Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

Broad Calls to Ax Education Department and Take On Teachers’ Unions at 1st GOP Debate

Libby Stanford, Education Week

Republican presidential candidates slammed teachers’ unions and called for the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education, reading acceleration, more curriculum transparency, and expanded school choice in the first official debate of the GOP nominating contest Wednesday night. The debate, which was hosted by Fox News in Milwaukee, Wis., on Aug. 23, provided the first opportunity for most candidates to answer questions about education.

The GOP school boards making California Dems red in the face

Blake Jones, Politico

Republicans pushing socially conservative policy in schools have had surprise breakthroughs in California, a state where they’re flirting with irrelevance. GOP-backed school board trustees wrested majority control of a small batch of Golden State school boards last fall in races that were ostensibly nonpartisan. The victors are now importing policies on race and gender that would seem more at home in Florida than in California. Newly-seated majorities have condemned critical race theory, challenged mentions of LGBTQ figures and relationships in curriculum and required that transgender students’ identities be disclosed to parents. The moves have agitated state Democrats while offering California Republicans — relegated from statewide office — newfound outposts of power.

Gov. Newsom sends letters to districts about ethnic studies requirement as part of anti-hate campaign

Diana Lambert, EdSource

In the wake of a recent shooting of a Southern California business owner over the display of a rainbow Pride flag, Gov. Gavin Newsom is announcing an anti-hate campaign that includes a letter to school leaders outlining their responsibility to teach the adopted ethnic studies curriculum that will be required in two years.The curriculum focuses on the history, culture, struggle and contributions of African Americans, Native Americans, Asian/Pacific Islander Americans and Latinx Americans. The model curriculum also includes lesson plans on other communities, including Filipino Americans, Jewish Americans, Arab Americans, Sikh Americans, Armenian Americans and others.

Language, Culture, and Power

States are banning LGBTQ+ subjects in schools. Most students say they were never taught about them anyway.

Orion Rummier, The 19th

At least 11 states have passed laws to censor discussion of LGBTQ+ issues in public schools, eliminating the potential for queer students to see themselves in their education. But most LGBTQ+ students haven’t been learning about their community in school anyway. Instead, they’ve turned to the internet to learn about their identities as queer and trans young people. Some do online research about LGBTQ+ identities after learning from their friends or seeing representation in fiction.  In a new survey published in August, only 13.8 percent of 12,615 LGBTQ+ students said that their history classes had ever included a lesson, unit or chapter on LGBTQ+ history. The online survey, organized by the Human Rights Campaign Foundation and the University of Connecticut, mostly received responses from high school students, though some middle school and college students also participated. Students, the majority of which were in public schools, took the survey in 2022.

I helped two migrant teens enroll in Chicago Public Schools. It was anything but straightforward.

Maureen Kelleher, Chalkbeat Chicago

The first week of school highlights yet another facet of the challenge Chicago faces in supporting newly arrived migrants: enrolling their children in school. For the past two days, I saw it up close while helping two migrant families enroll their daughters at a neighborhood high school in Brighton Park. These families, recent arrivals from Venezuela, are among more than 1,200 migrants currently sleeping in police stations; about 6,500 more are staying in local shelters.

Scottish school libraries receive funding to fight racism

Lucy Jackson, The National

Scottish school libraries will receive a funding boost for projects supporting anti-racism and promoting equality, diversity and inclusion. The School Library Improvement Fund opened its applications today for all state-run nurseries, primary schools and secondary schools in Scotland.

The funding is worth £200k and will prioritise project applications which support anti-racism and racial equality. There is no minimum or maximum amount that schools can apply for.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

Social media could be fueling gun violence among young people [AUDIO]

Ayesha Rascoe, NPR

NPR’s Ayesha Rascoe speaks with ProPublica reporter Alec MacGillis about the relationship between social media and an increase in gun violence, often resulting in homicides, among young people.

