Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

Trump’s Goal of Burying History Won’t Work If Teachers Refuse to Stop Teaching

Jesse Hagopian, Truthout

President Donald Trump is waging an all-out assault on education by issuing executive orders designed to privatize schooling, attack immigrant and transgender students, prohibit solidarity with Palestine, chill dissent on college campuses and censor discussions of race, gender, sexuality and systemic oppression in schools. One of his latest orders, misnamed “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” threatens federal funding for schools that teach truthfully about Black, Indigenous, and people of color’s history or structural inequality, while also banning discussions of gender identity. These actions are about indoctrinating young people with what I call “uncritical race theory” — an ideology that denies systemic racism, either dismissing it altogether or reducing it to nothing more than isolated individual bias.

Top teachers worry there could be ‘no future’ if Trump drastically changes DOE

Arthur Jones II, ABC News

Ahead of Linda McMahon’s hearing to become the next secretary of the Department of Education, America’s state teachers of the year for 2024 have said they worry the future of public education is under direct attack. De’Shawn C. Washington, the 2024 Massachusetts teacher of the year, said he will be heartbroken if the Department of Education is dismantled under McMahon.

“This is a great opportunity to invest even more in our children right now, instead of retracting,” Washington told ABC News. “To pull further in, to watch those seeds grow and become a harvest, so that our country could thrive.”

Trump’s Education Pick Bankrolled Efforts to Support Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Owen Dahlkamp, The Nation

As President Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Education, Linda McMahon would be tasked with carrying out the GOP leader’s education agenda, including a roll back of diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. But, interestingly, financial documents reviewed by The Nation show that McMahon’s foundation has contributed millions of dollars to organizations that espouse views in opposition to the 47th president. These donations seem to conflict with her public right-wing stances, even as Trump continues to demand personal and party loyalty among his political appointees. The president has rapidly formed a new coalition—among his cabinet, on Capitol Hill, in the halls of the West Wing, and beyond—centered on hostility toward the Department of Education and DEI programs nationally.

Language, Culture, and Power

‘I Can’t Teach Students Who Don’t Feel Safe’

Andrea González-Ramírez, The Cut

Days after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Ginny and her colleagues at a high school in North Carolina welcomed two new students who had recently come to the U.S. from a Spanish-speaking country. The teens enrolled in the English as a second language (ESL) program that Ginny teaches and went to the library to pick up a school-issued computer. “My colleague was telling them, ‘You keep this laptop and you give it back if you transfer schools or when you graduate,’” she says. “Then one of the kids replied, ‘And what do we do with it if Trump gets us?’” The president’s mass deportations pledge has caused a level of anxiety among Ginny’s students that she’s rarely seen in the more than 15 years she’s been teaching ESL. (Ginny and the other educators in this story asked us to withhold their full names to protect their privacy.) Some students are making jokes about being deported, in what Ginny sees as an attempt to mask their panic.

‘It was just a regular morning’: Californians picked up in recent ICE raids include kids, volunteers

Wendy Fry, Cal Matters

A church-going agricultural worker. An Echo Park man taking his son to school. A 16-year-old kid searching for work to support his family in Mexico. Three weeks into President Donald Trump’s second term, a clearer picture is beginning to emerge of some of the first Californians targeted in his high-profile immigration crackdown. It’s very different from the descriptions of hardened criminals President Donald Trump has touted. People CalMatters interviewed about the raids across California suggested those swept up in them are dedicated family members and employees, their lives deeply woven into their communities. None appeared to pose the risks to national security or public safety Trump promised he’d target during his campaign.

The Artist Printing Emblems of Immigrant Resistance

Isa Farfan, Hyperallergic

Oakland-based artist and activist Nicolás González-Medina was among the nearly 1,000 protesters who gathered to advocate for immigrant, LGBTQ+, and women’s rights in San Francisco’s Mission District for a Day of Resistance on January 18, ahead of the presidential inauguration. And he had come prepared with his woodcut printmaking supplies. “Ninety percent of being a political artist is showing up to things,” he told Hyperallergic. For the march protesting the inauguration of Donald Trump — who has again vowed to deport millions of undocumented immigrants — González-Medina chose his design “Somos La Resistencia (We Are the Resistance),” which he printed on picket signs and approximately 150 shirts worn during the event. The print features a half-portrait of a long-haired figure wearing earrings that say “resist” and holding a hand up in defiance. The artist gives his artwork out for free at protests, but typically sells it online.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

The Left Needs Its “Schools of Enlightenment and Revolution”

Steve Fraser and Nelson Lichtenstein, Jacobin

Not long before he was gunned down by the Chicago police in 1969, Fred Hampton, deputy chairman of the Black Panther Party and chair of its Illinois chapter, observed, “You can’t build no revolution with no education.” Recently, the New York City chapter of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) created an Academy for Socialist Education. The academy — which one of us, Steve Fraser, is involved in organizing — is into its second “semester,” offering courses that range from fascism and imperialism to an introduction to political economy and the making of “Trump country.” Institutions like the academy, as well as less formal undertakings, have featured prominently in the history of many radical movements. Challenging the status quo and imagining new worlds heightens the desire for new knowledge. Indeed, the demand for education of any sort was at one time the cry of working people, when formal schooling was a mark of the privileged. Education was seen as central to emancipation.

