Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

How Trump is Dismantling the Education Department and Remaking Public Schools [Video]

Jennifer Smith Richards and Megan O’Matz, ProPublica

Linda McMahon, the nation’s secretary of education, says public schools are failing. In November, she promised a “hard reset” of the system in which more than 80% of U.S. children learn. But rather than invest in public education, she has been working to dismantle the Department of Education and enact wholesale changes to how public schools operate. To help her carry out these and other goals, McMahon has brought on at least 20 advisers from ultraconservative think tanks and advocacy groups who share her skepticism of the value of public education and seek deep changes, including instilling Christian values into public schools.

The Trump Administration Plot to Destroy Public Education

Rosa DeLauro, The American Prospect

After taking stock of the state of American education, the president determined dramatic action was needed. He set out to “cut red tape and promote better service for local school systems”; to “save tax dollars,” “eliminate bureaucratic layers,” and “earn improved educational services at less cost.” He believed the “primary responsibility for education should rest with those States, Localities, and private institutions that have made our Nation’s educational system the best in the world.” And that we must “ensure that local communities retain control of their schools and education programs.”

The risks of AI in schools outweigh the benefits, report says

Cory Turner, NPR

The risks of using generative artificial intelligence to educate children and teens currently overshadow the benefits, according to a new study by the Brookings Institution’s Center for Universal Education. The sweeping study includes focus groups and interviews with K-12 students, parents, educators and tech experts in 50 countries, as well as a literature review of hundreds of research articles. It found that using AI in education can “undermine children’s foundational development” and that “the damages it has already caused are daunting,” though “fixable.”

Language, Culture, and Power

Twin Cities students walk out, decry ICE as surge continues [Audio]

Elizabeth Shockman and Kyra Miles, MPR News

Hundreds of Twin Cities high school students walked out of school Monday to protest federal immigration enforcement in Minnesota, and some school leaders in the region are increasingly concerned about high absenteeism with families fearing being caught up in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations. An estimated 500 high school students walked out of Roseville High School Monday morning, walking from their school, around the parking lot and onto a bridge over Minnesota Highway 36 in Roseville.

US apologizes for mistake in deporting Massachusetts college student, but defends her removal

Michael Casey, AP News

The Trump administration apologized in court for a “mistake” in the deportation of a Massachusetts college student who was detained trying to fly home to surprise her family for Thanksgiving, but still argued the error should not affect her case. Any Lucia Lopez Belloza, a 19-year-old Babson College freshman, was detained at Boston’s airport on Nov. 20 and flown to Honduras two days later. Her removal came despite an emergency court order on Nov. 21 directing the government to keep her in Massachusetts or elsewhere in the United States for at least 72 hours. Lopez Belloza, whose family emigrated from Honduras to the U.S. in 2014, is currently staying with grandparents and studying remotely. She is not detained and was recently visiting an aunt in El Salvador. 

A Different Brown Story: Black Teacher Recruitment to Navajo Reservation BIA Schools During the Desegregation Era

Oliver George Tapaha, Khalil Anthony Johnson, Jr., Nathan Tanner, and Terah Venzant Chambers, Educational Researcher

The 70th anniversary of the Brown decision provides an opportunity to shed light on the story of Black educators who were recruited to schools on the Navajo Nation after being fired in the transition to desegregated schooling. With the support of the Navajo Tribal Council, the 1954 Navajo Emergency Education Program established funds to create additional schools throughout the Navajo Nation. Contacted through Black newspaper and magazine advertisements and direct recruitment, hundreds of Black teachers, displaced from schools throughout the South, ended up at schools like Chinle Boarding School. We share one former student’s story and contextualize it within the broader Brown historiography.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

Youth appeal federal climate lawsuit to Ninth Circuit

Micah Drew, Daily Montanan

A group of young plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit against the federal government alleging a series of executive orders threaten their constitutional right to life by exacerbating climate change haven’t given up on their fight. After a federal judge in Missoula dismissed the case, Lighthiser v. Trump, last fall over a lack of jurisdiction, the plaintiffs asked the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to intervene and overturn the ruling that blocked their efforts to challenge the federal government’s plan to “unleash American energy.” “Our government has a system of checks and balances, and right now those checks have failed us,” lead plaintiff Eva Lighthiser said in a statement. “These executive orders are directly harming me and my fellow plaintiffs. Every additional wildfire, smoky day, flood, puts our lives and health at risk. With this appeal, we have hope that the Ninth Circuit will uphold its constitutional duty to protect this nation’s young people.”

