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  • Who Designed the Choice

    Who Designed the Choice
    2026/10/13
    Most of the coverage of Nikole Hannah-Jones's New York Times Magazine essay asks whether a mother chose wrong. In this follow-up to What It Cost Us, Dr. David J. Johns asks the questions the coverage keeps skipping: who gets blamed, who gets punished, who designed the choice, and who gets left off the map. He names how the blame for a decision two parents made landed on one, and traces how Black mothers with the least have been criminalized for crossing district lines. He breaks down the new federal voucher program launching January 1, 2027, and why your governor's opt-in decision matters. He widens the map to the rural South and Appalachia, where property-tax funding fails Black and white children alike. And he lifts up what works, from the Rosenwald schools to the Oakland Community School, Marva Collins, and the Department of Defense schools.

    Related classes
    • What It Cost Us https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/teach-the-babies-w-dr-david-j-johns/id1745797318?i=1000792173861
    • How Vouchers Are Destroying Public Schools, with Fred Jones https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/teach-the-babies-w-dr-david-j-johns/id1745797318?i=1000760021242
    The essay and the response
    • Nikole Hannah-Jones, "In fighting for every Black child, did I betray my own?" The New York Times Magazine: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/20/magazine/ny-public-schools-black-students-segregation.html
    • Mayor Zohran Mamdani's response (Education Week): https://www.edweek.org/leadership/mamdani-says-nyc-public-schools-failed-nikole-hannah-joness-daughter/2026/09
    • Najya Hannah-Jones and Nikole Hannah-Jones on This American Life (Fox News coverage): https://www.foxnews.com/media/nikole-hannah-jones-daughter-asks-why-her-education-sacrificed-ideology-says-it-makes-no-sense
    • Ronell Smith on the limited menu of options, including Roland Fryer's Wall Street Journal argument (The Dallas Morning News): https://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/commentary/article/nikole-hannah-jones-daughter-school-black-families-22458642.php


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    21 分
  • Faith the Size of a Mustard Seed with Dr. Tiffany Crutcher

    Faith the Size of a Mustard Seed with Dr. Tiffany Crutcher
    2026/10/06
    Dr. Tiffany Crutcher joins the class ten years after a Tulsa police officer killed her twin brother, Terence. She is a descendant of Black Wall Street and the founder of the Terence Crutcher Foundation. She talks about the mother who taught her quiet strength and about the brother the news never showed. She shares her freedom dreams for the next generation and her plans for Greenwood North, a 65,000-square-foot home for rebuilding Black Wall Street. She also answers the hardest question: who takes care of Tiffany?

    NOTES

    • Terence Crutcher Foundation: terencecrutcherfoundation.org
    • Black Wall Street Legacy Festival, held each year around May 31 in Greenwood
    • The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and the destruction of Black Wall Street in the Greenwood District
    • Former officer Betty Shelby was acquitted of manslaughter in 2017.
    • Terence Crutcher's estate filed its civil suit in June 2017.


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    39 分
  • What It Cost Us: Najya, Brown, and the Black Tax

    What It Cost Us: Najya, Brown, and the Black Tax
    2026/09/29
    Ten years ago, Nikole Hannah-Jones chose a school for her daughter and called it the just choice. Now she has told the world what that choice cost.

    Dr. David J. Johns takes the class past the arguments to the questions underneath them. What did Brown v. Board give us, and what did it cost? What does the Black tax take from us, generation after generation? Why do Black teachers matter so much? And why does a systemic problem need a collective answer? Grace for every parent making constrained choices they did not design, and one rule for all of us: keep the children out of our mouths.

    No absolution for any of us. An assignment for all of us.

    Let's All Get Free.

    SHOW NOTES
    In this solo class, Dr. David J. Johns responds to Nikole Hannah-Jones's New York Times Magazine essay with gratitude, grace, and an assignment. He traces the unpaid bill of Brown v. Board and names the Black tax as a set of architected, constrained choices. He shares the story of his former student Nala. And he makes the case that collective action, not one family's sacrifice, is how we win schools worthy of Black children.Historical context
    • Brown v. Board of Education (1954), and the more than 38,000 Black teachers pushed out of their jobs in the decade after the decision: https://www.chalkbeat.org/2024/05/10/black-teachers-lost-jobs-after-brown-vs-board-ruling
    • How Black teachers lost when civil rights won in Brown v. Board (The 74): https://www.the74million.org/article/how-black-teachers-lost-when-civil-rights-won-in-brown-v-board/
    • November 14, 1960, New Orleans: Ruby Bridges integrates William Frantz Elementary. The same morning, Leona Tate, Tessie Prevost, and Gail Etienne integrate McDonogh No. 19.
    • February 3, 1964, the New York City school boycott: more than 450,000 students stayed out of school to protest segregation. https://crdl.usg.edu/events/ny_school_boycott/ and https://www.brooklyneagle.com/articles/day-history-february-3-new-york-city-school-boycott
    • Freedom Summer, Mississippi, 1964, and the Freedom Schools tradition it launched.


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    23 分
  • We Wrote It Down

    We Wrote It Down
    2026/09/22
    In March of 1972, ten thousand Black folks went to Gary, Indiana, and came out with an agenda. Fifty-four years later, we wrote it down again.

