Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

Educators sue to block enforcement of anti-diversity civil rights guidance

Erica Meltzer, Chalkbeat

Three educator groups are suing to block the U.S. Department of Education from enforcing new civil rights guidance that targets a wide range of practices related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. The guidance came in the form of a Dear Colleague letter to school leaders on Feb. 14. The letter cited the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which banned race-conscious admissions policies in higher education, and warned schools against giving any consideration to race in hiring, training, discipline, student supports, graduation ceremonies, and other aspects of academic life.

Linda McMahon’s Only Qualification as Education Secretary Is a History of Spreading Hate

Dave Zirin, The Nation

The first Major League Baseball player to break the color line was Jack Roosevelt Robinson in 1947. The first Black man, in the restricted, country club world of golf, to play in the Masters was Lee Elder in 1975. The first Black man’s win of the World Wrestling Federation championship was in 1997, when the biracial charisma-machine Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson took the belt. It would not happen again for another Black wrestler until 2019, when the title adorned the waist of Kofi Kingston. The longtime fan favorite was then squashed in eight seconds by German American Übermensch Brock Lesnar and never got a rematch. This backstage decision was widely perceived as humiliating to Kingston and a slap in the face to fans and Black wrestlers who were literally crying with joy when Kofi was crowned. In the world of sports entertainment, where outcomes are scripted, the most common role for Black wrestlers had always been minstrelsy: Ugandan headhunters, “voodoo practitioners” holding human skulls, and a Black woman named Sapphire. (The “Sapphire caricature” is a minstrel trope from the early 20th century, so none of this was subtle.)

Answering the Important Questions About Closing Schools

Kevin Welner and Sally Nuamah, NEPC

With many school districts facing declining enrollment as well as fiscal pressures due to lower inflation-adjusted resources, board members across the U.S. have been weighing the possibility of closing public schools. These are often painful decisions for district leaders and for the schools’ neighborhoods. In the Q&A below, National Education Policy Center director Kevin Welner asks political scientist Sally Nuamah of Northwestern University to help us understand some of the most important issues surrounding these school-closure decisions. Prof. Nuamah is the author of the 2022 book, Closed for Democracy: How Mass School Closure Undermines the Citizenship of Black Americans. 

Language, Culture, and Power

What happened when America emptied its youth prisons? [Audio]

James Forman, Jr. ‘The Daily’

When David Muhammad was 15, his mother moved from Oakland, Calif., to Philadelphia with her boyfriend, leaving Muhammad in the care of his brothers, ages 20 and 21, both of whom were involved in the drug scene. Over the next two years, Muhammad was arrested three times — for selling drugs, attempted murder and illegal gun possession. For Muhammad, life turned around. He wound up graduating from Howard University, running a nonprofit in Oakland called the Mentoring Center and serving in the leadership of the District of Columbia’s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services. Then he returned to Oakland for a two-year stint as chief probation officer for Alameda County, in the same system that once supervised him.

Education concerns remain high at LA County juvenile hall

Betty Márquez Rosales, Ed Source

Los Padrinos Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles County remains open a year after the state’s corrections oversight board deemed it “unsuitable for the confinement of minors” and four months after it ordered the center to shut down due to ongoing noncompliance with the state’s minimum standards for juvenile facilities. The problems plaguing the facility, located in the southeast LA city of Downey, include insufficient probation officers, students arriving to class late, abysmal performance on standardized education testing, and the center’s heavy reliance on substitute teachers. A court hearing that had been scheduled for Friday was to decide the hall’s fate, but L.A. County Superior Court Judge Miguel Espinoza deferred the decision until April, to allow for the completion of a re-inspection by the Bureau of State and Community Corrections, known as BSCC, the state agency that deemed it unsuitable after multiple inspections.

The Teen-Disengagement Crisis

Jenny Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop, The Atlantic

Many parents are probably familiar with a certain type of teen and their approach to school: These kids turn up. They do their homework. They get good-enough grades. They comply, which in academic terms means they’re behaviorally engaged. But they’re not investing in what they’re learning, nor are they that interested in trying to make sense of it. If you ask them how school was, their usual answer tends to be: Meh.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

When This Professor Got Cancer, He Didn’t Quit. He Taught a Class About It.

Kate Selig, New York Times

Dr. Bryant Lin stood before his class at Stanford in September, likely one of the last he would ever teach. Just 50 years old and a nonsmoker, he had been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer four months earlier. The illness is terminal, and Dr. Lin estimated that he had roughly two years left before the drug he was taking stopped working. Instead of pulling back from work, he chose to spend the fall quarter teaching a course about his own illness. Registration for the class had filled up almost immediately. Now the room was overflowing, with some students forced to sit on the floor and others turned away entirely. “It’s quite an honor for me, honestly,” Dr. Lin said, his voice catching. “The fact that you would want to sign up for my class.”

This cancer researcher was studying LGBTQ+ people. Her work is now in limbo.

