Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

From arming teachers to corporate tax breaks: Tennessee’s new, extreme laws

George Chidi, The Guardian

Tennessee’s Republican-dominated legislature passed a litany of starkly conservative laws this year, ceding little quarter to gun control advocates and democracy activists calling for moderation. Among the more strident bills passed last month was a measure to allow teachers to arm themselves in class. Though the new law allows school districts to opt out of the policy, its passage came despite howls of contempt raining down from the galleries from gun control advocates who have been pressing for change following the Covenant School mass shooting of 2023. House lawmakers cleared the galleries before voting 68-23 to pass the bill.

Feds find civil rights violations in Southlake, Texas, schools, students’ lawyers say

Mike Hixenbaugh, NBC News

The U.S. Department of Education is seeking to negotiate with the Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, Texas, over four students’ civil rights complaints — which three education law experts say signals that the department has substantiated the students’ allegations of racist and anti-LGBTQ discrimination. The Education Department’s civil rights enforcement arm described the next steps in its investigation in a letter Monday to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which represents the students. The development comes three years after the civil rights organization filed federal complaints on behalf of students who said Carroll officials failed to protect them from harassment.

With Schools in Ruins, Education in Gaza Will Be Hobbled for Years

Liam Stack and Bilal Shbair, New York Times

Amjad Abu Daqqa was among the top students at his school in Khan Younis, excelling in math and English, and he was applying for a scholarship to study in the United States when war erupted in the Gaza Strip last October. Teachers used to reward his good grades with trips to local historical sites or to the pier, where they would watch boats and take pictures of the sunset. He dreamed of going into medicine like his big sister, Nagham, who studied dentistry in Gaza City. But his old life and old dreams now feel far away. His school was bombed, many of his friends and teachers are dead, and his family fled their home to seek safety in Rafah, along with more than one million others.

Language, Culture, and Power

Education and Liberation: A CBFS Conversation

Lucien Baskin, Black Perspectives

Conversations in Black Freedom Studies (CBFS) is a monthly discussion series held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Curated by Jeanne Theoharis and Robyn C. Spencer-Antoine with Komozi Woodard, the series was established as a space to discuss the latest scholarship in Black freedom studies, bringing the campus and community together as scholars and activists challenge the older geography, leadership, ideology, culture, and chronology of Civil Rights historiography. On May 2nd, CBFS hosted a virtual discussion on “Educational Injustice and the Struggle for Liberatory Education.” Today we are highlighting the scholarship of four of the guests, Leslie Alexander, Keith Mayes, Zebulon Miletsky, and Conor Tomás Reed.

LAUSD passes resolution to support multi-language learners

Mallika Seshadri, EdSource

The Los Angeles Unified School District school board unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday, calling on Superintendent Alberto Carvalho to create a revamped Master Plan for English Learners that would go into effect in the 2025-26 academic year. The revised plan, according to the resolution, must also be developed with input from various stakeholders, including students, families, teachers, the LAUSD-UTLA Immigrant Support Committee and community organizers. Carvalho will have to report back to the board in 120 days regarding the resolution’s implementation.

The Complex Factors Affecting English-Learner Graduation Rates

Ileana Najarro, Education Week

The likelihood of an English learner graduating from high school within four years may depend on the student’s race and ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status, according to a new study from New York University and University of Houston researchers. Federal data from 2019-20 show that while the national English-learner graduation rate has increased to about 71 percent, those students still lag behind the overall rate of 86 percent. For their study published in the Educational Researcher journal this month, researchers reviewed graduation data of more than 127,900 New York City students who began 9th grade in 2013 and 2014.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

College student explores rare mental health condition in award-winning podcast [Audio]

Elissa Nadworny and Janet W. Lee, Morning Edition, NPR

It’s rare to get a first-person perspective on living with a condition called schizoaffective disorder. But Michael Vargas Arango, who was diagnosed as a teenager, wanted the world to know that it’s not something to be afraid of. “I’m not dangerous. I’m not crazy. And I’m not delusional,” he says in his podcast, The Monsters We Create. “I’m just one more guy, with a mental health condition, living with it.” His emotional and deeply personal entry was chosen by our judges, from among 10 finalists. As the grand prize winner of this year’s NPR College Podcast Challenge, he’ll receive a $5,000 scholarship.

