Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

‘We rejoice and tell the world… but we must go further’ (See p.5)

W.E.B. DuBois, National Guardian, 1954

One hundred years before Chief Justice Warren declared that racial segregation in public schools “is a denial of the equal protection of the law,” another chief justice declared that Negroes had no rights which a white man must respect. Thus in a century this nation has taken mighty steps along Freedom Road and raised the hopes of mankind, black, yellow and white.

70 years ago, school integration was a dream many believed could actually happen. It hasn’t

Annie Ma, Associated Press

Seventy years ago this week, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled separating children in schools by race was unconstitutional. On paper, that decision — the fabled Brown v. Board of Education, taught in most every American classroom — still stands. But for decades, American schools have been re-segregating. The country is more diverse than it ever has been, with students more exposed to classmates from different backgrounds. Still, around 4 out of 10 Black and Hispanic students attend schools where almost every one of their classmates is another student of color.

The intense segregation by race is linked to socioeconomic conditions: Schools where students of color compose more than 90% of the student body are five times more likely to be located in low-income areas. That in turn has resounding academic consequences: Students who attend high-poverty schools, regardless of their family’s finances, have worse educational outcomes.

‘Brown v. Board’ Decimated the Black Educator Pipeline. A Scholar Explains How

Madeline Will, Education Week

One of the nation’s most significant milestones for civil rights also devastated the pipeline of Black educators, with consequences that are still being felt today. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, which was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court 68 years ago this week, afforded Black children access to the same educational opportunities as white children, ending the doctrine of “separate but equal.” But it also caused the dismissal, demotion, or forced resignation of many experienced, highly credentialed Black educators who staffed Black-only schools.  After the decision, tens of thousands of Black teachers and principals lost their jobs as white superintendents began to integrate schools but balked at putting Black educators in positions of authority over white teachers or students.

Language, Culture, and Power

A Girl Scouts troop offers hope and ‘sisters for life’ for migrant children [Audio]

Jasmine Garsd, All Things Considered

The world is very gray today: It’s raining in New York City. From the outside, the building looks like any other old hotel in midtown Manhattan, but it is one of the largest migrant centers for families with children in the city. About 3,500 people are housed here. Inside the building, the light is dim and there’s the constant murmur of people shuffling in and out. Somewhere in this labyrinth of hallways, there’s a room that’s in technicolor. This is the meeting point for a Girl Scouts troop, in partnership with New York City Health and Hospitals. One by one, the scouts start trickling in. Their ages are kindergarden through 12. They all are recently-arrived migrant children from Latin America, whose families are seeking asylum.

Not just oppression: Lessons from one state on how schools can get Asian American history right

Kalyn Belsha, Chalkbeat

A former California park ranger traced his fingers over the Chinese characters carved onto a wall. It was as if ghosts were there, sharing their stories, he said. The ranger was standing in the immigration station on Angel Island, the lesser-known West Coast counterpart to Ellis Island. Tens of thousands of immigrants, mostly from China and Japan, were detained there in the early 1900s. Many left behind poems or messages. Dozens of Illinois teachers watched the ranger in a recorded video. They had gathered over Zoom to learn about how they could incorporate Angel Island and other key elements of Asian American history into their lessons.

To engage students in math, educators try connecting it to their culture

Kate Rix, The Hechinger Report

Before she got to the math in her lesson on linear equations last fall, Sydney Kealanahela asked her class of eighth graders on Oahu why kalo, or taro root, is so important in Hawaii. What do you know about kalo, she asked them. Have you ever picked it? A boy who had never spoken in class, and never seemed even slightly interested in math, raised his hand. “He said, ‘I pick kalo with my grandma. She has a farm,’” Kealanahela recalled. “He was excited to tell us about that.” Class discussion got animated. Everybody knew about poi, the creamy staple Hawaiian food made from mashed taro. Others had even noticed that there were fewer taro farms on Oahu.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

Community colleges offer clean energy training as climate-related jobs expand across America

Alexa St. John and Melina Walling, AP News

On the south side of Chicago, students learn to work on Rivian electric pickup trucks and SUVs through a new technician program at Olive-Harvey College. About 150 miles (240 kilometers) south, students at Danville Area Community College in Illinois are taught to troubleshoot massive wind turbines dozens of meters tall, along with climbing and safety. In Albuquerque, students train on wiring and fixing solar panel installations through Central New Mexico Community College’s electrical trades courses. And in Boston, students study how to toughen homes and buildings against extreme temperatures at Roxbury Community College’s Center for Smart Building Technology. The focus is on automating and modernizing heating and air conditioning systems so they contribute less to climate change.

