Prof. Jack Schneider: What Counts as Evidence? The Real Battle Behind Education Reform | EPS 17
We are told constantly that schools are failing. Test scores are down. Standards have slipped. The system is broken. But step back for a moment and ask: failing by whose measure, assessed by whose tools, and serving whose interests?
In this episode, Dr. Steven Stolz sits down with Prof. Jack Schneider of the University of Massachusetts, historian, policy researcher, and founder of the Beyond Test Scores Project, for a conversation that cuts through the noise of education debate to ask what evidence in education actually means, where it comes from, and who controls it.
Schneider's work sits at a rare and important intersection: he is both a rigorous academic researcher and a fearless public intellectual willing to name the forces, political, ideological, and financial, that shape education policy in ways that have little to do with what is good for children or communities. His books include "Beyond Test Scores," "Education and the Commercial Mindset," and "A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door" (co-authored with Jennifer Berkshire), which documents the well-funded movement to privatise public education in the United States.
In this rich and searching conversation, Dr. Steve and Prof. Schneider explore:
What standardised tests actually measure, and the vast terrain of what they miss entirely, including the things parents, teachers, and communities value most in a school
The Beyond Test Scores Project: what happens when you ask communities what they actually want from schools, and then try to measure it
Why powerful narratives about "failing schools," "accountability," and "school choice" keep driving policy despite weak or contradictory evidence, and how those narratives are constructed and maintained
The privatisation agenda: the economic motivations behind school vouchers, charter school expansion, and sustained attacks on teachers' unions, and who benefits when public education is weakened
Why there is such a consistent and curious gap between how people view "schools in general" versus their own local school, and what that gap reveals about how public perception is shaped
The culture wars targeting public education: what is really driving the assault on public schools, how it differs from past conflicts over education, and what is genuinely at stake
How misleading rhetoric, about "failing schools," "rigour," "choice," and "merit", gets translated into policy, often with damaging consequences for the most vulnerable students
What the history of education policy keeps trying to teach us that we stubbornly refuse to learn
What a genuinely honest, community-centred, and educationally meaningful approach to school quality and accountability could actually look like, and whether the political will exists to build it
Prof. Jack Schneider is Associate Professor of Education at the University of Massachusetts and one of the most widely read education policy scholars in the United States. He is the founder of the Beyond Test Scores Project, a research initiative that works with school districts to develop richer, more meaningful measures of school quality. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Education Week, and numerous academic journals.
🔗 Prof. Jack Schneider: umass.edu/education/about/directory/jack-schneider
This is episode three of the 2026 season of Deep Thinking, titled "Reconsidering Education", a season featuring conversations with leading education scholars from Stanford, Edinburgh, Berkeley, UMass, Vermont, and beyond. Previous episodes in this season: EPS 015 with Fred W. Stolz OAM on educational leadership and legacy, and EPS 016 with Prof. David Labaree of Stanford on why schools were never meant to change.
Deep Thinking with Dr. Steven Stolz is produced in Adelaide, Australia and releases every second Wednesday on all major platforms. Hosted by Dr. Steven Stolz, educator, philosopher, and academic at the University of Adelaide.
