Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

The Los Angeles Unified School District has a new superintendent [AUDIO]

A. Martinez, KOSU-NPR

This COVID pandemic era has put a particular burden on school administrators as districts struggle to get students back to class but also keep everyone safe. One person who’s been tackling those challenges is former Miami-Dade Public Schools chief Alberto Carvalho. Last December, as many people have during this period, Carvalho switched jobs to become superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest public school system in the nation. I spoke with Carvalho and asked him about the challenges ahead and about the pressures not just on students but teachers, too, as they navigate the ongoing pandemic.

Why some in higher education are freaking out about new affirmative action showdown

Liz Willen, Hechinger Report

After the pandemic forced classes online, Harvard University junior Swathi Kella watched classmates from an array of backgrounds and races pop onto her screen, their names and faces far more diverse than those of her New Jersey high school.  Now, she worries that the variety she values in her education could disappear for generations to come. “If affirmative action goes away, opportunities to learn from different perspectives and world views will be limited, and that does an injustice to students,” Kella told me during a break from her classes in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Monday, after a conservative-dominated Supreme Court agreed to hear challenges to race-conscious admissions. “It’s kind of shocking when you think about what this will mean concretely for the student body.”

You Are Not Entitled To Our Deaths: COVID, Abled Supremacy & Interdependence

Mia Mingus, Leaving Evidence

These days, I am struggling to find grace for abled people. I have taken a break from engaging with most abled folks in my life because frankly, I don’t know how to convey the magnitude of disabled rage I feel about this pandemic and the stunningly self absorbed levels of abled entitlement. I cannot casually check-in anymore or be asked how I’m doing in the middle of mass suffering, illness and death. I cannot listen to or read about the high rates of infections, illness and death in BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and People of Color) communities with no mention of BIPOC disabled people in the middle of a pandemic. I cannot listen to the CDC say they are “encouraged” that only those “who were unwell to begin with” will die from Omicron and then hear about so-called-comrades’ vacations outside of the continental U.S. I cannot be part of any more so-called political conversations that don’t acknowledge disability, ableism and abled supremacy in the middle of a pandemic.

Language, Culture, and Power

Pride Flags and Black Lives Matter Signs in the Classroom: Supportive Symbols or Propaganda?

Eesha Pendharkar, Education Week

Should a teacher be allowed to place a Black Lives Matter sticker on their desk to let students know they oppose racism, or hang a Pride flag from their door to let their LGBTQ students know the classroom is a safe space? Or are those actions another way for teachers to politically influence and divide students? Across the country in recent months, board members, administrators, and teachers have been at odds over the express purpose of Black Lives Matter logos and Pride flags and what free speech rights teachers have when it comes to decorating their classrooms.

One-in-Ten Black People Living in the U.S. Are Immigrants

Christine Tamir and Monica Anderson, Pew Research Center

The Black population of the United States is diverse, growing and changing. The foreign-born segment of this population has played an important role in this growth over the past four decades and is projected to continue doing so in future years. Roughly 4.6 million, or one-in-ten, Black people in the U.S. were born in a different country as of 2019, up from 3% in 1980. By 2060, the U.S. Census Bureau projects that this number will increase to 9.5 million, or more than double the current level (the Census Bureau only offers projections for single race groups).

Kid of the Year Finalist Lujain Alqattawi, 13, Teaches English to Kids in Refugee Camps

Eloise Barry, Time

For most kids, the early stage COVID-19 lockdowns in 2020 meant one thing: boredom. Many took the chance to start a new hobby, watch superhero movies, or spend more time on TikTok. But Lujain Alqattawi, a 13-year-old eighth grader in Maryland, saw the pause as an opportunity to do something different. “With COVID we were just sitting at home and I felt like I wanted to help people or make an impact,” Lujain says. “I was just thinking like, what can I do to help people in general? What do I have?” A bilingual teenager of Palestinian heritage, Lujain realized something she had that others lacked: language skills. Inspired by her mom, who has taught English as a second language for two decades, and by her family history—her father emigrated to the U.S. from Jordan as a Palestinian refugee—Lujain decided she would teach Arabic-speaking refugees English.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

Environmental Education Is Falling Short. Activism Can Help

Peter Sutori, Yes!

