York Magazine)

* Jack Schneider, educational historian and professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

* The Education Wars (Jack Schneider)

* Beyond Test Scores (Jack Schneider)

* Jack Schneider in The Nation

* r/Teachers: “What does this generation of students do better than others?” (via Evil Witches Newsletter )

* Scopes Monkey Trial

* Arizona Education Debit Card

* Teachers Have It Easy

* California Healthy Kids Survey

* The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich

* The City & The City by China Miéville

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