We meet a group of Massachusetts parents who’ve been taking on big tech in their children’s schools and in their own lives. When these parents learned that the school district was considering integrating AI tools into the classroom, they got to work. Over the past year, Reconnect Malden has pushed the district to adopt strict limits on AI as well as the edtech platforms that increasingly dominate learning. At a time of growing parent backlash against big tech, these parents offer an inspiring roadmap for how to challenge the bots.

Have You Heard heads to West Virginia, where public schools face a precarious future. As the state’s voucher program expands, the small schools that are the lifeblood of many rural communities are increasingly on the chopping block. We talk to West Virginians across the state about some of the challenges facing public schools, and why a political backlash to the GOP’s complete control of the state may be brewing.

Traditional student discipline is broken. That’s the premise of an exciting experiment in student-run restorative justice taking place at Attleboro High School in southeastern Massachusetts. Students who’ve committed minor disciplinary infractions can now go before a jury of their literal peers in an effort to repair the harm they’ve done. Far from letting offenders off easy, Youth Court holds students accountable in a way that detention or in-school suspension doesn’t.

In this special episode we’re showcasing a brand new education podcast: Budget Committee! School finance is complicated, but it doesn’t have to be that way. In their new show, school finance whisperers Derek Gottlieb and David Backer dig into the data, demystifying the jargon and the lingo to help listeners not just understand the numbers but push for change. We’re big fans and we think you will be too.

Despite working considerably more hours than their colleagues in other countries, teachers here say they don’t have enough time to do their jobs, leading to high rates of stress, burnout and teacher turnover. We hear from researchers and current and former teachers about the ‘time scarcity’ toll, and why any effort to ‘fix’ our schools must start by reckoning with the demands on teacher time.

Civic centers are all the rage on red state campuses. Designed to reclaim and “save” the humanities, reinstate ideological diversity in higher ed, and bring back the Great Books, these centers are growing rapidly, even as the old school humanities wither away. But when writer Ann Manov visited a new center at her alma mater, the University of Florida, the reality fell far short of the sales pitch.