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Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice
Supreme Court rules on church playgrounds; are vouchers for religious schools next?
John Fensterwald, EdSource
U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and other supporters of school choice are hailing a U.S. Supreme Court decision Monday as one more step toward tearing down states’ opposition to tuition vouchers for private and religious schools. Opponents in California and in other states whose constitutions ban using taxpayer money for religious schools, while disappointed with the ruling, are warning not to read too much into it. In Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, MO. v. Comer, the court ruled 7-2 that the state of Missouri violated a church’s right to freely exercise religion by denying it a state-funded grant to improve the church’s preschool playground. Speaking for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that Missouri’s policy excluding churches from participating in the playground retrofit program “expressly discriminates against otherwise eligible recipients by disqualifying them from a public benefit solely because of their religious character.” This, Roberts wrote, “is odious to our Constitution all the same, and cannot stand.”
Dozens of Democratic Senators express concerns about DeVos and civil rights
Alyson Klein, Education Week
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., and 33 other Democratic senators have major concerns with the direction of the civil rights enforcement under U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. And they’ve sent her a six-page letter letting her know how they feel. The letter doesn’t mince words: Here’s a snippet: Your testimony in front of Congress, your continued association with groups with records of supporting discrimination, and two memos written by the Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, have reemphasized longstanding concerns about your dedication to the idea that all students, no matter their race, religion, disability, country of origin, sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity, have a right to receive an education free from discrimination.
Early childhood educators get schooled in working with ‘exceptional’ kids
Priska Neely, KPCC
When federal data in 2014 revealed that thousands of students were being suspended in preschool, officials at Los Angeles Universal Preschool were shocked. In response, they created a program for educators who work with the students at greatest risk for suspension. The first cohort of early childhood educators graduated Friday from the Exceptional Populations Certificate program, which was designed to help teachers and aides who work with children with developmental delays, physical and medical disabilities and emotional and behavioral issues.
Language, Culture, and Power
In California push to help students with dyslexia, LA schools take a first step
Jane Meredith Adams, EdSource
The Los Angeles Unified school board jumped ahead of a new state law last week and instructed the school district to immediately create a plan to train teachers on the leading learning disability in California: a reading impairment known as dyslexia. The demand by the board of the second-largest school district in the U.S. was hailed by parent advocates as a signal that districts across the state, and potentially the nation, might finally provide interventions that help students with dyslexia learn to read. Effective interventions are available, but most school districts nationwide do not provide them widely, citing the cost of training, according to advocates for students with disabilities.
‘The U.S. continues to welcome the most talented’: Universities respond to Supreme Court action on travel ban
Susan Svrluga, The Washington Post
When President Trump announced in the winter that he would ban people from six mostly Muslim countries from entering the United States to protect national security, university leaders were some of the most outspoken opponents of the measure, warning it would hinder research and recruitment of the best talent in the world. “If left in place, the order threatens both American higher education and the defining principles of our country,” Princeton University’s president and the University of Pennsylvania’s president wrote in a February letter that was signed by nearly 50 top university leaders. On Monday, some university leaders welcomed a Supreme Court ruling that Trump also claimed as a victory. The Supreme Court agreed to allow a limited version of the ban to take effect, carving out exceptions that appear to exempt university students, faculty and lecturers. In October, the court will consider the case and the president’s powers in immigration matters.
I am learning Inglés: A dual-language comic
La Johnson, NPR
In a dual-language classroom, sometimes you’re the student and sometimes you’re the teacher. Here’s what it’s like for 6-year-old Merari.
Whole Children and Strong Communities
GOP health-care bill could strip public schools of billions for special education
Emma Brown, The Washington Post
School superintendents across the country are raising alarms about the possibility that Republican health care legislation would curtail billions of dollars in annual funding they count on to help students with disabilities and poor children. For the past three decades, Medicaid has helped pay for services and equipment that schools provide to special-education students, as well as school-based health screening and treatment for children from low-income families. Now, educators from rural red states to the blue coasts are warning that the GOP push to shrink Medicaid spending will strip schools of what a national superintendents association estimates at up to $4 billion per year. That money pays for nurses, social workers, physical, occupational and speech therapists and medical equipment like walkers and wheelchairs. It also pays for preventive and comprehensive health services for poor children, including immunizations, screening for hearing and vision problems and management of chronic conditions like asthma and diabetes.
