Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

Los Angeles families fear ICE raids at school graduation ceremonies

Kayla Jimenez, USA TODAY

At Palms Middle School, a public campus on the Westside of Los Angeles, the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration crackdown in nation’s second-largest city loomed large over an otherwise joyous middle school commencement ceremony on June 10. A doleful Principal Arturo Enriquez told Angeleno families that parents and community members were stationed outside of the campus “ready to call me” if United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials showed up. “We are a melting pot of beautiful, incredible people,” Enriquez said to the crowd before wiping a tear from his eye. “This incredible community, all of these students, all of these parents, guardians, friends and family, it is because of you that these young people are here ready to go on to that next step – to that high school life, to represent each of us as an incredible member of society.”

LAUSD condemns immigration raids as one unfolds next to a school

Betty Márquez Rosales and Mallika Seshadri, EdSource

Los Angeles Unified School District’s superintendent and board members condemned the raids and arrests of undocumented immigrants on Monday during a press conference at the district’s headquarters in downtown L.A. Meanwhile, 7 miles away, another raid was unfolding next to a high school, creating new tension and apprehension. Around 8:30 a.m., videos posted on social media platforms showed what appeared to be immigration agents chasing and arresting day laborers by the city’s Home Depot, which sits behind and in sight of Huntington Park High School. Simultaneously, a graduation ceremony for a local elementary school was taking place in the high school’s auditorium. Many people online began speculating that the ceremony might be the target of an immigration raid. It wasn’t, but the fear was real.

How Washington is stressing out American schools

Laura Meckler and Lucy Naland, Washington Post

Public schools have had a tough run — pandemic closures and culture wars, falling test scores and rising absenteeism. Now they’re facing a host of new pressures, this time from state and federal policies including proposals for private-school vouchers, funding cuts, and scrutiny of their approaches to gender and race. Many of the issues are under consideration, either in Congress or at the Supreme Court. Some proposals may be modified, and in some cases, the court may side with the schools’ point of view. Nonetheless, taken together, public education today faces a landscape skeptical of, if not outright hostile to, its policies and priorities. The shifts could put new strains on schools’ budgets and change how they handle controversial topics.

Language, Culture, and Power

30 Regional Mayors speak on LA protests [Video]

Cynthia Gonzalez, AP News

Good morning everyone, my name is Dr. Cynthia Gonzalez.  I am the vice mayor for the city of Cudahy, the SELA region.  Although the raids haven’t happened in our small city, they are happening in southeast Los Angeles pretty heavily, and we stand united.  And I also want to speak to Americans, especially to those who have allowed our community to be the scapegoat of this administration—that made you feel that your American dream hasn’t happened because of us. 

Resources for an Alien Country

Antero Garcia, La Cuenta

Alien |ˈālyən| -adjective: “unfamiliar and disturbing or distasteful.” Folks working with young people right now: how will you talk about the ways this country amplifies cruelty on its people?

When the Trump administration incites violence, bringing in thousands of soldiers that will only heighten harm, how will you talk with children about the alien nation we live in? The willingness of this country to censure the voices of its citizens is a constantly repeating story. (One we need only look at the ongoing suppression of pro-Palestinian voices on school campuses in recent months.)

Tennessee’s Law on School Threats Ensnared Students Who Posed No Risks. Two States Passed Similar Laws.

Aliyya Swaby, ProPublica

New laws in Georgia and New Mexico are requiring harsher punishments for students — or anyone else — who make threats against schools, despite growing evidence that a similar law is ensnaring students who posed no risk to others. ProPublica and WPLN News have documented how a 2024 Tennessee law that made threats of mass violence at school a felony has led to students being arrested based on rumors and for noncredible threats. In one case, a Hamilton County deputy arrested an autistic 13-year-old in August for saying his backpack would blow up, though the teen later said he just wanted to protect the stuffed bunny inside. In the same county almost two months later, a deputy tracked down and arrested an 11-year-old student at a family birthday party.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

A federal law helps homeless students get an education. Trump’s budget could weaken it

Lee V. Gaines, NPR

Megan Mainzer works with children and families experiencing homelessness at Middletown Public Schools in Rhode Island. Last year, the federal government sent $65,000 to her district to help support those students – funding that was made possible by the decades-old McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, a federal law that includes legal protections and a grant program to help schools cover the costs of educating students experiencing homelessness.

In Middletown, Mainzer says those federal dollars helped staff a high school food pantry, and helped pay for transportation, after-school care, internet hotspots, gas and groceries for families. But she may not be able to rely on that funding going forward. That’s because the Trump administration’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2026 aims to consolidate the McKinney-Vento federal grant program with 17 other programs, and dramatically cut funding.

