Jack Schneider

Have you heard? Have you heard? Have you heard? Have you heard? Have you heard? Have you heard? [upbeat music] Welcome to Have You Heard? I'm Jennifer Berkshire.

And I'm Jack Schneider.

And Jack, the topic of this episode is a state that I have wanted us to visit for quite some time, and that would be West Virginia.

The Mountain State.

Um, I'm in.

Uh, known for scenic beauty, for being, um, the opposite of East Virginia, and for being home of the inspiring Red for Ed movement, which people may remember from, oh, I don't know, seven or eight years ago.

Well, unfortunately, Jack, these days West Virginia is known for something else, and that would be the increasingly perilous state of its public schools.

A lot of them are closing, especially in the coal region of the state, and that's what we're gonna be talking about in this episode.

Here's Jennifer Berkshire with more.

She's the host, along with Jack Schneider, of the podcast Have You Heard? and co-author of The Education Wars, also a collaboration with Schneider, which was published by the New Press a couple of years ago.

Jennifer Berkshire.

You report that just 10% of Arizonans support the state's voucher scheme.

I'm Jennifer Berkshire.

And I'm Jack Schneider.

And Jack, the best thing about doing this podcast, all 20,000 episodes that we've done so far, is that we get the most amazing correspondence from our listeners.

And one came into the mailbag the other day, a former teacher, I think she said she was a special ed teacher.

And she wanted to know if we would do an episode about those awful shock gloves that, you know, first ICE is going to have them.

The detention is really not doing anything for the student or the teacher.

A huge thanks to Toby Reed and to his students for letting us crash their criminal justice class and telling us all about youth court at Attleboro High School.

And Jack and I will be right back to talk about the renewed push for stricter discipline in schools and what proponents could learn from something like we just heard about.