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Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice
Children in Sudan Trapped in Escalating Hostilities, Urgent to Prioritize Their Protection
Special Representatives of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict and on Violence against Children
The rapid escalation of hostilities in Sudan has a dramatic impact on children, already highly affected by the country’s long-lasting and devastating conflicts and the dire humanitarian situation. The Special Representatives of the Secretary-General for children and armed conflict and on violence against children echo the UN Secretary-General’s call on all parties to immediately cease hostilities and to ensure that necessary measures are taken to protect civilians and especially children in the context of combat operations. “The lives, protection and well-being of children must take precedence over combat operations, and we call on all parties to halt hostilities and to ensure full protection of all children. Parties should further refrain from attacking civilian infrastructures in accordance with international humanitarian law, especially those impacting children – this includes schools and medical facilities as well as water and sanitation systems”, said the two UN Officials.
The Effect of Right to Work Laws on Union Membership and School Resources: Evidence from 1942–2017
Melissa Arnold Lyon, Educational Researcher
In the Janus v. AFCSME decision, the U.S. Supreme Court mandated that all public sector workers, including teachers, operate in a Right to Work (RTW) framework. In the years since, teachers’ unions have not experienced the mass exodus that some predicted, but should we expect them to? Using an original, historical data set spanning 1942–2017, I examine the effect of prior RTW policies on teachers’ union membership and school expenditures. I find that RTW policies decrease teachers’ union membership by roughly 43% and reduce educational expenditures by nearly $800 per pupil. Importantly, effects take roughly 10 years to clearly materialize. Additional analyses provide support for the notion that effects on school resources are driven, in part, by effects on union membership.
Gaslighting Americans about public schools: The truth about ‘A Nation at Risk’
Valerie Strauss and James Harvey, Washington Post
In April 1983, a commission convened by President Ronald Reagan’s education secretary, Terrel H. Bell, released a landmark report about the nation’s public education system, “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform.” It famously warned: Our nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science, and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world. … If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As I wrote in 2018, the authors used statistics to paint a disturbing picture of the country’s public system, though it turned out that a lot of the data was cherry-picked to confirm previously decided conclusions about the awful state of America’s schools. The piece I published, by James Harvey and David Berliner, explained how the report — and its aftermath in waves of school reforms — was bungled.
Language, Culture, and Power
College Board to Revise African American AP Course Again, Admits to Cowing to Conservative Pressure
Lauren Camera, US News and World Report
The College Board will revise its Advanced Placement course on African American history once again, it announced on Monday – an about face that comes after watering down the course requirements in response to GOP outrage over the material covered. “In embarking on this effort, access was our driving principle – both access to a discipline that has not been widely available to high school students, and access for as many of those students as possible,” a message posted to its website said. “Regrettably, along the way those dual access goals have come into conflict.”
“The updated framework, shaped by the development committee and subject matter experts from AP, will ensure that those students who do take this course will get the most holistic possible introduction to African American Studies.”
While ‘Diverse’ Books Remain Under Siege, a New Collection for Kids Celebrates Latino Stories
Nadia Tamez-Robledo, EdSurge
If a children’s book makes a splash on the news or social media these days for being under threat of bans from libraries, there’s almost a guarantee that the book deals with racially diverse characters, any mention LGBTQ+ issues, or both. It’s in this environment that a new collection of books was recently released, one designed for elementary school classrooms. Each bundle in this new Rising Voices series, while differing somewhat depending on grade level, contains books created by Latino authors and illustrators.
How to teach English learners to read? Here’s how one school does it [AUDIO]
Education Beat Podcast
EdSource reporter and Education Beat host Zaidee Stavely visits a school that’s had an uncommonly high degree of success with teaching English learners to read: Frank Sparkes Elementary, in Winton, about 10 miles from Merced, in California’s Central Valley.
Whole Children and Strong Communities
As Rail Profits Soar, Blocked Crossings Force Kids to Crawl Under Trains to Get to School
Topher Sanders, Dan Schwartz, and Joce Sterma, ProPublica
Jeremiah Johnson couldn’t convince his mother to let him wear a suit, so he insisted on wearing his striped tie and matching pocket square. It was picture day and the third grader wanted to get to school on time. But as he and his mom walked from their Hammond, Indiana, home on a cold, rainy fall morning, they confronted an obstacle they’d come to dread: A sprawling train, parked in their path. Lamira Samson, Jeremiah’s mother, faced a choice she said she has to make several times a week. They could walk around the train, perhaps a mile out of the way; she could keep her 8-year-old son home, as she sometimes does; or they could try to climb over the train, risking severe injury or death, to reach Hess Elementary School four blocks away.
New Laws Are Harming LGBTQ+ Students. Here’s How to Help
National Education Policy Center
As the number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills in state legislatures has increased in recent years, K-12 educators are facing dual challenges related to teaching LGBTQ+ students and to teaching students about issues related to gender identity. More than 20 states have introduced bills that emulated and/or expand upon Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, according to Education Week. Enacted in 2022, that law limits lessons on gender identity.
Transgender children have been a target of many of the bills. In fact, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an anti-trans bill just last week.
Diet culture can hurt kids. This author advises parents to reclaim the word ‘fat’ [AUDIO]
Tonya Mosley, NPR
By the time they enter kindergarten, most American children believe that being “thin” makes them more valuable to society, writes journalist Virginia Sole-Smith. By middle school, Sole-Smith says, more than a quarter of kids in the U.S. will have been put on a diet. Sole-Smith produces the newsletter and podcast Burnt Toast, where she explores fatphobia, diet culture, parenting and health.
