8.14.26

Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

Schools spend billions on AI, but struggle to figure out what’s worth buying

Robbie Sequeira, Stateline

As a new school year begins, some classrooms may use artificial intelligence tools to flag a student struggling with classwork, track attendance or try to raise reading scores. But as school districts make decisions on which tools are safe and worth spending thousands or millions of dollars on, some officials feel overwhelmed by the array of choices. Some states and districts have begun offering guidance for vetting AI purchases, but educators and experts say districts are still carrying much of the burden on their own. While school districts have long wrestled with education technology purchases, AI is different because the industry is moving faster than districts and states can keep up with, said Mark Schneider, a nonresident senior fellow at the conservative-leaning think tank the American Enterprise Institute. “There’s always an asymmetry between what the providers know and what the districts know,” Schneider told Stateline. 

A Framework for Facilitating Young People’s Sociocritical AI Literacies

Golnaz Arastoopour Irgens and Sarah K. Burriss

As artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in young people’s lives, there is an urgent need for conceptual educational frameworks that sufficiently integrate technical skills with the ethical and social implications of AI. This essay proposes a sociocritical AI literacies framework centered on four interrelated components—being, knowing, acting, and making—to support children and youth in developing technical critical consciousness, computational knowledge, and collective agency. Drawing from traditions in critical pedagogy and critical literacy studies, this actionable framework emphasizes identity, justice, and creativity, positioning young people not as passive users but as capable co-creators of more equitable AI futures. This approach calls for educators and communities to take children and youth perspectives seriously and holistically in reimagining technosocial learning environments.

‘No. 1 Concern’: Educators Organize for Better Working Conditions

Tim Walker, NEA Today

The cliché is no one goes into the teaching profession to become rich. While educators may not expect great wealth, they have every right, however, to expect a clean, safe, healthy and supportive working environment. Hannah Ball, an elementary school teacher in the Poudre School District, in Fort Collins, Colo., didn’t anticipate working in a classroom that topped 90 degrees. “It was unbearable,” she recalls. “Students were passing out and behavior problems only got worse.” Unfortunately, extreme temperatures—including cold classrooms during winter—are among the many ways teacher working conditions have declined.

Language, Culture, and Power

The Road to Reading for English Learners

Linda Cavazos, Claude Goldenberg, American Educator

A recent controversy in the reading world is whether findings from reading research, sometimes referred to contemporaneously as the “science of reading,” apply to students who are not proficient in the language they are learning to read. In the United States, these students are known as English Learners (ELs), emergent bilinguals, or multilingual learners. These terms all have slightly different meanings, but they are generally used interchangeably. We’ll use ELs for simplicity. However we refer to them, critics claim that not only does the “science of reading” not apply to ELs, but it is also detrimental to their literacy development. The controversy is unnecessary, even harmful, as it obscures important information and understandings that would help educators better serve their ELs. Research from the United States and around the world demonstrates that what we know about how children acquire literacy when they know the language they are learning to read is just as relevant for students who are learning the language as they are learning to read and write it.

Navigating Uncertainty: The Challenges Facing Immigrant and Undocumented Students and Educators

Lori Spradley, Radical Teacher

The paths that immigrant and undocumented students will tread are perilously evolving, as the cutting-edge forces threatening their existence constantly morph. The perilous journey undertaken by educators to secure sufficient pedagogical independence also means that as much emphasis as possible should be placed upon ensuring that immigrant students feel safe. Recent studies emphasize that immigrant students live in constant fear due to pending legislation that jeopardizes their safety and stability (López Amézquita, 2025). The hearts and minds of these young victims are constantly under siege, leading to anxiety and trauma that significantly impede their learning and growth.

The Culture Trap [Audio]

Will Brehm and Derron Wallace, FreshEd

Today we explore the experiences of Black Caribbean youth in the United Kingdom and the United States. My guest is Derron Wallace, an assistant professor of sociology and education at Brandeis University. Derron Wallace’s new book is The Culture Trap: Ethnic Expectations and Unequal Schooling for Black Youth.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

Doctors say Trump’s vaccine order will raise fears, cause confusion and endanger kids

Laura Ungar, AP News

Doctors say President Donald Trump’s new executive order on vaccines is misguided and likely to stoke fear and confusion among parents at a time when measles is raging, immunization rates are falling and children are heading back to school. “Many families are finishing up that back-to-school checklist, and among those things is the medical checkup and assuring that their kids have their vaccines,” Michigan pediatrician Dr. Molly O’Shea said. “To put into question the safety or efficacy of these vaccines right now is really unfortunate and ill-conceived.” The order, signed Monday, advocates separating the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine into three different single-disease shots and giving all childhood immunizations at separate appointments when possible. It also includes several changes to the childhood vaccine schedule already attempted by Trump’s health department but blocked by a federal judge. The department is run by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who helped lead the anti-vaccine movement for years.