Every child deserves to see themselves represented on their classroom bookshelves and during discussions

Katherine Locke, Hechinger Report

At first glance, the request from parents who don’t want their children to take part in discussions of LGBTQ+-themed picture books in the classroom might not seem so objectionable. Six parents complained that the content of books like “Pride Puppy,” an alphabet book that follows a family as they temporarily lose their dog in a Pride Day celebration, are inappropriate for younger students. They claimed that the Montgomery (Maryland) County Board of Education outside of Washington, D.C., violated their religious rights by failing to provide an opt-out for their children. After gaining the support of some religious groups, they took their views to the Supreme Court in April in the case Mahmoud v. Taylor.

School Support Staff Organize to Protect Immigrant Families

Sundjata Sekou, NEA Today

“A family rushes into a grocery store, each child is to get an item on the shopping list and told to meet at the register in exactly one minute. Their goal is to grab food as quickly as possible—before they risk getting caught in an ICE raid,” says Ivis Castillo.  This is the reality due to President Trump’s immigration policies and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activities in many communities across the United States. Castillo explains that in her role as a bus driver, she has seen a Spanish-speaking student who, after being absent, returned to school withdrawn. When she asked him what was wrong, he said he was scared he wouldn’t see his parents again because of ICE enforcement. This type of pressure, anxiety, and fear amongst students has caused Castillo to create her own protocol that aligns with her district’s policy. If ICE or immigration officials try to enter her school bus, Castillo says: “No one is going to enter, and if they want to talk to me, they’re going to have to talk to me by my…driver’s window. I’m not going to release any students.” 

Access, Assessment, Advancement

What the loss of international students could mean for the U.S. [Audio]

Willis Ryder Arnold and Anthony Brooks, WBUR

These are disconcerting times for international students in America. The fallout of President Trump’s attempt to strip Harvard University of its right to enroll foreign students is being felt across the country and could threaten research science and innovation for years to come. While a federal judge has sided with Harvard for now, the legal battle is threatening international scholarship at the nation’s oldest university and beyond.

Undocumented students ask judge to let them challenge sudden loss of in-state tuition

Eleanor Klibanoff, Texas Tribune

A group of undocumented students on Wednesday asked a judge to let them intervene in a case that revoked their access to in-state tuition, the first step in their ultimate goal of overturning the ruling. The filing comes a week after the U.S. Department of Justice sued Texas over its 24-year-old law that allowed undocumented Texans who had lived in the state for three years and graduated from a Texas high school to qualify for lower tuition rates at public universities. Texas quickly agreed with the Trump administration’s claim that the law was unconstitutional and asked a judge to find the law unenforceable. The quick turnaround — the whole lawsuit was resolved in less than six hours — represents a “contrived legal challenge designed to prevent sufficient notice and robust consideration,” lawyers for these students argued in their motion.

Anti-DEI group out with new NC video. They posed as ‘students in distress,’ WCU says

Korie Dean, The News and Observer

A new undercover video from an activist media organization purports to show a former administrator at Western Carolina University “pushing” diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, despite the UNC System repealing DEI programs last year. But the university is standing by its record regarding compliance with state and federal rules on DEI. And, in initial comments about the matter sent to The News & Observer, the university also said that the undercover interviewers did not present themselves to the administrator truthfully — instead posing as “students in distress” who asked “leading questions.”

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

Amid Trump-Newsom fight, funding threat sends chill through California schools

Lexi Lonas Cochran, The Hill

Immigration protests in Los Angeles and President Trump’s military response are dominating the news cycle, but it’s Trump’s threat to decimate California’s federal funding that has education experts worried.  Golden State schools would be particularly harmed by such a move, advocates say, and in many places, state and local leaders could struggle to make up the difference. 

Education Amid Trump-Newsom fight, funding threat sends chill through California schools

Immigration protests in Los Angeles and President Trump’s military response are dominating the news cycle, but it’s Trump’s threat to decimate California’s federal funding that has education experts worried.  

Trumpian “Common Sense” and the History of IQ Tests

Pepper Stetler, Los Angeles Review of Books

At a press conference on January 30, 2025, the morning after a tragic midair collision in Washington, DC, between a military helicopter and an American Airlines plane, President Donald Trump rationalized the crash by invoking the Federal Aviation Administration’s attempts to diversify its workforce. “The FAA is actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems, and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website.” Citing no evidence that diversity programs had anything to do with the accident, which killed 67 people, his point—presumably—was to show that disability and competence do not mix. Those unable to discern the categorical difference between the two lacked what he labeled as “common sense.”