New research reveals how work permits reduce child labor violations

Nina Mast, Ashish Kabra, and Fred (Jiacong) Bao, Economic Policy Institute

In recent years, child labor violations have been on the rise across the country. At the same time, lawmakers in many states have proposed bills to reverse long-standing state child labor standards that prohibit employers from exposing youth under 18 to hazardous jobs or overly long work hours that interfere with their health and well-being. Youth work permits—which many states have historically required—have been a repeated target of this coordinated, industry-backed campaign to weaken child labor laws. Such permits typically require employers to outline the potential hours and work duties for a minor worker, as well as parental approval and verification that the minor is attending school.

How a school program from Baltimore is using hip-hop to teach social-emotional skills [Video]

Ali Rogan and Kaisha Young, PBS News

Nationwide schools are looking for better ways to connect with students and support their emotional well-being. A recent Yale University study found that social emotional learning programs or self can improve students’ sense of belonging and boost academic performance.

While Black and Brown students are more likely to report feelings of isolation from their peers, many SEL models don’t reflect their lived experiences. A Baltimore based organization called We Do It 4 the Culture is changing that it uses hip hop and storytelling to help students learn empathy and express themselves. Ali Rogin spoke to Jamila Sams, the founder of We Do It 4 the Culture. 

Access, Assessment, Advancement

Colleges must start treating immigration-based targeting as a serious threat to student safety and belonging

Madison Forde, Hechinger Report

Last month, a Boston University junior proudly posted online that he had spent months calling Immigration and Customs Enforcement to report Latino workers at a neighborhood car wash.

Nine people were detained, including siblings and a 67-year-old man who has lived in the U.S. for decades. The student celebrated the arrests and told ICE to “pump up the numbers.” As the daughter of Caribbean immigrants and a researcher who studies immigrant-origin youth, I was shaken but not surprised. This incident, which did have some backlash, revealed a growing problem on college campuses: Many young people are learning to police one another rather than learn alongside one another.

There’s an intensifying kind of threat to academic freedom – watchful students serving as informants

Austin Sarat, The Conversation

Texas A&M University told philosophy professor Martin Peterson in early January 2026 that he could not teach some of Greek philosopher Plato’s writings that touch on “race and gender ideology.” The university’s local chapter of the American Association of University Professors, an organization of professors and academics in the U.S., quickly denounced this requirement.

Peterson, in response to his university’s direction, replaced the Plato readings with material on free speech and academic freedom. Silencing a professor from teaching a certain subject fits within what experts have long recognized as encroaching on academic freedom.

What Seniors Are Writing About in Their College Admissions Essays

Bernard Mokam, New York Times

As her daughter drafted her college essay this fall, Elsa Menendez, a mother of two from the north of Spain, advised her not to write about her trips to visit family back home. “I am not sure if you should even be talking about diversity,” said Ms. Menendez, who had been startled by the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration and diversity initiatives. “It was difficult to hear,” her daughter, Lola, recalled. After the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in 2023, Chief Justice John Roberts left room for race to be considered in the writing portion of a college application, so long as it was tied to another characteristic or virtue. But conservatives and others have long argued that giving a boost to students because of their race or ethnicity is unfair and that it has magnified the role of race and racism in American life, rather than diminishing it.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

NEPC Talks Education: Understanding School Finance as a Racial and Political Problem

Christopher Saldaña, Roseann Liu, and David Backer, NEPC 

In this month’s episode of NEPC Talks Education, Christopher Saldaña speaks with Roseann Liu and David Backer about their approaches to K-12 school finance research and why understanding the human dimensions of education funding is essential for achieving equity. Liu, a professor of educational studies and Asian American studies at Swarthmore College, is an anthropologist. Her recent book, Designed to Fail: Why Racial Equity in School Funding Is So Hard to Achieve, uses ethnographic methods to make visible what she calls the story behind the numbers. Backer, a professor of Education Policy at the College of Human Development, Culture and Media at Seton Hall University, draws on philosophy and critical theory in his new book, As Public As Possible, to offer a witty and provocative treatise on the financial policies we’ll need to make our public schools work for all children.

Civil Rights Rollbacks in the South Signal a Threat to Vulnerable School Children Everywhere

Ashana Bigard, The Progressive

In April 2025, President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) attempted to end a decades-old legal dispute involving the federal government, local and state governments in Louisiana, and families seeking better access to high-quality education for their children. 

The Justice Department lifted a school desegregation order in a school district near New Orleans, Louisiana, releasing the district from federal oversight. The oversight was in place because of alleged segregation of students on the basis of race, which is a violation of the Constitution according to federal courts. Trump officials called the original 1967 agreement, which required the school board to take specific steps to desegregate schools and fix the harm caused by past racial discrimination, a “historical wrong” that needed to be corrected. Louisiana state education officials joined in the DOJ’s court filing lifting the oversight, likely seeing it as potential welcome relief to other districts in the state that have also been under court oversight for racial segregation. 