Eastside history comes to life in youth-driven social justice plays inspired by community leaders

Kamren Curiel, Boyle Heights Beat

On a rainy Thursday evening, amid a week of Eastside student walkouts, hundreds gathered inside Roosevelt High School (RHS)’s new performing arts center for “Seeds of Resistance,” a play inspired by social justice icons with ties to Boyle Heights.  Through four captivating short plays, the stories of Homeboy Industries founder Father Gregory Boyle, artivist Nobuko Miyamoto, culture sculptor Rubén Funkahuatl Guevara and Brown Berets founding member Victoria Castro came to life on stage at a high school renowned for its role in the 1968 walkouts.

“We wouldn’t be in this space today if it weren’t for those who stood up back then,” said Patricia Hanson, principal of Roosevelt’s Math, Science, and Technology Magnet Academy (MSTMA), who presented the production.

The Purposes of Education: A Citizen Perspective Beyond Political Elites

Ebba Henrekson, Fredrik O. Andersson, and Jurgen Willems, Educational Researcher

Education has long been an area of political debate in the United States, with politicians and policymakers advocating for distinct societal and/or individual purposes of K–12 education. In this article, we examine the public opinion on the purpose of education, and we explore whether this political divide on the purpose of education is also represented in the broad public opinion. For a sample 19,032 U.S. respondents, we test whether citizens’ partisanship corresponds with their opinions on seven educational purposes. We observe that the public opinion represents a multifunctional view on education and that some but rather small differences relate to partisanship. We frame these findings in the existing literature and postulate avenues for further research.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

Trump Attacks Child Care for the Most Vulnerable

Emma Janssen, The American Prospect

It had been nearly two weeks since the government turned all federal grants and loans off and then back on again, but many Head Start child care providers across the country still couldn’t get their money until the past few days. Some, in Wisconsin, started taking out lines of credit. Others came close to shutting their doors, at least temporarily, which would leave hundreds of low-income families without child care. When you turn the federal government off, you can’t just switch it back on again. Even after the administration reversed its funding freeze that the OMB had ordered in late January, dozens of programs were unable to access their funding. One of those programs is Head Start, the program that funds early-childhood education and care for hundreds of thousands of low-income children across the country. Many Head Start providers were still unable to access their funding as of Friday, February 7, nearly two weeks after the funding freeze was rescinded.

Gutted courses, fewer majors, faculty layoffs: Who will feel Cal State’s 8% budget cut?

Mikhail Zinshteyn, Cal Matters

For all the math taught at college, the California State University system is stumped over an arithmetics problem it has less than five months to solve: How to keep operating when the governor has proposed cutting $375 million from its budget. Without the money, the nation’s largest public four-year university system — enrolling more than 460,000 students — is likely due for a lot of subtraction: fewer professors teaching students due to layoffs and employment contracts that aren’t renewed, gutted academic programs and cancellation of majors that students are already enrolled in.  It’s already happening at some campuses, including San Francisco State and more recently Sonoma State, whose interim president intends to take the rare step of laying off tenured faculty, ending majors and totally shuttering the university’s NCAA Division II intercollegiate athletics.

The community college creating a home base for transition-age foster students

Betty Márquez Rosales, Ed Source

Sky Celine Page was not so sure that school was for her. She had spent the end of middle school ditching class and high school catching up on assignments as she moved between foster homes, and she was ready to quit college after performing poorly her first two semesters. “There was so much going on in my mind, and I was always so stressed out that I couldn’t just sit there and focus on schoolwork,” Page said. Nearly three years ago, she was couch surfing after leaving a foster home, and with nowhere to sleep consistently, school was placed on the back burner. Page is one of Los Angeles County’s transition-age youth — a term used to describe young adults aging out of the foster system. About 1,000 young people, 18 to 24 years old, age out in L.A. County each year, according to a 2024 report from the California Policy Lab.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

The Risks Trump Poses to K-12 Education

Jessica Grose, New York Times

I have noticed that prominent supporters of President Trump have recently made disturbing statements about children with learning disabilities. In an interview with my colleague Ross Douthat earlier this year, the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen said:  “Take what you would think would be a bulletproof program, like child disability in schools. It’s far from clear to me that the median taxpayer would support that if they really knew what that was. As you and I both know, what that has become is basically a medicalized mental illness. …”

The devastating impact for women and girls if the Department of Education shuts down

Katica Roy, MSNBC

When politicians talk about eliminating the U.S. Department of Education, they frame it as a cost-cutting measure, a bureaucratic trim for leaner governance. But let’s be clear: dismantling the Department isn’t just an administrative shift — it’s a direct economic attack on women and girls, with consequences that will ripple through every household, business and community in America. The stakes aren’t just educational; they’re economic, and the price will be paid by all of us.

