Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

Democrats introduce bills to protect school diversity on Brown v. Board of Education anniversary

Ashlee Banks, The Grio

U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., reintroduced two landmark civil rights bills on the 69th anniversary of the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Brown v. Board of Education. Scott announced on Wednesday the reintroduction of the Strength in Diversity Act, which offers federal funding to school districts that increase diversity among the student body and reduce racial or socioeconomic isolation. Scott argued U.S. public schools are more segregated now than they were in the 1960s, which has had a detrimental impact on minority groups. In 1954, the Supreme Court ruled that state laws permitting racial segregation in public schools were unconstitutional and violated the 14th Amendment. Congressman Scott said despite the several decades that have passed since the Supreme Court ruled on desegregating schools, not much has changed. Segregation, he argued, has only taken on different forms.

Is Equal Opportunity Enough?

Christine Sypnowich, Boston Review

The last decade has delivered increasingly bleak portraits of vast inequalities in income, wealth, health, and other measures of well-being in many rich capitalist countries, from the United States to the United Kingdom. What should we do about them? One common response is to argue that inequalities are only a problem to the extent that they reflect unequal opportunities. Economist Jared Bernstein—a longtime advisor to Joe Biden, now a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers—expressed this view clearly in 2014 when he stated, “Opportunity and mobility are the right things to be talking about. . . . We always have inequality, and in America we’re not that upset about inequality of outcomes. But we are upset about inequality of opportunity.” Accordingly, in his first executive order as president, Biden proclaimed that “equal opportunity is the bedrock of American democracy.” For his part, British Labour leader Keir Starmer has stated his party’s aim should be to “pull down obstacles that limit opportunities and talent.” And Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has intoned that in Canada, where I live, “no matter who you are . . . you have every opportunity to live your life to its fullest potential.”

How My Teacher Union Fought for Housing Justice

Ann Finkel, Rethinking Schools

In the K–8 public school where I taught in East Boston, this experience was all too familiar: One day a student would be in class, learning and laughing with classmates, and the next day their seat would be empty. Evicted, priced out, apartment sold to a developer. Each story felt like a punch in the gut, and left a gaping hole in our classroom and school community. When COVID hit, students started disappearing even more rapidly, and many families who remained asked more and more for information about their rights as tenants and how to get rent relief. The situation turned desperate for the family of one of my 7th-grade students when his brother got COVID, his parents couldn’t go to work, and the rest of his family (including a baby) had to isolate in one room. Teachers and staff delivered daily meals to his house, had frequent phone conversations with his mom, and tried everything we could to keep him in a positive mental state.

Language, Culture, and Power

Latino History Is U.S. History. High School Textbooks Neglect It

Sarah Schwartz, Education Week

It is well-documented that U.S. history textbooks have provided a limited picture of the role race and ethnicity play in the American past and present. Figuring out how to remedy that, though, has long proved contentious. In the past few years, questions about whose stories to highlight, and how to tell them, have fueled Republican-led efforts to restrict how teachers can discuss race and gender in the classroom and animated debates over state social studies standards. One new report tries to provide some guidance—specifically for Latino history.

Vietnamese refugees are claiming space in Orange County’s school system

Mai Tran, Prism

At a virtual listening session hosted by Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC) in March, Vietnamese residents from all over California responded to the question, “What do you want out of the model curriculum?” The screen was covered in sticky notes—participants wanted “access to resources—archives, artifacts,” “to better underst[and] my family’s past,” to learn about “lived experiences, especially [of] women and youth,” and to teach future generations about “the effects of refugeeism on so many aspects of life, public health (exposure to chemical agents and bombings), lower education outcomes.” For decades, Southeast Asian Americans have received minimal outreach from politicians at the local and state levels.

How a Viral Video Sparked an Ongoing Discussion of Police in Schools [AUDIO]

Jeffrey R. Young, EdSurge Podcast

In 2015, a video went viral showing a white school resource officer violently flipping over a Black student in her desk and dragging her across the room before arresting her. It sparked a lawsuit against a vague South Carolina law that brings the criminal justice system into schools for minor offenses, and a nationwide discussion about systemic racism in school policing.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

How Community Schools Can Fix a Growing Student Absentee Rate

Jeff Bryant, LA Progressive

School absentee rates that increased dramatically during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic have not declined. In fact, they’re getting worse, according to a September 2022 research analysis posted on the blog site of Attendance Works, a national nonprofit that advocates for reducing “chronic absenteeism” in schools. Chronic absenteeism is defined as missing at least 10 percent of the school year.

