Just News 2.27.26

Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

Trump administration expands efforts to dismantle the Education Department

Juan Perez Jr., Politico

The Trump administration is expanding its efforts to dismantle the Education Department by moving its oversight of school safety grants and foreign funding for universities to other agencies, the administration announced Monday. The Department of Health and Human Services is slated to take over work related to school shootings and student mental health programs. The State Department will be tasked to help the Education Department manage how the federal government monitors the flow of billions of dollars in foreign gifts and contracts to higher education institutions.

The Staggering Costs of Trump’s War on Public Service

Abdullah Shihipar, The New Republic

During his inaugural address more than 60 years ago, President John F. Kennedy challenged the nation he was about to lead to “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.” In the decades since, millions of Americans have answered this call by choosing to pursue a career in public service, working in the various departments that make up federal, state, and local government. It has taken just over a year for this administration to take a hacksaw to the federal workforce. After promising to cause federal workers “trauma,” the Trump administration has fired thousands of career civil servants across dozens of agencies. This has hit science agencies especially hard—Science magazine estimates more than 10,000 federal workers with STEM doctoral degrees left the government in the past year, representing a 14 percent cut of workers with a STEM doctorate in the federal workforce. 

The anti-Latino agenda behind Trump wanting Americans to have more kids

Gustavo Arellano, Los Angeles Times

Parents can take advantage of a larger child tax credit. July 5 will see the launch of $1,000 stock investments funded by the Treasury Department for children born in this country during President Trump’s reign. He has mulled offering $5,000 “baby bonuses” and creating a “National Medal of Motherhood” for women who have six or more children. All this is happening even as birthrates have plummeted in this country for decades, reaching their lowest point ever in 2024. A reduced population tends to relegate countries to economic and demographic doom — look at Japan and Russia. That’s why one of Trump’s big campaign promises was to Make America Fertile Again.

Language, Culture, and Power

How do you explain ICE to your child? Immigrant families are having ‘The Talk’

Candace Norwood, The 19th

Ana is a Mexican American woman who, as a child, did not live in fear of immigration raids. She’s a U.S.-born citizen who grew up in Mexicantown, Detroit, a Southwest neighborhood that serves as a cultural hub for the city’s Latinx population. Her grandparents immigrated to the United States with legal status from a small town in the Mexican state of Jalisco. Admittedly, Ana, 38, did not have much awareness about the experiences of undocumented immigrants until she started dating her now-husband in 2012. At 18, he entered the country without documentation, arriving from the same area of Mexico as Ana’s family.

Whitening American History

Naomi Bethine, American Prospect

Philadelphia’s President’s House Site, where Presidents George Washington and John Adams once lived, saw a number of its exhibits red-flagged by the Trump administration in 2025. Six exhibits and 13 specific items within them were pinpointed for review in accordance with Executive Order 14253: “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” All those exhibits focused on slavery—specifically, the nine people whom Washington enslaved while living in Philadelphia. Passersby were surprised to see National Park Service (NPS) employees abruptly removing these exhibits on January 22. One employee was heard repeatedly saying, “I’m just following orders” from his supervisor. In the span of an hour, all the displays were gone.

The Promise and the Problem of Black History Month

Yohuru Williams, The Progressive

n the summer of 1976, political scientist Jack Citrin described the growing pessimism among Americans as a national malaise—a “kind of yearning” for answers that politicians could not provide, and a deepening sense that government leaders were failing to live up to their ideals. The country was still reeling from the Watergate scandal, the humiliating end of the war in Vietnam, and a looming crisis of confidence revealed in public opinion polls. It was during this period that, in February 1976, President Gerald Ford issued a somewhat unusual statement urging Americans to observe Black History Month. His timing was notable. Besides being a period of political uncertainty, 1976 was also the nation’s bicentennial—a year devoted to reflection on the meaning of American freedom, citizenship, and equality.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

Creating Welcoming Schools: The Role of Positive Climates in Reducing Absenteeism

Jerome Graham, Yi-Chih Chiang, and Su Yon Choi, American Educational Research Journal

Chronic absenteeism has risen significantly since the COVID-19 pandemic, and while attempts to redress absenteeism can target drivers at multiple ecological levels, this study focuses on a within-school factor: student perceptions of school climate. Using statewide data from middle and high school students in Georgia, we examine how aggregated student-reported climate measures relate to absenteeism. We find that students’ perceptions of climate significantly predict school-level absenteeism rates, with the relationship most pronounced for Black and White students. The association between worsening climate perceptions and absenteeism is stronger than the association for improving ones, and connectedness and safety are the climate elements most related to absenteeism. Our results position school climate as a within-school lever that stakeholders can target to combat absenteeism.