Mariachi program teaches history and culture as well as music

Karen D’Souza, Edsource

Zaida Ramos first learned the magic of mariachi from her father when she was a little girl. Now they make music together, running the bilingual music program for San Jose’s Alum Rock Union School District. Her father, Juan, is the maestro, the music director. She’s the program director. The father and daughter duo collaborate to share the culture and heritage of mariachi music with their students. The Ramos clan has been teaching children music for more than two decades. It’s a veritable family business. “Mariachi is how I grew up. In my family, we were always singing,” said Ramos, a vocalist who also plays the violin. “It’s so fulfilling for us, so rewarding, to share mariachi with the families and with the whole community. Everybody is part of the performance because everybody’s connected to these songs, you know? Many times you’ll hear the audience sing along, they laugh, they cry. It resonates with everybody in some way, it’s their story.”

Teacher Well-Being Depends on Workload, School Climate and Feeling Supported

Nadia Tamez-Robledo, EdSurge

In the two decades that Jennifer Merriman has been in education, she’s seen a tendency in the field to solve problems by piling more tasks onto teachers who are already straining under the weight of their workloads. That ultimately works against what researchers say is one of the most important pillars of a school’s success: the well-being of its teachers. Findings from the University of Oxford Wellbeing Research Centre are detailed in a new report commissioned by the International Baccalaureate Organization, where Merriman is the global director of research, policy and design.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

Advocates continue push for public investment in early childhood education

Madison McVan, Minnesota Reformer

Early education providers and teachers from the Iron Range piled on a bus headed south on Monday morning, shuttering their child care centers for the day so they could lobby lawmakers at the state Capitol in the final week of the legislative session. Lawmakers have all but crushed the hopes of child care advocates with a minimalist session, but advocates continue to push for increased spending as part of the Day Without Child Care, a national campaign coordinated by the progressive organization Community Change. “We’re closer to closing our centers permanently than people think,” said Amanda Reed, the director of two child care centers in Virginia, Minn.

Undergrads are unionizing, in a sign of labor’s resurgence

Elaine S Povich, Rhode Island Current

Junior psychology major Erin Green works part time at the children’s preschool at Sonoma State University, caring for university employees’ kids ages 1 to 5. Some of the non-student workers in her center belong to a union. But she didn’t, until just a few weeks ago. Green, a 49-year-old returning student who works 20 hours a week, said she makes $16.25 an hour, just above the state’s minimum wage of $16. “I was appalled at how little we were getting paid,” Green said. “When I started to hear the buzz around the campus that we were about to become unionized, I thought that was something I should get involved in.” Green and more than 7,000 undergraduate student workers across California State University’s 23 campuses overwhelmingly voted in an election this year to join a union. Now, about 20,000 undergrads are members of the California State University Employees Union, the largest union of undergraduate student workers in the country.

College campuses can’t hire undocumented students. How that might change in California

Mikhail Zinshteyn & Adam Echelman, Cal Matters

In January, the University of California Board of Regents broke the hearts of undocumented students by halting a proposal to allow them to work on campus. A few days later, David Alvarez had a plan. The Democratic assemblymember from Chula Vista huddled with student organizers and decided to draft a bill to compel the UC, as well as the community colleges and California State University, to do what the UC regents would not. Federal law prohibits employers from hiring anyone who is undocumented, but Alvarez’s Assembly Bill 2586 says California’s public colleges and universities should be exempt and allowed to hire undocumented students for on-campus jobs.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

The Trump team’s radical plan to gut American public education

Rob Schofield, NC Newsline

In many ways, it’s one of the great mysteries of modern American policy debates: What does the political right aim to achieve by destroying public education? The idea of siphoning off billions of public dollars to fund private school vouchers is more obvious: It’s a straight money grab that abets the longstanding desire of many people of means to avoid having to send their children to melting pot schools that include poor kids and kids of different races and ability levels. But why the relentless attack on the public schools and the kids and families who remain in them? Is it simply a matter of the fact that – as Willie Sutton infamously said of the banks he robbed – “that’s where the money is”?

