Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

Conservatives targeted LAUSD’s Black student achievement program. The district shouldn’t give in

Tyrone Howard and Pedro Noguera, Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Unified School District has said it is removing race as a factor for determining which students will be helped by its Black Student Achievement Plan. The move comes after a federal civil rights complaint about the program was filed by a conservative group in Virginia in 2023. The group charged that the plan was unconstitutional because it targeted support for students based solely on race. We have consulted with LAUSD on the Black Student Achievement Plan since its inception. It was established in 2021 after efforts by parents and community activists drew attention to the district’s dismal track record serving its Black students. In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder, the school board voted to direct a portion of its funding for school policing to an improvement plan for the academic experiences and outcomes of Black students.

Don’t Shield Students From Offensive Language in Literature. Do This Instead

Larry Ferlazzo, Sonja Cherry-Paul, Françoise Thenoux, David Upegui, Education Week

It’s not uncommon for classic children’s books or literature to contain offensive language.

How should we teachers deal with that challenge? 

Why being forced to precisely follow a curriculum harms teachers and students

Cara Elizabeth Furman, The Conversation

In teaching, “fidelity” refers to closely following specific procedures for how to teach a lesson or respond to student behavior. For example, following a curriculum to fidelity might mean a teacher is required to read from a script, use a certain tone or expression, or teach from a designated page in a guidebook on a specific day. In the past 20 years, teachers have experienced diminished control over what and how they teach. Simultaneously, the idea of teaching to fidelity has increasingly become the norm. Today, policymakers commonly suggest that fidelity is synonymous with good teaching. While prevalent across the country, this kind of micromanaging is more common in urban and rural schools that serve low-income and minority students.

Language, Culture, and Power

Trump plans to scrap policy restricting ICE arrests at churches, schools and hospitals [Video]

Julia Ainsley and Didi Martinez, NBC News

The incoming Trump administration intends to rescind a long-standing policy that has prevented Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from arresting undocumented people at or near so-called sensitive locations, including houses of worship, schools and hospitals or events such as funerals, weddings and public demonstrations without approval from supervisors, according to three sources familiar with the plan. President-elect Donald Trump plans to rescind the policy as soon as the first day he is in office, according to the sources — who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the change publicly. The move would be intended to boost ICE’s authority to arrest migrants across the country, and its speed in doing so, as part of Trump’s plan to carry out what he has said he wants to be the “largest deportation operation in American history.”

Trump says he supports DREAMers. His past actions say differently.

Li Zhou, Vox

In a recent Meet the Press interview, President-elect Donald Trump claimed he’s open to working with Democrats on legislation that could keep DREAMers — undocumented immigrants who came to the US as children — in the country. His own track record, however, casts doubt on just how serious this commitment is. “I want to be able to work something out,” Trump said during an exchange with NBC News’s Kristen Welker, when pressed on if he wanted DREAMers to stay in the US. His most recent remarks stand in stark contrast to his actions as president, though, when he tried to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which shields some DREAMers from deportation. (He also called on Congress to act to protect DACA recipients, which it failed to do.)

Welcoming Migrant Students: Lessons from Colombia

Joshua Lerner, American Educator

In the spring of 2022, I sat down with my first-grade co-teacher and Lucia, the mother of one of our newcomer students, Andres.* We pulled up three chairs on the classroom rug to talk about how we could work together to help Andres transition to school each morning. Andres and Lucia had recently migrated from Colombia, and this period of adaptation had been hard on Andres. Lately, he had been crying and would only come into the building holding my hand. It would take him the better part of the morning to feel comfortable enough to take off his coat, hang up his backpack, and join his classmates. Conferences like these were not new to me. I’ve been a bilingual teacher in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) for 15 years. I am currently the English learner program teacher at my school. My job is not only to provide bilingual education and English as a second language services but also to coordinate our school’s program (with over 220 multilingual learners), collaborate with my coworkers on professional development, and increase family engagement. However, this particular conversation had a big impact on me because it led me to see the gaps in how well our school truly understood many of our students’ families.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

Extreme weather disrupts education worldwide [Audio]

YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections

In 2022, extreme rain caused massive floods across Pakistan, killing more than 1,700 people and displacing millions more. Many school buildings were damaged or destroyed, keeping children out of class for months. As the climate warms, extreme weather is becoming more common – and experts worry that these disasters could have a big impact on education. Marin: “Globally, we estimated that between January 2022 and June 2024, so two-and-a-half years, extreme weather events disrupted the education of over 400 million students.” Sergio Venegas Marin of the World Bank studies climate and education. He says even when schools stay open, the shock of a disaster can upend students’ lives.

