Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

Improving Teacher Pay and Teacher Shortages are Priorities for Americans; Elimination of U.S. Department of Education Not Strongly Supported [Audio]

John Hendron, PDK Poll

A small loss in confidence in the public schools, alongside strong support for a slate of education priorities, are highlights gleaned from the 57th annual PDK Poll. Strong support for career and technical education programs, addressing teacher shortages, improving teacher pay, providing security to keep students and teachers safe, and inclusion initiatives lead as priorities for school leaders and policy makers. Conducted annually since 1969, the PDK Poll on Public Attitudes Toward Public Education (formerly the Gallup/PDK Poll) delves into a range of education-related topics.

“Education Reform” Has Undermined Public Schools’ Popularity

Jennifer C. Berkshire, Jacobin

If you’re a supporter of public education, it has been a tough summer. And if you, like me, have been sounding the alarm about the dangers of school privatization, it’s impossible to ignore the sense that the future we’ve been warning about has arrived. Five years ago, education historian Jack Schneider and I wrote a book called A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door: The Dismantling of Public Education and the Future of School that culminated in a sort of Black Mirror chapter titled, “Education, à la Carte.” In it, we described how the ultimate vision of school-privatization advocates wasn’t simply to shift the nation’s youngsters into private schools but to “unbundle” education into a vast array of products for consumers to purchase on Amazon-like exchanges. Lest you think we were exaggerating, turn your attention to Florida, where, as Sue Woltanski documents, Project Unbundle has arrived with a vengeance.

The Impact of Gun Violence on Children and Adolescents

Nirmita Panchal and Sasha Zitter, KFF

The United States experienced a sharp increase in firearm mortality among youth in recent years, with firearms becoming the leading cause of death for children and adolescents by 2020. Beyond firearm deaths, there are many more youth who survive gunshot wounds or are otherwise exposed to gun violence, which can lead to negative behavioral health outcomes. For example, increased youth suicide risk has been linked to communities exposed to school shootings. School shootings in the U.S. have increased in prevalence over time, as has exposure of school-aged children to these shootings, up from 19 per 100,000 school-aged children from 1999-2004 to 51 per 100,000 from 2020 to 2024.

Language, Culture, and Power

Some Programs for Black Students Become ‘Illegal D.E.I.’ Under Trump

Dana Goldstein, New York Times

Chicago is a testing ground for some of the left’s biggest ideas about race and education. School systems in the city and nearby suburbs are pushing to hire more Black male teachers, add more Black history and train teachers in concepts like white privilege. Some of those policies have a strong record of improving student learning, while others lack much track record. But for the Trump administration, all of it could be against the law. Now, school districts with programs aimed at lifting up Black students, and others, are finding themselves legally vulnerable. The White House is pursuing a reversal of the federal government’s traditional role on race and schools, going after what it calls “illegal D.E.I.,” or diversity, equity and inclusion.

The Dreamer Xóchitl Santiago in Trump’s immigration court

Carla Gloria Colomé, El Paîs

The meeting is at 8:00 a.m. on Wednesday, outside the El Paso Service Processing Center. Family, friends and aid groups have called the press, activists, community leaders, and anyone else who wants to join in. The idea is for the place to be filled with banners depicting a young Indigenous woman, sometimes wearing a Texan hat, sometimes surrounded by flowers, sometimes harvesting the land, sometimes carrying a basket in the middle of a furrow in some field in South Florida. The hope is also for the final release of Catalina “Xóchitl” Santiago, a Mexican Zapotec woman, the daughter of farmers, the beneficiary of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, the Dreamer who should never have been detained in early August as she was about to board a domestic flight to Houston.

New immigrant tracking laws take effect in La.

Bobbi-Jeanne Misick, Louisiana Weekly

Two new Louisiana laws that require some state agencies and higher education systems to collect and share data on undocumented migrants are now in effect – including reporting some applicants for benefits to federal immigration authorities. The enactment of the laws follow moves at the federal level to expand data-collection on applicants for government benefits. It’s not yet clear when all affected state agencies will begin collecting the information — or how they plan to do it — the new data-collection requirements are raising concerns that immigrant families will be too scared to apply for public benefits, even when they are eligible.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

A 6-year-old girl from Gaza, a missing limb and a doctor’s mission [Audio]

Ari Daniel, NPR

A 6-year-old girl with eyes the color of dark chocolate walks into an exam room in a clinic in downtown Beirut. It’s evident that Kenzi Madhoun has a flare for fashion. She’s wearing a white dress with tassles. Her face is framed beneath a pink straw hat that covers a scar above her hairline. On her left hand, there’s an inked outline of a little heart. Her right arm, however, is missing. She’s been through surgeries in Egypt and Turkey. But her father, Adam Madhoun, has brought her to Lebanon hoping for something better. “What I wish for is for her to live normally, to do whatever she wants to do,” he says through an interpreter. “There are games that need two hands. Or when she wants to wear her clothes. The simplest things.”

