Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

Supreme Court clears the way for Trump administration to massively reduce the size of the Department of Education

Amy Howe, SCOTUS Blog

The Supreme Court on Monday granted the Trump administration’s request to temporarily pause an order by a federal judge in Massachusetts that would require the Department of Education to reinstate nearly 1,400 employees who were fired earlier this year as part of the department’s efforts to reduce the size of its workforce. In a brief unsigned ruling, the justices blocked the order issued in May by U.S. District Judge Myong Joun, who had concluded that the Trump administration’s “true intention is to effectively dismantle the Department” even though in his view it lacked the power to do so. Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented, in a 19-page opinion that was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Sotomayor called the court’s decision “indefensible,” writing that it “hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out. The majority,” she said, “is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naïve, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave.”

Trump paused funding for after-school programs. States are suing.

Zachary Schermele, USA TODAY

A coalition of states is suing the Trump administration to restore billions of dollars in federal education funding, including money for after-school and summer learning programs. The group of Democratic attorneys general, representing 24 states and the District of Columbia, filed the lawsuit on July 14 in a federal court in Rhode Island. In the complaint, the top lawyers in several blue states say the funding pause is unconstitutional and ask the court to restore the money in their states immediately. Since the U.S. Department of Education’s decision two weeks ago to withhold the funds – which have been available to schools annually without interruption for decades – many districts nationwide have been mired in financial uncertainty.

Elevating the Few: What JD Vance excludes from the history of the Civil War and immigration.

Elizabeth R. Varon, History News Network

“I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don’t belong.” So JD Vance declared earlier this month at the Claremont Institute, where he was accepting an award for “statesmanship.” In the speech, Vance attacked a creedal definition of citizenship that would include immigrants who believed in the idea of America, and exclude native-born people labeled as far-right extremists who are told “they don’t belong in America” unless they agree with what Vance described as “progressive liberal values.” Since he partnered with Donald Trump, Vance has emerged as one of the main spokespeople for the effort to redefine national belonging around heritage rather than creed. In doing, he is tapping a corrosive tradition of nativism that runs through much of American history.

Language, Culture, and Power

‘I already want to cry.’ Undocumented parents prepare for the unthinkable: giving up their kids

Jenny Gold, Los Angeles Times

Sonia’s son has been anxious lately, crying and asking why their neighbor had been picking him up from preschool instead of his mom. She doesn’t know what to tell him. At just 4 years old, he’s too young to understand the truth. Sonia has lived in the U.S. without legal status for 25 years, harvesting squash, cilantro and tomatoes in the fields of Riverside County. But she can no longer risk leaving her house to pick up her child for fear of being detained or deported by federal agents. She has begun preparing for something far worse than a missed pickup — the possibility that their separation could become permanent.

Head Start advocates pursue legal challenge to new Trump policy barring undocumented children

Ann Schimke, Chalkbeat

Several state Head Start associations and parent groups are fighting a Trump administration effort to bar undocumented children from the federally funded Head Start program. The groups, which are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, asked a federal district court on Tuesday to amend an April lawsuit they filed against the Trump administration over Head Start changes. They want to add a challenge to the government’s July 14 directive calling for the exclusion of undocumented children from the program. Tuesday’s motion marks the second time the plaintiffs have sought to update their lawsuit in an effort to keep up with what they see as a series of abrupt and harmful changes that are chipping away at the 60-year-old program.

Emotional day as mural recalling an end to corporal punishment in schools is unveiled

Aonghus McDonagh, Roscommon Herald

The recent unveiling of a mural at the former De La Salle Brothers school in Ballaghaderreen was an emotional day for past students and for former Minister for Education John Boland’s family. The mural, located on the gable wall of the former school, now the local Family Resource Centre, commemorates the abolition of corporal punishment in 1982 under Minister Boland, and is the first of its kind in the country. The mural was unveiled by Mr Boland’s daughter, Deputy Grace Boland. One of those past students was Cllr Micheál Frain who spoke of the “ongoing torture camp” that he and many others experienced during their education from the age of four before progressing to secondary school.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

A New Era of Hunger Has Begun

Tracy Kidder, New York Times

Parts of Easthampton, an old mill town in western Massachusetts, look like relics of industrial New England — the old workers’ rowhouses, for instance. In other parts, it seems like a place in renaissance, with converted factory buildings spruced up and reinhabited by art galleries, restaurants, shops. Pedestrians fill the sidewalks on Friday and Saturday nights, especially during monthly art walk evenings. But on Monday mornings, when the downtown feels shuttered, another sort of crowd, one in search of food, not art and entertainment, gathers on a side street outside a 19th-century brick building. A sign out front identifies it as the Easthampton Community Center and Food Pantry.

