Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

60 years ago, students joined the civil rights movement with ‘The Children’s Crusade’ [AUDIO]

Debbie Elliott, NPR

The Birmingham movement in 1963 was a turning point when children joined the struggle for equal rights. The brutal response from white segregationists galvanized support for the Civil Rights Act.

‘Shocking:’ Naples rabbi harassed outside school board meeting [Audio]

Cary Barbor, WGCU

On the agenda of the May 3rd Collier County School Board meeting was discussion of the final candidates for Superintendent of Collier County schools. Rabbi Adam Miller of Temple Shalom in Naples was there to speak up during the public comment section, on behalf of concerned parents in the Jewish and broader communities. Here’s Rabbi Miller: One of the candidates, Mr. Van Zant, as part of his interview session, was talking about wanting to reach the, as he called them, “unchurched students” in our community and wanting to address issues of failing morality and wanting to teach Christian values. All of which was language that had a lot of the parents in the Jewish community very concerned, because they are worried that their children, their families, and those who are staff in our schools, are going to be feeling very isolated and alienated if the schools began actively teaching religion as part of what they were teaching to our children.

When a second grader doesn’t have lunch, a teacher steps in to save the day

Ryan Katz and Autumn Barnes, My Unsung Hero–NPR

It was lunchtime, and Evelyn Flores was starting to get really hungry. As she watched her fellow second graders leave the classroom to buy their lunch, she started to worry. Flores lived in San Mateo, Mexico, with her parents, who were flower farmers. The family was struggling financially, so instead of buying lunch, Flores’ mother would drop off food. But that day, she didn’t show up. “I was like, what happened? Why [is] my mom not here?” Flores remembered.

Language, Culture, and Power

“Education Leads to Liberation”: Nikole Hannah-Jones on The 1619 Project & Teaching Black History [Video]

Amy Goodman, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and Spike Lee, Democracy Now

As attacks on the teaching of Black history escalate in Florida and other states, we turn to two of the nation’s most acclaimed storytellers: the Oscar-winning filmmaker Spike Lee and the journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her work on The 1619 Project. They both spoke last Friday on the birthday of Malcolm X at the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Education Center, which is housed in the former Audubon Ballroom in New York where Malcolm X was assassinated in 1965. Last Friday marked what would have been Malcolm’s 98th birthday. We begin with Nikole Hannah-Jones.

Students with disabilities often left out of popular ‘dual-language’ programs

Tara Garcia Mathewson, Hechinger Report

After María Mejía’s son was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder in preschool, the question of where he should go to kindergarten focused entirely on his special education needs. Mejía and her husband, Spanish-speaking immigrants from the Dominican Republic, only later learned that Joangel, now 7, would have been an ideal candidate for one of the four elementary schools in Boston that teach students in both English and Spanish, Joangel’s first language. Experts say such programs offer English learners the best chance at academic success. BPS has pledged to start dozens more. But kids like Joangel, who have individualized education plans, are often left out,their families unwittingly forced to place them into English-only special education programs to help meet their learning needs. Mejía said she was shocked when she learned there was an alternative.

‘American Genocide’ podcast tells of Native American boarding schools [AUDIO]

WBUR

The podcast “American Genocide: The Crimes of Native American Boarding Schools” focuses on one Native community, Pine Ridge, South Dakota, where the Red Cloud Indian School is investigating its own past. The school and dozens of others across the country, most operated by the Catholic Church and U.S. government, were part of a large effort that began in the 19th century to assimilate Native children. Generations of Lakota attended Red Cloud, many were forcibly removed from their homes and many suffered abuse at the school. Children were punished for speaking their Native languages as the schools sought to erase their Native culture.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

The Pride Flag Flies Again

Brenda Alvarez, NEA Today

The seaside village of Stonington is tucked into the southeast corner of Connecticut and is best known for setting the scene of the 1988 film Mystic Pizza. The town’s tight-knit community usually sticks together. But that bond started to unravel in October, when the nation’s culture wars spilled into a middle school classroom. The epicenter of the debate? A classroom with rainbow pride flags on display. The parent of a Stonington middle schooler complained to administrators, saying that her child was upset over seeing the pride flags. The parent believed the flags violated school policy: Nothing political in the classroom.

