Weekend listening: Sarasota FL was supposed to be the capital of MAGAmerica, starting with its school board. Then came the revolt of the normies soundcloud.com/haveyouheard...

Education was a big issue in this Michigan special election. Some important lessons here on how education & affordability are starting to intersect 1) running against universal school lunch is a real loser! 2) make [state name] more like Mississippi does not seem to rally voters

The future in 2 stories: 1) AI will create a permanent underclass that no amount of college and career readiness can address and 2) school-as-workplace prep will hasten this along

One major issue missing from this account of the GOP's struggles in Iowa: school vouchers. The controversial program is expensive, unregulated, and widely seen as a handout to wealthy Iowans. This has created a mess for GOP candidates and an opening for Dems www.wsj.com/politics/ele...

If you live in a red state w/ a voucher program, not only must your elected GOP reps support it (no matter how much of a hole it blows in the budget), but if they try to limit the program in ANY way, they'll be targeted by billionaire school choice PACs. Seems likely to alienate a lot of GOP voters

The backlash against edtech is suddenly everywhere - and it's only going to grow. I wrote about why this grassroots revolt is about more than Chromebooks and Khanmigo educationwars.substack.com/p/the-big-te...

Have you heard? @jenniferberkshire.bsky.social and @jackschneider.bsky.social are presenting during ELC’s Education Justice Lecture on June 3! Register or sponsor using the links below! #webinar #publiceducation #teachertok #fyp #publicschools

Among the 20K workers Citi is firing: “A.I. Champions and Accelerators” who perform their dayjob while trying to convince their coworkers to adopt AI www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/b...

As would my masters thesis on women using DIY comics as a vehicle for establishing identity, now that I look at it

My PhD dissertation on public pedagogy and the It Gets Better Project would be prohibited in Texas.

My PhD dissertation on how the separation of work and home shaped gender identity in 19th century America would have been prohibited in 21st century Texas

Recommended weekend listening: Silicon Valley's vision for schools is dreary and dystopian. It's also fueling a massive backlash against all things edtech soundcloud.com/haveyouheard...

Join @haveyouheard.bsky.social Podcasters, Authors and Educators, @jenniferberkshire.bsky.social and @jackschneider.bsky.social, for ELC’s 17th Annual Education Justice Lecture edlawcenter.org/join-podcast...

According to that big new profile of ED chief Linda McMahon, the brains behind the new federal school voucher program was west Texas oil billionaire and 'theo-ligarch' Tim Dunn www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

@jenniferberkshire.bsky.social is right on, as usual. Blue-state governors are facing a Boromir moment here. They like to think they can use Trump's scheme for good, but it won't work. It'll siphon money away from public schools.

New episode of @haveyouheard.bsky.social: Silicon Valley's vision for public education is both familiar and dystopian. Tim Scott joins us to talk about his urgent new book Schooling for Silicon Valley. Thanks @kevinkumashiro.com for the h/t! soundcloud.com/haveyouheard...

Want to see how messy the politics of school vouchers are for Dems? Here's likely 2028 candidate Mark Kelly on what a disaster vouchers have been for Arizona. Meanwhile, pro-voucher Dems are in Mass. today to push Gov. Maura Healey to sign onto Trump's voucher plan www.azcentral.com/story/opinio...

I wrote about why the GOP should be worried about that earth-shaking election in Hungary - AND last week's school board races in the US educationwars.substack.com/p/reading-th...

If the Texas GOP loses its grip on the legislature there'll be lots of reasons. But a big & underappreciated one is school vouchers -- deeply unpopular w/ Dems and many conservatives. www.texastribune.org/2026/04/08/t...

There's a striking convergence between the trend away from teaching whole books, described by the teachers in the @haveyouheard.bsky.social piece below, and @hunderdown.bsky.social's observations that a downturn in #KidLit publishing is being driven by declining school and library sales. Yikes.

Weekend listening: worried about the disappearance of books from schools, heavy-handed literacy policies and the relentless focus on workplace prep? You just may have a case of the blue state blues! soundcloud.com/haveyouheard...

Clearly something in the water right now in particular. This was my most recent Substack post. substack.com/home/post/p-...

Some of my favorite English educators on one of my favorite education podcasts! This is such an important issue. The loss of humanity, intellectual community, & meaning caused by this obsession with maximizing test scores and human capital is/will be devastating to public education in the long term.

"Small wonder that adolescents are struggling with nihilism and despair, when we’ve taught them that nothing they do during their six-hour school day can matter for its own sake."

Huge thanks to @jenniferberkshire.bsky.social for amplifying the conversation about how "blue state" politicians have embraced the corporate, back-to-basics "Make Literacy Technical Again" movement at the expense of a more holistic, compelling, and purposeful vision for education.

