Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

Moms for Liberty rises as power player in GOP politics after attacking schools over gender, race

Ali Swenson, AP News

To its members, it’s a grassroots army of “joyful warriors” who “don’t co-parent with the government.” To anti-hate researchers, it’s a well-connected extremist group that attacks inclusion in schools. And to Republicans vying for the presidency, it has become a potential key partner in the fight for the 2024 nomination. Moms for Liberty didn’t exist during the last presidential campaign, but the Florida-based nonprofit that champions “parental rights” in education has rapidly become a major player for 2024, boosted in part by GOP operatives, politicians and donors. The group that has been at the forefront of the conservative movement targeting books that reference race and gender identity and electing right-wing candidates to local school boards nationwide is hosting one of the next major gatherings for Republican presidential primary contenders. At least four are listed as speakers at the Moms for Liberty annual summit in Philadelphia later this month.

‘I don’t want to talk to the gay one’: LGBTQ teachers say they are fighting erasure in their own classrooms

Scottie Andrew, CNN

Daffne Cruz has worked at public elementary, middle and high schools in Polk County, Florida, for 10 years. And for all 10 years, she’s never made an effort to downplay or hide her queerness.

A high school assistant principal, Cruz has faced criticism from other school administrators in the county for being an out gay educator. She wears bowties and suspenders to work and proudly displays photos of her wife and their daughter around her office. Some have suggested she conceal her queerness for the sake of her career; she said one county official misgendered her in a forum of her colleagues. But it wasn’t until this school year that a parent came into her school’s office and said, referring to Cruz, “I don’t want to talk to the gay one.”

Schools in poorer neighborhoods struggle to keep teachers. How offering them more money and power might help

Joe Hong, Cal Matters

Teachers don’t get into their profession for money or power, but a little more of both might help keep them at high-poverty schools, where students are more likely to fall behind grade level and less likely to graduate from high school or attend college. Across California and the nation, many of these schools struggle to retain teachers, leaving them with fewer experienced educators. Those who stay often battle the headwinds of poverty: hunger, homelessness and mental health challenges. After only a few years, many end up leaving for easier teaching jobs in more affluent communities.

Language, Culture, and Power

Study: Most textbooks don’t include key events in U.S. history that involve Latinos [AUDIO]

Morning Edition, NPR

NPR’s A Martinez speaks with Viviana López Green, senior director of the racial equity initiative at UnidosUS, about the lack of Latino history in high school textbooks.

6 ways schools are encouraging students to lead the way

Elena Ferrarin, K-12 Dive

The student government association at East Feliciana High School in Jackson, Louisiana, held an online poll in December asking students whether they felt comfortable speaking up in class. They found the majority did not, which led the school to hold a teacher session on engaging students. Senior Antoine Johnson, the East Feliciana student government association’s president, said he’s seen tangible results from that.Teachers “are more inclusive. When we get the answer wrong, they push us to try again. If they have disruptive students, they try to take more steps to get to their level,” Johnson said.

God, guns and gay rights: Nashville’s Youth Poet Laureate is asking lawmakers for change [Audio]

Mariana Bacallao, WPLN

During this year’s State of Metro Address, Nashville’s Youth Poet Laureate called on lawmakers to do better for Tennessee’s children. The 16-year-old poet sat down with WPLN News to talk about gun reform, religion and LGBTQ rights.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

Community schools model should lift a heavy burden off teachers. Will it last?

Lasherica Thorton, EdSource

Across the Fort Miller Middle School campus in Fresno, some of the seventh and eighth grade teachers have closets stocked with shirts, pants, coats and shoes of varying sizes; other classrooms store hygiene products and toiletries; some have snack closets to curb students’ hunger throughout the day and between classes. Part of the room used by Tria Biltz, a clinical social worker, is filled with the school’s backpack program to ensure students have this basic necessity.