Death rate spikes for young adults, report shows

Karen D’Souza, Ed Source

The death rate for Californians, as well as Americans in general, between the ages of 15 and 44 is far higher now than it was before the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a new report from the Legislative Analyst’s Office. Striking demographic disparities exist as the trend seems to be most pronounced among men, Native Americans, and Black people, as well as those who live in rural northern counties and those in the lowest-income ZIP codes. Breaking down the recent spike by cause of death, the LAO finds that drug overdoses account for about 60%, while alcohol-induced deaths and motor vehicle crashes each account for 10%. One of the key factors fueling the overdose trend, often known as “deaths of despair,” has been the emergence of fentanyl in California’s illicit opioid markets. Speeding and other risky driving behaviors may well have also played roles in car crash deaths.

Student Wellness Tip: Increasing Access to Affordable Food

Ashley Mowreader, Inside HigherEd

The price of a college education is one of the top reasons students don’t enroll or enroll but then stop out of college. Additional costs and fees associated with being a student, then, can also impede academic success and wellness. College students are more likely to experience food insecurity compared to the general population of the U.S., which can be due in part to a lack of resources, social stigma and students’ busy schedules, according to prior research. Food can also cost more in a college town or at on-campus dining facilities. In a May 2024 Student Voice survey by Inside Higher Ed and Generation Lab, one in five (21 percent) respondents say making campus meal plans or food prices more affordable would be most helpful in promoting their overall well-being, out of 11 possible actions their colleges could take.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

Barbara Bowman Dies at 96; Visionary Educator for Preschoolers

Sam Roberts, New York Times

Barbara T. Bowman, an educator who trained generations of teachers in helping underprivileged children in their preschool years begin to fulfill their potential, died on Nov. 4 in Chicago. She was 96. Her death, in a hospital, was caused by heart failure, said her daughter, Valerie B. Jarrett, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama and now the chief executive of the Obama Foundation in Chicago. A scion of a trailblazing Black family, Mrs. Bowman was a founder of the Chicago School for Early Childhood Education, now known as the Erikson Institute. The organization has had a profound influence on education policy in Chicago, across Illinois and in the federal government, particularly under the Obama administration, with its focus on early education.

Investigating how kids are harmed by lower child care standards

Jackie Mader, Hechinger Report

Having covered the child care industry for nearly a decade and experienced the ins and outs of different types of care with my own two sons, I thought I had seen just about everything. But a little over a year ago, I came across a news story that stopped me in my tracks. In an attempt to address child care shortages, lawmakers in Wisconsin were proposing putting teenagers as young as 16 in classrooms as teachers, potentially in charge of group sizes that would be larger than ever before. As I dug into Wisconsin’s efforts, I found it wasn’t the only state proposing to loosen regulations, increase staff-to-child ratios or pare down training requirements. A quiet wave of deregulation seemed to be sweeping across the country, masquerading as a solution to child care staffing woes.

Trump’s immigration rhetoric is already impacting college students

Zachary Schermele, USA Today

With weeks to go before President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House, colleges are shifting their guidance for students who could be impacted by the immigration restrictions he’s promised to enact. Some schools have issued travel advisories to foreign students, urging them to return from international holiday travel before Trump’s second term begins. During his first time in office, the president-elect didn’t just try to stop illegal immigration – he also slowed and upended legal entry into the U.S., including for foreign visitors and students reliant on visas. In a late November message, Cornell University administrators predicted a travel ban is “likely to go into effect soon after inauguration” and called it a “good idea” for international students and staff to be back on U.S. soil before the start of their spring semester.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

Researchers report stunning surge of misogyny after the election

Laura Barrón-López and Sam Lane

I

n just a 24-hour period after Election Day, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue tracked a 4600 percent increase in mentions of the terms, “Your body, my choice” and “Get back in the kitchen” on the social media platform X. One post by far right activist Nick Fuentes has been viewed nearly 100 million times. But the misogyny is not just online. For more on this trend and efforts to fight it, I’m joined by Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a professor at American University and director of the school’s Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab, or PERIL. 

Parents in Africa struggle with unpredictable school fees that force children to drop out

Rodney Muhumuza, AP News

The day Shalom Mirembe was sent home from school last month over unpaid tuition, her father lay dying in a hospital. Even as her mother sat by his bedside, school officials were calling and demanding payment. For Mirembe’s mother, a shoe vendor who looks after four children, it was a heartbreaking moment in the daily struggle to pay often unpredictable and unregulated school fees. Constant threats demanding payment can leave her feeling helpless. Some officials are more tolerant, but eventually they all grow tired of her pleas. “You have to care for this one, you have to care for the other one,” Justine Nangero said, describing a delicate balancing act to keep Mirembe and the others enrolled. “I try to fight to see that I pay to all these schools.”

With thousands of slots still open, LAUSD opens up subsidized preschool to higher-income families [Audio]

Elly Yu, LAist

With thousands of spots in its subsidized preschools vacant, the Los Angeles Unified School District is opening up enrollment to higher-income families to fill spaces currently not being Why is LAUSD expanding its preschool program to higher-income families? The district has more than 80 preschools for 2- to 4-year olds, known as early education centers, funded through the California State Preschool Program (CSPP). The state requires that providers prioritize students based on certain criteria, like income and living situation. But since the pandemic and the growth of transitional kindergarten for 4-year-olds, the district has been under capacity at its preschools, said Dean Tagawa, who directs LAUSD’s Early Childhood Education Division. They’ve been at around 70% full — equivalent to about 3,000 open spots. Now, the district is seeking families regardless of income.