Barbara Rodriguez, The 19th

At the beginning of the year, Mandi Pratt-Chapman, a researcher at the George Washington Cancer Center, was immersed in a multi-year study collecting data about the sexual orientation and gender identity of cancer patients. The goal, she explained, was to better understand how clinicians interact with LGBTQ+ people to improve patient care and health outcomes. LGBTQ+ people are among those most likely to face discrimination in accessing health care. But President Donald Trump’s January 20 executive order demanded that grant funding from the federal government not promote “gender ideology.” A flurry of directives targeting gender have followed, with some now tied up in courts.

Pakistan’s transgender community finds hope and dignity at a culinary school

Babar Dogar, AP News

For transgender students involved in a very special project at a culinary school in Pakistan, there is more to a class than just learning the art of cooking. Neha Malik used to dance at parties and weddings for a living and was, occasionally, a sex worker. Since January, she has been enrolled in a new course for the trans community at the Culinary & Hotel Institute of Pakistan. The free six-month program in the city of Lahore, Pakistan’s cultural capital, welcomed its first group of 25 trans students in January; the second group of 25 began training on Feb. 1. Now, Malik, 31, dreams of working as a chef in Dubai, the futuristic, skyscraper-studded city in the United Arab Emirates. She never misses a class. “I am so absorbed in learning that I don’t have time to dance anymore,” she added.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

The Department of Education Threatens to Pull the Plug on Colleges

Sonja B. Starr, New York Times

The Department of Education issued a threatening letter this month addressed to all educational institutions that receive federal funds. The letter offers an extreme and implausible interpretation of the law governing diversity, equity and inclusion policy. It demands that schools abandon not just affirmative-action-like programs that consider the race of individuals but also policies that are blind to individuals’ race if those policies were adopted, even in part, to promote racial diversity. The letter also claims that federal law prohibits schools from teaching or promoting certain ideas about race that the department deems unacceptable.

The Invisible Costs of Upward Mobility

Eileen G’Sell, Jacobin

Below the coffered ceiling of Washington University’s stately Holmes Lounge, I gather with other faculty for a lecture by visiting scholar Melissa Osborne. A sociologist from Western Washington University, Osborne is here to present their first book, Polished: College, Class, and the Burdens of Social Mobility, as an apt corrective to the myths we tell ourselves within these wood-paneled walls. Professors (and teaching faculty like me) tend to think that higher ed paves the way to more reflective, enriching lives, regardless of background. We also tend to assume that social mobility invariably brings greater happiness. These truisms are comforting, and we rarely open them up to scrutiny. Osborne is not a typical academic, and for reasons that have little to do with their appearance — gingham button-down, inked forearms, silver undercut. Osborne was a first-generation, low-income student at an elite private college and earned a doctoral degree from an even more elite private university. 

Pain for Everyone: How Trump’s “indirect costs” cap at the NIH would hurt undergrads too.

Ethan Ris, Slate

Make no mistake: the Trump administration’s unprecedented order to slash health research funding is a direct attack on higher education, especially its mission of providing college access to broad swaths of Americans. Late on Friday, Feb. 7, an anonymous entity speaking on behalf of the National Institutes of Health announced that, effective immediately, the agency would cap an expense line on research grants known as “indirect costs” at a rate of 15 percent. This may sound like a technocratic budgetary tweak, but it is anything but. The money that colleges and universities stand to lose is actually a major form of federal subsidy for higher education, helping slow down the rising cost of college and providing desperately needed opportunity for lower-income students.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

Children’s arithmetic skills do not transfer between applied and academic mathematics

Abhijit V. Banerjee, Swati Bhattacharjee, Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, Esther Duflo, Alejandro J. Ganimian, Kailash Rajah & Elizabeth S. Spelke, Nature 

Many children from low-income backgrounds worldwide fail to master school mathematics1; however, some children extensively use mental arithmetic outside school. Here we surveyed children in Kolkata and Delhi, India, who work in markets, to investigate whether maths skills acquired in real-world settings transfer to the classroom and vice versa. Nearly all these children used complex arithmetic calculations effectively at work. They were also proficient in solving hypothetical market maths problems and verbal maths problems that were anchored to concrete contexts. However, they were unable to solve arithmetic problems of equal or lesser complexity when presented in the abstract format typically used in school. 

Education Department “Lifting the Pause” on Some Civil Rights Probes, but Not for Race or Gender Cases

Jennifer Smith Richards and Jodi S. Cohen, ProPublica

The U.S. Department of Education on Thursday told employees that it would lift its monthlong freeze on investigating discrimination complaints at schools and colleges across the country — but only to allow disability investigations to proceed. That means that thousands of outstanding complaints filed with the department’s Office for Civil Rights related to race and gender discrimination — most of which are submitted by students and families — will continue to sit idle. That includes cases alleging unfair discipline or race-based harassment, for example.

Detroit’s attempt to improve its schools was hamstrung by redlining

Barbara Spindel, Christian Science Monitor

Brown v. Board of Education was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision, a unanimous ruling that racial segregation in America’s public schools was unconstitutional. With its declaration that “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” the court established that any government action to segregate students violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

The 1954 decision struck an unequivocal blow against segregated school facilities in the Jim Crow South. But as Michelle Adams demonstrates in “The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the North,” its implications for the rest of the United States were less clear-cut. Adams, a law professor at the University of Michigan, offers a forceful, insightful account of the failed effort to use Brown to integrate public schools in her hometown of Detroit.