16 Montana Kids Are Suing the State Over Climate Change. Here’s What to Know About the Trial

Solcyre Burga, Time Magazine

A Montana judge will hear arguments in a first-of-its-kind lawsuit on Monday that will decide whether the state’s contribution to climate change violates its Constitution, which explicitly guarantees a right to a “clean and healthful environment.” In Held v. Montana, which was brought forward by 16 Montana youth as young as five, plaintiffs argue that state legislators have put the interests of the state’s fossil fuel industry over their climate future. Legal experts say that if plaintiffs win, the case could be used to bolster climate change efforts in other states.

Why Is Harvey Milk Still Dangerous, 46 Years After He Was Assassinated?

Peter Dreier, Jacobin

The Temecula Valley school board in Southern California’s Riverside County wants to erase slain gay rights leader Harvey Milk from history. On May 16, the board voted three to two to ban the use of a social studies curriculum for the district’s eighteen elementary schools because it mentions Milk and discusses the existence of the LGBTQ community and gay rights movement. At the meeting, board member Danny Gonzalez falsely called Milk — the first openly gay person elected to public office in California — a “known pedophile.” Board president Joseph Komrosky said, “My question is, why even mention a pedophile?” as part of school materials. A third board member, Jennifer Wiersma, said, “We can do better.” The Temecula vote anticipated similar conflicts in Southern California, including a protest last Tuesday outside a Glendale school district building and a protest the week prior at a Los Angeles elementary school. Both concerned public schools’ recognition of LGBTQ Pride Month.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

Child-care providers by day, Amazon drivers by night. Workers fight for living wages

Jenny Gold, Los Angeles Times

Behind the white iron gate of her Boyle Heights home, Adriana Lorenzo’s concrete courtyard is filled with half a dozen tricycles, a basketball hoop and the melodic cadences of classical music that resonate through the play area. “It keeps the kids happy and calm,” she says. Lorenzo owns her own child-care program, taking care of 14 children. On a recent Wednesday, she holds baby Elijah, 13 months, close to her chest, swaying back and forth as she brushes the hair from his eyes. Lorenzo has been working since 5 a.m., when she got up to sanitize the bathrooms and cook pancakes and eggs for the children before they began arriving at 6:30 a.m. Her last charge won’t head home until after 5:30 p.m.

In affirmative action and student loan cases, some see backlash to racial progress in education

Annie Ma & Aaron Morrison, Washington Post

As a Black student who was raised by a single mother, Makia Green believes she benefited from a program that gave preference to students of color from economically disadvantaged backgrounds when she was admitted over a decade ago to the University of Rochester. As a borrower who still owes just over $20,000 on her undergraduate student loans, she has been counting on President Joe Biden’s promised debt relief to wipe nearly all of that away. Now, both affirmative action and the student loan cancellation plan — policies that disproportionately help Black students — could soon be dismantled by the U.S. Supreme Court.

How American Universities Turned Red

Steve Fraser, Jacobin

In 1919, an annus mirabilis of global revolution, Helen Taft was president of Bryn Mawr College. She was also the daughter of the Republican president and Supreme Court justice William Howard Taft, and sister of Robert Taft, author of the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act. Nonetheless, she endorsed the right of workers to strike and remarked that, “the wealthy men of the country certainly owe the professors a living wage.” The views of Helen Taft were heterodox both within her family and in academia more widely. While the rest of the country was aflame with labor standoffs from the Seattle dockyards to the steel mills of Pittsburgh, campuses stayed silent. When they did decide to join in on the action it was to supply undergraduate strikebreakers, who descended from august institutions like Harvard to undermine organized labor.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

What it really takes to help students succeed

Valerie Strauss and Kevin Welner, Washington Post

Yes, we do know how to help students succeed in school. Too many schools just don’t do it.

Last month I published an excerpt of a new book (“Schools of Opportunity: 10 Research-Based Models of Equity in Action”) about public schools that have succeeded in closing opportunity gaps for marginalized students — specifically those that were highlighted in a unique multiyear project of the National Education Policy Institute, which is housed at the University of Colorado at Boulder, called Schools of Opportunity. The excerpt highlighted experiences at one school, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Early College in far-northeast Denver, and its approach to student wellness through largely nonacademic supports and services. This post looks more broadly at four important lessons on how schools can help students succeed that are explained in the book.

