8.7.26

Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

98 teens got together to craft an AI bill. Here’s what happened. [Audio]

Cory Turner, NPR

98 high school students from across the country gathered in a mock student senate. The goal was to come up with a bill that would guide schools on how to deal with the chaos created by AI.

NPR’s Cory Turner attended to see how things developed.

Is tech helping or hurting? California school districts take action

Paris Barraza, USA Today

When Eric Hanson’s young daughter came home from school repeating “subscribe” like she’d been watching YouTube, he and his wife had some questions about her classroom. Why are they watching YouTube in school? What are they watching? His daughter, who is going into the third grade, attends a school in Los Angeles Unified School District. It’s one of the largest school districts in the nation, and like others, it’s wrestling with what some advocates say is too much technology use in schools. The district established limits on how much time students spend on screens earlier this year. It also eliminated device use among its youngest pupils, in addition to other directives. The new policy came as leaders of another large school district in California took action: The approval of a resolution that, at its heart, looks at technology currently being used and assesses whether it’s helping or hurting students’ learning and their mental health, the San Diego Unified school board president said.

Refusing Educational Technology: Artificial Intelligence, Inequity, and the Problem of Critical Optimism

Niral Shah, David Stroupe, Aman Yadav, Tess Bernhard, Charles Logan, Elizabeth B. Dyer, Peng He, Christina (Stina) Krist, and Tingting Li, Educational Research

Artificial intelligence—like many technologies before—comes with hope and worry about its implications for education. In this essay, using generative AI as a case, we appraise the ideological field of positions that stakeholders take in relation to educational technology overall. Drawing on science and technology studies, our analysis shows that education’s default position is optimism, even among those genuinely “critical” of technology’s capacity to amplify inequity. Refusal is not widely regarded as a legitimate response to educational technology. We argue, in contrast, that given the potential for scalable harm from unproven technologies like generative AI, the most rational position with new technology is robust caution with a readiness to refuse. We conclude by detailing three forms of refusal for educational stakeholders to consider: curricular, bureaucratic, and administrative.

Language, Culture, and Power

Head Start leaders warn of lasting trauma from ICE enforcement

Judith Ruiz-Branch, Fulcrum

A recent report showed heightened immigration enforcement is taking a toll on children enrolled in Head Start, a popular early childhood program in Illinois. The New York Times reports U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is aiming to arrest about 2,000 people per day, without the visibility of previous operations. Lauri Morrison-Frichtl, executive director of the Illinois Head Start Association and other Head Start leaders, said aggressive deportation efforts have been widespread. A recent poll from the organization showed behavioral and psychological effects on both immigrant and non-immigrant children. “Children in our classrooms, anytime they hear a siren or a whistle, have a meltdown because that’s a sign that something bad is going to happen,” Morrison-Frichtl explained. “Then, if their parent was late picking them up, they lose it because they thought their parent had been captured by ICE.”

The Impact of Immigration Enforcement and Anti-Immigrant Policies On K-12 Schools, Educators, And Immigrant Youth And Families

Sophia Rodriguez, National Immigration Law Center

This report summarizes a timely national qualitative case study documenting the acute structural and emotional shocks rippling through America’s public education system due to heightened federal immigration enforcement actions. This study synthesizes over 50 hours of qualitative empirical data gathered from 37 educators, including teachers, leaders, and state-level personnel across 14 distinct states between January and April 2026. Respondents represent a diverse group of frontline educators, including classroom teachers, school social workers, principals, district-level coordinators, and community-based organization leaders.

How the Battle of the Little Bighorn reshaped U.S. policy toward Native Americans [Video]

Judy Woodruff and Mike Fritz, PBS Newshour

It’s been 150 years since the Battle of the Little Bighorn, one of the most famous and enduring events in American history.While Native Americans were victorious, Judy Woodruff reports on how the battle reshaped the government’s policy towards indigenous people, and why it still resonates so deeply for so many today. It’s part of her series Crossroads: America at 250.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

The U.S. Relies on Family Caregivers. Millions of Them Are Kids.

Helen Ouyang, New York Times Magazine

Isabella Myricle Robinson was 15 and hanging out in her bedroom, surrounded by her stuffed Hello Kitty dolls, when she heard her mother, Rosa Seda, cry out. She raced into her mother’s room and found her lying on the floor. Rosa didn’t seem to be breathing. “Mama, wake up!” Isabella screamed. She shook her mother’s head from side to side and told her to breathe. “I honestly thought that she was gonna pass away right there,” she says. Rosa had collapsed after her doctor called her with bad news: Her breast cancer had spread to her brain. By then, Isabella had already been caring for her mother for a year and a half. “It all went downhill from 14,” she says. After Rosa’s right breast was removed, Isabella would skip school to milk the tube that drained her post-op fluid, even as she feared pulling the tube out. She would change Rosa’s bandages and help her bathe, sort her pills morning and night and spray the bathroom with Lysol so her mother wouldn’t pick up an infection. At Rosa’s medical appointments, where Isabella took notes, she learned how cancer spreads. “I don’t even know how that physically is possible to have cancer in your bloodstream,” Isabella told me. “But that’s what the doctors say.”