How San Diego’s Monarch School helps homeless students transform their futures

Kate Rix, K-12 Dive

Zaira Martinez had to change schools in her sophomore year of high school, switching from a big urban high school with more than 1,700 students to a K-12 school with just under 300 students. But It wasn’t just the school’s size that was different. Teachers at Zaira’s new school kept a watchful eye on all students, fully expecting them to need support on both academic and life issues. Unlike her previous teachers, her new teachers would ask how she was doing and even stay late if she needed help.

Connecting Community Resources to the Students Who Need Them Most

Evie Blad, Education Week

Community groups often stand at the ready to help schools with challenges like hunger, housing instability, and mentorship needs, but it takes a thoughtful person to connect those resources to the students who need them most and to monitor their progress, said Rey Saldaña, President and CEO of Communities in Schools. The national nonprofit organization trains school-based coordinators to help manage what it calls “integrated student supports,” like donations and social services provided by out-of-school organizations. Those coordinators use data about factors like absenteeism to monitor the effectiveness of their work and to identify students who help.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

California walks back decision to muzzle researchers testifying in pandemic education lawsuit

Dan Walters, CalMatters

As noted in this space recently, there’s been a recent trend in California’s state government toward secrecy – restricting the flow of information to media and the public about what officialdom is doing. A prime example of that trend was a harsh warning from the Department of Education to education researchers that they could be punished if they testified in any lawsuit against the department. A clause in research contracts banned such testimony, even if the researcher was not using data obtained from the department. The warning, which officials partly walked back, was issued because the state was being sued by students whose schooling was interrupted and damaged by shutdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The charade of ‘test-optional’ admissions

Maggie Bigelow, Hechinger Report

As schools and testing centers shut down in spring 2020, it seemed only fair for colleges and universities to suspend ACT and SAT admissions requirements. A pandemic is as good a reason as any to change the rules. Three years later, and months after the Covid-19 national emergency was declared over, 80 percent of colleges and universities are still following “test-optional” protocols. This trend has generally been celebrated by critics of the tests, who argue that the exams are inherently unfair due to the disproportionately large share of high scores among affluent test takers. However, in practice, the test-optional system is far more exclusionary than mandatory testing requirements ever were.

This book dissects the years-long battle for gender equality at MIT [Audio]

Manuela López Restrepo, NPR

In their pursuit of science and discovery, the few female scientists at MIT in the late 20th century found themselves faced with hurdles related to their gender, rather than their research. So they did what scientists do: they quantified it. One journalist took notice. Who is she? Kate Zernike is a national reporter for the New York Times, covering politics, healthcare, and more. She is also the author of book, The Exceptions: Nancy Hopkins, MIT, and the Fight for Women in Science, which details the struggles of female researchers aiming to gain equality among male peers.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

Supreme Court Is Asked to Hear a New Admissions Case on Race

Stephanie Saul & Adam Liptak, NY Times

In the latest challenge to the role race may play in school admissions, a legal activist group asked the Supreme Court on Monday to hear a case on how students are selected at one of the country’s top high schools, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology. A divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled in May that Thomas Jefferson, a public school in Alexandria, Va., did not discriminate in its admissions. The Pacific Legal Foundation, a libertarian law group, wants the Supreme Court to overturn that decision, arguing that the school’s new admissions policies disadvantaged Asian American applicants.

C. L. R. James’s Radical Vision of Common Humanity

David Scott, Boston Review

C.L. R. James’s The Black Jacobins was first published in London in the summer of 1938 by Secker and Warburg (later that year it would appear from Dial Press in New York). Born in 1901, James had moved from colonial Trinidad to metropolitan Britain only six years before, in March 1932. Initially a self-consciously literary man oriented vaguely toward Bloomsbury modernist realism, and with no more than an incipient sense of anticolonial, let alone socialist politics, within these six years he had more or less abandoned his commitments to writing fiction and established himself at the center of both the Marxist debate about the Soviet Union and the prospect of a new international left, and the anticolonial debate about national and Black self-determination. These would form interlocking axes shaping the analytical and political framework of The Black Jacobins.

