7.3.2026

Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

Birthright citizenship is protected. But anxiety lingers for immigrant parents.

Candice Norwood, The 19th

Legal advocates celebrated on Tuesday after the Supreme Court upheld the long-settled understanding of the 14th Amendment’s right to birthright citizenship. But for some immigrant parents of U.S.-born children, the anxiety will linger. This includes Andrew, a 35-year-old father who grew up in South Korea and asked to use a pseudonym to protect his identity.

The Four Fallacies at the Heart of SCOTUS’ Decision on Trans Athletes

George Theoharis, Talking Points Memo

The Supreme Court on Tuesday authorized further discrimination against transgender students. In a split ruling on two cases about whether states could ban trans students from school sports matching their gender identity — Little v. Hecox and West Virginia v. B.P.J. — the court ruled that it’s permissible to exclude trans students from the teams that align with their gender identity.

Fundamentally, both cases were about stopping trans girls from playing school sports. The court decided both cases together under the name West Virginia v. B.P.J. by ruling against both the Title IX and Equal Protection claims made by the trans students. In short, the Court decided that Title IX permits banning trans students by deciding that Title IX only pertains to biological sex, sex assigned at birth. The conservative justices also ruled that the equal protections guaranteed to all in the Constitution are not violated by state trans sports bans.

Power is stripped from state schools superintendents in major education overhaul

Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times

The just-approved state budget strips authority from the elected state superintendent of public instruction, transferring power in January to an appointee of the governor, dramatically changing the oversight and management of a public school system serving more than 6 million students from preschool through 12th grade. The change was pushed through by Gov. Gavin Newsom at the urging of academics and education reformers who have long criticized how the state’s $149-billion public education system is governed. In essence, the change consolidates increased power within the governor’s office — streamlining and largely replacing a diffuse system in which the state superintendent has significant influence but no direct control over budget and policy.

Language, Culture, and Power

Teaching Radical Love in Adult English as a Second Language

Kate Kuczynski, Radical Teacher

In this Dispatch, I weave my narrative of teaching beginning English as a Second Language course for adults with Paulo Freire’s revolutionary humanization and bell hooks’ love ethic to explore what a praxis of radical hope can look like in a space where shared language and communication are not a given.

California school libraries blindsided by ‘catastrophic’ budget cut

Carolyn Jones, CalMatters

California librarians were stunned when a last-minute budget change stripped K-12 schools of a trove of research materials, potentially leaving thousands of students without resources to do reports, projects or homework assignments. Without notice to schools or librarians, the Legislature last week canceled $5.5 million that pays online fees for the Encyclopedia Britannica, New York Times, PBS videos such as Ken Burns documentaries, scientific journals and thousands of other online materials used by students and teachers. The cut goes into effect on July 1, 2027. “We had no idea this was coming,” said Greg Lucas, head of the California State Library, which helps oversee the program for California’s 10,000 public schools. “This will have a huge impact on California students.”

Trump administration sued over DACA renewal delays

Daniella Silva and Nicole Acevedo, NBC News

Immigrant advocacy and legal aid groups sued the Trump administration Thursday, demanding answers about “severe delays” in renewals for Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients that are causing people to lose their jobs, livelihoods and legal immigration status. Under DACA, over half a million qualified undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as young children are allowed to work and study in the country where they were raised without fear of deportation. But thousands of them have had their status lapse because of delayed renewals, which must occur every two years, resulting in the loss of their work permits and leaving them more vulnerable to detention and deportation.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

What Happens When Kids Design Playgrounds? Lava, Mushrooms, Giant Chess.

Winnie Hu, New York Times

Thousands of New York City students have helped remake their drab asphalt schoolyards into vibrant, green spaces that they actually want to play in over the summer. The students acted as junior landscape architects. Through a hands-on design process, they made up wish lists — with wants like a swimming pool, chocolate fountain, merry-go-round and koi pond — and whittled them down to what was realistic. They measured and mapped out their play areas and incorporated feedback from teachers, parents and neighbors, who all voted on the final design.