‘Kids are actually eating the food’: State expands lunch program that pairs schools with farms

Carolyn Jones, CalMatters

In school lunchrooms around Lake Tahoe, students line up for a red, hairy fruit called a rambutan. On pozole day, they shout, “We want more!” And when the salad bar runs dry, they ask the staff to refill it – over and over. This brings joy to the cafeteria crew, but Gage Gautheier recently bestowed the highest possible praise from a middle-schooler: “I have literally never heard anyone complain about the food.” Tahoe-Truckee Unified is among 500 California school districts that get their food through the state’s Farm to School program, which pairs local farmers, ranchers and other food producers with school districts to provide fresh meals to students. The program has been so successful since it started in 2021 that this month the state expanded it and made it a permanent part of the Department of Food and Agriculture.

LAUSD flags lead at two Boyle Heights schools, but says campuses are safe after warehouse fire

Mariana Dale, LAist

Los Angeles Unified School District officials said environmental tests have concluded the Boyle Heights warehouse fire did not result in widespread contamination at nearby schools. However, on Tuesday they reported lead levels in the soil at two elementary school campuses that exceeded California’s acceptable threshold. Officials announced the results one day before classes resume at dozens of schools within a three-mile radius of the Lineage warehouse. The district promised to give families advance notice of testing results ahead of the start of school on Wednesday. Those results were posted in a 561-page document uploaded to a district website Tuesday morning.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

‘It wouldn’t be Head Start anymore:’ Providers blast federal proposal to alter preschool program

Jackie Mader, Hechinger Report

Soon after Alma Guerrero’s youngest child started Head Start in Washington’s Skagit County, one of his teachers pulled the mother of three aside. The boy wasn’t talking, unlike other toddlers his age who are typically using simple words and phrases. Had Guerrero noticed that too? That observation ultimately led to speech therapy for her son, now almost 3. Guerrero said she’s amazed at how much his vocabulary has blossomed. “He comes home and he’s got something new to share,” Guerrero said. Guerrero credits her son’s progress to his participation in Head Start, the federally funded program for low-income infants, toddlers and preschoolers. In addition to preparing children for school, Head Start programs have also focused on child and family well-being through federal standards that govern how they operate.

Trump Sues New York and Other States Over In-State Tuition for Migrants

Luis Ferré-Sadurní, New York Times

The Justice Department on Monday sued three states — Connecticut, New York and Vermont — over policies that offer in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants at public colleges and universities. The lawsuits argue that the policies are unconstitutional, violate federal law and discriminate against U.S. citizens from other states who pay thousands of dollars more in out-of-state tuition. The legal actions were the latest effort by the Trump administration to tighten immigration enforcement and crack down on policies it sees as favoring immigrants who do not have legal status at the expense of Americans.

Taliban have barred 2.4 million Afghan girls from school since 2021, UNESCO says

Reuters

The Taliban have barred an estimated 2.4 ‌million Afghan girls from secondary education since they regained power in Afghanistan in 2021, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization said on Tuesday. The Taliban are preparing to mark the fifth anniversary of their return to power this week, as some nations expand ties with the government despite deepening ​human rights concerns among watchdogs. Afghanistan is the only country where girls and women are formally banned from secondary and higher ​education, UNESCO said in its statement. It “risks condemning Afghanistan to decades of lost potential, deepening poverty, ⁠and irreversible harm,” the agency said. UNESCO estimates the ban on female secondary and higher education could cause 600,000 Afghan women to ​leave the workforce by 2066, lead to $9.6 billion in cumulative income losses and increase the risk of early marriage.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

Even Here, LGBTQ+ Youth Face Bullying

NEPC

As anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination has amped up over the past half decade, California remains a relatively hospitable environment for the 9% of Americans who identify as sexual and gender minorities. Yet even in this state, LGBTQ+ youth face significantly higher rates of bullying in high school than do their cisgender heterosexual peers, according to a new analysis by Christina Sun, Alexandria Hurtt, and NEPC Fellow Michal Kurlaender, all of the University of California Davis. This reality follows them as they transition to college, leading to elevated concerns that they will face discrimination on campus, the study found.

Still separate and unequal? Families sue Massachusetts over school segregation.