What to Know About the Proposed California Wealth Tax Drawing Threats From Billionaires and Pushback From Newsom

Connor Greene, Time

A proposed measure in California seeks to tax billionaires’ wealth. But the effort may cause the state to lose billions in future tax revenue before it even reaches the ballot. The proposed ballot measure, called the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act, would impose a one-time 5% tax on billionaires’ assets. The measure is still in the process of gathering the 90,000 signatures necessary to put it before voters in November. But it is already receiving fierce backlash from several of the state’s wealthiest residents—and from its Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Democracy and the Public Interest

Redesigning public education as the bulwark of democracy

Michael Matsuda, Ed Source

As we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026, we are called to a national reckoning. We must ask ourselves: Have we built the systems — specifically our public schools — that truly allow every young person to realize the aspirations described by our founders? In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson performed a radical act of editing that redefined the American experiment. Influenced by the Enlightenment, he deliberately replaced John Locke’s triad of “life, liberty, and property” with the “pursuit of happiness.” This was not a move toward shallow hedonism; it was a shift toward a more Aristotelian take on happiness —a moral quest for human flourishing, virtue and self-improvement. Jefferson and our country’s founders understood that while property is a material possession, the pursuit of a well-lived life is a civic right and a spiritual journey.

Reimagining the Schoolhouse Gate: Children’s Right to Receive Information in the Age of Curriculum Censorship 

Harvard Law Review 

In recent years, various legislative and school board actions have sought to restrict or censor educational content related to race, gender, sexuality, and identity.1 One prominent example is Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act2 — the “Don’t Say Gay” law — which prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in certain grades.3 Though varying in scope, these legislative efforts share a common aim: to regulate what information students may access in school and thereby teach what is — and is not — acceptable to discuss. Plaintiffs have challenged these restrictions in federal courts, with varying outcomes.4 Some courts have struck down these restrictions as unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination,5 some have upheld them under deferential standards such as Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier,6 while other courts have characterized curriculum decisions as government speech beyond First Amendment review.7 What emerges is a patchwork of approaches that leaves unresolved the central question: Amid disputes over teachers’ speech rights, parental authority, and state control of curriculum, what direct rights, if any, do students have to receive information in public schools? 

How to Survive as a Teen Under Trump

Sarah Milner, Democratic Left

I was about to turn 15 when Donald Trump announced his first presidential campaign. I was a listless high schooler with no ambitions and socialist politics I’d picked up from listening to old protest songs on YouTube. Right up to election day, it felt like a joke. The night he won his election, I walked through the dark in my suburban hometown, watched the same news clips playing on every station, and thought that Bernie Sanders must have been right, and that everything would have to change if we were going to stop this. I knew things would get worse, but the extent of the crisis has been astonishing. In the ten intervening years we’ve seen millions die from COVID, we’ve watched social protections, abortion rights and public services gutted, and we’ve seen our country carry out the greatest moral crime of the 21st century, the genocide in Gaza.

Other News of Note

Civil rights activist Claudette Colvin dies at 86 

Eden Turner, The 19th

African-American activist Claudette Colvin, whose arrest for refusing to give up seat on a segregated bus preceded Rosa Parks’ more famous stance, has died. She was 86. On March 2, 1955, as she headed home from school in downtown Montgomery, Alabama, 15-year-old Colvin and her friends boarded a bus and sat in seats behind the first five rows, which were reserved for White passengers. Shortly after, a White woman saw that the first five rows were full and asked Colvin and her friends to move toward the back of the bus. While her friends obliged, Colvin did not. As a result, Colvin was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to the White woman.

Lynda Blackmon Lowery, One of the Youngest Selma Marchers, Dies at 75

Richard Sandomir, New York Times

Lynda Blackmon Lowery, a young foot soldier in the fight for voting rights in Selma, Ala., who was 14 when law enforcement officers savagely attacked her and many other unarmed protesters on “Bloody Sunday” in 1965, died on Dec. 24 at her home in Selma. She was 75.

Her daughter Danita Blackmon confirmed the death but did not specify a cause. Ms. Lowery, then known as Lynda Blackmon, said she was arrested nine times before she turned 15 for participating in civil rights protests. In one of the pivotal events in the civil rights movement, she gathered with some 600 people on March 7, 1965, on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma for a planned march to Alabama’s capital, Montgomery.