Climate change is an urgent but often overlooked education policy issue

Matthew A. Kraft, Sohil Malik, and Grace T. Falken, Brookings

The United States is facing a dual crisis in declining educational outcomes and escalating climate impacts. Student achievement has dropped to its lowest level in a quarter century and the pandemic-era spike in chronic absenteeism has largely persisted. Strengthening the nation’s pre-K-12 education system is essential — not just for individual opportunity, but also for broader economic prosperity and innovation. Climate change is also placing mounting pressures on our country in ways that are impossible to ignore.

Sex Ed in America Sucks, New Study Confirms

Luis Prada, Vice

Boston University’s School of Public Health has released the results of a research paper that paints a grim, frankly pathetic picture of the state of sex education in American schools today.

The study says that a huge chunk of U.S. sex ed is medically questionable at best. Only 19 states actually require that what kids learn in sex ed be medically accurate. Only 37 percent of states require that kids learn facts related to sex in sex ed classes. The rest is the rhythm method and prayers, I guess. In total, 42 states mandate some form of sex education in public schools. But what’s taught depends less on science and more on local politics, outdated moral panics, and the undying lingering remnants of purity culture.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

Changes in Children’s Kindergarten Readiness in the Wake of COVID-19: Statewide Evidence from Louisiana

Anna J. Markowitz, Walter Herring, and Isabelle Fares, Teachers College Record

The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted family life in myriad ways, including increasing family stress and reducing access to early care and education experiences. Such factors suggest that children’s early learning and development may have been negatively impacted, which would have long-term implications for necessary school support. This study estimates statewide changes in kindergarten readiness in Louisiana from 2019 to 2021 to understand both the immediate impact of COVID-19 and the potential for longer-term implications. Given the unequal burden of the pandemic, variability by economic disadvantage and race/ethnicity is explored.

Inside transitional kindergarten: Where play, curiosity and early learning meet

Karen D’Souza, Ed Source

When Krystyna Kalishevskyi emigrated from Ukraine with her family last year, she had experienced more trauma and fear than a 4-year-old can cope with. Going to school in California was a big challenge because the little girl spoke scant English and often communicated with hand gestures. Now her parents say she is joyful and confident, as well as fluent in English. Her father chalks up that transformation to her year in TK at Hawthorne Elementary School in the San Luis Coastal Unified School District. She made fast friends, learned new words, and began to blossom. “The class definitely helped her grow,” said Vadym Kalishevskyi. “She became more independent, learned school routines and developed strong friendships.”

These federal programs help low-income students get to and through college. Trump wants to pull the funding

Michael Vasquez, Hechinger Report

The summer after ninth grade, Zoey Griffith found herself in an unfamiliar setting: a dorm on the Morehead State University campus. There, she’d spend the months before her sophomore year taking classes in core subjects including math and biology and electives like oil painting. For Griffith, it was an opportunity, but a scary one. “It was a big deal for me to live on campus at the age of 14,” she said. Morehead State is about an hour from her hometown of Maysville. “I was nervous, and I remember that I cried the first time that my dad left me on move-in day.”

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

Stratification Economics and Racial Disparities in U.S. K–12 Education

Da’Shay Templeton, Frontiers in Education

This manuscript introduces and applies the framework of stratification economics to understand persistent educational disparities between Black and White American K-12 students. Stratification economics challenges traditional economic theories that attribute inequality primarily to individual choices and cultural factors, instead highlighting the structural, institutional, and deliberate mechanisms perpetuating racial and socioeconomic hierarchies. Drawing from interdisciplinary literature, the paper argues that U.S. educational inequality stems from systemic resource advantages favoring White Americans, evident in disparities in school quality, enrichment access, and college admissions support.