Democracy and the Public Interest

How to teach hope when democracy is retreating

Joel Westheimer, The Conversation

In the wake of Donald Trump’s reelection, the United States has lurched further toward a democratic crisis. Institutions once considered stable now feel precarious. The assault on truth — already well underway — has intensified, with political leaders openly flouting constitutional principles, suppressing dissent and dismantling democratic safeguards. The rhetoric of grievance and retribution has become the soundtrack of public discourse. The U.S. is not alone. Across the globe, democracy is in retreat. The list of nations such as Hungary, Poland, Brazil and India where autocrats and aspiring autocrats have tried to erode democratic norms is growing.

GOOD NEWS: LGBTQ Youth Activists in Texas Curb Censorship and New Jersey Law Protects Transgender Students from Discrimination

Lana Leonard, GLAAD

Major legal victories break through the anti-LGBTQ fury of the current administration and anti-LGBTQ politicians against youth and teen populations across the country. In Texas, the student-led policy organization Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT) championed additional temporary injunctions on a Texas law barring freedom of speech for minors. Meanwhile, New Jersey Superior Court upheld an injunction blocking three Monmouth County school districts from implementing policies that would’ve forcibly outed transgender, Two-Spirit and gender nonconforming students. As part of its education and advocacy “Going Local” programming across the country, the GLAAD Media Institute (GMI) – GLAAD’s training, research and consulting division – convened meetings with local leaders and community advocates in Texas and New Jersey in recent months and years. Attendees who completed a program or session with the GLAAD Media Institute were immediately deemed GLAAD Media Institute Alumni, who are equipped to maximize community impact by leveraging their own story for culture change.

Engaging Haiti’s Youth in the Fight Against Corruption and Impunity

United Nations Democracy Fund

Haiti faces a deepening political crisis that has left many young citizens disengaged from democratic processes. With no elections since 2021, a generation of Haitians aged 15-24 has never exercised their voting rights or engaged in democratic dialogue. In response, Nou Pap Dòmi, a Citizens’ Collective for Social Justice Against Corruption and Impunity, is taking action. Supported by the United Nations Democracy Fund and the UN Country Team in Haiti, the organization has launched the Sitwayen Pa Dòmi project to raise awareness about corruption, impunity, and the importance of civic participation. “Young men women and men are catalysts of change in any country. They are the change they want to see. Therefore, the UN in Haiti welcomes initiatives which provide a space for Haiti’s youth to express their commitment to fighting against corruption, and to be the vectors of peace and stability.” Ulrika Richardson, Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary General and Resident / Humanitarian Coordinator in Haiti.

Other News of Note

What Students Have to Say About Their Black History Class

Geoff Wickersham, Education Week

Why did you decide to take this course? What made you feel Black history was important to you?

Lamont: I wanted a history class that focused more on my history. History is viewed as important because it’s necessary to know where you came from, and this African American history class is teaching me more about where I came from. 

Mackenzie: I felt, and have felt since around middle school, that Black history is not taught as extensively, accurately, or as in-depth as I believe it should be. Black history, my history, isn’t something that can be or should ever be covered and considered completed in a one weeklong lesson. —Mackenzie

Nia: Over the years, in all of my history classes, I felt like something was missing. I felt like there was much more to learn about African American history, African American culture and their contributions to the world than just the quick side note of slavery and civil rights we were taught. As a Black person myself, I yearned for that representation.

Rollback of diversity efforts leaves teachers wondering about effects on Black History Month [Audio]

Kassidy Arena, NPR

Gwen Partridge, or Mrs. Gwen to her pre-K students, walked around her homemade Black History Museum at the YMCA Immanuel Early Learning Center in Omaha, Neb., on an icy Thursday. She and her co-workers researched and created each exhibit. “What’s great is when they learn something about Black history and then the parents come back and say ‘Thank you,’” Partridge said. Partridge has been a pre-K teacher for 20 years, and the Black history museum she spearheaded for the school has interactive exhibits for the students. There’s a music section with a piano, a makeshift hair salon, and plenty of books about influential Black history-makers.

The Origins of Black History Month

Daryl Michael Scott, Association for the Study of African American Life and History

The story of Black History Month begins in Chicago during the summer of 1915. An alumnus of the University of Chicago with many friends in the city, Carter G. Woodson traveled from Washington, D.C. to participate in a national celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of emancipation sponsored by the state of Illinois. Thousands of African Americans travelled from across the country to see exhibits highlighting the progress their people had made since the destruction of slavery. Awarded a doctorate in Harvard three years earlier, Woodson joined the other exhibitors with a black history display. Despite being held at the Coliseum, the site of the 1912 Republican convention, an overflow crowd of six to twelve thousand waited outside for their turn to view the exhibits. Inspired by the three-week celebration, Woodson decided to form an organization to promote the scientific study of black life and history before leaving town. On September 9th, Woodson met at the Wabash YMCA with A. L. Jackson and three others and formed the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History.