The teaching profession is in the worst shape of the past 50 years. That’s according to researchers Melissa Arnold Lyon and Matthew Kraft, who crunched a half century’s worth of data on such indicators as whether students are interested in going into teaching, the prestige of the profession, and the satisfaction of teachers themselves. What emerged were some striking historical patterns and a clear warning about the state of the teaching profession.

Young people had a major impact in the midterm elections, including students who aren’t even old enough to vote. In this episode, we meet some high school activists who are making their power felt, both in and out of schools, fighting against an array of policies driven by what they see as adult fear. And they’re just getting started. Next up: a campaign to lower the voting age for school board elections in Michigan to 16. Special guests: Syd Olthoff, Hafiza Khalique and Julia Cuneo of Detroit Area Youth Uniting Michigan.

Supposed exposes about schools-gone-bad are a staple of US education discourse. But the COVID era and the waning of school accountability have given the “rhetoric of reveal” new life and potency. Special guest Mark Hlavacik breaks down the politics of the big reveal at a time of real danger for public education.

The story of college success in the US often conflates distance with quality, and separation from family and community as a rite of passage. But when Corinne Kentor, the runner up in our 2022 Grad Student Research Contest, observed students who’ve grown up in families with mixed immigration status, she saw something very different: a view of college as a collective project. Her research raises big questions about how we view college and “success” in a time of deepening education polarization.

Accusations that schools were indoctrinating children via something called Critical Race Theory seemed to come out of nowhere. By the summer of 2021, legislators across the country were rushing to enact bans against something they could barely define. So how did the narrative about CRT take hold so quickly and resonate so deeply? The winners of the 2022 Have You Heard Graduate Research Contest, Annie Gensterblum, Ariell Bertrand, and Sandy Frost Waldron, have some answers that may surprise you.

GOP-dominated states have seen a blitz of legislation targeting trans students. What’s behind these attacks? While this anti-trans hysteria represents just the latest in a long-line of conservative “panics,” today’s furor also signifies an ominous development in the public school culture wars: an effort by the right to roll back the expansion of civil rights. Special guests: parent activist Robert Chevaleau and pediatric psychologist Natasha Poulopoulos.