In an environmental studies class in a secondary school in a South African township, the teacher takes the students outside into the sunny fall morning. She shows them how to plant a tree and ensure it survives. The students seem captivated as each of them plants their own sapling in the ground outside the school; this hands-on, outdoor class is a rare opportunity to get away from the classroom and the rote learning that usually goes on inside. This class is one of many hands-on environment-oriented classes that have sprung up around the world in the past decade as part of governments’ efforts to introduce sustainability into school curricula. But how realistic is it to expect schools to fix humanity’s environmental mess? After observing the class, I asked the teacher whether she connected her hands-on lessons to larger conversations around climate change, and she said no. The point of the class, she said, was precisely to get away from theoretical discussions about global environmental issues and to help students take tangible action. This is not surprising if we consider how most public education systems are run. They are generally under direct control of governments, the vast majority of which are currently doing nowhere near enough to tackle the environmental crisis—as COP26 has shown.

Poway Unified sees success with program to integrate special education students

Angela Brandt, San Diego Tribune

Tate Julian, a sixth-grade student at Twin Peaks Middle School, had lunch with a new friend recently. He and his friends invited a boy named Cole, who has an aide for his autism, to sit with them. “He’s a nice kid,” Tate said. “Me and my friends plan to do it daily.”This is the type of interaction Poway Unified School District officials were hoping for when they started the Inclusive Practices Program a few years ago. Since then, the district has adopted a “general education for all” policy. Schools have shut down their day classes, which removed students with special education needs from general education settings. And special education students who had been bussed for specific coursework at other schools are now going to the school in their neighborhood.

College Students Struggle to Address a Mental Health Crisis

Teresa Xie, The Nation

Around 11:30 AM on December 15, a Northeastern University student was found unresponsive in Snell Library, one of the main libraries on campus. Boston Fire and EMS arrived on the scene. Just a few hours later, the Northeastern University Police Department gave the library an “all clear.” The student was pronounced dead in an apparent suicide. The university administration’s response? Sending an e-mail to all students that read, “The university is making counseling and other mental health services available to everyone in the university community who needs support.” Finals week proceeded as normal, and students began shuffling into the library again.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

About 1 in 3 child care workers are going hungry

Colin Page McGinnis, The Conversation

Of the nearly 1 million child care workers in the United States, in a recent white paper, my colleagues and I found that 31.2% – basically 1 out of every 3 – experienced food insecurity in 2020, the latest year for which we analyzed data. Food insecurity means there is a lack of consistent access to enough food. This rate of food insecurity is anywhere from 8 to 20 percentage points higher than the national average. In Washington state and Texas, one study found 42% of child care workers experienced food insecurity, with 20% of child care workers experiencing very high food insecurity. High food insecurity is when a person reports reduced quality and variety of diet. Very high food insecurity occurs when a person reports disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake.

Graduation rates dip across U.S. as pandemic stalls progress

Matt Barum, Kalyn Belsha, & Thomas Wilburn, Chalkbeat

High school graduation rates dipped in at least 20 states after the first full school year disrupted by the pandemic, suggesting the coronavirus may have ended nearly two decades of nationwide progress toward getting more students diplomas.The drops came despite at least some states and educators loosening standards to help struggling students. The results, according to data obtained from 26 states and analyzed by Chalkbeat, are the latest concerning trend in American education, which has been rocked by a pandemic that left many students learning remotely last year and continues to complicate teaching and learning.

Drop in college enrollment threatens to cause long-term economic, social consequences 

Jon Marcus, Washington Post

Slower economic growth. Continued labor shortages. Lower life expectancy. Higher levels of divorce. More demand for social services, but less tax revenue to pay for it. A sharp and persistent decline in the number of Americans going to college — down by nearly a million since the start of the pandemic, according to newly released figures, and by nearly 3 million over the last decade — could alter American society for the worse, even as economic rival nations such as China vastly increase university enrollment, researchers warn. “It is a crisis, and I don’t think it’s widely recognized yet that it is,” said Jason Lane, dean of Miami University’s College of Education, Health and Society.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

“Nothing About Us Without Us”: A Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) Case Study on East Side Union High School District

Miguel Casar, Conor Sasner, and Felicia Graham, Center for the Transformation of Schools

In 2013, after more than a decade of student and parent organizing across the state, the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) was signed into California law, marking an important development in the fight for equity in educational funding. In a departure from California’s long-standing method of resource allocation from categorical funding to a block grant, LCFF utilizes a weighted formula to allocate resources to districts based on the number of low-income students, foster youth and English Learners they serve. LCFF was designed to provide districts with more flexibility, and, consequently, increased opportunities to conduct transformational and equity-oriented work.