Children using social media at younger age appear to do worse in school tests

Ian Sample, The Guardian

Children who open social media accounts at the start of secondary school appear to perform worse in tests than those who delay, with researchers suspecting that the constant checking for updates is a major distraction for many students. Pupils who opened their first social media account aged 11 to 12 scored lower in mathematics and reading tests than those who waited a few years, with scores at age 16 differing between the groups by the equivalent of about six months of learning, the study found. The work does not prove social media is to blame, but the researchers took account of many other factors that could skew the results, such as the students’ academic performance before they had social media, their family structure and parents’ education.

School recess is back in play

Carly Mallenbaum, Axios

After decades of diminishing recess time, half of U.S. states now require it or other physical activity by law. Why it matters: Yes, recess is literally child’s play. But researchers, pediatricians and parents say it’s crucial for young students’ physical and mental health. By the numbers: As of December, school recess was mandated in 12 states and D.C., and laws requiring physical activity existed in 12 states, according to Johns Hopkins research. Most recently, Oklahoma’s law mandating 40 minutes of daily recess became effective in July. Between the lines: “Physical activity” laws are broader than “recess” ones. They can include after-school sports and gym class. And, separately, nearly every state has PE legislation. But physical activity and phys ed laws don’t necessarily require free play, which advocates say is a daily necessity for kids.

The big picture: Unstructured play doesn’t just teach social skills, but research connects it to increased classroom motivation and behavior, better school attendance, and less stress for students.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

Calls to end ‘antiquated’ exam system as 150,000 pupils receive their results

Craig Paton, The Independent

The Scottish Greens have written to the Education Secretary, calling for an overhaul of the “antiquated” exam system, as almost 150,000 pupils received their results. The party has asked Mairi McAllan to implement recommendations from an expert review by Professor Louise Hayward in 2023, which suggested a reduction in the number of exams, shifting more focus towards coursework and continuous assessment. It also recommended abolishing exams for S4 pupils. The changes were rejected by the previous education secretary, Jenny Gilruth, but the Greens have offered support to push through the recommendations. 

Professors sue Texas A&M System over limits on teaching race, gender

Jessica Priest, Texas Tribune

Four professors and a national faculty group asked a federal judge Monday to block the Texas A&M University System’s restrictions on teaching about race, gender and sexuality and to reinstate courses canceled under the policy. The university system bars professors from “advocating” race or gender ideology or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity. The policy applies to all 12 universities in the system. It requires presidential approval to address those subjects in certain courses and, according to the lawsuit, prohibits them in core courses. The lawsuit asks the judge to rescind instructions requiring professors to remove particular readings or subjects and declare the policy unconstitutional. The professors and faculty group allege the restrictions violate the professors’ First Amendment rights and are so vague that faculty cannot determine what they may teach without risking discipline. They want the judge to restore courses removed from the core curriculum and prevent the regents from imposing similar restrictions.

Trump administration asks colleges to commit to education overhaul

Rebecca Carballo and Bianca Quilantan, Politico

The Education Department is asking university leaders to publicly commit to a series of institutional changes, many of which are in line with the Trump administration’s higher education agenda, by the end of the year. The agency’s Monday letter asks these leaders to address grade inflation, improve transparency about the costs of attending their schools and curb foreign donations. It also asks them to hire faculty of “all relevant perspectives,” with the Trump administration previously arguing schools are too left leaning and suppress conservative voices. The letter contains some similarities to the college compact the administration sent to a select group of universities last fall, none of which agreed to sign it.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

Review of Segregation and School Funding: How States Reinforce Inequality and What to Do About It

M. Di Carlo & B. D. Baker Elsie Szecsy, Education Review

In this book, Matthew DiCarlo and Bruce Baker examine how racial and economic segregation in U.S. public schools is tied directly to the way schools are funded. The authors intersperse discussion of historical milestones toward equity and their marginal effectiveness with illustrative case studies of school districts in seven metropolitan areas. They also discuss some little-known history that underpins the persistent problem of inequitable education in the United States metropolitan areas. This well-reasoned and well-documented book is an important contribution to the larger, longstanding, and continuously evolving conversation about civil rights, educational equity, housing segregation, tax policy and public-school reform.