Their high school canceled an LGBTQ play. These teens put it on anyway. [VIDEO]

Hannah Natanson, Washington Post

Sydney Knipp, 16, tiptoed to the stage’s edge and peered around the black curtain at the nearly 1,500 people waiting for the play to start. It was the largest audience she had ever seen. In a few minutes, Sydney was supposed to stride before them, braids streaming, to deliver the opening monologue as Alanna Dale in “Marian, or The True Tale of Robin Hood,” a gender-bending take on Sherwood Forest’s beloved bandit.

Vice principal, school board and Carlsbad City Council failed to support LGBTQ+ community, say students in walkout

Phil Diehl, San Diego Union Tribune

Students at Sage Creek and Carlsbad high schools walked out of classes Tuesday morning over recent decisions by the Carlsbad Unified School District board and the Carlsbad City Council not to display the Pride flag.,They were also protesting comments by a school administrator who told members of his church to oppose what he called any “sexual identity or gender ideology curriculum, groups, or celebrations on public school campuses.” About 100 students and a few parents and friends, many carrying colorful banners and signs, gathered around the flagpole at CHS, and close to 200 at Sage Creek High School. Both peaceful rallies started at 10 a.m. Tuesday and lasted about 40 minutes.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

How the Advanced Placement curriculum undermined its original goals

David Perry, Washington Post

In the 1950s, mired in the thick of the Cold War, a small group of educators — all White men at elite institutions — came up with an idea. What if promising high school students could take advanced classes, engage with the liberal arts and be lifted into top colleges even if they came from non elite backgrounds? Those demonstrating potential could, they imagined, move more quickly past the rote drudgery of high school and into the pursuit of knowledge that was, in their estimation, America’s core advantage over the Soviet Union. With a view toward the public good and enough private funding to give them independence from public oversight, these men ended up building a new entity that today we know as Advanced Placement.

Most oppose banning the consideration of race and ethnicity in college and university admissions

AP/NORC

The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing two cases involving the University of North Carolina and Harvard University on whether the schools discriminate against white and Asian American applicants. Two-thirds of U.S. adults think the Supreme Court should permit the consideration of race and ethnicity of applicants in the admissions process. This includes a majority of both Democrats (65%) and Republicans (60%). There is no significant difference based on race or ethnicity either. Sixty-two percent of white adults, along with 62% of Black adults and 65% of Hispanic adults think consideration of race and ethnicity should be permitted by colleges. College educated adults are more likely to say colleges and universities should be able to consider race and ethnicity compared to those without college degrees.

As Supreme Court considers affirmative action, colleges see few other ways to diversity goals

Collin Binkley, AP

As an alternative to affirmative action, colleges from California to Florida have tried a range of strategies to achieve the diversity they say is essential to their campuses. Many have given greater preference to low-income families. Others started admitting top students from every community in their state. But after years of experimentation — often prompted by state-level bans on considering race in admissions — there’s no clear solution. In states requiring race-neutral policies, many colleges have seen enrollment drops among Black and Hispanic students, especially at selective colleges that historically have been mostly white. Now, as the Supreme Court decides the fate of affirmative action, colleges nationwide could soon face the same test, with some bracing for setbacks that could erase decades of progress on campus diversity. A ruling is expected by the end of June.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

Teachers’ race and gender biases and the moderating effects of their beliefs and dispositions

Yasemin Copur-Gencturk, Ian Thacker & Joseph R. Cimpian, International Journal of STEM Education

The underrepresentation of women and students of color in mathematically intense STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) majors remains a persistent challenge in the United States. For example, despite nearly equivalent mean mathematics achievement between boys and girls throughout K-12 and bachelor’s and Master’s mathematics degree completion, there are large gender differences in doctoral degree completion. In other math-intensive disciplines such as computer science, engineering, and physics, large gender disparities exist at all higher-education degree levels and in the labor market. Further, despite gradual improvements to racial diversity in the STEM workforce, as of 2021 there were still disproportionately fewer Black and Hispanic recipients of Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctoral degrees as well as fewer workers in STEM fields. There are many competing hypotheses for why there are gender and racial disparities in STEM, with explanations stemming from fields of economics, psychology, sociology, and even biology in the case of gender. Yet, evidence is converging on the idea that unconscious and conscious biases held by teachers comprise an important factor that can contribute to gender and race disparities in academic outcomes and perpetuate STEM-specific stereotypes

More than a quarter of DACA recipients are uninsured as they await the fate of health care rule

Nicole Acevedo, NBC News

More than a quarter of young immigrants protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program lack health insurance and face burdens preventing them from accessing care, according to new data first shared with NBC News. A report published Friday by the immigrant rights nonprofit group National Immigration Law Center, documenting the findings of a recent survey, finds that 27% of DACA recipients reported not being covered by any kind of health insurance or other health care plan. The results suggest that of the more than 580,000 young adults without legal status who are allowed to work and study without fear of deportation under the Obama-era DACA program, almost 157,000 are estimated to be uninsured.