What California’s planned power outages are costing schools: darkness, disruption and debt

Alejandra Reyes-Velarde, AP News

One windy morning in December 2024, teachers at Orange Vista High School rushed students into a line that stretched to the street. Southern California Edison had cut the power for parts of Riverside County to prevent its equipment from sparking a fire. Lessons ended. Classrooms went dark. And anxious parents in the Inland Empire city of Perris waited impatiently to greet their children. A month later, the school lost power again, days after the Eaton and Palisades fires to the northwest destroyed entire Los Angeles County neighborhoods. Orange Vista High was among at least five Riverside County school districts that reported closures during winter high winds in 2024 and 2025. Local school officials say the disruptions hit harder in economically disadvantaged districts, where families rely on critical services such as free meals and child care.

3 in 5 US undergrads struggle with basic needs. How some colleges are helping.

Kelly Field, Christian Science Monitor

The food pantry at Austin Community College’s Highland campus was busy, with a steady stream of students stocking up on essentials. Many items had posted limits – one cabbage, two onions, three potatoes – but zucchini were in abundance. “Take more,” the cashier urged the shoppers, some stopping in between classes. And they did. With 3 in 5 American undergraduates reporting food or housing insecurity, a new model of support has taken hold on college campuses. From Harvard University to Hostos Community College in New York City to the University of Minnesota, schools are offering food pantries, emergency grants, and transportation help. It is a matter of survival – for both students and colleges.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

Most Conservative Students Don’t Feel Persecuted on Campus

Kathryn Palmer, Inside HigherEd

Despite widespread political rhetoric claiming that colleges suppress conservative viewpoints, new data shows that most college students feel free to express themselves regardless of their political affiliation. According to a report that Gallup and the Lumina Foundation published today, just 2 percent of all college students—including 3 percent of Republicans—say they feel they don’t belong on campus due to their political views. That’s one of the many disconnects between public perceptions about higher education’s climate and value and what students say is actually happening on campus, according to the report, “The College Reality Check: What Students Experience vs. What America Believes.”

Conservative-leaning civic centers now teach courses at public colleges

Meredith Kolodner and Sarah Butrymowicz, Hechinger Report

One glossy insert stuck out from the orientation packet handed to hundreds of Ohio State University freshmen last August. It advertised a tempting offer: Students could earn a $4,000 scholarship — close to a third off in-state tuition — if they enrolled in one civics-oriented course and attended three events each semester outside of class. It seemed straightforward, but missing in the fine print was the controversial nature of the center giving the scholarships, sponsoring the lectures and crafting the new courses. It was the Salmon P. Chase Center for Civics, Culture, and Society, created by Ohio’s Republican-dominated legislature with the explicit goal of enticing students to take courses taught by a newly hired group of conservative philosophers, political scientists and historians.

US Department of Justice sues UCLA over anti-Semitism allegations

Al Jazeera Staff and Reuters

The United States Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), alleging that its “administration turned a blind eye to – and at times facilitated – grossly antisemitic acts”. Tuesday’s lawsuit marks the latest example of a campaign under President Donald Trump to crack down on campuses that hosted large pro-Palestinian protests. Critics, however, have accused the Trump administration of seeking to dampen the free speech of activists it disagrees with.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

Early Avenues of the Afterlife: Antiblackness in K–12 School Discipline Post-Brown

Kathryn Wiley, AERA Open

The disproportionate discipline of Black students remains a civil rights issue. While researchers often focus on contemporary aspects of this issue, its origins extend to earlier historical eras. Using the concept of the afterlife of school segregation, this article presents themes derived from a review of key historical reports published during the early 1970s about the use of school discipline during large-scale school desegregation. Doing so illuminates the historical patterns of pushout that followed the Brown decision. Four themes were identified, including: (1) widespread disproportionate suspension and expulsion of Black students, (2) changes to conduct codes in previously all-white schools to target Black students culturally and to enforce segregationist norms, (3) the frequent use of discipline to suppress Black students’ efforts to challenge racial injustice, and (4) white educators’ use of discretion to enact disparate discipline. These themes showcase the afterlife of school segregation in the proliferation of exclusionary discipline post-Brown and connect to continued sources of disparities today. 