To fight segregation in Milwaukee education, activists set up ‘freedom schools’ in 1964

Chris Foran, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Sixty years ago, to demonstrate the impact of segregation in Milwaukee, civil rights activists took the city to school — by taking students out of school. Frustrated by a lack of action from Milwaukee Public Schools in addressing de facto segregation in the city’s schools — and the corresponding lack of support for schools in the city’s predominantly Black neighborhoods — members of the Wisconsin conference of the NAACP, the Congress of Racial Equality, and the Near Northside Nonpartisan Conference formed the Milwaukee United School Integration Committee, or MUSIC, on March 1, 1964.

How can California teach more adults to read in English? [AUDIO]

Education Beat Podcast

California has one of the lowest rates of English literacy in the U.S. Almost one third of adults in the state can do little more than fill out a basic form or read a very simple piece of writing in English. Many of them are immigrants. Experts say programs aimed at addressing poor literacy reach only a fraction of adults who need help. One way to reach them is to bring classes directly to the workplace.

Democracy and the Public Interest

Former Far-Right Hard-Liner Says Billionaires Are Using School Board Races to Sow Distrust in Public Education

Jeremy Schwartz, ProPublica

When Courtney Gore ran for a seat on her local school board in 2021, she warned about a movement to indoctrinate children with “leftist” ideology. After 2 1/2 years on the board, Gore said she believes a much different scheme is unfolding: an effort by wealthy conservative donors to undermine public education in Texas and install a voucher system in which public money flows to private and religious schools. Gore points to West Texas billionaires Tim Dunn and brothers Farris and Dan Wilks, who have contributed to various political action committees that have poured millions into legislative candidates who have promoted vouchers. The men also fund or serve on the boards of a host of public policy and advocacy organizations that have led the fight for vouchers in Texas. In recent years, the largesse from Dunn and the Wilks brothers has reached local communities across Texas, including Granbury, near Fort Worth, where fights over library books, curriculum and vouchers have dominated the community conversation.

The Real Scandal of Campus Protest

Erik Baker, Boston Review

One of the courses I teach is called “Science, Activism, and Political Conflict,” and one of my ambitions with that course is to show students that both of these things—activism and political conflict—are normal in science, and in academic life more generally. That’s a theme that we like to emphasize when speaking in “defense” of student protest. It’s part of a storied tradition, it’s respectable, it’s normal. But in order to explain why I think what you all are doing is so important, I want to start today by saying that actually, student protest is nowhere near normal enough in the history of higher education in this country. The real scandal is not that there has been student protest. It is that there has not been much, much more of it.

Human rights: the case for the defence [Audio]

Baroness Chakrabarti,  London School of Economics: Public lectures and events

Baroness Chakrabarti’s latest book, Human Rights: The Case for the Defence outlines the historic national and international struggles for human rights, from the fall of Babylon to the present day. Her intervention engages both sceptics and supporters and equips believers in the battle of ideas whilst  persuading doubters to think again. For human rights to survive, they must be far better understood by everyone.

Other News of Note

University of California Workers Vote to Authorize Strike in Rebuke Over Protest Crackdowns

Jonathan Wolfe, New York Times

Unions are known for fighting for higher pay and workplace conditions. But academic workers in the University of California system authorized their union on Wednesday to call for a strike over something else entirely: free speech. The union, U.A.W. 4811, represents about 48,000 graduate students and other academic workers at 10 University of California system campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Its members, incensed over the university system’s handling of campus protests, pushed their union to address grievances extending beyond the bread-and-butter issues of collective bargaining to concerns over protesting and speaking out in their workplace.

Brown v. Board, 1954-2004:  What does it mean for California? [K-12 Discussion Guide]

UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education, and Access (2004)

In 1950, 17 year old Barbara Johns and her classmates at Robert Moton High School in Prince Edward County Virginia, stood up and said they would no longer accept the degrading conditions in their school, and they went on strike. More than 450 African American students attended the school designed for 180. The school ‘building’ was three tarpaper shacks with potbelly stoves that left some students overheated and others freezing cold. There was no science lab, cafeteria, toilets, or running water. Textbooks came second hand, passed down from the White school in town. The students met with lawyers from the NAACP and became petitioners in DAVIS v PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY, challenging the separate and unequal conditions. A cross was burned on the high school grounds, but the students and their parents held firm. Finally, the district said it would build a new school. In 1951,  DAVIS v PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY became one of five cases that the United States Supreme Court heard under the name, BROWN v BOARD OF EDUCATION.