Millions of kids thrust back into poverty after the child tax credit expired

Karen D’Souza, EdSource

Millions of families are once again uncertain about how they will keep a roof over their heads and put food on the table, experts say, in the wake of the lapsed child tax credit. The expiration of the child tax credit is expected to increase childhood poverty from 12% to 17% in January, the highest since December 2020, according to research by the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University, as NBC reported. Black and Latino children will be hit harder than other groups, with poverty rising to 1 in 4 kids. The child tax credit expansion was introduced under the American Rescue Plan Act. The total payout was increased to $3,000 per child 6 and older, and up to $3,600 per child younger than 6. Eligibility definitions were also broadened, allowing families to be eligible for full credit even if they had low earnings.

District equity plans may become merely symbolic without further action

Shawna De La Rosa, K12 Dive

Many school districts adopted equity policies in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, but more work is needed to ensure these efforts aren’t seen as merely symbolic, Mary Rice-Boothe, chief access and equity officer for The Leadership Academy, a nonprofit focused on helping education leaders disrupt systemic inequities, writes for Edutopia. Rice-Boothe suggests a few key components are necessary to make sure equity policies work. Having a common language and shared beliefs is essential to the process, beginning with teachers addressing their own racial consciousness and examining “cycles of socialization” that show what educators may unconsciously be doing that prevents students from being successful.

Democracy and the Public Interest

New Report Details the School-Level Impact of the Anti-CRT Conflict Campaign

NEPC

A superintendent advised teachers to tell students inquiring about Holocaust-denial to ‘ask

your parent’ rather than insist the Holocaust was real. A principal advised that a government class should not include any materials that were political in nature. A teacher was so cowed by parent anger over critical race theory that she is afraid to teach about the Bill of Rights.A chief equity officer received death threats on Twitter and started parking near cameras so

that they could capture an attack. These are just some of the incidents detailed a new report about how local school districts have been impacted by the ongoing conservative campaign against teaching, supposedly about Critical Race Theory but actually about other issues related to gender, ethnicity, and race.

Expanding digital citizenship education to address tough issues

Nicole Mirra, Sarah McGrew, Joseph Kahne, Antero Garcia, and Brendesha Tynes, Phi Delta Kappan

Even as educators wrestle with the ongoing challenges of pandemic-era teaching and learning, they’ve found themselves thrust into the middle of a civic crisis as well. For months now, fierce and hyperpartisan debates have raged at school board meetings and in district offices all over the country, focusing on everything from mask mandates to systemic racism and critical race theory, with those involved drawing on wildly divergent sources of information. No doubt, educators have a lot to contend with already, but these angry conflicts highlight the urgent need for our schools to provide civic and media education that prepares young people for responsible citizenship in a sharply divided and media-saturated society.

Black Mississippi senators walk out in protest over critical race theory ban

The Associated Press, NPR

Black lawmakers walked out in protest Friday and withheld their votes as the Mississippi Senate passed a bill that would ban schools from teaching critical race theory. The state superintendent of education has said critical race theory is not being taught in Mississippi schools and legislators have offered no evidence to show it is. Republicans said the theory teaches “victimhood,” while Democrats said the ban could squelch discussion of Mississippi’s racist history. “This bill is not morally right,” Democratic Sen. Barbara Blackmon of Canton, who is Black, said during the debate. The bill’s chief sponsor, Republican Sen. Michael McLendon of Hernando, who is white, said hundreds of constituents have told him they have heard about the theory on national news and they don’t want it taught to their children.

Other News of Note

A Brief But Spectacular take on immigrant justice in America [Video]

Gaby Hernandez, PBS Newshour

Originally from Mexico City herself, Gaby Hernandez understands firsthand the challenges immigrants can face in the United States. As the executive director of the Long Beach Immigrants Rights Coalition in California, she empowers those in her community to push for better resources and protections at both the local and national level. She shares her Brief But Spectacular take on immigrant justice.