Aspen Ideas fest for teens: Brooklyn students tackle mental health, immigration, rats

Michael Elsen-Rooney, Chalkbeat

Kimberly Gil knows what it’s like to struggle with mental health and not have a place to turn for support. Gil, a 16-year-old sophomore at the High School for Social Justice in Bushwick, Brooklyn, immigrated to the U.S. as a kid and struggled to acclimate. She often felt like she couldn’t talk to her family about what she was going through. It’s a familiar story among her classmates, Gil said. “Many of our students have lost a loved one. They’ve gone through sexual harassment, sexual assault, depression, self-harm,” said Gil. But when it comes to bringing up those topics with their families, many teens are concerned “they won’t believe me, or they won’t be there for me.”

Minneapolis students want better playground accessibility for classmates with disabilities

Jack O’Connor, Star Tribune

Eight-year-old Clementine, 10-year-old Hattie and 11-year-old Olivia asked all their classmates — even the mean seventh-grader in the back of the bus — to sign a petition to make their Minneapolis school playground more accessible for disabled students. While originally motivated by their 11-year-old sister Fiona, who has Rett syndrome, a neurological condition that limits her ability to use her hands, walk and communicate, the siblings have now taken their fight beyond their school. Hattie and Olivia, along with other students, spoke at a recent Minneapolis school board meeting and held signs that said “Play for ALL.”

Access, Assessment, Advancement

Quality Preschool is More than ABCs

Cindy Long, NEA Today

There’s magic in Rita Bamba’s preschool classroom. It’s filled with color and light, and it hums with chatter and music, punctuated by squeals of delight. Vibrant bulletin boards, posters, and children’s artwork cover the walls, streamers hang from the ceiling, and shelves brim with treasures, like Play-Doh, colorful blocks, and tiny instruments for tiny hands.  “We have all of these things for a ​ reason,” Bamba says. “We want to spark their imaginations and foster learning through play.” Most students in her class at Arcola Elementary School, in Silver Spring, Md., are eligible to attend the program for free, based on their family’s income.

For college faculty, supporting protesters is a new job — and risk

Kyle Melnick &  Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, Washington Post

Annelise Orleck has been teaching U.S. and Jewish history for more than three decades at Dartmouth College. But during a protest on campus last week, the 65-year-old feared she might become a key figure in future textbooks. After she told police officers to stop arresting students on the campus green, Orleck said, officers threw her to the lawn and knelt on her back. She said she couldn’t breathe.

I teach democracy at Princeton. Student protesters are getting an education like no other

Razia Iqbal, The Guardian

Students across the US are forging bonds in the face of brutal power structures. You might say Teaching an undergraduate class on democracy at Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs this semester has felt urgent and clarifying. In the classroom, we’ve been looking at backsliding and the slow corrosion of democratic norms in so-called democratic countries. Meanwhile, what’s been happening outside the classroom in more than 120 universities around the US and the world tells us a more ominous story about democracy.

For two weeks, we focused on the United States; there were lively discussions on political polarization, January 6 and the threat posed by supporters of Donald Trump, as well as how robust or fragile US democracy currently is. Looking at each democracy involved criticism of the state. In the class on Israel, we examined, among other areas, controversial proposed judicial reforms, as well as the incarceration of Palestinian minors held in administrative detention, as examples where democratic values might be defined as absent.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

A New Way for Educators to Think About School Segregation

Sarah D. Sparks, Education Week

In the last 15 years, students in the nation’s large school districts have become much more isolated racially and economically. A national longitudinal study of schools suggests less court oversight and more parental choice may be to blame. Researchers Sean Reardon of Stanford University and Ann Owens of the University of Southern California tracked the racial and economic demographics of a nationally representative sample of schools from 1967 to 1990 and every public school in the country from 1991 to 2022. This allowed them to measure how much exposure a student of one race or income level would have to students of other racial or socioeconomic backgrounds. Schools and districts have become much more racially integrated than they were before the Supreme Court ruled in 1954 that racially separate school systems were unequal and unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education. However, the researchers found that students’ exposure to students of other races and income levels regressed since 1991.

Without School or Work, Some California Youth Are Left Disconnected from the Economy

Daniel Payares-Montoya, PPIC

A widespread belief that California’s children will face a bleak economic future is supported by worrying numbers: the rising share of “disconnected youth” (also known as “opportunity youth”)—those not in school or not employed and not looking for a job—across all gender and race/ethnic groups. To thwart this grim trend, young Californians need avenues to economic opportunity through education and employment. In 2022, close to 11.5% of the state’s youth, or nearly half a million Californians aged 16 to 24, were not in school nor participating in the labor market. This marked the highest number of individuals among all states and the 22nd highest rate nationwide. While the rate declined in 2022, it remains above pre-pandemic levels, given a sharp increase in 2019 and 2020. Enrollment declines in K–12  and higher education, in part driven by pandemic-related forces, contributed to this upswing.