‘I’m very proud it’s there’: how Tina Turner’s one-room school became a museum

David Smith, The Guardian

When Tina Turner, resident in Switzerland, read in Bilanz magazine that her old school in Tennessee was being turned into a museum, she assumed it must be a local white school from the era of Jim Crow racial segregation, perhaps with her name appended after the fact. Then she realised it really was Flagg Grove school, the one-room schoolhouse attended by the young Anna Mae Bullock (AKA Tina Turner), having been built by her great uncle in 1889. “Immediately then I became excited and got involved,” Turner says in a video on the website of what is now the Tina Turner Museum containing memorabilia including costumes, gold records and her high school yearbook.

Democracy and the Public Interest

Why are schools in Maine keeping Gender Queer on shelves, despite challenges? A case study in what makes a difference

Kelly Jensen, Book Riot

Maine is an interesting case study in book banning. Ranked in the top 10 least populated states in the U.S., it has also been among the states seeing big leaps in population since the beginning of the pandemic — 20,000 new residents moved to Maine between 2020 and 2022. Since mid-2022, the state has seen several book challenges happening at school districts. Many came on the heels of a $600,000 ad buy from Maine Families First, a conservative political action group, who poured that money into a campaign against the reelection of state governor Janet Mills, a democrat. Maine Families First’s 30-second television commercial juxtaposed falling test scores across the state with the inclusion of books like Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer being made available in school libraries. The suggestion, of course, was that Mills spent more money on attempting to “indoctrinate” young people than ensure they excelled at standardized testing. The funding came from GOP donors outside of the state with ties to the Claremont Institute.

Bill allowing chaplains in schools raises some concerns

Keri Heath, Austin American-Statesman

The Texas House and Senate have approved a bill that would let school districts employ chaplains as a way to ease the shortage of counselors in schools, sending the bill to Gov. Greg Abbott to become law. While some lawmakers and rights advocacy groups have raised concerns about the use of religious-affiliated staff in public schools, law experts say the bill skirts along a legal gray area concerning faith in campuses. Senate Bill 763 would allow districts to employ chaplains or accept them as volunteers to provide support for students. During the final House vote on the bill this week, Rep. James Talarico, D-Austin, questioned the lack of requirements for participants in the chaplain program.

School censorship is not democratic. Speaking up is the solution

Jonathan Zimmerman, Philadelphia Inquirer

In 2015, I went to China to teach a course about schools and history. The first thing I learned was that the schools didn’t really teach history — at least not the way I understood it. They taught a sanitized, state-approved version, purged of anything remotely critical or controversial. Most textbooks downplayed or simply omitted the Great Leap Forward — Mao Zedong’s attempt to fast-track communism that instead caused millions to die of starvation — and the Cultural Revolution, which displaced millions of others to forced labor camps in the countryside. And nobody spoke of the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations at Tiananmen Square, where soldiers gunned down student protesters.

Other News of Note

Today in History: Indian Citizenship Act

Library of Congress

On June 2, 1924, Congress enacted the Indian Citizenship Act, which granted citizenship to all Native Americans born in the U.S. The right to vote, however, was governed by state law; until 1957, some states barred Native Americans from voting. In a WPA interview from the 1930s, Henry Mitchell describes the attitude toward Native Americans in Maine, one of the last states to comply with the Indian Citizenship Act.

Teaching the Tulsa Massacre

Zinn Education Project

During the Tulsa Massacre, deputized white rioters murdered hundreds of Black residents and destroyed their homes, businesses, schools, and community centers. This took place from May 31 to June 1, 1921, in the thriving African American community of Greenwood in Tulsa, Oklahoma. This is one of countless massacres in U.S. history designed to maintain white supremacy that receive little attention in corporate curricula. Many people first learned of the Tulsa Massacre last year from HBO’s Watchmen and commemorations of the 100th anniversary of Red Summer. Young people should not have to depend on HBO to learn essential lessons in U.S. history.