Cameron Pugh, Christian Science Monitor

Fifty years ago, Massachusetts became a national test case for equity in schools, after riots erupted over policies meant to undo decades of harmful segregation. Courts had ordered the state to bus students across Boston neighborhoods to integrate schools. While the policy remained fraught, by the mid-1980s, a federal appeals court proclaimed schools here as desegregated as was reasonably possible. Today, Massachusetts ranks among the best states in the country for public education. Boston switched to a “home-based” model in 2014 that claimed to give all families access to high-performing schools without the commute. Even as student test scores have plunged nationwide, public schools in the state continue to make top grades in math and reading. But a lawsuit filed in May says the challenge of segregation is not over.

The Fight for Special Education

Peter Stetler, The Nation

In March 2020, Courtney and Spencer Morey moved to Aledo, Texas, a rapidly expanding suburb of Fort Worth, because of the stellar reputation of its schools. But about three years later, when their daughter Annie, who has Down syndrome, was supposed to start preschool, she was denied the education that is guaranteed to her by law under the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), even though no one from the school had ever met her. I met the Moreys on an unusually warm afternoon last spring. Dressed in white shorts, a sleeveless red sweater, and modest jewelry, Courtney waved me into her well-air-conditioned SUV, and she and I drove to pick up Annie from KinderFrogs, an early-intervention program for children with disabilities on the campus of nearby Texas Christian University. Annie has attended KinderFrogs ever since the district’s requirements for an assessment of her special-education needs—including an IQ test—prevented her from enrolling in its preschool program.

Democracy and the Public Interest

Between a rock and a hard place? Tensions and teachers’ frames of reference in the context of public policies on coexistence

Cecilia Fierro and Christopher Hempel, Education Policy Analysis Archives

How can schools be organized to make peaceful coexistence (convivencia) possible? This question concerns not only school actors, but also public policies and educational research. The introduction of the Model of Convivencia to Attend, Prevent and Eradicate School Violence in the Mexican state of Guanajuato is linked to the hope that a corresponding development will be initiated. Based on the observation that many teachers have difficulties in orienting their actions on the basis of such a model, in this article we analyze the educational policy and the usual conditions of teachers’ actions related to convivencia. With this objective, we analyze the discourse on school convivencia and the programs in force in México and Guanajuato.

Young Children’s Civicness: A Close Look at Membership and Community

Katherina A. Payne, Sunmin Lee, Molly E. McManus, Democracy and Education

As one of the first communities outside of young children’s private spheres of family, scholars consistently position school as an ideal space for civic education. At its core, civic education helps young children cultivate communities that support broader societal structures and mores. As children negotiate new constellations of people within a place, we wondered, what are some ways in which young children construct their membership in the initial civic communities that schools purport to cultivate? Drawing on data from a yearlong ethnographic study of three classrooms in a Head Start in a large city in Texas, we examine how children use institutional and relational tools to play with ideas of civicness. Ultimately, we argue that membership is a key aspect of children’s civicness and is one way they play with civicness in early childhood classrooms.

Voucher critics tell Supreme Court GOP voucher measure is an unconstitutional ‘Trojan horse’

Jim Small, AZ Mirror

Public school advocates hoping to rein in the Grand Canyon State’s billion-dollar universal private school voucher program told the Arizona Supreme Court that Republican legislators hope to “weaponize the popularity” of protecting money for military families to gut a citizens initiative — and rewire the separation of powers. Proposition 145 is ostensibly about protecting money for students in families where a parent is in the military, who make up less than 1% of all voucher recipients, and it would amend the state constitution to bar any law that confiscates any unspent voucher money awarded to those students. But it also says that if any law doing so is approved after Nov. 1 of this year then the entirety of that law, not just the provision affecting students in military families, is voided.

Other News of Note

Educating in Dangerous Times

John McDonald, UCLA School of Education and Information Studies

Educating in Dangerous Times: A Call to Reenvision Public Schools in America, a new book aiming to spark a new and bold public conversation about K12 schooling will be published Tuesday, August 25, 2026, by Beacon Press. The book will be introduced in a national Zoom book launch — Tuesday, Aug 25th at 7:30 PM EST/4:30 PM PST.

Register for the launch here.

Edited by George Theoharis, a professor of education leadership and inclusive education at Syracuse University and John Rogers, professor of education and associate dean for research and public scholarship at the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies, the book gathers a collection of essays by leading education scholars shining a light on the threats in this highly charged political moment to our public schools. The authors then set forth a vision of what schools should be and the initial steps toward creating them.