Child soldiers recount horrors of Sudan’s war and presence of Colombian mercenaries

Sam Mednick, Isabel Debre and Astrid Suárez, AP News

The teenage boy’s hands and legs were shackled to the anti-aircraft gun mounted on a pickup as Sudanese warplanes attacked. He saw another child chained to the steering wheel. As their captors sought cover, the terrified children were ordered to stay and shoot down the jets over the capital, Khartoum. If they tried to flee, they’d be killed by their captors — if the planes didn’t get them first. The boy, now 17, told The Associated Press that those who ordered him strapped to the gun were Colombian mercenaries providing military aid to Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces against the army in the war, now in its fourth year. Another child said he was forced to carry out artillery strikes and beaten for disobedience.

‘Rape list’ part of misogyny girls face at school

Megan Paterson, BBC

A group of teenage girls have said they feel “worthless” and “frightened” as a result of the extreme misogyny they regularly experience. The students, from Tyneside, have spoken out after making a film about the language they endure at school and online. Many comments are too explicit to share, but they include threats of violence and rape often masked as “banter”. One girl described how disturbed she had been after a “rape list” was made by boys in her school. The government said it was “taking bold and decisive action to halve violence against women and girls”, with changes being introduced from September to help teachers challenge misogyny. The North East has the highest rate of violence against women and girls in England and charities warned unchallenged attitudes could lead to abuse in early relationships.

Democracy and the Public Interest

“Going from not being aware of what’s happening to me being aware”: The civic learning of one undocumented Latina girl in Los Angeles

Claudia Diera, Theory and Research in Social Education

In this ethnographic case study, I use theoretical constructs, such as place-based education, critically relevant civics education, and Latinx lived civics, to present the civic learning of one undocumented Latina girl, Emily, in Los Angeles across three spaces: 1) at home, living in a working-class, immigrant household; 2) in her community, which faced environmental impacts from local industry; and 3) at school, where she engaged in interdisciplinary projects about her community. I ask, what civic learning is possible for a youth from their home and from their school- and community-based activities? My findings indicate that Emily learned to (a) live as part of a collective, (b) examine systemic inequities in her community, and (c) be a changemaker were crucial components of her overall civic learning. My findings show that students of color do not always experience civic disempowerment. Rather, they learn valuable civic knowledge, skills, and commitments from all aspects of their lives—at home, at school, and in their communities—where they develop their identities as active participants in a democracy, recognizing and exercising their ability to influence the world around them. 

The Most Radical Thing About Texas’ Book List Isn’t the Bible

James Traub, New York Times

This summer the Texas State Board of Education approved a mandatory reading list for public school students that includes fairy tales and nursery rhymes for little children, stories of America’s founders and Aesop’s fables for elementary schoolers, poems by Rudyard Kipling and Langston Hughes for middle schoolers and Shakespeare’s plays and Dante’s “Inferno” for high schoolers — and passages or stories from the Bible for every grade, save kindergarten. In our highly decentralized educational system, states don’t tell teachers which books to assign — the model Texas will begin using in 2030 makes it an outlier.

A rural Virginia school board changed its rules to block an LGBTQ+ club. Students are suing in federal court

Christopher Wiggins, Advocate

A Virginia school board illegally responded to students’ efforts to create an LGBTQ+ support club by repeatedly changing the rules, renaming the problem and, ultimately, making the club impossible to form, according to a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday. The students say almost every other club remained welcome. The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia and Potomac Law Group filed the complaint on behalf of two students and their parents against the King George County School Board, Superintendent Jesse Boyd, and King George Middle School Principal Casey Nice. King George is located about 50 miles southeast of Washington, D.C., between the nation’s capital and Virginia’s capital, Richmond. The lawsuit accuses school officials of violating the First Amendment and the federal Equal Access Act by barring a gay-straight alliance, or GSA, while allowing other noncurricular student groups to operate.

Other News of Note

My Typical Day as a Teenager in the Box on Rikers Island

John Katehis, Hammer and Hope

Rikers Island in New York City is a symbol of the horrors of America’s mass incarceration system. Located in the East River in plain sight of La Guardia Airport and Manhattan’s skyscrapers, including Billionaires’ Row, Rikers is one of the world’s largest jail complexes, with an appalling record of overcrowding, medical neglect, crumbling facilities, violence, and prisoner suicides. The island’s jails are filled with New York City’s poor, most of them awaiting trial; typically about 90 percent of those incarcerated are Black or Latino. After decades of organizing by prison abolitionists, the New York City Council passed a proposal in October 2019 to close Rikers by 2027. Though the plan stalled under former mayor Eric Adams, current Mayor Zohran Mamdani has ordered the closure of the island’s notorious medical facility and promised renewed efforts to shut the rest of the prison after “years of a flouting of not just recommendations but requirements.” In this essay from a new book edited by Elizabeth Hinton and Elsa Julien Lora, Harm and Punishment: Incarcerated Writers on Violence and the US Prison, John Katehis describes the nightmarish conditions he faced in solitary confinement in Rikers, where he was sent as a 16-year-old in 2009. Hundreds of thousands of others had similar experiences at Rikers, before and since; their accounts helped to spur the ongoing fight to close the prison.