Exploring the Role of Care in the Teaching Aspirations of Latina Pre-Service Teachers

Claudia Diera, Urban Review

In this qualitative study, I center two pre-service Latina teachers who attend a Hispanic-serving institution in a major urban city in the Southwest to illustrate their aspirations to become teachers in their communities. Using “care” as a conceptual lens, I discuss that, besides merely caring about children, these two women were inspired to become teachers because of the care they received from their own teacher(s) thus, in their own future classrooms, they aim to enact culturally affirming and relevant care with students and families. This is an important experience that Latinas bring with them into teacher education and their future classrooms because they understand from lived experiences the contextual factors that contribute to student learning and the need for more critical forms of caring in our urban schools. However, while well-intentioned, this goal of Latina pre-service teachers may perpetuate expectations which often place further taxation and increased roles for them as teachers. Given this implication specific to Latina pre-service teachers, preparation to prevent excessive emotional labor is much-needed in the teacher education field for their persistence.

The Guardian view on the children of Gaza: when 17,000 die, it’s more than a mistake

The Guardian

On Sunday, an Israeli strike killed six Palestinian children – and four adults – as they queued for water in a refugee camp. The deaths of children may be the most terrible part of any war. It is not only the suffering of the innocent and powerless, and the unimaginable pain of surviving parents – as dreadful as those are – but the knowledge of lives ended when they had barely begun, of futures that should have stretched long into the distance severed in an instant. As shocking as Sunday’s deaths were, they are commonplace in Gaza: a classroom-worth of children have been killed each day since the war began.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

America’s child care system relies on immigrants. Without them, it could collapse

Jackie Mader, Source New Mexico

Maggi’s home in a suburban neighborhood here is a haven for local families. It’s a place where after just a few weeks in Maggi’s family-run child care program this spring, one preschooler started calling Maggi “mama” and Maggi’s husband “papa.” Children who have graduated from Maggi’s program still beg their parents to take them to her home instead of school. Over the past few months, fewer families are showing up for care: Immigration enforcement has ramped up and immigration policies have rapidly changed. Both Maggi and the families who rely on her — some of whom are immigrants — no longer feel safe.

Gutting the Student Loan Program

Robert Kuttner, The American Prospect

The Supreme Court’s unexplained ruling allowing the Trump administration to strangle the Education Department has gotten the headlines, but more insidious are the provisions in the budget bill undermining the student loan program. This hasn’t gotten nearly enough attention.

The bill, signed July 4, reduces and caps the total amount that students and parents can borrow. It raises interest costs and shuts down or weakens programs that allow loan forgiveness based on income or public service employment. And for new student loans, it only offers two repayment plans, both of which are far more expensive than the current options. Some of this takes effect as late as 2028; other provisions are in force almost immediately. Why is the administration doing this? Think of it as a Trump trifecta. The move saves the government some money, which helps pay for Trump’s billionaire tax cuts.

Leveraging Research and Demanding Proof In Response To Legislative Attacks on DEI in U.S. Higher Education

Shaun Harper, AERA Open

More than 50 years of research confirms the value that diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies, programs, and professional roles add to college and university campuses. Despite this, governors, state legislators, federal policymakers, and a U.S. President have signed executive orders, issued “Dear Colleague” letters, and enacted policies in recent years that have defunded or eliminated DEI initiatives. Many DEI professionals have lost their jobs; grants to scholars studying DEI-related topics have been paused and canceled. This article is a call for greater reliance on and appreciation for empirical evidence about the educational benefits of DEI in higher education. It also places the burden of proof on DEI opponents who make enormously consequential, unsubstantiated claims. Lastly, five common myths and exaggerations about DEI are juxtaposed with evidence from various trustworthy sources.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

As Trump Moves to Dismantle the Department of Education, We Need a Constitutional Amendment

Noliwe Rooks, Time Magazine

In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court gave the Trump Administration a green light to do what it has long promised: gut the Department of Education from the inside out. The ruling upheld the administration’s authority to fire department staff en masse, paving the way for a de facto dismantling of an agency responsible for enforcing civil rights law, allocating billions in federal education funding, and ensuring that when states fail poor children, someone still shows up. This isn’t a bureaucratic reshuffling. It’s a deliberate unraveling of the federal government’s role in public education—an already weakened, often reluctant, commitment to the idea that education is a national responsibility, not just a local budget line.