New Have You Heard: we talk to four current and former teachers about what blue states keep getting wrong about public education. @johndownesangus.bsky.social, @jaustinedu.bsky.social, @annieabrams.bsky.social and Nora De La Cour on why they have the blue state blues soundcloud.com/haveyouheard...

There's a whole alternate universe where Democrats would have won in 2026 if they'd just talked about standardized testing more. www.politico.com/newsletters/...

Essential reading if you want to understand THE divide in the Democratic Party today. Acknowledge that young voters are right to feel that capitalism has failed them? Or keep flogging education as the answer to economic unraveling? www.nytimes.com/2026/03/27/b...

More interesting details about that Dem state senate upset in Florida. Brian Nathan ran on *attacking the attacks on the working class,* including repealing a new law aimed at crippling teachers unions. And he won because enough GOP voters crossed party lines to vote for him

Interesting detail about that FL state senate flip: both candidates want more accountability for the state's $1 billion school voucher program. But the guy pledging much tougher rules won

This Florida flip is the second upset in two weeks where the GOP's hostility to public education became a Dem advantage floridapolitics.com/archives/786...

Spot on from @piperformissouri.bsky.social The weakening of public schools / devaluing of teachers & the dismissal of the Liberal Arts are part of a deliberate effort to reshape America into a place where fewer people can think critically or organize collectively or ? the power of those in power.

Anyone else old enough to recall those cringey sex ed films in health class? The latest episode of the pod, starring the brilliant @margaretgmyers.bsky.social on her book The Fight for Sex Ed is for you! soundcloud.com/haveyouheard...

My bold prediction: when parents outraged at big tech's takeover of schools join forces with anti data center/anti AI folks, it will be something. educationwars.substack.com/p/ai-is-comi...

Everyone who argues that Dems need to focus on vouchers/testing/anti-union stuff is just praying that we'll all forget the period from 2004 to 2018 where Dems embraced it to an embarrassing degree and it destroyed what was left of our educational system

Dems for Education Reform says candidates need to go hard at teachers unions, embrace school vouchers and standardized testing. But Dems who are most exciting to voters right now, including candidates who've flipped seats, are doing the exact opposite. www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

Parent backlash vs ed tech has been brewing for years. Here's Florida where parents started pushing back against iReady a decade ago. iReady spread through FL like kudzu thanks to 1) test score fever 2) 3rd grade reading retention 3) the influence of Jeb Bush www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/l...

A major and really unappreciated fault line in the Democratic Party right now is the divide between the 'tax the rich' populists and the old school 'fix the schools' centrists

If you're worried about the coming AI job-pocalypse, bold new solution just dropped. Do what we've been doing, but harder www.edweek.org/teaching-lea...

This makes me so angry! Also everyone should listen to the wild Have You Heard podcast about the conservative Texans mad about school vouchers. cc: @jenniferberkshire.bsky.social @jackschneider.bsky.social

I wrote about how strange it is that so many of the folks and orgs behind the drive for tech-based personalized learning don't seem to remember anything about it now educationwars.substack.com/p/how-did-th...

For a glimpse at our Gilded Age, head to Teton County, WY - the richest per capita county in the US. It's home to crumbling public schools &, thanks to billionaire largess, a shiny new private school which taxpayers will soon pay for thanks to vouchers billionaires lobbied for

Lots of amnesia about what drove the ed tech frenzy: lots of influential orgs and individuals who saw *personalized learning* as a way to teacher-proof (and union proof) schools. Anyone else old enough to recall the Obama era?

In our newest episode, @jenniferberkshire.bsky.social shares her experience teaching in the prison education program and the lessons we can learn about school and society. What Prison Can Teach Us About School w/ Jennifer Berkshire: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rxrR... #edchat #k12

The Democrats Cannot Withstand the Economic Shock that's Coming. (In case you were wondering what the party of education and retraining has planned for mass white collar displacement - it's more education and retraining) www.nytimes.com/2026/03/06/o...

Weekend listening: if Texas turns blue(r), a backlash against school vouchers by GOP voters will be a big part of the story on.soundcloud.com/L8SfDbV07d1L...

I wrote about the (surprising) potency of school vouchers in this week's elections. TLDR Vouchers are a poor fit for the *bottom vs. top* energy sweeping the Democratic party. Meanwhile, telling GOP voters that they have no choice but school choice might've been a bad move...

@jenniferberkshire.bsky.social on vouchers: The reality is that a policy that is a darling of billionaire donors and actively redistributes wealth upwards is a spectacularly poor fit for our “top vs. bottom” political moment. It’s also an organizing opportunity. (Talarico gets it.)

Latest episode of Have You Heard goes deep into a story the media has completely missed: the backlash against school vouchers on the right (and why it matters.) Forget *education freedom.* These oonservatives see government overreach and socialism on.soundcloud.com/L8SfDbV07d1L...