Access, Assessment, Advancement
Democratic Child Care Bill Keeps Work Requirements
David Dayen, The American Prospect
One of the biggest objections Democrats have to the House Republican debt limit bill being considered this week is that it increases work requirements in Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The Republican bill would require 20 hours per week of work for childless, able-bodied Medicaid and SNAP recipients, up to age 56. White House spokesperson Andrew Bates has condemned Republicans for proposing to “take health care and food assistance away from millions of people.” Estimates show that two million people could lose health benefits because they wouldn’t qualify for Medicaid under these new requirements, and about one million could lose food assistance. But as Democrats condemn work requirement provisions in the Republican debt limit plan, they are poised to keep work requirements in their signature child care legislation.
California is offering free immigration legal services for community college students
Zaidee Stavely, Ed Source
If you’re a student, staff or faculty member at a California community college, you’re eligible for free legal immigration services. Since 2019, California has been investing $10 million yearly in a program that provides legal services to help community college students renew their status under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, identify options to apply for permanent residency or for permanent residents to apply for naturalization, among other services.
A 4.0 student beat all the odds. But he can’t afford a UC campus
Teresa Watanabe, LA Times
The journey to college has tested the resolve of Jonathan Cornejo, a senior at West Adams Preparatory High School in central Los Angeles. The son of a single immigrant mother from El Salvador, he had no home Wi-Fi or working laptop for stretches at a time or a study space in the family’s cramped apartment. He sometimes felt lost in his college preparatory classes and couldn’t always find the help he needed. Yet Jonathan overcame those challenges to earn a 4.0 GPA while serving as student body president and yearbook editor in chief.
Inequality, Poverty, Segregation
Equity Audits in School Districts: An Explainer
Eesha Pendharkar, Education Week
In late 2020, the Baldwinsville Central School District in upstate New York began gathering data on middle school students’ participation in accelerated learning programs, which aim to provide them with access to Advanced Placement and other college-level courses in high school, according to Deputy Superintendent Joe DeBarbieri. In this process, district officials found a significant underrepresentation of students of color and those with disabilities in these advanced courses. Baldwinsville enrolls about 5,000 students, which are 87 percent white, and has 806 students with disabilities, making up 15 percent of its enrollment. “We started asking the question, why is that the case? You know, when they’re exposed to the same types of curriculum and experiences? What are we doing wrong?” he said.
The University of California Is Bailing Out Private Equity Giant Blackstone
Matthew Cunningham-Cook, Jacobin
As the world’s largest private equity firm faces potential losses from a cloudy real estate market, its executives blocked jittery investors from withdrawing their money from one of its real estate funds, while insisting that rent increases and evictions will bolster returns. Now, the Blackstone Group’s real estate investment trust has received a multibillion-dollar bailout from a source whose employees and students are already suffering through the housing crisis: California’s public university system. Just months after Blackstone’s real estate investment trust purchased America’s largest owner of private student housing, the same trust received a $4.5 billion infusion from the University of California’s Board of Regents, two of whom have close ties to the company. The investment rewards the financial firm only a few years after the company and its executives spent $5.6 million to kill California ballot initiatives that would have expanded rent control in the state.
Wayne County Commission approves resolution on income inequality in education
Dave Herndon, Press and Guide
Wayne County Commissioners approved a resolution calling for action on ending income inequality in education in Michigan. The April 11 resolution was presented by members of the Wayne County Commission Youth Council, a body of 18 students from high schools throughout the county formed to address issues of concern to young people. “Each year, the youth commission takes on a key issue and this was a major focus of their efforts this school year,” said Commissioner Monique Baker McCormick (D-Detroit), who founded the council and works with its members. “This year, we chose to focus on income oppression because of how pervasive it is in affecting the youth of Wayne County,” said youth council Chair Dierra Surles, a senior at Cass Technical High school and three-year council member.
Democracy and the Public Interest
Texas Senate Passes Bill Requiring 10 Commandments in Every Classroom
Ryan Bort, Rolling Stone
The United States was founded on the separation of church and state. It’s in the Constitution and everything. The Republican Party has long been working to dismantle this principle — sometimes by gesturing toward Christian nationalism, and sometimes, in the case of the Texas state Senate, by trying to write it into law. The legislative body approved a bill on Thursday that wouldn’t just permit the state’s public schools to display the 10 Commandments; it would require them to do so and to do so prominently. Senate Bill 1515 holds that “a public elementary or secondary school shall display in a conspicuous place in each classroom of the school a durable poster or framed copy of the TenCommandments.”
At This Museum Sixth Graders Learn Lessons in Democracy
Alina Tugend, NY Times
Feelings were running high as everyone lobbied their representatives. The constituents had only a few minutes to make their arguments, and it seemed no one was listening. At one point, someone tried to unseat a delegate. This was politics at work at the New-York Historical Society’s democracy program, with 21 sixth graders from Middle School 244 in the Bronx.
5 years after the teacher walkouts, Oklahoma’s GOP has changed its tune
Beth Wallis, NPR
Five years ago, thousands of Oklahoma teachers joined a nationwide movement when they walked out of their classrooms to protest for better pay and more school funding. Throngs of educators and their allies marched around the statehouse, making their case to lawmakers. They were energized and hopeful – but that hope was short-lived. Oklahoma’s Republican majority ultimately blocked many of the proposals teachers walked out for in 2018. But this session, something unexpected is happening: The state’s Republicans are now backing record-level education funding measures, including teacher raises and a slew of pro-labor bills.
Other News of Note
Harry Belafonte––the activist artist who influenced the labor movement
Karen Juanita Carrillo, Amsterdam News
Harry Belafonte: A Life in Photos [PHOTO ESSAY]
Peter Keepnews, NY Times
He captivated audiences with his singing, achieved movie stardom and spent decades fighting for civil rights. In all his endeavors he broke racial barriers.