Democracy and the Public Interest

The Power Of Youth: A Look Into Youth Participation in the 2024 Global Elections

The 2024 elections marked a key moment as youth shaped democracy with action and advocacy.

Lonwabo Nkonzo, Global Citizen

The 2024 elections were a global democratic milestone, with nearly half the world voting to shape their leadership for the next few years. Billions, including millions of young people, voted to address issues like healthcare, education, unemployment, climate change, and systemic inequality. Yet, youth voter turnout faced challenges globally, with declines in some regions. Let’s explore how young people engaged in these elections, what motivated them, and their critical role in shaping the global democratic landscape.

Ohio teacher suspended for having LGBTQ books in classroom. Now she’s suing the district

Madeline Mitchell, Cincinnati Enquirer

An Ohio elementary school teacher is suing her school district after she was disciplined for having books with LGBTQ characters in her classroom library. Karen Cahall has worked at New Richmond Exempted Village School District in Clermont County for more than three decades. She’s listed on the district’s website as a third grade teacher at Monroe Elementary School.

“Cahall maintains sincere and deeply rooted moral and religious beliefs that all children, including children who are LGBTQ+ or the children of parents who are LGBTQ+, deserve to be respected, accepted, and loved for who they are,” her lawsuit, filed in early December, reads. 

His controversial school board policies made national headlines. He was just elected again.

Nadra Nittle, The 19th

President-elect Donald Trump is not the only conservative candidate who made a comeback on Election Day. In Temecula, California, former school board president Joseph Komrosky was elected a trustee once again after losing a June recall race following a series of controversies that brought national attention to the school district about an hour northeast of San Diego. By just over 200 votes, Komrosky eked out a win against his teachers union-backed opponent, David Sola, to obtain a seat on the governing body of the Temecula Valley Unified School District (TVUSD), which enrolls about 26,500 students. Three other seats on the five-member school board were also up for election. Conservatives won most of these races, giving the school board that has made headlines for its contentious policies related to race, gender and sexuality a right-wing majority once again. Results from the school board election and other races throughout California were just finalized December 3 because state laws and voting-by-mail procedures require more time to process ballots. In major elections, officials have up to a month to certify results.

Other News of Note

Nikki Giovanni, Renowned Poet And Icon Of The Black Arts Movement, Dies At 81

Melissa Noel, Essence

Nikki Giovanni, the trailblazing poet, activist, author and professor whose words redefined Black literature and culture, passed away on Monday, December 9. She was 81 years old. Giovanni died peacefully, with her wife, Virginia “Ginny” Fowler, by her side, according to WDJB News. Her death followed her third cancer diagnosis, though an official cause has not been confirmed. With a career spanning more than five decades, Giovanni wove the fabric of the Black experience into poetry, essays, children’s books and anthologies. Her fearless exploration of race, gender and civil rights made her a clarion voice for justice and empowerment—a voice that shaped a generation.

Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin in conversation [Video]

ALL ARTS Vault, Youtube

Then 47-year-old novelist James Baldwin is interviewed by 28-year-old poet Nikki Giovanni in a two-part presentation of WNET’s “SOUL!” Taped in London in 1971, the wide-ranging conversation explores Black life in America, the struggle for racial justice and evolving gender roles, while also offering insight into the work and artistic process of two literary icons.

In Praise of a Teacher [Audio, at 2:30]

Nikki Giovanni, The Writer’s Almanac

The reason Miss Delaney was my favorite teacher, not just my
favorite English teacher, is that she would let me read any book I
wanted and would allow me to report on it. I had the pleasure of
reading The Scapegoat as well as We the Living as well as Silver
Spoon (which was about a whole bunch of rich folk who were
unhappy), and Defender of the Damned, which was about
Clarence Darrow, which led me into Native Son because the real
case was defended by Darrow though in Native Son he got the
chair despite the fact that Darrow never lost a client to the chair
including Leopold and Loeb who killed Bobby Frank. Native Son
led me to Eight Men and all the rest of Richard Wright but I
preferred Langston Hughes at that time and Gwendolyn Brooks
and I did reports on both of them. I always loved English because
whatever human beings are, we are storytellers. It is our stories
that give a light to the future. When I went to college I became a
history major because history is such a wonderful story of who we
think we are; English is much more a story of who we really are.
It was, after all, Miss Delaney who introduced the class to My
candle burns at both ends; /It will not last the night; /But, ah, my
foes, and, oh, my friends— /It gives a lovely light. And I thought
YES. Poetry is the main line. English is the train.