U.S. Public Education Spending Statistics

Melanie Hanson, Education Data Initiative

Report Highlights. Public education spending in the U.S. falls short of global benchmarks and lags behind economic growth.

The Trump administration’s macroeconomic agenda harms affordability and raises inequality

Josh Bivens, Economic Policy Institute

In the first months of the second Trump administration, the question that popped up frequently about its economic policy agenda was, “Will it cause a recession?” After a year and no clear signs of a recession (at least not yet), many looking to formulate an organized critique of the Trump agenda argue that it is making affordability for American families worse. Both the concerns of heightened recession risks and deteriorating affordability are valid. Trump policies really are making a recession more likely and even if a recession does not occur, these policies will harm typical families’ ability to afford what they need.

Democracy and the Public Interest

Youth, Migration, and Active Citizenship: Exploring Students’ Citizenship Vocabularies Across Six Countries

Miri Yemini, Garth Stahl, and Ullrich Bauer, American Educational Research Journal

Migration profoundly shapes the lives of young people and is a polarizing topic in public discourse globally. This article examines if and how secondary school students across six countries with significant migration connect the issue of migration with their understanding of active citizenship. Employing Thorson’s concept of citizenship vocabularies, we document and analyze young people’s perceptions as well as the resources, narratives, and frameworks they use to make sense of migration, citizenship, and civic life. Drawing on data from deliberative discussion groups, the study adds depth to our understanding of how the current generation of youth engages with a complex and multifaceted social issue and makes an important contribution to debates concerning citizenship education, youth activism, and migration.

These high school students are the caretakers of one of America’s dark chapters

Erica Meltzer, Chalkbeat

The black-and-white photographs show neat rows of young men wearing old-fashioned football uniforms and leather helmets. As elementary students jostled around the museum display, Granada High senior Emersen Hernandez explained that the Amache Boys’ Club team only ever played one home game, against nearby Holly. Amache won that game. But most other teams in the region did not want to play at Amache — or play against them at all. “Why?” one boy interrupted. Emersen paused before answering. But she didn’t shy away from the reason. “At the time, there were a lot of racists in the area, and they did not want anything to do with the Japanese Americans.”

Inside the fight to save Texas’ Native American studies course

Kaiya Little, Hechinger Report

avion Horn watched as “before” and “after” images appeared on a screen at the front of his classroom: black-and-white photos of boys and girls, much younger than him and his classmates, first with faces framed by long hair and traditional clothing, then with their locks cut, wearing high-necked dresses and stiff button-ups. For Horn, then a high school senior at Grand Prairie High School near Dallas and a descendant of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, it was his first in-depth lesson on the boarding schools where the U.S. government sent hundreds of thousands of Native American children in the 19th and 20th centuries with the goal of assimilating them and eradicating Native culture.

Facing a mental health crisis, an NJ school pulled a beloved novel from English class

Anastasia Tsioulcas, NPR

The South Orange & Maplewood community in New Jersey has been through some very tough times. Schools superintendent Jason Bing says at least five young people enrolled at the public Columbia High School (CHS) have attempted to die by suicide this year. In December, one CHS student died in an accident; another young person, enrolled at a private school but known to many CHS students, died by suicide the same month. The School District of South Orange & Maplewood’s most immediate response to this mental health crisis: it removed Junot Díaz’s novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao from a high-level English class at CHS, which serves the suburban towns of South Orange & Maplewood about 15 miles west of New York City. After pushback from parents and students, the district said that parents could sign a permission form to allow their children to study the novel in class – a scenario which PEN America, the group dedicated to free expression, still classifies as a “book ban.”

Other News of Note

Write down all that you are letting go and then let your words take flight. 

La Cuenta

This week, we are sharing the latest storytelling prompt for the Testimonios de Esperanza project. An overview of the project can be found here. This month’s project is one of making, writing, and friendly competition: Create a paper airplane in whatever style you desire. On its wings, write an affirmation (for yourself of your community) and/or write down anything you wish to let go of. This can be a poem, a statement, artistically crafted across the wings or written in straight lines. Make this plane the vessel of your own words. If you can, record your plane’s flight. How far did it go? Where will you throw it from? Whose plane (if you are doing this with family members) can go the farthest distance?