Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

Students occupy schools and universities across Europe in climate protest

Damien Gayle, The Guardian

A wave of student occupations has shut down schools and universities across Europe as part of a renewed youth protest campaign against inaction on climate breakdown. Twenty-two schools and universities across the continent have been occupied as part of a proposed month-long campaign. In Germany, universities were occupied in Wolfenbüttel, Magdeburg, Münster, Bielefeld, Regensburg, Bremen and Berlin. In Spain, students in occupation at the Autonomous University of Barcelona organised teach-outs on the climate crisis. In Belgium, 40 students occupied the University of Ghent. In the Czech Republic, about 100 students camped outside the ministry of trade and industry. In the UK occupations were under way at the universities of Leeds, Exeter and Falmouth.

Disrupted Learning and Health Woes: Climate Change Impacts Educators Should Brace For

Madeline Will & Mark Lieberman, Education Week

America’s children are poised to face a wide range of health challenges as a result of climate change, and schools have a significant role to play in addressing those impacts. That’s the takeaway from a report released last month by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency that outlines five major health risks for children associated with a projected rise in the global temperature. The EPA’s office of atmospheric protection synthesized existing research with emerging models that show the impact of climate change to make projections about the scale of the challenges K-12 students will endure. The report paints a troubling picture of how children’s health and well-being will be affected as temperatures rise and air quality worsens.

‘Education reform’ is dying. Now we can actually reform education.

Perry Bacon Jr., Washington Post

America’s decades-long, bipartisan “education reform” movement, defined by an obsession with test scores and by viewing education largely as a tool for getting people higher-paying jobs, is finally in decline. What should replace it is an education system that values learning, creativity, integration and citizenship. Joe Biden is the first president in decades not aggressively pushing an education agenda that casts American schools and students as struggling and in desperate need of fixing. He has not stated that “education is the civil rights issue of our time,” a sentence said by presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. His administration has backed policies, such as an expanded child tax credit, that view giving people more money, not more education, as the main way to reduce poverty.

Language, Culture, and Power

Latinos have made big educational gains, Census data show

Emma Gallegos, EdSource

Over the last few decades, Latinos have made big educational gains in both high school and college attainment, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In 1996, 58.2% of the Latino population ages 25 to 29 graduated from high school. That increased to 88.5% in 2021, according to census data. In 2005, one-third of Latinos 25-34 had some college. By 2021, over half of young Latinos had some college. Latinos of all backgrounds have made gains, but those of Mexican and Central American origin have made the greatest strides.

NYC Schools Handcuff and Haul Away Kids in Emotional Crisis

Abigail Kramer, Pro Publica

It was almost time for school pickup when Paul’s mom saw the text on the classroom messaging app: Paul — her 7-year-old — “ended up running out of class today and it escalated rather quickly.” Someone at the school had called 911. Paul’s parents could contact the main office for more information, the message read. Paul’s mom remembers the physical feeling of dread, like ice under her skin. Paul — that’s his middle name — has a neurological disorder. He loves to cuddle with his mom and help take care of his baby sister, and he’s wild about Greek mythology. Like a lot of kids with developmental disabilities, he also has very big tantrums, hitting, spitting and throwing things when he gets upset. Since the end of first grade, he’s been in a special public school classroom in Brooklyn that integrates disabled and nondisabled kids.

CORE and the Early Civil Rights Movement in Los Angeles

M. Keith Claybrook, Jr.

The Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was founded in the spring of 1942 in Chicago by James Farmer along with a racially diverse group of liberals, pacifists, socialists, and religious groups, most of whom were college students. From its origin and expansion throughout the country, CORE was committed to interracialism and nonviolent direct action. With branches from Brooklyn to Seattle, CORE was a major organization in the struggle for civil rights and racial justice in the mid-twentieth century. By 1947, CORE had affiliates in nearly two dozen cities around the United States, including Los Angeles. Through numerous actions and collaborations, Los Angeles CORE played an important part in the early phase of the Civil Rights Movement. One of the first major actions was a sit-in at Bullock’s Broadway stores tea room on Saturday, June 28, 1947, when members took up twenty tables from 11:30am-3:30pm.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

LGBTQ Agenda: Queer youth mental health worsened by discrimination, violence according to survey

John Ferrannini, Bay Area Reporter

Discrimination, physical harm, and conversion therapy correspond to suicide risk, the results of a Trevor Project survey of tens of thousands of LGBTQ young people show. “The findings from our 2023 U.S. National Survey support previous findings that demonstrate LGBTQ young people are at significantly higher odds of suicide risk compared to their peers,” Casey Pick, a lesbian who is director of law and policy at The Trevor Project, stated to the Bay Area Reporter. “It’s important to understand that LGBTQ youth are not inherently prone to suicide risk, but rather, they are placed at higher risk because of how they are mistreated in society.” The 2023 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ Young People was taken between September and December 2022, and the results were released May 1. The report draws from a sample size of 28,524 LGBTQ young people, aged 13-24.

