Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

Trump administration holds back nearly $7 billion in K-12 funds, sparking outcry from schools

Kalyn Belsha, Chalkbeat

Schools are scrambling to plan for what could become a massive budget hole after the Trump administration said Monday it would not release nearly $7 billion in K-12 education funds that had been expected to go out July 1. The withheld funds, which were approved by Congress earlier this year, include all $890 million meant to help English learners develop their language skills and $375 million to provide academic support to the children of migrant farmworkers, according to an email that was sent to states by the U.S. Department of Education and obtained by Education Week. The money being held back also includes $2.2 billion in Title II funds that support teacher training, $1.4 billion for before- and after-school programs, and $1.3 billion in funding for academic enrichment programs, such as STEM and college and career counseling.

U.S. Supreme Court decision worries LGBTQ+ advocates, emboldens conservatives

Thomas Peele and Diana Lambert, Ed Source

California school leaders will face a new reality when students return next month following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Friday that parents have a constitutional right to remove their children from classes that conflict with their religious beliefs. The court’s 6-3 decision in Mahmoud v. Taylor, written by Justice Samuel Alito, gives parents wide latitude in what they can claim conflicts with their religion. It goes far beyond books about gay marriage and gender identity at the heart of the case, which grew out of a dispute involving a Maryland school district, said Edwin Chemerinsky, the dean of UC Berkeley’s Law School, in an interview Monday. Conservative parental activists vow to move quickly to take advantage of the decision. In a statement, Jonathan Keller, the president of the California Family Council, called the majority decision “a direct rebuke to the kind of LGBTQ-centered curriculum that has flooded California public schools in recent years. This is our Red Sea moment. God just parted the legal waters. Now it’s up to parents to walk through.”

Your Brain on ChatGPT

Nataliya Kosmyna, MIT Media Lab

With today’s wide adoption of LLM products like ChatGPT from OpenAI, humans and businesses engage and use LLMs on a daily basis. Like any other tool, it carries its own set of advantages and limitations. This study focuses on finding out the cognitive cost of using an LLM in the educational context of writing an essay. We assigned participants to three groups: LLM group, Search Engine group, and Brain-only group, where each participant used a designated tool (or no tool in the latter) to write an essay. We conducted 3 sessions with the same group assignment for each participant. In the 4th session we asked LLM group participants to use no tools (we refer to them as LLM-to-Brain), and the Brain-only group participants were asked to use LLM (Brain-to-LLM). We recruited a total of 54 participants for Sessions 1, 2, 3, and 18 participants among them completed session 4. We used electroencephalography to record participants’ brain activity in order to assess their cognitive engagement and cognitive load, and to gain a deeper understanding of neural activations during the essay writing task. We performed NLP analysis, and we interviewed each participant after each session. We performed scoring with the help from the human teachers and an AI judge (a specially built AI agent).

Language, Culture, and Power

‘I don’t want any light shining on our district’: Schools serving undocumented kids go underground

Jo Napolitano, The 19th

Schools and other organizations serving undocumented students are taking their activities underground, fearful of revealing all they do to help newcomers navigate life in America — lest they be targeted and shuttered by the Trump administration. Some have asked staff to use secure messaging systems like Signal instead of text and email to keep sensitive conversations from public reach. Others say such discussions should happen only over the phone. A few are reconsidering the distribution of once-standard know-your-rights cards, afraid they could overstep some unclear federal boundary about immigration enforcement, while others are scrubbing the names and locations of their sites from the internet.

About 1 in 4 U.S. adults worry they or someone close to them could be deported

Luis Noe-Bustamante, Carolyne Im, and Mark Hugo Lopez, Pew Research

About a quarter of U.S. adults (23%) say they worry a lot or some that they or someone close to them could be deported, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted earlier this month. That’s up slightly from 19% in March. This comes as the Trump administration increases immigration arrests and deportations. Immigrants are more likely than U.S.-born adults to worry about deportations impacting them, their family or close friends. About four-in-ten immigrants (43%) say they worry a lot or some, up from 33% in March.

Amid ICE raids and student pressure, LAUSD allocates $5 million for Dream Centers

Alejandra Molina, Boyle Heights Beat

In a move driven by student activism, the Los Angeles Unified board earmarked $5 million in its $18.8 billion budget to help fund support centers for undocumented students in district schools. 

This decision comes months after students called on the district to implement these centers across all LAUSD campuses — at walkouts and at board meetings — and follows reporting by Boyle Heights Beat on how students helped shape these demands through organizing efforts on their campuses. Commonly known as Dream Centers, these spaces are now being referred to as Student and Family Centers. Students say these centers are about visibility, connection and safety, and are necessary spaces after President Donald Trump rolled back policies that protected sensitive places like schools and churches from immigration enforcement.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

Homeless student counts in California are up. Some say that’s a good thing

Carolyn Jones, Cal Matters

In Kern County, the first rule in counting homeless students is not saying “homeless.” Instead, school staff use phrases like “struggling with stable housing” or “families in transition.” The approach seems to have worked: More families are sharing their housing status with their children’s schools, which means more students are getting services. “There’s a lot of stigma attached to the word ‘homeless,’” said Curt Williams, director of homeless and foster youth services for the Kern County Office of Education. “When you remove that word, it all changes.”