Majority of Americans support banning social media for kids under 16

Jeffrey Gottfried and Monica Anderson, Pew Research

Nearly six-in-ten U.S. adults support banning anyone under the age of 16 from using social media sites, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. The survey comes as governments around the world weigh new restrictions on teens’ use of social media. About one-in-five adults oppose banning those under 16 from using social media. And roughly a quarter are unsure, according to the survey conducted May 26-June 1, 2026.

Students branch out and climb trees to learn up close how to care for them and why they help cities flourish 

Sharon Jean-Philippe, The Conversation

Students who study forestry will read about trees, but they do not often get the chance to climb up into a tree, feel its branches and see its leaves up close. After observing how many forestry courses gave students limited chances to learn through hands-on experiences, I attended a workshop to gain tree-climbing skills and brought some of these lessons back to my own university’s new urban forestry program. Forestry students at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, now learn about trees in the classroom and on laptops, but also from 50 feet above the ground. In the process, they gain practical tree-climbing skills, including knot-tying, how to set a climbing line and basic techniques that help them go up, down and across trees.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

We need to ask better questions about how and if career pathways are working

Luke Rhine, Hechinger Report

For years, policymakers, educators and employers have debated whether career pathways — programs that connect high school students to postsecondary education and careers — actually work. We’ve framed the conversation as apprenticeship versus college, workforce training versus liberal arts and careers versus academics. While new findings from Rodel and RTI International — in one of the most detailed studies yet examining pathways-participating students’ outcomes after high school — are encouraging, they also expose how little we still understand.

Housing Instability and High School Completion: A Research Brief

Sophie Bandarkar and Peter Hepburn, Educational Researcher

Residential instability is linked to lower educational attainment, but research—particularly quantitative research—often overlooks the causes underlying residential moves and the differential effects of forced and voluntary mobility. Using longitudinal data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we examine how different trajectories of residential mobility shape high school completion among low-income children. We find that both forced and voluntary moves are associated with lower graduation rates. Repeated moves and moves during adolescence are also linked to lower graduation rates, while eviction-specific moves are not uniquely predictive of graduation.

Why Americans Will Get Less Help Paying for College

Rachel Abrams and Ron Lieber, The Daily

As the cost of higher education has soared in recent decades, universities have attracted more scrutiny about the value of a four-year degree. Now, the Trump administration is taking those questions to the next level with a set of policies that scales back the federal government’s student loan program. Ron Lieber, who writes about personal finance for The New York Times, explains what the new changes are, and how they might reshape higher education in America. Guest: Ron Lieber, the Your Money columnist for The New York Times, writes about everything from retirement savings and college tuition to credit reports and taxes.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

Developmental Timing of Educational Opportunities for Children in Low-Income Households

Eric Dearing, Henrik Daae Zachrisson, Andres S. Bustamante, and Deborah Lowe Vandell, Educational Researcher

Extending findings from a 26-year longitudinal study of educational opportunity, we examine whether opportunities are related to the educational attainment and earnings of children from lower-income households (n = 226) as a function of when in a child’s development they occur. We compare the predictive power of opportunities accrued within three key developmental stages—early childhood, middle childhood, or adolescence—with the combined power of opportunities accrued across these stages. Our findings point to the value of educational opportunity in all three stages, particularly for educational attainment.

Trump’s actions signal a move toward institutionalizing people with disabilities, advocates warn

Annie Ma, AP News

For decades, disabled people have fought for their rights to go to school and live alongside peers without disabilities — rights that some fear could be losing ground under the Trump administration. Last month, the Department of Education announced it would shift oversight of special education to the Department of Health and Human Services, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose comments on the limits of disabilities such as autism have drawn sharp rebukes from advocates and lawmakers. Meanwhile, after a White House push to police homelessness, the Department of Justice released guidance that lowered the barrier to institutionalizing any person with a disability.