Extracurricular involvement in high school is not a level playing field

Julie J. Park and Brian Heseung Kim, Brookings

Standardized tests perpetuate inequality in college admissions, but what about other parts of college applications? Extracurricular activities have the veneer of leveling the playing field—in theory, anyone can join a club or sign up for activities. However, activities like music lessons and sports cost money, as well as time and resources for students and their families. Extracurricular involvement is generally less accessible to students who have to work to support their families, and some activities still reflect the impact of historic exclusion (e.g., swimming for Black youth).  Why does this matter?

Americans’ Largely Positive Views of Childhood Vaccines Hold Steady

Carly Funk, Alec Tyson, Brian Kennedy, and Giancarlo Pasquini, PEW Research

Americans remain steadfast in their belief in the overall value of childhood vaccines, with no change over the last four years in the large majority who say the benefits of childhood vaccines for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) outweigh the risks, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. Still, the survey finds that alongside broad support for childhood vaccines there are signs of some concern – especially among those closest to the decision-making process of vaccinating children. Parents see the risks of MMR vaccines as a bit higher than other Americans, and about half of those with a young child ages 0 to 4 say the statement “I worry that not all of the childhood vaccines are necessary” describes their views at least somewhat well.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

California’s Major Investment in Universal Transitional Kindergarten

H. Alix Gallagher, PACE

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, California’s student achievement lagged the national average and had greater disparities among student groups relative to other states. In fact, student achievement in affluent districts was on par with typical districts across the country, but in less affluent communities, students were about a full year behind the national average. Research shows that once students are in California’s public schools, however, they progress at similar

(or better) rates than in many parts of the country. The vast achievement gap in California, therefore, is present at kindergarten, which is why one of the most promising approaches for enabling California students to meet state standards and close the gap with students elsewhere is ensuring broad participation in high-quality preschool.

How a Little-Known Federal Program Creates Opportunities for Migrant Students

Sarah Williams, EdSurge

Olga puts on a fleece pullover and wraps her head in a bandana while her husband dons similar garb. It’s four in the morning and still dark outside. They’re off to work in the grape harvest in Napa Valley, California. Olga is a recruiter for the Migrant Education Program (MEP); by working side by side with the farmworkers she hopes to recruit, Olga can talk about the services MEP provides, and hopefully, enroll them in the program. Olga’s dedication is an example of what over 100 regional staff do to support farmworkers and their families.

The college-going gap between Black and white Americans was always bad. It’s getting worse

Jon Marcus, Hechinger Report

Patrick Ben III always knew he’d go to college, even though his parents hadn’t. He also knew that the high school he attended on Chicago’s South Side offered few of the advantages that wealthier kids got. There were no Advanced Placement courses, for example, and little help was available with college and financial aid applications, said Ben, who is Black. “I understood that a lot of the things I did to prepare for college I would have to do myself.” When he made it to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the shortcomings of his high school were even more evident. Other students from more affluent places “were sitting there in class talking about how they’ve already done this stuff, where I’m thinking, all of this is new to me.”

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

How Public Schools Cherry-Pick Their Students

Tim Derouche, Time

In May 2022, an Arizona mom named Karrie got a heartbreaking message from the local public school: Her son Brayden wouldn’t be allowed to return as a second-grader in the fall. The reason? Brayden had been diagnosed on the autism spectrum, and the school claimed that it didn’t have any more room for kids with disabilities. “It felt like they were looking for a reason to dismiss him,” Karrie told me, “and make him somebody else’s problem.”

Are principals steering disabled children away from their schools?

Lauren Rivera, Chicago Tribune

Many parents want to find schools where their children will thrive. But for parents of children with disabilities, the stakes for finding a good school cannot be higher. Parents’ concerns range from whether a school will have the right services and supports to help their child advance academically, to whether the school can keep their child physically safe. In some cases, having that information, which is not publicly accessible and often obtained through directly contacting school officials or participating in school tours, can be lifesaving. But discrimination can prevent families from gaining such crucial knowledge.