Where There Is No Equity Engine: Unequal Geographies of College Success for Low-Income Students

Becca Spindel Basse, AERA Open

Very few four-year American colleges and universities consistently enroll and graduate substantial proportions of low-income students. The outlier institutions that do—institutions I term Equity Engines—are vital social resources for both low-income students and our democratic society. Yet like other valuable resources, they are unevenly distributed across the United States. Drawing on geospatial analysis and bivariate mapping, I examine the relationship between access to and need for Equity Engines across states and within them. Moving from the state to the census tract level, I find compounding geographic barriers to bachelor’s degree completion in southern states. These states have high rates of youth poverty and no or minimal access to colleges and universities that are consistently accessible to and effective at serving low-income students. In contrast, states that are effectively meeting high need with high access have multiple public Equity Engines, a worthy and feasible goal for all states.

Who has the power?  Chronicling Los Angeles County’s Systemic Failures to Educate Incarcerated Youth

Education Justice Coalition

All youth in California, including incarcerated youth, have the fundamental right to an education.  Los Angeles County has had one of the largest juvenile legal systems in the United States for decades. The Los Angeles County Probation Department asserts that it “is currently the largest probation service agency in the United States, and presumably the world with over 6,500 employees and an operations budget of more than $900 million.” Despite decades of lawsuits and calls for reform, Los Angeles County continues to detain young people in conditions where they lack access to the essential tools they need to reintegrate into their communities and avoid recidivism. As evidenced by low graduation rates, high suspension rates, alarmingly low attendance, observations, and testimony from students, staff, and monitors, Los Angeles County has failed to ensure access to the essential tool of a quality, culturally affirming, robust, and individualized education to the thousands of students under its care in juvenile detention facilities each year. This failure disproportionately affects low-income communities of color and persists due to the lack of transparent and responsive accountability mechanisms.

Democracy and the Public Interest

California schools brace for fallout from U.S. Supreme Court decision on religious rights

Thomas Peele, Ed Source

Two months after the U.S. Supreme Court granted public school parents the right to withdraw their children from materials and discussions on LGBTQ+ issues and other subjects that conflict with their “sincerely held religious beliefs,” conservative leaders in California are predicting schools will be swamped with opt-out demands. That hasn’t happened yet, but attorneys agree that this latest escalation of the culture wars will likely cause turmoil, confusion, and years of litigation, largely because the court offered no guidance on how opt-out requests should be handled, how religious belief claims can or should be verified, and how schools should handle potential logistical issues.

‘I will not back down’: Right-wing AG demands red state’s schools defy court order

Brad Reed, Common Dreams

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Monday said that the vast majority of schools in the Lone Star State should still plan on displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms even after a federal judge ruled against it last week. In a statement, Paxton said that “schools not enjoined by ongoing litigation must abide” by a state law that requires the display of the Ten Commandments in all public and secondary school classrooms.

Let Our Youth Vote!

Frances Moore Lappé and Corinna Rhum, Common Dreams

With democracy under attack in the US, a worldwide movement to lower the voting age is growing. This July, the United Kingdom announced it would lower the voting age from 18 to 16 in general elections. When the bill passes, the UK will join Brazil, Austria, Cuba, Argentina, Nicaragua, and Ecuador as nations which already allow 16-year-olds to vote. In others, including Greece and Indonesia, the voting age is 17. While there is no clear partisan advantage in lowering the voting age, collective benefits abound—including a more engaged democracy judged by civic engagement and political attitudes.

Other News of Note

How Los Angeles Students Are Meeting the Threat of ICE Raids

Calvin Macatantan, NEA Today

In Los Angeles, on the last Monday of the 2024-25 school year, the library at William Jefferson Clinton Middle School, which Teacher Librarian Kirti Baranwal describes as “a place of joy with a lot of laughter and learning,” felt hollow. The library is normally filled with students who drop by every morning to greet her and play games, but that day, many were simply gone, Baranwal recalls. Kirti Baranwal, a teacher-librarian at William Jefferson Clinton Middle School in California. Baranwal confirmed with her school’s attendance counselor that 25 percent of the student body was absent following U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids that began on June 6. She didn’t need numbers to notice the change. “I didn’t see the familiar faces I do every morning,” she says. This silence signaled that the safe atmosphere schools are meant to provide had been punctured.