School districts offer free meals for all students through summer
Gary Warth, The San Diego Union-Tribune
The San Diego Unified School District is throwing a barbecue with special guests, a community resource fair, soccer coaches and circus performers Wednesday to promote a free meals program that will run throughout summer. Unlike the free and reduced-price program offered to qualified students throughout the school year, the summer program is open to all students, and parents can even join in at more than two dozen barbecues at various locations during the next nine weeks.
Students’ sense of belonging at school is important. It starts with teachers
Evie Blad, Education Week
A student’s sense of belonging at school is important to academic achievement, say educators who responded to an Education Week Research Center survey. While most educators who took the survey use routines to help students feel welcome and safe at school—like greeting them at the classroom door each morning—many respondents say they struggle to help address some barriers to belonging. The survey, administered by the Education Week Research Center, drew input from 528 educators who are registered users of edweek.org. Among those respondents, 41 percent say it’s challenging or very challenging for them to address “the concerns of students who feel that they might be judged negatively based on their identity (e.g., disability status, gender, race/ethnicity).”
Access, Assessment, and Advancement
Schools let students take laptops home in hopes of curbing ‘summer slide’
Mollie Simon, NPR
When principal Kelli Hoffman ran into her students at a McDonald’s during summer break, she knew they weren’t there for the McNuggets. The two rising eighth-graders at French Middle School had invested in a Coke to unlock a bigger prize: free Wi-Fi. They sat logged into their school-provided Chromebooks studying exercise ideas from their sports coaches. Hoffman’s district, Topeka Public Schools in Kansas, is one of a rising number of systems that are letting students take their school-issued devices home over the summer months. “It has opened up a huge educational resource to our kids who may not have access otherwise,” Hoffman said.
SoCal colleges scramble to make new financial aid available for summer students
Adolfo Guzman-Lopez, KPCC
After having been cut in cost-saving measures five years ago, the U.S. Department of Education announced last week that it would restore the federal financial aid Pell grant program for students taking summer classes. But the move, which goes into effect on July 1, has left some Southern California college administrators scrambling to figure out whether students whose summer sessions begin before that date would be able to receive the new funds.
How half of California’s future workforce can earn college degrees at higher rates
Mikhail Zinshteyn, EdSource
Though often outshone by their coastal neighbors, California’s central and eastern regions are home to millions of potential college students who could make the difference between the state boasting a thriving economy — or not. A new report identifies a handful of successes and some hurdles these regions must overcome to bring more of their students to and through college. The report details how high school students in the San Joaquin Valley and Inland Empire — plus Los Angeles County — are in need of funding and access to classroom seats to graduate from college with bachelor’s degrees. The stakes are high, as the three regions account for nearly half of the state’s population and are estimated to be home to half of the roughly 1.1 million additional college-educated workers California needs by 2030 to remain competitive economically.
Inequality, Poverty, Segregation
Adults see Black girls as less innocent than their White peers, survey finds
Evie Blad, Education Week
Adults see black girls as less innocent, more independent, and less in need of nurturing and protection than their white peers, a report released Tuesday by Georgetown University says. The report is the first to explore perceptions of black girls, building on previous research that found black boys are wrongly perceived as older than they actually are and more likely to be viewed as guilty when they are suspected of a crime. It’s a trend researchers call the “adultification” of black children. The results carry implications for fields from education to criminal justice, and they may help explain why black girls are disciplined in school at disproportionately high rates compared to their peers of other races, say the authors of the report, called “Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood.” “Simply put, if authorities in public systems view Black girls as less innocent, less needing of protection, and generally more like adults, it appears likely that they would also view Black girls as more culpable for their actions and, on that basis, punish them more harshly despite their status as children,” the report says.
Two Native American tribes allege discrimination in Montana schools
Joe Heim, The Washington Post
Two indigenous tribes in Montana are asking the federal government to investigate what they say is systemic racism and discrimination in a public school district on their reservation. The Assiniboine and Sioux tribes on the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in northeastern Montana filed a complaint Wednesday with the Justice Department and the Education Department saying that the Wolf Point School District discriminates against native students and “deprives them of basic rights to which they are entitled in school.” The complaint adds that “the unequal treatment of Native students is detrimental to their development and education and violates federal law.” According to the 46-page document, the discrimination in the school district, which is state-run and governed by a local school board, is longstanding and includes bullying, racial slurs, discriminatory hiring practices, intolerance of tribal practices and beliefs, disproportionate discipline of nonwhite students and denial of equal educational opportunities, guidance and college counseling to native students.
