We’re headed to Vermont where public schools are confronting a ‘perfect storm’ of challenges. Costs are rising in this largely rural state even as the student population is declining, fueling a taxpayer revolt. Meanwhile, thanks to a recent SCOTUS ruling, a tradition of funding private schools with public funds means that Vermont must now pay for religious education. Enter the state’s Republican governor with a bold plan to do education in Vermont completely differently. Will public education survive in the Green Mountain State? And how long before schools in your state face a similar precipice?

Like just about everyone these days, our own Jack Schneider is troubled–make that frightened–by our political landscape. But however deep our divides may be, there’s one issue that can, if not bring us together, allow for at least a conversation. The dismantling of the public education system would be so obviously bad for all of us that maybe, just maybe, a shout from the other side of the partisan divide might actually be heard. That was Jack’s hope in penning this Letter to a Trump Voter.

Organizing in defense of public education at the local level has never been more vital. And yet in an era when even the most local elections are now nationalized, electing pro-public education candidates can be a heavy lift. In this episode, we hear from a group of parents in Souderton, Pennsylvania who have been slowly ‘moving the needle,’ making incremental gains in each election cycle. They’re hoping that 2025 will finally be the charm when it comes to convincing local voters to make the school board nonpartisan again.

It’s common knowledge that every student has a learning style: visual, auditory or kinesthetic. But what if those classifications are not just inaccurate but dangerous? That’s the argument made by education historian Tom Fallace in his provocative new book, You Are Not a Kinesthetic Learner: The Troubled History of the Learning Style Idea. Fallace argues that learning styles took hold as teachers were asked to do more and more in response to social and economic divides. Not only is the research behind learning styles flimsy, but as Fallace documents, but the classifications end up lumping together whole racial and ethnic groups as kinesthetic learners.

Vouchers are not conservative. That’s what we heard again and again when we talked to Texans who consider themselves Republicans but oppose their party’s top education priority. We hear from rural Texans who are taking the attacks on their local schools very personally, and business minded Republicans who fear the consequences of privatizing education for workforce development. But the real lesson in this episode is political. The big money push to expand school vouchers, and expel voucher opponents, is spurring rising discontent within the ranks of the Republican party, including among some of Trump’s staunchest supporters.

Our biggest political divide these days isn’t race or gender but education - and that division is only getting worse. We talk to the co-author of a new book that offers the single best explanation we’ve come across regarding the role that education is playing in fueling our bitter political battles. David Hopkins, author (with Matthew Grossmann) of Polarized by Degrees: How the Diploma Divide and the Culture War Transformed American Politics, helps us makes sense of a profound shift in American politics, how K-12 teachers and university faculty came to be seen as the enemy by so many on the right, and what we can do about it.