Redrawing Attendance Boundaries to Promote Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Elementary Schools

Nabeel Gillani, Doug Beeferman, and Deb Roy, Educational Researcher

Most U.S. school districts draw “attendance boundaries” to define catchment areas that assign students to schools near their homes, often recapitulating neighborhood demographic segregation in schools. Focusing on elementary schools, we ask: How much might we reduce school segregation by redrawing attendance boundaries? Combining parent preference data with methods from combinatorial optimization, we simulate alternative boundaries for 98 U.S. school districts serving over 3 million elementary-age students, minimizing White/non-White segregation while mitigating changes to travel times and school sizes. Across districts, we observe a median 14% relative decrease in segregation, which we estimate would require approximately 20% of students to switch schools and, surprisingly, a slight reduction in travel times. We release a public dashboard depicting these alternative boundaries and invite both school boards and their constituents to evaluate their viability. Our results show the possibility of greater integration without significant disruptions for families.

Democracy and the Public Interest

Texas almost approved a school voucher program in the 1950s – to avoid desegregation [Audio]

Camille Phillips, Houston Public Media

Republican lawmakers in Texas have made school vouchers a priority during the most recent legislative session, and their prize bill will likely cross a pivotal hurdle next week. On Monday, May 15, the Senate Education Committee will discuss passing Senate bill 8 on to the full chamber for a vote. The bill would essentially allow families to use public funds for private school tuition. Controversial since their inception, school vouchers have been around in the U.S. since at least the 1950s, when Southern states used them as a tool to circumvent desegregation. In 1957,the Texas House approved a bill that would have given any family that withdrew their child from an integrated school a “tuition grant” to attend a private school. The bill was part of a package of legislation sent to the state Senate with one goal: keeping schools segregated by race.

The Student Protesters Were Arrested. The Man Who Got Violent in the Parking Lot Wasn’t.

Nicole Carr, ProPublica

When one police officer heard the radio call for backup at a high school campus outside Little Rock, Arkansas, he first thought there’d been a problem at a football game. The indecipherable chanting in the background sounded like roars from the bleachers. But it turned out that the rhythmic rallying call that November night last year was coming from the lobby outside a school board meeting. The prior two meetings, in September and October, had been held in Conway High School’s huge auditorium, equipped with ample seating and plenty of parking for what had, as of late, been larger crowds. There also had been an unusual amount of conflict. The day after the September meeting, police showed up at the homes of two residents to investigate separate incidents allegedly related to that meeting. At the October meeting, shortly before the board’s vote on policies that would restrict the rights of transgender students, a local grandfather stepped up to the microphone and warned the board about the sins of the LGBTQ+ community. “They invent ways of doing evil,” the man said during the public comment period. “But let me remind you that those that do such things deserve death.”

The state of our planet is making us anxious; learning how to fix it can help

Kennesha Garg, EdSource

“Who cares? We’re all going to die before we hit 30 anyway.” Sardonic comments like these are not uncommon among my peers. From dark satires like “Don’t Look Up” to feelings of defeat after watching climate activists slowly fade from the limelight time after time (even after we claim to have changed), there’s a pattern that arises regarding the environment: We’ve lost all hope. In a global survey conducted by the journal The Lancet Planetary Health, more than 50% of 10,000 youth felt sad, anxious or hopeless due to climate change, adversely influencing their daily lives and outlook.

Other News of Note

Mayoral Candidate Helen Gym Wants to Build a Progressive Philadelphia

Matthew Cunningham-Cook, Jacobin

When private equity threatened to destroy a 133-year-old hospital, Helen Gym, a former teacher and parent organizer turned first-term Philadelphia City Council member, sprung into action.

“How corrupt is it for an investment banker and a real estate company to come in and buy a major medical hospital in the poorest large city in the country?” Gym’s voice boomed out to a crowd of hundreds in front of Hahnemann University Hospital in central Philadelphia at a July 2019 rally with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), one the first times Gym’s organizing work caught national attention. “And how wrong are our laws when Joel Freedman and his cohort of vulture capitalists can run this hospital into the ground in less than eighteen months and now they’re going to flip it for a real estate deal?”

Helen Gym Has Won Big for Working People

David Backer, In These Times

Ideology can work like ocean currents, pulling you in with a force beneath the surface that doesn’t feel like much at first. Maybe you feel a tug here and there, but you don’t think about it much until suddenly you’re under water. It’s been like that with the Philadelphia mayoral race, with at least one non-partisan poll showing a statistical tie between at least four leading candidates — and there are several currents pulling voters in different directions.