Wealth, Race, and Higher Education: Behind the Making of IHEP’s Newest Research Series

Marián Vargas and Lauren Bell, IHEP

Wealth disparities by race and ethnicity are a defining feature of the economic landscape of the United States. The median wealth of White households is nine times larger than the median wealth of Black households, five times larger than the median wealth of Hispanic households, and three times larger than the wealth of multiracial households. These differences significantly shape students’ college experiences and their opportunities after graduation. Yet the wealth differences are often hidden in higher education data. Traditional metrics like income provide a snapshot, but do not fully capture the assets (or debts) students and families bring with them to college. As a result, real affordability challenges often go unmeasured and unaddressed. To shed light on these issues, IHEP Senior Research Analyst Marián Vargas introduces our new series, Wealth, Race, and Higher Education. Using federal survey data, the first brief explores how intergenerational wealth transfers affect students’ ability to meet basic needs while enrolled. 

Toward Clarifying Mechanisms of Racism as Fundamental Causes of Educational Inequality

David Enrique Rangel and Carson Byrd, Educational Researcher

This article proposes adopting fundamental cause theory (FCT) in education research. FCT’s emergence and application in medical sociology can serve as an example of integrating relational theories of inequality with causal designs to propose more effective interventions to address racialized educational disparities. Additionally, despite the many contributions from the expanding scholarship in critical quantitative and computational methods, limited work has clarified and operationalized the causal mechanisms of racism in education. We contend that FCT can sharpen and crystalize this synthesis between critical theoretical frameworks and quantitative methodologies through its premise that racism is a fundamental cause of educational inequality, defining and testing for fundamental causal relations, and focusing on flexible resources that reinforce the durability of racialized educational disparities.

Democracy and the Public Interest

Immigrant-Origin Youth and the 2024 U.S. Election

M. Alejandra Arce, UCLA Youth Impact Study

Immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under 18) comprised 27% of the U.S. population in 2023. In the previous year, more than 17 million children in the U.S. lived with at least one immigrant parent. Most of these children are born in the U.S. and are thus guaranteed constitutional birthright citizenship with all its rights and privileges, including the right to vote in U.S. elections. Around 13% are born outside of the U.S. and may not have access to the same rights and privileges unless or until they are afforded a pathway to citizenship. Whether or not they are guaranteed these rights, immigrant-origin youth are civically active in many ways and both affect and are affected by U.S. democratic processes. Our team conducted a study to understand young people’s beliefs, feelings, and behaviors surrounding the 2024 U.S. election. This brief focuses on a subsample of participants who have atleast one parent born outside of the U.S. 

How a ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ provision could accelerate a shift toward private education [Video]

Stephanie Sy and Kyle Midura, PBS Newshour

President Trump is making some big and controversial changes to the future of public education.

The Supreme Court allowed the administration to continue today with a major dismantling of the Department of Education. There’s also an important change included in the president’s new tax and spending law that he signed on July 4. It would create what many say is essentially a new national school voucher program. Stephanie Sy has the details.

The latest billionaire attacks on public education and how to fight them

Frank Lara, Liberation

From the dismantling of the Department of Education to the vilification of DEI and ethnic studies, the Trump administration has escalated its billionaire agenda through attacks on public education. The latest of these attacks comes in the form of a federal voucher program, the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA), strategically placed in Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill.” ECCA will use the federal tax code to create a national school voucher program. Billionaires claim that public schools are failing, and exploit anxieties about their outcry of crisis to push privatization efforts like vouchers. But the only real way to improve public schools is through fully funding them, not through undercutting the very premise of public education by encouraging private school flight. 

Other News of Note

Sacramento’s James A. Fisher, historian of Black California, dies at 82 

Cathie Anderson, Sacramento Bee

James Adolphus Fisher, pioneering historian of Black California, educator, activist and beloved father and grandfather, died at his Sacramento home on June 20, following what his family described as a mild cardiac arrest. He was 82. Born in Wharton, Texas, on Oct. 13, 1942, Fisher was part of the Great Migration westward that transformed countless African American lives. His mother, Allie Hallie Fisher, driven by a vision for a better future, led the family to California, first settling in Los Angeles and eventually Stockton, where she believed “opportunity was wide open.” TOP VIDEOS The video player is currently playing an ad. This family journey deeply shaped Fisher’s lifelong scholarly drive to chronicle the struggles and the triumphs of Black communities in the American West. Historian Quintard Taylor, a professor emeritus at Seattle’s University of Washington, said Fisher “was one of first historians to research and write the history of Black California.”