Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

AI Is Going to Upend Public Education. Or Maybe Not [Audio]

Larry Cuban, Have You Heard?

AI is about to upend teaching and learning. So tell us the techno optimists who have made essentially the same claim about every technological innovation, dating back to the film strip. Our guest, historian Larry Cuban, predicts that AI will join a long list of tech ‘silver bullets’ that have been overhyped, only to fall short of the promised utopia. Cuban argues that tech boosters are prone to such overselling because they don’t understand the nature of teaching and its reliance on human connection.

Chicago public schools run by principals given more independence saw better student achievement: study

Reema Amin, Chalkbeat

Eight years ago, Chicago Public Schools launched a program that gave certain principals more control, such as more flexibility over budgets and being freed of extra oversight from district leaders. It was an effort to reward effective veteran school leaders with “more leadership and professional development opportunities.” Now, a new study by a Northwestern University professor shows that the initiative — known as the Independent School Principals program, or ISP — resulted in better test scores and school climates and could be a cost-effective way to improve schools.

“The Classroom is a Reflection of the Real World”: Black Women Urban Teachers’ Activist Pedagogy and Leadership

Andrea T. Gabbadon and Wanda M. Brooks, Urban Education

This article utilizes narrative inquiry and a Black feminist lens to explore the political and social justice orientation of Black women educators and their commitment to students in urban schools. Three Black women teacher leaders explain their pedagogy and leadership during a period of heightened sociopolitical tension, including racial violence and legislative censorship. Analysis of semistructured interviews revealed three themes: (1) facilitating conversations about race-related current events, (2) de-centering whiteness and teaching the truth, and (3) promoting student safety and wellbeing amidst isolation. The article concludes with recommendations to support Black women educator activists and a more diverse teacher workforce.

Language, Culture, and Power

Taking Note of Our Biases: How Language Patterns Reveal Bias Underlying the Use of Office

Discipline Referrals in Exclusionary Discipline

David M. Markowitz, Angus Kittelman, and Kent McIntosh, Educational Researcher

The comments teachers write when sending students to the office have the potential to increase our understanding of how bias may contribute to longstanding racial disparities in school discipline. However, large-scale analysis of open text has traditionally had a prohibitive cost. Through natural language processing techniques, we examined over 3.5 million office discipline records from national samples of more than 4,000 schools for whether teachers’ linguistic patterns differed when describing incidents depending on the race/ethnicity and gender of the students. Results of such analyses consistently showed that teachers wrote longer descriptions and included more negative emotion when disciplining Black compared to White students, especially for Black girls. In conjunction with psychology of language theory, the patterns suggest that teachers may perceive and process student behavior differently depending on student identities. Implications of the findings and potential for research on naturally occurring language data in education are discussed.

The newest form of school discipline: Kicking kids out of class and into virtual learning

Carly Graf, Hechinger Report

It wasn’t the first time Ventrese Curry’s granddaughter had gotten into trouble at school. A seventh grader at a charter school in St. Louis, Missouri, she had a long history of disrupting her classes and getting into confrontations with teachers. Several times, the school issued a suspension and sent Curry’s granddaughter home. In each instance, the school followed state law: The punishment was officially recorded and assigned a set length of time, Curry was formally notified and she and her granddaughter had a chance to appeal the decision. But one day in February, after refusing to go into her classroom and allegedly cursing at her teachers, the seventh grader was sent home to learn online indefinitely.

Securing Quality Education Access for Refugees: Ensuring the Right to (Medical) Education

Sadia Khalid, European Sting

The plight of refugees extends beyond their search for safety and shelter; it also encompasses their struggle for access to quality education. This is especially true for those aspiring to pursue careers in medicine and healthcare. In the field of emergency and trauma medicine, where healthcare professionals frequently operate in zones of violence, the challenges faced by refugee doctors and medical students are particularly exceptional.Refugees who have fled war-torn regions, such as Ukraine, Yemen, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Syria, Central, and Latin America, often encounter barriers that hinder their educational journey. When it comes to education, access to quality medical training becomes crucial for refugee doctors and medical students. However, they often encounter difficulties in navigating educational systems, including limited resources, language barriers, and the need for recognition and validation of their qualifications. Ensuring their right to quality (medical) education is not only a matter of fairness and equality but also an investment in the future of healthcare.Efforts must be made to address these challenges and provide support to refugee doctors and medical students. This includes creating inclusive educational policies, offering language and cultural integration programs, facilitating the recognition of their qualifications, and providing mentorship and guidance.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

DeSantis’s Florida Approves Climate-Denial Videos in Schools

Scott Waldman, Scientific American

Climate activists are like Nazis. Wind and solar power pollute the Earth and make life miserable. Recent global and local heat records reflect natural temperature cycles. These are some of the themes of children’s videos produced by an influential conservative advocacy group. Now, the videos could soon be used in Florida’s classrooms. Florida’s Department of Education has approved the classroom use of material from the Prager University Foundation, a conservative group that produces videos that distort science, history, gender and other topics. Education experts call the videos dangerous propaganda.