‘We have to have a massive revolution in public education in the United States’
Rebecca J. Rosen, The Atlantic
Over the last four decades, the percentage of Americans who are solidly in the middle class has shrunk, from 61 to 50 percent, according to the Pew Research Center. Some of those who have left the middle class are doing better, and others are doing worse. As the Washington Post columnist Robert Samuelson put it, “The extremes grow at the expense of the center.” The Harvard professor and filmmaker Henry Louis Gates Jr. says that the problem stems from the American education system having failed to adapt to the 21st century’s highly globalized, highly technological economy. For those who get top-tier training, there’s opportunity for prosperity. But for those who go to poor schools and don’t graduate from college, the traditional pathways to the middle class—in particular manufacturing jobs and small-business ownership—are usually unavailable. Instead, service work has grown in its share of overall employment, and service work tends to provide very poor wages and few opportunities for growth. Though these dynamics are affecting both black and white Americans, Gates said, black Americans in particular tend to attend under-funded schools and struggle to build middle-class economic security.
Public Schools and Private $
Do charters or traditional schools have it worse? A new study says both
Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times
Charter schools remain a subject of intense debate in Los Angeles, especially with the arrival soon of two new school board members who were supported by charter backers. While research on charters often is inconclusive and partisan, a study released this week has ammunition for both their enthusiasts and their critics. The research commissioned by a coalition of educational and philanthropic organizations focused on charter schools in Oakland. It determined that they have received less public funding than Oakland’s traditional public schools, but that traditional schools have had a more challenging student population to educate.
Reed Hastings backs school board candidates, but opposes elected school boards
Louis Freedberg and Mikhail Zinshteyn, EdSource
Despite contributing millions to pro-charter forces backing school board candidates in Los Angeles and elsewhere, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says he doesn’t believe in elected school boards. It is an argument that the billionaire philanthropist has been making in various forums for years. His latest salvo against school boards that many regard as a bedrock of American democracy came last week in a speech he made to the annual conference of The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools in Washington D.C., attended by about 4,500 enthusiastic charter school advocates, teachers and administrators. His appearance came just weeks after all three candidates he backed in Los Angeles Unified won seats in school board races that were the most expensive in U.S. history. Some $17 million was spent in the election – with deep pocketed philanthropists easily outspending the California Teachers Association and other teachers unions in the race.
School voucher recipients lose ground at first, then catch up to peers, studies find
Emma Brown, The Washington Post
Students who received publicly funded vouchers in Indiana and Louisiana appeared to lose significant academic ground in the first two years after switching to private schools but then caught up to their public-school counterparts in subsequent years, according to two studies made public Monday. The studies do not show that vouchers led to significantly stronger math and reading performance overall, even as President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos promise to pour billions of dollars into expanding vouchers nationwide. Vouchers are direct government payments that families use as scholarships to attend private schools, and they are bitterly contested.
Other News of Note
The lifelong learning of lifelong inmates
Clint Smith, The Atlantic
Lance leans over his desk, his round belly situating his body tightly between the wooden chair and plastic desk—both too small for someone with his girth. A collection of yellow notepad papers, their edges frayed after being torn from their original binding, wrestle alongside one another in his hands. It is a Saturday morning, and the classroom is small, and silent but for the friction of Lance’s papers and the grinding on the pen he bites out of nervous habit. His large fingers fiddle about the loose sheets, verifying that they’re in order as he mutters to himself, quietly reading his story aloud, restless in the anticipation of sharing with his classmates. Lance is often the first person to arrive in class, having rigorously prepared the entire week, perfecting his assignment so as to leave his peers impressed. In this way, Lance is not so different from students I previously taught as a high-school teacher in Maryland. He is brimming with the sort of intellectual curiosity all teachers hope to see in their students. What is different is that this isn’t a high-school classroom: It’s a state prison in Massachusetts, and Lance is serving the 46th year of his sentence.
This political moment: Resources for educators in the Trump era
Daniela Kruel DiGiacomo, DML Central
Educators have long been responsible for supporting the growth and development of all young people. The job of designing engaging lessons, promoting respectful discussion, creating an inclusive classroom, and preparing youth for life in democratic society is never an easy one. We expect educators to perform these and countless other feats on a daily basis. And, this particular political moment is especially challenging. Characterized by record-high indicators of polarization and ideological discord among our major political parties, this political moment has made educators’ routine job duties remarkably challenging and ever-important. What follows is a brief overview of a few of the significant challenges that face educators today. This document also provides a handful of supplementary resources to support equitable teaching and learning in this political moment (accessible through the open-access hyperlinks).