School Segregation Is On The Rise — And Trump Is Likely To Make It Worse

Nathalie Baptiste, Huffington Post

When the Trump administration announced in April that it was dismissing the Department of Justice’s decades-long effort to desegregate the Plaquemines Parish School District in Louisiana, the state’s Republicans rejoiced. “For years, federal judges have imposed unnecessary requirements that have cost our schools and our children tens of millions of dollars,” Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry said in a press release. “Educational decisions should be made at the most local level and not by unelected, activist federal judges.”

Democracy and the Public Interest

Teaching Dobbs Where Divisive Concepts and Abortion Are Restricted: Teacher Learning, Controversial Issues, and Mixed-Reality Technology

Rebecca Geller, Democracy and Education

Though scholarship has long championed the positive impacts of classroom considerations of controversial or difficult issues, teachers have often hesitated to broach divisive topics for numerous reasons, including legislation purporting to limit controversy in classrooms and, often, that they had limited or no preparation to teach controversies, especially not politically contentious sociopolitical contexts. I worked with a research team to use a mixed-reality teaching simulation of a controversial issue discussion as a low-stakes learning context for developing skills for collective pedagogical reasoning. The teaching simulation centered on Dobbs v. Jackson, the 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and eliminated a constitutional right to abortion. This article presents a qualitative case study of one participating preservice social studies teacher, Cristina. In it, I trace Cristina’s participation in my class and the teaching simulation through her decisions to teach about abortion in her middle school student teaching placement the following semester. Findings suggest that the teaching simulation played an important role in her professional development and learning, facilitating her efforts to discuss abortion in a state with bans on abortion and teaching divisive concepts.

Do the Unexpected! Why Deweyan Educators Should Be Pluralists about Political Tactics and Strategies

Joshua Forstenzer, Educational Theory

How should Deweyan educators teach their students about engaging in efforts to bring about social change in a political context marked by polarization, power differentials, and oppression? In this article, Joshua Forstenzer argues that Deweyan educators must encourage their students to engage in pluralistic and creative experiments rather than teach a pre-set model for social change. To this end, he engages with two critiques: one formulated by Lee Benson, Ira Harkavy, and John Puckett according to which Dewey’s pedagogic vision failed to be sufficiently practically minded; the other formulated by Aaron Schutz — drawing on Saul Alinsky’s theory of community organizing — according to which Deweyan educators fail to be meaningfully politically minded, because their democratic faith blinds them to the role of conflict in real politics. In response, this article argues that the Deweyan outlook is closer to Alinsky’s than Schutz assumes and that it demands that we Deweyan educators introduce our students to a rich diversity of voices and traditions that address the concrete conditions of social change to provide our students with a fullness of civic experiences, as well as a depth of political and social ideas to challenge the status quo.

Can organising save American democracy with Marshall Ganz [Audio]

Hannah Peaker, New Economics Foundation

During the presidential campaign, the Democratic Party warned that American democracy was under attack from Trump. Since the start of Trump two-point‑0, his administration has deported pro-Palestine student protestors. He has barred Oval Office access to journalists who have used the phrase ​“Gulf of Mexico” rather than ​“Gulf of America”. And he has called for a judge blocking his orders to be impeached. With such anti-democratic forces ensconced in the White House, have US progressives failed? Have the far-right thrived because they are simply better at organising? And how can Americans come together to prevent the stripping away of their most basic rights? Hannah Peaker is joined by Marshall Ganz, legendary organiser, lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School, and author of People, Power, Change: Organising for Democracy Renewal.

Other News of Note

“No Kings”: 1,800+ Rallies Planned as Trump Threatens “Very Heavy Force” on Army Parade Protesters

Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!

A nationwide “No Kings” movement plans to hold over 1,800 anti-Trump rallies across the United States on June 14, the same day as President Trump’s military parade in Washington, D.C., as he celebrates his 79th birthday. Organizers are protesting President Trump’s mass deportations, militarized crackdown against protesters, defiance of court orders, and attacks on civil rights. “We’re going to show him on June 14 that real power lies in the people,” says Leah Greenberg⁠, co-founder and co-executive director of ⁠Indivisible. Tanks and other armored vehicles are being transported to Washington, D.C., for the parade, which Marine Corps veteran JoJo Sweatt calls an “egregious overspend.” President Trump threatened heavy force would be used on anyone who protests at the parade in D.C.