Polluted Skies and High Heat Expose School Facility Issues, Threaten Students’ Health

Elizabeth Heubeck, Education Week

Nearly 64 million people in the United States currently live in counties that have been flagged by the American Lung Association for having spikes in deadly particle pollution on a daily basis. And studies show that children are at disproportionately high risk. Exposure to tiny airborne particles from wildfires, an increasingly common occurrence of late, is about 10 times as harmful to children’s respiratory health as pollution from other sources. Children also are more vulnerable than other populations to excessive heat, another growing climate-related concern. Those surging health risks put an extra burden on schools to ensure that children are safe and comfortable enough to learn while they’re on campus.

Modesto City Schools goes “green” with new bus fleet for the first day of school

Ashley Nanfria, CBS News

Modesto City Schools is starting off the school year green as the district rolls out 30 new electric school buses. The new buses will replace half of the district’s old diesel school buses. Making Modesto City Schools one of the first school districts to convert half of their 62-bus fleet to battery electric with a single purchase. Modesto City Schools Associate Superintendent, Business Services Chief Business Official Tim Zearley said this change will save the district more than $250,000 in fuel costs annually. “Now’s the time. In 2035 there is legislation that diesel school buses will no longer be allowed on the roads. We took a plunge and decided to order the 30 EV school buses,” Zearley said.  The new wheels will help to lower carbon emissions as they transport up to 78 students each ride without the use of gas.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

This is how much child care costs in 2023

Care.com

Child care is unaffordable for the majority of U.S. families, particularly low-income and middle-class households, according to the Care.com 2023 Cost of Care Report. That’s just one key finding from the 10th annual report, which is based on feedback from 3,000 parents and provides our most thorough look at child care costs yet, including a current-, 5- and 10-year lookback. For the 10th year in a row, child care costs have continued to rise. Today, families are spending, on average, 27% of their household income on child care expenses. And 59% of parents surveyed tell us they are planning to spend more than $18,000 per child on child care in 2023. It’s no surprise that 50% of parents are more concerned about the cost of child care than they were at this time last year.

Critics pan state’s justification for threatening Stanford education professor over breach of data contract

John Fensterwald, Ed Source

In its first public statement on the issue, the California Department of Education last week defended its right to pursue a breach of a data partnership agreement against a Stanford University education professor for participating in a lawsuit against it.  CDE’s rationale failed to persuade numerous critics and attorneys who are challenging the agency’s action in court; they say the department’s defense ignored the harm to the public by restricting independent researchers’ use of state data. “It seems pretty clear that a state agency here is trying to hold public data hostage to coercive demands on researchers’ free speech rights,” said John Affeldt, managing attorney for Public Advocates. This public interest law firm has filed successful lawsuits against CDE over several decades including the landmark Williams case, which guarantees that low-income schools are equipped with adequate facilities, sufficient textbooks and well-trained teachers.

Americans Have Less Confidence in Higher Ed: Why?

Sarah Wood, US News and World Report

Recent public opinion polls indicate that Americans’ confidence in higher education is dwindling, as is their faith in the Supreme Court, Congress, the presidency and other U.S. institutions. Fewer than 4 in 10 Americans – 36% – report having a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in higher education, according to a Gallup report based on phone interviews of 1,013 adults representing all 50 states and the District of Columbia, conducted in June 2023. That confidence level is down from 48% in 2018 and 57% in 2015. There was a decline across all demographics – especially among those who identified as Republicans, had no college degree or were 55 years or older – in terms of the percentages of these groups that said they have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in higher education.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

50 Years Older and Deeper in Debt

Stan Karp, Rethinking Schools

This year marks the 50th anniversary of San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, the landmark 5-4 Supreme Court decision that held that education is not a fundamental right protected by the U.S. Constitution. The decision dashed hopes that the historic Brown v. Board of Education ruling that ended legal segregation in 1954 would be followed by a sustained federal commitment to making education equality a reality. Demetrio Rodriguez was a sheet metal worker and a member of the Edgewood Concerned Parent Association when he became the lead plaintiff in the case. He thought his three children were being shortchanged by wide disparities in schooling across the sprawling San Antonio school district and the state of Texas. Parents hoped the case would clearly establish a federal right to education.

Our family of four shared a cramped studio for 25 years. L.A. housing costs nearly kept us there forever

Jennifer Nazario and Paula Nazario, Los Angeles Times

My sister and I have called Westlake and Koreatown home our entire lives, but rising rent priced us out of our own community. Southern California’s high costs of living and limited homeowner support programs made it nearly impossible to find a better housing situation for our family. Growing up in a predominately low-income immigrant community, we assumed living in an overcrowded apartment was the norm. For more than 25 years, our family of four lived in a rent-controlled, cramped 450-square-foot studio with a walk-in closet and tiny bathroom. We converted the walk-in closet into a bedroom and our parents slept in a twin-sized bed right outside the kitchen. Our apartment was old, moldy and infested with roaches and hadn’t been renovated since we moved in — hence the rent being cheaper than the market rate for L.A. County.