Study Finds That a Small Number of Teachers Effectively Double the Racial Gaps Among Students Referred for Disciplinary Action

American Educational Research Association

The top 5 percent of teachers most likely to refer students to the principal’s office for disciplinary action do so at such an outsized rate that they effectively double the racial gaps in such referrals, according to new research released today. These gaps are mainly driven by higher numbers of office discipline referrals (ODRs) issued for Black and Hispanic students, compared to White students. The study, published in Educational Researcher, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association, was conducted by Jing Liu at the University of Maryland, College Park, Emily K. Penner at the University of California, Irvine, and Wenjing Gao at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Gender biases not improved over past decade, U.N. says

Federica Urso, Reuters

Gender inequality has remained stagnant for a decade, according to research by the United Nations released on Monday, as cultural biases and pressures continue to hinder women’s empowerment and leave the world unlikely to meet the UN’s goal of gender parity by 2030.

Despite a surge in women’s rights groups and social movements like Time’s Up and MeToo in the United States, biased social norms and a broader human-development crisis heightened by COVID-19, when many women lost their income, have stalled progress on inequality. In its latest report, the United Nations Development Programme tracked the issue through its Gender Social Norms Index, which uses data from the international research programme World Values Survey.

Democracy and the Public Interest

How Right-Wing Christians Are Taking Over the Charter School Industry

Carol Burris, The Progressive

Former Education Secretary and Michigan billionaire Betsy DeVos and her husband, Dick DeVos, want to advance God’s “kingdom” with taxpayers footing the bill. School choice is the banner under which the DeVoses and their Christian nationalist allies fight to turn back the clock on American culture by undermining “government schools.” Their preference is to spread religious school vouchers, but the expansion of charter schools designed to appeal to Christian nationalist families serves their plan too. For years, the charter school movement was associated with neoliberal reforms based on the belief that school competition in urban environments would be the tide that lifted all boats. But that thinking shifted as school choice became a Republican priority. There is even an ongoing effort, applauded by DeVos’s American Federation for Children, to open the first religious charter school in Oklahoma–which was approved by the Virtual Charter Board this week.

Memphis activists challenge bans from school district property in federal lawsuit

Laura Testino, Chalkbeat Tennessee

Five people who were banned from Memphis-Shelby County Schools buildings and property have filed a federal lawsuit against the district, claiming officials violated their constitutional right to access public meetings. The people banned are activists in Memphis who have called on the school board to increase transparency and integrity in its search for a new superintendent. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court on Tuesday, describes the activists as “the most vocal critics” of the “botched search for a new superintendent,” and alleges the district is “conspiring” to prevent their advocacy.

Third-grade teacher fired over viral TikTok video about student protest

Bevan Hurley, The Independent

A third-grade teacher in Texas who posted a viral TikTok about her students sitting in protest during the Pledge of Allegiance says she has been fired. Sophia DeLoretto-Chudy posted the video in March claiming that Austin Independent School District (Austin ISD) administrators had raised concerns with her after children had linked her lesson about Nazi propaganda to the Pledge. The former Becker Elementary School teacher said she had been pulled into a “check-in meeting” with administrators in the TikTok, which has since been viewed more than 3.2 million times. Ms DeLoretto-Chudy said that the school district was concerned that she was teaching students their “legal and constitutional rights”.

Other News of Note

The Meaning of the Juneteenth Holiday [VIDEO]

NBC News Washington

Howard University professor of Africana studies Dr. Greg Carr explains the meaning of the Juneteenth holiday.

Meet the High School Student Helping Her City Study Reparations for Black Residents

Mark Lieberman, Education Week

In Kansas City, Mo., earlier this month, a 13-person commission to study reparations for Black Americans started its work. Commission members include nonprofit executives, academics, a doctor, a lawyer—and a rising high school senior. Madison Lyman, 17, attends Lincoln College Preparatory Academy, a 1,000-student public school that opened in 1865, originally for Black students only. Serving on the commission is an honor and a privilege, she said, but she wasn’t sure at first that she should do it.