The State of U.S. Wealth Inequality

Ana Hernández Kent and Lowell R. Ricketts, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis

The State of U.S. Wealth Inequality1 presents a timely look at average, inflation-adjusted wealth for various demographic groups. The St. Louis Fed’s Institute for Economic Equity provides quarterly data on racial, generational and educational wealth inequality based on average U.S. household wealth.2 Knowing the current state of wealth inequality sheds light on opportunities to foster a more equitable economy where everyone can thrive. These estimates reveal the size of the wealth gaps between different demographic groups and identify which groups have the fewest resources. Knowing the magnitude of these gaps over time is an important step toward understanding why these differences persist and what actions might close them. Expanding the opportunity to build wealth to all families creates the potential for greater economic equity.

Democracy and the Public Interest

The Mob Attack on UCLA’s Protest Encampment—Plus Israel, Hamas, and Sexual Violence [Audio]

David Myers and Jon Wiener, Start Making Sense

Lots of pro-Palestine encampments on college campuses have been attacked by local police, but UCLA was different: a pro-Israel mob attacked the encampment on April 30. The attack continued for three hours before police stepped in, and they didn’t arrest any of the attackers. The next night, the police themselves attacked and shut down the encampment. UCLA professor and chair in Jewish history David Myers has our report.

Historians for Peace and Democracy: Our Fight for Academic Freedom and Democracy

Mary Nolan and Ellen Schrecker, Radical Teacher

Every day we see another atrocity in the mindboggling war against teaching the truth about racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression in American history, LGBTQ+ issues, or anything else that may affront the extreme right in American politics. Florida may be the epicenter of this well-funded campaign against public education, but in 2022 alone, 140 bills have been introduced – and many passed in 42 state legislatures, and the current year may break that record. The list of horrors is long and growing, creating a chill in classrooms across the nation that push teachers at every level to prune their syllabi and watch what they say in class in case a conservative student records their words and files a complaint.

Dozens of fixes proposed to deter more mega-cases of charter school fraud

John Fensterwald, EdSource

Audacious, multimillion dollar scandals by two California charter school operators within the past decade exposed vulnerabilities to fraud resulting from inept and negligent oversight and inadequate auditing. A pair of inquiries into those weaknesses have concluded that several dozen actions could help spot, address and potentially deter future attempts by charter school operators to evade state laws and regulations. Both reports were issued within the past two months. One is a  joint effort of the Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) and the Fiscal Crisis Management Assistance Team, a state fiscal oversight agency known as FCMAT. The other is by the Anti-Fraud Task Force of the California Charter Authorizing Professionals, a nonprofit association for school districts and county offices of education. Its report reminded legislators and policymakers what’s at stake in failures of oversight: “Every theft of funds from our public schools not only harms the students, but also undermines public confidence in our public education system.”

Other News of Note

High school students, frustrated by lack of climate education, press for change

Alexa St. John and Doug Glass, AP News

Several dozen young people wearing light blue T-shirts imprinted with #teachclimate filled a hearing room in the Minnesota Capitol in St. Paul in late February. It was a cold and windy day, in contrast to the state’s nearly snowless, warm winter. The high school and college students and other advocates, part of group Climate Generation, called on the Minnesota Youth Council, a liaison between young people and state lawmakers, to support a bill requiring schools to teach more about climate change. Ethan Vue, who grew up with droughts and extreme temperatures in California, now lives in Minnesota and is a high school senior pushing for the bill.

Portland schools set to receive $50M for climate action

Monica Samayoa, OPB

Portland schools are set to receive $50 million to boost climate action through the Portland Clean Energy Fund over the next five years. On Wednesday, Portland city commissioners unanimously approved PCEF’s Climate Friendly Public Schools plan for seven districts that have schools inside Portland city limits. The funds will support energy-efficient retrofits for older buildings, like installing solar panels and new air-conditioning systems and increasing tree canopy in school yards. The voter-approved Portland Clean Energy Fund uses a tax on retail sales in the city to generate revenue, with a particular aim of addressing effects of climate change in communities that have historically been marginalized or underserved.