logo
episode-header-image
Jun 2014
52m 1s

David C. Berliner, Gene V. Glass et al.,...

Marshall Poe
About this episode

David C. Berliner, Gene V. Glass, and associates are the authors of 50 Myths and Lies That Threaten America’s Public Schools: The Real Crisis in Education (Teachers College Press, 2014). Dr. Berliner is Regents’ Professor of Education Emeritus at Arizona State University. Gene V Glass is a senior researcher at the National Education Policy Center and professor at the University of Colorado. The associate authors are comprised of leading Ph.D. students and candidates selected by Dr. Berliner and Dr. Class for this book.

In the book, Dr. Berliner, Dr. Glass, and the other writing associates attempt to expose common myths and lies that are present in the current political and educational landscape. While grounding their writing in academic research, the authors’ wrote a book aimed to be assessable to administrators, teachers, government officials, and the common (non-academic) person. The result is an extensive and yet easy-to-read book, broken into small sections that all pack a powerful punch. The authors do not hold back criticism from those they consider to be purveyors of myths or lies–such as Michelle Rhee, Michael Bloomberg, and Tony Bennett. From properly interpreting American student rankings on international testing like PISA and TIMSS, to questioning the success of the charter school movement, and showing why young students should not be held back, this book uncovers all of these myths and more. Dr. Berliner joins the podcast to discuss this book and also a few other recent events in education.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/education

Up next
Jul 6
Pooja Agarwal, Cynthia Nebel, Veronica Yan, "Smart Teaching Stronger Learning: Practical Tips From 10 Cognitive Scientists" (Unleash Learning Press, 2025)
How can I help my students not only learn my course material but also retain and transfer that information? This is a question that has plagued and intrigued teachers for centuries. In Smart Teaching Stronger Learning: Practical Tips for 10 Cognitive Scientists, the authors provi ... Show More
1h 14m
Jul 6
Steve Haberlin, "Meditation in the College Classroom: A Pedagogical Tool to Help Students De-Stress, Focus, and Connect" (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2023).
This book provides background, strategies, and tips for higher education faculty and instructors interested in incorporating meditation in their classrooms. The work is based on research involving introducing brief meditation practices to college students and developing a detaile ... Show More
45m 3s
Jun 27
James M. Lang, "Write Like You Teach: Taking Your Classroom Skills to a Bigger Audience" (University of Chicago Press, 2025)
Teachers are subject matter experts that can distill information into manageable chunks for their students. In Write Like You Teach: Taking Your Classroom Skills to a Bigger Audience (University of Chicago Press, 2025), Dr. James M. Lang insists that the skills teachers use in th ... Show More
1h 5m
Recommended Episodes
Jun 2019
Pauline W. Chen, "Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality" (Vintage, 2008)
Too often keeping patients alive gets in the way of helping them as they approach death. Dr. Pauline Chen shares her experiences as a medical student and transplant surgeon and how they’ve shaped the way she practices medicine.Chen is the author of Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflect ... Show More
42m 2s
Jan 2024
Joseph C. Russo, "Hard Luck and Heavy Rain: The Ecology of Stories in Southeast Texas" (Duke UP, 2022)
In Hard Luck and Heavy Rain: The Ecology of Stories in Southeast Texas (Duke UP, 2023), Joseph C. Russo takes readers into the everyday lives of the rural residents of Southeast Texas. He encounters the region as a kind of world enveloped in on itself, existing under a pall of po ... Show More
34m 14s
May 2017
Kate Daloz, “We Are As Gods: Back to the Land in the 1970s on a Quest for a New America” (PublicAffairs, 2016)
Growing up in a geodesic dome is not a claim everyone can make, but author Kate Daloz can. Her book We Are As Gods: Back to the Land in the 1970s on a Quest for a New America (PublicAffairs, 2016) traces the path taken by many children of suburbia in the 1960s across the country ... Show More
54m 30s
Mar 2023
Local news is civic infrastructure. And it’s crumbling. Can we save it?
Harvard Kennedy School professors Nancy Gibbs and Tom Patterson say local news is civic infrastructure. And it's crumbling. Like bridges, local news organizations use facts to help people connect with each other over the chasm of partisan political divides. People need reliable i ... Show More
44m 48s
Oct 2023
How to keep "TLDR" syndrome from killing your policy proposal
Harvard Kennedy School Professor Todd Rogers and Lecturer in Public Policy Lauren Brodsky say trying too hard to sound intelligent—even when communicating complex or nuanced ideas—isn't a smart strategy. Because today’s overburdened information consumers are as much skimmers as r ... Show More
45m 12s
May 2023
America & Democracy Ep. 2: Jonathan M. Berman on Anti-Vaxxers
In this series of interviews from The MIT Press Podcast, we'll be drawing on the research of various authors to reflect on some of the issues shaping the American political landscape of today.The second episode of this series features a discussion with the author of Anti-vaxxers, ... Show More
39m 41s
Jan 2024
Robert N. Gross, “Public vs. Private: The Early History of School Choice in America” (Oxford UP, 2018)
There are numerous political debates about education policy today, but some of the most heated surround vouchers, charter schools, and other questions about public funding and oversight of private schools. Though many of these questions feel new, they, in fact, have a long histor ... Show More
1h 6m
May 2021
Nathan D. Grawe, "The Agile College: How Institutions Successfully Navigate Demographic Changes" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2021)
In his highly influential book, Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education, Carleton College Professor of Economics, Nathan Grawe, alerted college and university leaders to the challenges they would be facing with the accelerating decline in the number of U.S. high school g ... Show More
1h 5m
Aug 2023
Hava Rachel Gordon, "This Is Our School!: Race and Community Resistance to School Reform" (NYU Press, 2021)
Parents, educators, and activists are passionately fighting to improve public schools around the country. In This Is Our School!: Race and Community Resistance to School Reform (NYU Press, 2021), Hava Rachel Gordon takes us inside these fascinating school reform movements, explor ... Show More
47m 7s
Jun 2020
Leticia Bode et al., "Words That Matter: How the News and Social Media Shaped the 2016 Presidential Campaign" (Brookings, 2020)
Words That Matter: How the News and Social Media Shaped the 2016 Presidential Campaign (Brookings Institution Press, 2020) comes out of a broader collaboration between social scientists at the University of Michigan, Georgetown University, Gallup, Inc.This collaboration, which is ... Show More
1h 1m