Missouri school board member resigns and plans to move over anti-LGBTQ bills

Jo Yurcaba, NBC News

A school board member in central Missouri resigned Tuesday, blaming a slate of bills introduced by state lawmakers that would negatively affect her transgender daughter. Katherine Sasser, who served for two years on the Columbia School Board, said at a school board meeting Monday that her family will also move before the start of the next school year because the state “is no longer a safe place” for them, according to KOMU-TV, a local NBC affiliate. “I came to Columbia, Missouri as a wide-eyed college freshman at the University of Missouri in 2003 and I have spent the last 20 years building my life here,” she said in a statement shared on social media following the board meeting. “This district raised me professionally.”

Could a Narcan vending machine help stem opioid deaths among young people?

Summer Lin, LA Times

A free vending machine that dispenses the overdose-reversal drug naloxone was unveiled this week at Santa Clara University, the first such campus resource in the Bay Area, school officials said. The machine at the school’s Benson Memorial Center will dispense two-packs of Narcan, a nasal spray for delivering naloxone, with instructions on how to recognize signs of an overdose, how to administer the spray and to call 911, university officials said in a statement.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

New look at benefits of quality preschool education

Valerie Strauss, Robert Hahn, Steve Barnett, Washington Post

Quality preschool programs have long been connected to positive education and health outcomes for students, and over the past two decades, some state legislatures have taken steps to improve both the availability and the quality of these programs. But there’s still a very long way to go: The coronavirus pandemic wiped out years of progress, and the National Conference of State Legislatures reports that only six states have established early-childhood agencies that have directors in cabinet-level positions. They are Alabama, Connecticut, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Mexico and Washington — and Alabama just saw its governor, Republican Kay Ivey, force the resignation of the woman in charge of its successful preschool program because Ivey didn’t like passages in a well-regarded book about developmentally appropriate practice in early-childhood programs.

How Are California School Districts Planning for Universal Prekindergarten? Results From a 2022 Survey

Melanie Leung-Gagné Victoria Wang Hanna Melnick Chris Mauerman, Learning Policy Institute

In 2021, California committed to providing universal prekindergarten (UPK) for all 4-year-olds and income-eligible 3-year-olds by 2025–26. UPK includes several early learning programs, including transitional kindergarten (TK), the California State Preschool Program (CSPP), Head Start, and expanded learning opportunities to provide full-day early learning and care. TK is the only program that is free and universally available as part of California’s public education system. Offered by local education agencies (LEAs), TK currently serves all 4-year-olds who turn 5 between September 2 and December 2 and will expand to all 4-year-olds by 2025–26. The legislature also made new investments in CSPP, a program for income-eligible 3- and 4-year-old children. Funding for CSPP is provided by the state through grants to both LEAs and community-based organizations. This report provides a snapshot of 1,108 LEAs’ initial plans for UPK expansion through the analysis of a survey administered by the California Department of Education in August 2022.

Community colleges pay expenses hoping to boost graduation [Video]

PBS Newshour

Community colleges can be a catapult to economic mobility, dramatically increasing earnings and almost all are open admission. But most students that start degrees do not finish on time, and many don’t finish at all. Hari Sreenivasan reports on a program spreading nationally to increase community college graduation rates. It’s part of our series, Rethinking College.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

Massive resistance to Brown’s integration decision purged Black educators

Leslie T. Fenwick, Brookings

June 15, 1971. That was the day that the groundbreaking 1954 Brown v. Topeka Board of Education decision outlawing racial segregation in public schools was narrowly operationalized as being about the racial integration of students. Following Brown, segregationists waged a protracted fight (known as “massive resistance”) against the new law of the land. This fight resulted in decimation of the ranks of Black principals and teachers. It was so pervasive and severe that its fallout eventually reached the halls of Congress, prompting a series of U.S. Senate Select Committee hearings in 1971 about the displacement and status of Black school principals in desegregating schools. The first day of the hearings was June 14, 1971, which was devoted to in-depth presentations of data, state reports, amicus briefs, and testimonials about the largest purge of educator talent from U.S. public schools. Specifically, that was the illegal firings, dismissals, and demotions of exceptionally credentialed and experienced Black principals and teachers and their replacement by less qualified whites.