Inequality Is Shortening American Lives

Marie Gottschalk, Jacobin

The United States is an exceptionally militarized, lethal, and violent country. The growing concentration of economic, political, and military power is draining America of vital resources to sustain healthy and peaceful communities. It is pushing more people to the margins, where a police officer, a prison cell, a tent, a military recruiter, or a deadly dose of fentanyl-laced heroin is waiting for them. Rates of homicide, gun violence, suicide, drug overdoses, incarceration, traffic deaths, poverty, and police use of force are exceptionally high in the United States compared to those of other Western countries. In a historic reversal, US life expectancy has fallen below that of much poorer countries as a growing number of people in this country are at risk of losing their homes, health, livelihoods, and savings.

Democracy and the Public Interest

Patriotism Toward What End? The Enduring Debate in U.S. History Education

Andrew Kordik, The Progressive

Florida Republicans are well-known for their attempts to literally rewrite the past. In 2022, the state legislature passed the so-called Stop W.O.K.E. Act to prohibit classroom discussions that might provoke “guilt, anguish, or psychological distress” among students about the history of their race or gender. Only a year later, Florida’s State Board of Education released new standards for African American History requiring that teachers explain how enslaved people “benefitted” from the skills they developed in bondage. Now, in yet another attempt at historical cleansing, Florida officials have unveiled FACT U.S. History, the state’s conservative alternative to the College Board’s Advanced Placement United States History course. 

Required Bible stories for Texas students challenge separation of church and state [Video]

William Brangham and Jaden Edison, PBS Newshour

Passages from the Bible will now become required reading for the roughly 5.5 million public school students in Texas. That follows the state Board of Education approving a new mandatory reading list on Friday, the first of its kind in the country. The Republican-controlled board also approved a controversial overhaul of the state’s social studies curriculum for elementary and middle school students.

Poll: Americans believe they aren’t being taught enough about democracy 

Stephanie Perry and John Lapinski, NBC News

For Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and other bold-face names struggling to bring about a new nation, an educated and informed citizenry was essential to the success of the American experiment. Nearly 250 years later, Americans largely feel that the country has achieved the ideals set forth by the Founding Fathers despite expressing doubt and pessimism about the future, according to a new national NBC News poll sponsored by More Perfect, a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to advancing democracy. While the survey revealed deep divisions, particularly around class and party politics, Americans found rare consensus in their dissatisfaction with the country’s commitment to teaching how those founding principles apply today. 

Other News of Note

“Do You Understand Your Own Language?”: Black radicals read the Declaration of Independence.

Robin D. G. Kelley, Hammer and Hope

Every so-called Independence Day I made my kids listen to passages from Frederick Douglass’s famous jeremiad “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?” Standing before a gathering organized by the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society on July 5, 1852, Douglass declared the nation’s celebration “a sham … [a] mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy — a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.” I wasn’t alone. I knew of Black families for whom the reading of Douglass’s address was as much a part of the Fourth of July festivities as barbecue and fireworks.

America at 250 [Video]

Adom Getachew, Aziz Rana, David Waldstreicher, Nikhil Pal Singh, Boston Review

When we talk about the American Revolution, we’re often being confronted with this question of, what kind of inheritance is it? And I think these moments always ask us to think about its relationship to the present. Just to give you an idea of what I have in mind, when Obama was elected in 2008, he spoke of the dream of our founders being alive in our time. Obama was very good at sort of knitting together these kinds of emancipatory milestones in American history, whether it was the New Deal, or women’s suffrage, or the civil rights victories of the 1960s, up to and including, say, marriage equality—which, although Obama was ambivalent about at first, passed during his first term. If we think of these all as moments in the expansion of democratic possibility in the United States, up to and including his own election, it’s not that long ago that this sort of redemptive story held. But after more than a decade in which a figure like Donald Trump has dominated American politics, I’m wondering whether any of you would really want to defend that kind of progressive emancipatory story in the current moment.