Teacher Fundraising Is Not a Solution to Our Broken System for Funding Schools

Eleanor J. Bader, In These Times

When elementary school music and chess teacher Elizabeth Flocker Aming took a job at Oak Grove Elementary School in North Miami Beach, Florida, in 2008, she quickly realized she would face enormous challenges. “Music and chess are considered luxuries,” she tells The Progressive. “Ninety percent of the kids at Oak Grove are from low-income, immigrant families. Many have never had an instrument even though they are musically inclined. Their parents often work three jobs and have little money for extras.” That’s where crowdfunding comes in. Flocker Aming has repeatedly turned to DonorsChoose, an online platform that, since its founding, has raised more than $1.7 billion from more than six million donors for public schools and educators. DonorsChoose allows potential donors to search its website for requests to fulfill in classrooms across the country, such as basic supplies and healthy snacks.

Democracy and the Public Interest

Why L.A. students walked out of school and protested mass deportations

Sarah Quiñones Wolfson, Los Angeles Times

For Lexi Resendiz, 16, a student at Benjamin Franklin High School in Highland Park, the walkout was a way of standing up for her family. “I’m trying to defend my parents, who immigrated here to get me a better life,” she said. “How are people going to hate when they don’t even know the real us.” For Samantha Fonseca, 17, who attends Woodrow Wilson High School in El Sereno, the protest was a way “to show that immigrants are not criminals.” Hundreds of students walked out of their high schools Tuesday, part of a long Los Angeles tradition of student walkouts for civil and immigrant rights. Against the downtown cityscape, a sea of youths could be seen walking along the sidewalk on the Cesar Chavez Bridge, wearing backpacks draped in Mexican and Salvadoran flags and holding signs protesting President Trump’s mass deportation policies.

Racism, anti-racism and the politics of popular culture [Audio]

Anamik Saha and Francesca Sobande, LSE: Public lectures and events

Racism and antiracism clash on a daily basis in media discourse. This joint talk reflects on current practices of “othering” in popular media and probes the nature and meaning of media diversity amidst far right appeals to media representation. These practices point to shifts in whom a plural media system can and ought to serve and why.

Civics in action: How NYC high schoolers can serve on community boards

Julian Shen-Berro, Chalkbeat

Twyla Ware remembers the moment she realized her voice could make a difference in local government. Residents feared a developer’s proposal for a 34-story complex would cut off sunlight to plants in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Then a middle schooler, Ware gathered some of her friends to sign petitions against the project and meet with local officials. Spurred in part by local community action, city officials ultimately rejected the developer’s rezoning proposal. Now a high school senior, Ware is one of the youngest community board members in the city, serving on Brooklyn’s Community Board 9, which includes Crown Heights and Prospect Lefferts Gardens. Several of the city’s borough presidents — who are responsible for appointing community board members — are trying to expand the representation of young people on community boards, which weigh in on such issues as neighborhood rezonings and budget items. City residents are eligible to serve on their district’s boards starting at age 16.

Other News of Note

Racism and Fascism (1995)

Toni Morrison, Journal of Negro Education

Let us be reminded that before there is a final solution, there must be a first solution, a second one, even a third. The move toward a final solution is not a jump. It takes one step, then another, then another. Something, perhaps, like this:

(1) Construct an internal enemy, as both focus and diversion.

(2) Isolate and demonize that enemy by unleashing and protecting the utterance of overt and coded name-calling and verbal abuse. Employ ad hominem attacks as legitimate charges against that enemy.

(3) Enlist and create sources and distributors of information who are willing to reinforce the demonizing process because it is profitable, because it grants power and because it works.

(4) Palisade all art forms; monitor, discredit or expel those that challenge or destabilize processes of demonization and deification.

(5) Subvert and malign all representatives of and sympathizers with this constructed enemy.

(6) Solicit, from among the enemy, collaborators who agree with and can sanitize the dispossession process.

(7) Pathologize the enemy in scholarly and popular mediums; recycle, for example, scientific racism and the myths of racial superiority in order to naturalize the pathology.

(8) Criminalize the enemy. Then prepare, budget for and rationalize the building of holding arenas for the enemy-especially its males and absolutely its children.

(9) Reward mindlessness and apathy with monumentalized entertainments and with little pleasures, tiny seductions, a few minutes on television, a few lines in the press, a little pseudo-success, the illusion of power and influence, a little fun, a little style, a little consequence.

(10) Maintain, at all costs, silence.