In this special episode, Have You Heard remembers the extraordinary Mike Rose. Special guests Erika Kitzmiller, Janelle Scott, Chris Buttimer, Michael Moses and Rema Reynolds help us recall Mike as a scholar, mentor and builder of worlds.

The claim that standardized testing has racist - even eugenicist - roots is oft repeated these days. But is it true? In an episode guaranteed to please no one, friend of the show Ethan Hutt walks us through the multiple and tangled histories of testing. And special guest Akil Bello does a dramatic reading of headlines foretelling doom and disaster should testing wither away.

The culture wars found a new target in 2021: trans youth. More than 100 laws were proposed to restrict the rights of trans individuals, especially kids. In this episode of Have You Heard, we’re joined by teacher, trans activist and co-host of the Southern Queeries podcast Aubree Calvin. Aubree helps us understand the origins of the right’s war on trans youth, and why the restriction of their access to health care and education is an issue that should concern every public education advocate.

Black students who are taught by teachers who attended an Historically Black College or University or HBCU fare better than their peers. That’s what Lavar Edmonds found as he dug into a trove of data from North Carolina schools. More intriguing still: while students with Black teachers show the biggest gains, the effect also held with white teachers who graduated from HBCUs. Edmonds, the runner up in the Have You Heard Graduate Student Research Contest, explains what he thinks is the “secret sauce” at HBCUs, and why his findings challenge some of the central assumptions of so-called “role-model effects” in education.

Why are the same states that are rolling back democracy also intent on dismantling public education? We assembled an all-star cast to get some answers. Special guests: Derek Black, author of Schoolhouse Burning: Public Education and the Assault on American Democracy; and Noliwe Rooks, author of Cutting School: Privatization, Segregation, and the End of Public Education.

If you know anything about higher education in prison, it's that these programs "pay off" for taxpayers in the form of tax savings and lower rates of recidivism. But the economic justification for college behind bars misses a far more profound value, says Patrick Conway, winner of the 2021 Have You Heard Graduate Student Research Contest. Conway's research raises essential and relevant questions - about who is entitled to be educated at tax-payer expense, what kind of education they should receive, and how we view crime.