How we can make access to computer science education in California more equitable

Paula Nazario, Ed Source

Far too often, ZIP-code and socioeconomic status determine whether California students have access to a computer science education — and those who don’t live in the right school district often miss out on this key opportunity to thrive in the digital future. In fact, only 39% of California high schools offer at least one computer science class, and the most recent data from the California Department of Education in 2018 indicates that only 5% of high schoolers are actually enrolled in a computer science course. Further examination reveals that Black, Indigenous, Latino, and Pacific Islander students, along with girls from almost every background, are vastly underrepresented in these courses. In other words, our current system helps perpetuate a deep digital divide by restricting access to students from only the most privileged backgrounds.

Democracy and the Public Interest

Education “intimidation” bills have skyrocketed since 2021, report says

Russell Contreras, Axios

Nearly 400 proposals aimed at allowing parents and government officials to change school lessons have been introduced in state legislatures since 2021, according to a new report from a nonprofit that defends free expression.  Though less than 10% have passed, the climate around the bills has intimidated educators into self-censorship in schools, limiting discussions around racism and gender, PEN America said.

Arkansas drops AP African American Studies course [Audio]

Alisa Chang and Josie Lenora, All Things Considered

Just 48 hours before the first day of school, the Arkansas Department of Education announced that Advanced Placement African American studies would not count towards graduation. The department said it’s reviewing the course for possible indoctrination. As Josie Lenora from member station KUAR in Little Rock reports, the course is still in its pilot stage.

Five of Little Rock Nine on Arkansas’ attempt to erase Black history

Valerie Strauss, Washington Post

In September 1957, nine Black Arkansas teenagers entered the all-White Little Rock Central High School in an episode that became iconic in the civil rights movement. The teens were part of school integration efforts that followed the 1954 Supreme Court Brown v. Board of Education ruling, which declared racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional. But in Little Rock, Gov. Orval Faubus (D) ordered the Arkansas National Guard to block the African American teens from entering the school. It took then-President Dwight D. Eisenhower (R) federalizing the National Guard and sending in U.S. Army troops to ensure that the teenagers could attend classes regularly at Central High. Now five of the Little Rock Nine are speaking out, in the post below, about actions taken by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) and the state legislature to restrict what students can learn about Black history. The Sanders administration said recently that the state would not give credit for the Advanced Placement African American studies because it violates a state law that bans lessons that “indoctrinate students with ideologies.”

Other News of Note

Transformational learning and engagement on climate action for students attending a climate negotiation

Julie Snorek & Elisabeth Gilmore, Nature

When Greta Thunberg addressed world leaders at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)’s 24th Conference of Parties (COP24), it highlighted how young people including Indigenous youth are seeking to influence international climate change negotiations. However, young people face barriers to effectively engaging in the COP processes with few opportunities to learn about the structure and practices for COP Observers. In this paper, we describe and evaluate a structured learning experience developed to support students conducting research related to climate change and their engagement with international climate negotiations. Before attending the COP24, students were given in-person and online training about the UNFCCC, its processes, and major issues under negotiation. They also developed and presented their work during a COP side event. Through pre- and post-surveys and in-depth interviews, we asked students about their expectations and degree of engagement and agency at the COP and more broadly on climate action. Students reported that the academic scaffolding before and during the COP provided most of the students with tools for navigating the complexities of the COP. For all of the students, learning through engagement with the COP24 process supported greater self-efficacy and literacy in relation to climate change action.

From solo protest to global movement: Five years of Fridays for Future in pictures

Euronews Green

On 20 August 2018, climate activist Greta Thunberg stopped going to school. Instead, she did something that would spark a worldwide movement and, hopefully, change the course of history.
Thunberg sat outside the Riksdag, Sweden’s parliamentary building, every day during school hours with a now-famous sign reading “Skolstrejk för klimatet” (“school strike for climate”).
Following heat waves and wildfires in Sweden, she wanted the government to act on climate change in a meaningful way.