Largely as a result of better identification methods, Kern County saw its homeless student population jump 10% last year, to 7,200. Those students received transportation to and from school, free school supplies, tutoring and other services intended to help them stay in school. For the purposes of this data, the definition of homelessness is broader than the state’s point in time count.

Senate Republicans just voted to dismantle America’s only climate plan

Zoya Teirstein, The Grist

After three days of nonstop negotiations on Capitol Hill, the Senate voted 51-50 on Tuesday to pass a domestic policy bill that accomplishes much of President Donald Trump’s first-year agenda. Vice President J.D. Vance cast the tie-breaking vote. Three Republicans — Rand Paul from Kentucky, Thom Tillis from North Carolina, and Susan Collins from Maine — voted against the package, while Democrats were united in opposition. If approved by the House of Representatives and signed by Trump, the legislation will make the deepest cuts to America’s social safety net in decades and unravel the country’s only existing federal plan to diminish the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change.

Hawaii unveils emissions reduction plan in response to youth lawsuit

Mike Lee, E&E News by Politico

Hawaii plans to build new electric vehicle chargers — as well as invest in public transit, bike lanes and sidewalks — as part of a settlement in a landmark youth climate lawsuit that requires the state to slash its greenhouse gas emissions. The Hawaii Department of Transportation agreed to publish — and carry out — an emissions reduction plan last year, when the state opted to settle the youth lawsuit. The first version of the plan also lays out pollution-cutting strategies for aviation and marine traffic. The plan doesn’t include specifics on the cost of the new chargers and other infrastructure. The state transportation department said those details would be included in future plans.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

The meritocracy trap: Early childhood education policies promote individual achievement far more than social cohesion

Katarzyna Bobrowicz, Pablo Gracia, Ziwen Teuber, and Samuel Greiff, PLOS One

Governments worldwide have reformed early childhood education (ECE) to equip young people with competitive skills for an increasingly specialized workforce. These reforms have coincided with a widespread acceptance of meritocratic beliefs holding that talent and effort, rather than uncontrollable factors (e.g., luck, social context), determine individuals’ lifetime success and achievement. This study examines whether recent ECE reforms may have promoted an economic meritocratic mindset that favors skills linked to individual competition for future achievement. Data came from a total of 92 documents published between 1999 and 2023, including ECE advisory reports from international organizations and government-endorsed ECE curricula from 53 countries across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania. 

Inside One of the Largest Student Worker Strikes Ever

Andrew Berka, The Nation

We will leave after we share our testimony,” said Mae Bracelin through a megaphone, cutting off the dean of students at the podium. “I have seen the discrimination that my coworkers face. I have seen that my coworkers are unable to pay their rent at the end of the month, are unable to eat,” she continued, as the staff and faculty seated around the room squirmed. “I have seen the sexual assault that they face from coworkers, that they face from students. This cannot be allowed to continue.” Lining the walls of the room, dozens of her comrades cheered. This was April 29, the second day of the University of Oregon Student Workers’ historic strike. Eight days later, they would win the first union contract in the nation covering every undergraduate student worker at a public university.

Racial Truth-Telling in Dual Enrollment: Exploring Organizational Constraints and Possibilities in the Anti-CRT Era

Julia C. Duncheon, Suneal Kolluri, and Dustin Hornbeck, AERA Open

K–12 teachers have become targets of political censorship in many states, with anti-CRT laws designed to eliminate racial truth-telling, or curricular content related to race and racism. Higher education has been targeted as well, most recently with anti-DEI initiatives, but college professors generally retain more curricular autonomy than their high school counterparts. As such, dual enrollment (DE)—college coursework delivered to high school students through a partnering postsecondary institution—may provide an avenue for students to learn about race and racism. Through the lens of racialized organizations, this study uses case study methodology to explore how a community college in Texas constrains or enables racial truth-telling in its DE courses. The findings show how the college’s ostensibly race-neutral response to K–12 curricular censorship placed the burden to defend racial truth-telling on individual DE faculty, with implications for their ability to do it. The paper closes with recommendations for policy and practice.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

Robert Reich on how inequality empowers demagogues [Video, 1994/2025]

Robert Reich, Democracy Now!

My friends, we are on the way to becoming a two-tiered society, composed of a few winners, and a larger group of Americans left behind—whose anger and whose disillusionment is easily manipulated.  Once unbottled, mass resentment can poison the very fabric of society, the moral integrity of society, replacing ambition with envy, replacing tolerance with hate.   