    Dr. David J. Johns takes the class inside the State of the People Black Papers, the community-driven policy briefs built by more than a hundred Black experts across ten states, and the two companion documents being built on top of them: a Day One list of five asks for the next Congress and the fuller people's platform underneath it.

    Then he takes us to Tulsa, to the Terence Crutcher Foundation's tenth anniversary gala, where a decade of work built out of grief is doing in practice what the Papers describe on the page. Honoring Dr. Tiffany Crutcher, celebrating honoree Dreisen Heath, and asking what legacy actually requires of the rest of us.

    Preorders open October 9th. Via StateofthePPL.com and routledge.com

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    14 分
  • Three Rings: Nobody Taught Us the Rules

    Three Rings: Nobody Taught Us the Rules
    2026/09/15
    We never left. But this is the first new class since June.

    Dr. David J. Johns opens the fall with a correction he's been carrying in public. For years he told rooms full of people that PBS should bring back Schoolhouse Rock. He was wrong twice—and the second mistake turns out to be the whole episode.

    In 1979, ABC shelved a three-minute cartoon explaining checks and balances because network executives feared the government being checked would come after their broadcast license. Nearly fifty years later, a third of American eighth graders score below basic in civics, which means they likely can't describe the structure of their own government. Nobody has to shelve anything now.
    This solo episode walks the three rings we should have all been taught, then shows what happens in the gap between how government is supposed to work and how it's being worked.

    Congratulations to Congressman Everton Blair, sworn in September first as the first openly LGBTQ+ person Georgia has sent to Congress—a seat decided by fewer than fifteen hundred votes, won by a man who came up through a school board. Appreciation for Senator Shevrin Jones and Representative Michele Rayner, who both lost on August eighteenth after a smear about a candidate's health status and dark money moving through a committee formed weeks before the vote. And a hard look at Inglewood Unified, where an elected school board has kept its seats and lost its votes for fourteen years.

    Plus: why Black joy is not the intermission, what Afrofuturist dreaming has to do with organizing, and why the real AI is Ancestral Intelligence.

    We're heading into the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation's 55th Annual Legislative Conference. Come find us at NBJC's OUT on the Hill.

    Let's All Get Free.

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    17 分
  • A Classroom Teacher’s Perspective w/Stephanie Allen

    A Classroom Teacher’s Perspective w/Stephanie Allen
    2026/09/08
    ICYMI: A Back-to-School Special Rerun

    Stephanie Allen does God’s work. A career educator for more than two decades, Ms. Allen currently teaches high school in Guilford County Schools in Greensboro, North Carolina, the third largest school district in North Carolina. She was recognized as a Teacher of the Year in 2019 and 2024–a recognition she’s earned. This episode features the front-line experiences of a classroom teacher, centers stories about under-supported students, and describes necessary steps to dismantle the social hierarchy that relegates Black students to the lowest rungs of every quality of life indicator ladder.

    Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/teach-the-babies-w-dr-david-j-johns--6173854/support.
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    39 分
  • Th Whole System Is Broken with Andrea Foggy-Paxton

    Th Whole System Is Broken with Andrea Foggy-Paxton
    2026/09/01
    ICYMI!

    Andrea Foggy-Paxton brings a unique perspective to leading change across sectors, drawing from leadership roles in start-up organizations, established organizations, and philanthropic organizations supporting systems transformation. This episode answers the questions: What is civics, and why should it be taught to all students? Andrea shares lessons from her experience as an industry titan and appointed school board member. She also talks about philanthropy and corporations' responsibility for ensuring educational equity.

    edloc.org
    @afoggypaxton


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    43 分
  • Preserving Legacy and the Power of Mutual Aid with Deesha Dyer

    Preserving Legacy and the Power of Mutual Aid with Deesha Dyer
    2026/08/25
    Summer Rewind Episode

    In this deeply personal and politically urgent conversation, Dr. David Johns welcomes his White House family—Deesha Dyer, former Social Secretary to President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama—for a raw discussion about what we lose when power demolishes history, and what endures when community builds with intention.

    Deesha takes us inside the moment she saw excavators tearing down the East Wing of the White House in October 2025—the space where she orchestrated state dinners, opened doors for people who never thought they'd walk through them, and made the People's House truly belong to the people.

    This conversation moves from the rubble of demolished institutions to the unshakeable foundation of community organizing. Deesha shares lessons learned from Michelle Obama about grace under pressure, why she wrote Undiplomatic for Black girls who "risk it all," and what defending democracy actually looks like in practice: investing in local organizations, letting leaders lead in their expertise, documenting our work, and showing up for each other with intention.

    Deesha's story is a masterclass in refusing to let imposter syndrome—or anyone else—define your worth. As she reminds us: buildings can be demolished in 72 hours, but they can't demolish the memories, the legacy, or the collective power we build together.

    This is required listening for anyone who believes that mutual aid isn't charity—it's how we survive, build, and love each other into liberation.

    Website: DeeshaDyer.com
    Instagram: @deedyer267
    Email: deesha@deeshadyer.com (She answers every email!)
    Book: Undiplomatic: How My Attitude Created the Best Kind of Trouble
    (Available at libraries and independent bookstores)


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    1 時間 1 分