Overemphasizing individual differences and overlooking systemic factors reinforces educational inequality

Allison Zengilowski, Irum Maqbool, Surya Pratap Deka, Jesse C. Niebaum, Diego Placido, Benjamin Katz, Priti Shah & Yuko Munakata, Nature

Imagine a student required to spend 30 minutes engaging in computerized training to improve their working memory capacity and ability to stay focused. They may practice tasks that are decontextualized from their classroom practice: store and recall an increasing amount of numbers, sequences of objects, and positions of different symbols. After finishing computer training, the student’s class takes part in a well-being practice as part of their social-emotional learning (SEL) curriculum. The class is given instruction on mindful breathing to control temper during conflicts and showing kindness to others to improve intrinsic motivation, social-emotional competencies, and academic performance. Students are told these activities will help them to succeed in their classes and everyday life. At the end of the day, the student walks past school police officers who are paid similarly to their classroom teachers, finds standardized test results in the mail that place them below average, and opens an empty fridge.

Slovakia: Failure to address Roma discrimination puts Slovakia ‘on collision course with European Court of Justice’

Amnesty International

Responding to the Slovak parliament’s failure to adopt an amendment to the School Act which would take steps to address discrimination against Roma children, Rado Sloboda, Director of Amnesty International Slovakia, said: “The Slovak parliament missed a crucial chance today to adopt measures that end the unlawful segregation of Roma children in education. By failing to vote in favour of an amendment aimed at preventing systematic discrimination in education, Slovakia has dashed hopes of providing equal access to education for Roma children and set itself on a collision course with the European Court of Justice. “Despite positive measures in the amended act, such as the provision of some support measures and the legal right to a place in kindergarten, today’s amendment falls woefully short of what is needed to comply with the state’s obligations to protect the rights of Roma children. Without concrete desegregation measures, these amendments will not adequately tackle discriminatory practices, condemning Roma children in Slovakia to ongoing segregation in education.

Democracy and the Public Interest

Florida Rejects Dozens of Social Studies Textbooks, and Forces Changes in Others

Sarah Mervosh and Dana Goldstein, New York Times

Florida has rejected dozens of social studies textbooks and worked with publishers to edit dozens more, the state’s education department announced on Tuesday, in the latest effort under Gov. Ron DeSantis to scrub textbooks of contested topics, especially surrounding contemporary issues of race and social justice. State officials originally rejected 82 out of 101 submitted textbooks because of what they considered “inaccurate material, errors and other information that was not aligned with Florida law,” the Department of Education said in a news release.

The New York Times Magazine ran a cover story that platforms the conservative war on education

Charis Hoard and Jasmine Geonzon, Media Matters

The New York Times Magazine recently dedicated a multipage spread to the conservative war on public education, often legitimizing the political right’s advocacy for school choice vouchers and crusade against obscure concepts like “critical race theory.”  In doing so, the magazine placed a target on the back of public education advocate and teachers union leader Randi Weingarten, gratuitously framing right-wing attacks on education as an organic result of the political climate, rather than as a manufactured onslaught spurred by conservative media.

Hong Kong schools in crisis as teachers and students flee ‘toxic’ political climate

Verna Yu, The Guardian

In a few weeks’ time, eight-year-old Peter will say goodbye to his school friends as he moves to Britain with his parents. In the past few years, Hong Kong children have got used to seeing more and more of their friends leaving the city. A decade-long decline in the birthrate, exacerbated by a recent exodus of residents from the city, has led to an alarming plunge in student as well as teacher numbers, leaving Hong Kong’s education system facing a serious crisis.

Other News of Note

Students reenact Birmingham children’s march on its 60th anniversary [AUDIO]

Kyra Miles, NPR

On the 60th anniversary of the Birmingham children’s march, students there reenacted the important event which alerted the nation to the police brutality used against those fighting for civil rights.