How hungry is California? Millions struggle to eat well in an abundant state

Rya Jetha, Jeanne Kuang and Jeremia Kimelman, CalMatters

Despite the state producing nearly half the country’s fruits and vegetables, one in five Californians are food insecure, meaning they have limited or uncertain access to adequate food. Food insecurity does not necessarily cause hunger, but hunger is a possible outcome. People experience food insecurity in different ways. Some families may only eat lesser quality food, while others may simply eat less. Food insecurity can have long-term physical and mental health effects. Research shows that food-insecure children can experience developmental delays and have trouble learning language. Children also are more likely to fall sick, recover more slowly, and be hospitalized more often if their access to food is inconsistent, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Food-insecure adults face higher rates of obesity, chronic illness, anxiety and depression.

Democracy and the Public Interest

“HOW SCARED ARE YOU?” Mapping the Threat Environment of San Diego’s Elected Officials

Rachel Locke and Carl Luna, KROC Institute for Peace and Justice

Democracy cannot function without individuals stepping up to serve as representatives of their community. The presence and growth of threats and harassment directed towards elected representatives poses a direct risk to our democracy, weakening community cohesion and our ability to address collective challenges. While our research found threats and harassment to be present across political parties, it identified women as far more likely to be on the receiving end both in terms of quantity and severity. If under-represented groups are pushed out of the processes of debate and decision-making, solutions will not be oriented around the diversity of our society. Without clear data on the scale of the problem, the rise in threats and ad hominem attacks are too easily discounted by public officials, the media and the public at large. Possible consequences range from an increased potential for physical violence and the resignation from public life of elected officials. The research outlined in this report helps to expose the scale of threats and harassment, while in turn providing recommendations from those directly impacted, concerned community members and scholars on how to reinforce safe and non-threatening local governance.

The Real Agenda of Moms for Liberty

Amy Littlefield, The Nation

Over the Fourth of July weekend, Moms for Liberty held a packed summit in downtown Philadelphia, its second-ever national convening. Founded in 2021, the fast-growing group claims 120,000 members in 285 chapters across 45 states, with hundreds of endorsed candidates elected to school boards to promote purging “critical race theory” and books with transgender characters from classrooms. At one session I attended, titled “(Wo)manhandling the Media,” the group’s strategy became crystal clear. Led by Christian Ziegler, the chair of the Florida Republican Party and the husband of Bridget Ziegler, a Moms for Liberty cofounder and Sarasota County School Board chair, the session provided lessons for new recruits on how to get the media—whom Ziegler described as a bunch of “lazy” liars—to boost their chapters’ profiles. A centerpiece of this approach involved using high-profile politicians to lure reporters to an event. “The media will show up because they’re thinking that what [the elected officials] say is going to be news—not your chapter, no offense,” he told a chapter head from a blue state who’d complained that journalists weren’t covering her rallies. “So you got to piggyback off those VIPs as much as you can. It’s like this summit, right?”

Shakespeare and penguin book get caught in Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ laws

Mike Schneider, AP News

Students in a Florida school district will be reading only excerpts from William Shakespeare’s plays for class rather than the full texts under redesigned curriculum guides developed, in part, to take into consideration the state’s new law that restricts classroom materials whose content can be deemed sexual. The changes to the Hillsborough County Public Schools’ curriculum guides were made with Florida’s new legislation limiting classroom materials that “contain pornography or obscene depictions of sexual conduct” in mind. Other reasons included revised state standards and an effort to get students to read a wide variety of books for new state exams, the school district said in an emailed statement on Tuesday. Several Shakespeare plays use suggestive puns and innuendo, and it is implied that the protagonists have had premarital sex in “Romeo and Juliet.” Shakespeare’s books will be available for checkout at media centers at schools, said the district, which covers the Tampa area.

Other News of Note

WHAT DO WE TEACH OUR STUDENTS ABOUT HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI?

Emilie Clarke,  Peace Action

Last year, I joined a small group of activists in Staten Island, NY to march in remembrance of the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This year I am representing Peace Action New York State as I march in Hiroshima itself, joining a world-wide network of activists calling for the end of nuclear weapons. Hearing the stories of Hibakushas (survivors of the atomic bombings) and seeing this vibrant movement for peace, I must ask myself, and I must ask all of you: if we don’t teach these stories in our schools, how are we preparing our students for the challenge of ensuring that history never repeats itself?

Haiku and Hiroshima: Teaching About the Atomic Bomb

Wayne Au, Zinn Education Project

As teachers know, some classroom materials invariably work, no matter the group of students. Barefoot Gen is one of them. Barefoot Gen, a Japanese animated feature film, tells the story of Gen (pronounced with a hard “G”), a young boy who, along with his mother, survives the bombing of Hiroshima. The story chronicles their struggles as they try to rebuild their lives from the bomb’s ashes. It is based on the critically acclaimed, semi-autobiographical Japanese comic book series Hadashi no Gen, by Keiji Nakazawa. Both the comic strip and the feature film oppose the Japanese government’s actions during World War II and include criticism of the intense poverty and suffering forced onto the Japanese people by their government’s war effort. In the lesson, Haiku and Hiroshima: Teaching About the Atomic Bomb, Wayne Au describes how he introduces the film to high school students and how he follows up with haiku written by survivors of the bombings and students’ own writing.