As U.S. retreats, the world fights an uphill battle against inequality

Ishaan Tharoor, Washington Post

While about 50 world leaders attended an international summit in Spain on alleviating global poverty, President Donald Trump had other priorities. On Tuesday, he opened a new migrant detention center surrounded by swamp in the Everglades that he dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.” His Republican allies in the Senate narrowly pushed through major legislation that would devote many more billions of dollars to fund immigration enforcement and Trump’s mass deportation campaign. The bill would also gut various social spending programs, pushing about 17 million Americans off health care, while extending significant tax relief to the ultrarich.

School participation in CEP keeps rising. ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ could change that.

Anna Merod, K-12 Dive

Republican-led proposals to cut SNAP are pending in Congress as lawmakers work to reach agreement on the controversial “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” as soon as this week. SNAP, meanwhile, is a metric used to streamline eligibility for CEP, the federal program that helps high poverty schools and districts provide free school meals to every student. Senators on Monday were debating and considering amendments to their bill after the House narrowly passed its own version in May. The House bill would reduce federal spending for SNAP by $287 billion, according to recent estimates from the Congressional Budget Office. Under Senate Republicans’ plan, which suggests similar reductions to SNAP, “many children would see food assistance to their families cut substantially or terminated,” said the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in June.

Democracy and the Public Interest

Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ Will Devastate Public Schools. America’s Kids Will Pay the Price

Jessica Alcantara and Laura Petty, Time Magazine

This week, Republican lawmakers are attempting to pass a budget reconciliation bill that pays for unprecedented handouts to the wealthiest Americans on the backs of cuts to programs that benefit most people. Hidden in this budget package before the House is a national private school voucher program funded through tax breaks for the wealthy that threatens to dismantle our system of public schools. According to Senator Ted Cruz, school vouchers are “the Civil Rights Issue of the 21st century.” The Texas Republican argues that vouchers are key to providing educational opportunities for young people. On the contrary, expanding vouchers and eliminating public education will actively harm young people—especially Black, Latino, and Indigenous students.

Keep Them On The Shelf

Eleanor J. Bader, The Progressive

Several years ago, Ira Wells, an associate professor of literature at Victoria College at the University of Toronto, was alarmed to hear the principal of his children’s elementary school say that she wished the school’s library “could get rid of all the old books.” Although he understood that she spoke from a sincere and well-intentioned desire to empty the shelves of homophobic, racist, sexist, and Eurocentric content—all of which can have a negative impact on children’s developing sense of identity and emotional well-being—he found the statement offensive to democratic values. At the same time, he was equally appalled by the efforts of Moms for Liberty, No Left Turn in Education, and other rightwing groups throughout the United States and Canada to restrict materials they believe “indoctrinate” children to hate Western values.

Black youth believe in their ability to make change, but our schools aren’t helping them

Rashid Duroseau and Andrew Wilkes, Hechinger Report

When Black youth appear in public conversations about civics, it’s usually in the context of disparities: whether it’s lower scores on the NAEP Civics assessment, underfunded schools or limited access to high-quality civic education. These are real, urgent issues. But they are only half the story. Black youth are frequently among the most civically engaged young people in the country, yet they are too often absent from conversations about civic excellence.

While it is true that only about 10 percent of Black eighth graders scored at or above proficiency on the last NAEP Civics assessment, it isn’t because they lack civic values or leadership potential.

Other News of Note

Fear of immigration raids forces cancellation of several July festivities in Los Angeles

Karen Garcia, Los Angeles Times

Several communities in Los Angeles County have called off or postponed their previously scheduled Independence Day and July events, citing resident safety amid ongoing immigration enforcement raids. The El Sereno Bicentennial Committee was one of the first organizations to announce the cancellation of its 66th Independence Day Parade in a June 20 statement on Facebook. “We stand with our community. The safety of our participants, spectators and volunteers is always at the forefront,” according to the post.

July Fourth and early Black Americans: It’s complicated

Susan Kelley and Derrick Spires, Cornel Chronicle

On July 15, 1776, the signing of the Declaration of Independence was front-page news in the New-York Gazette and Weekly Mercury. The newspaper ran the text in full and reported the declaration had been read to the Continental Army’s New York regiment, led by Gen. George Washington. One offered a reward for a 21-year-old Black man named Prince, who had escaped his enslavers and was “supposed to have gone towards Rye [New York] or entered the Army.” The other featured two brothers, Nathanial and Jacob, who had escaped from separate enslavers near Long Island, New York.

People’s History of Fourth of July

Zinn Education Project

A collection of more than a dozen people’s history stories from July 4th beyond 1776. The stories include July 4th anniversaries such as when slavery was abolished in New York (1827), Frederick Douglass’s speech “The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro” (1852), the Reconstruction era attack on a Black militia that led to the Hamburg Massacre (1876), protest of segregation at an amusement park in Baltimore (1963), and more.