Editors’ Note:
This week’s news touches close to home. We are saddened and outraged by the ugly and thuggish attacks on a nonviolent movement of UCLA students working to bring peace to Gaza. And, we grieve the loss of Jeannie Oakes, who joined with other educators to found Center X three decades ago to build more equitable and democratic schools and envision a more just society.

Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

Police continue to clear Dickson Plaza encampment, protesters face mass arrests

Matthew Royer, Shaanth Kodialam, and Constanza Montemayor, Daily Bruin

Hundreds of Palestine encampment protesters – including students and faculty – were arrested Thursday morning in Dickson Plaza, authorities said, in a move to clear Dickson Plaza of the encampment site. As the sun rose, hundreds of officers with municipal and state law enforcement agencies continued their sweep of the UC Divest Coalition and Students for Justice in Palestine at UCLA encampment, capping off weeklong protests that have resulted in altered class schedules, hundreds of arrests and injuries.

Pro-Israel counter-protesters attempt to storm encampment, sparking violence

Anna Dai-Liu and Dylan Winward, Daily Bruin

Fireworks, tear gas and fights broke out just after 10:50 p.m. Tuesday night and continued early Wednesday morning as around 100 pro-Israel counter-protesters attempted to seize the barricade around and storm the ongoing Palestine solidarity encampment in Dickson Plaza. The chaos comes as Chancellor Gene Block faces criticism for improper handling of the encampment and the same day the university deemed the encampment to be unlawful, threatening students inside with suspension and expulsion. Security and UCPD both retreated as pro-Israel counter-protesters and other groups attacked protesters in the encampment – led by Students for Justice in Palestine and UC Divest Coalition at UCLA – that followed similar ones across the country.

“People Could Have Died”: Police Raid UCLA Gaza Protest, Waited as Pro-Israel Mob Attacked Encampment [Video]

Democracy Now

We get an update from the University of California, Los Angeles, where police in riot gear began dismantling a pro-Palestinian encampment early Thursday, using flashbang grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas, and arresting dozens of students. The raid came just over a day after pro-Israel counterprotesters armed with sticks, metal rods and fireworks attacked students at the encampment. The Real News Network reporter Mel Buer was on the scene during the attack. She describes seeing counterprotesters provoke students, yelling slurs and bludgeoning them with parts of the encampment’s barricade, and says the attack lasted several hours without police or security intervention. ”UCLA is complicit in violence inflicted upon protesters,” wrote the editorial board of UCLA’s campus newspaper, the Daily Bruin, the next day.

Language, Culture, and Power

This Boston preschool is teaching children in Creole and English — and instilling Haitian pride

Fredlyn Pierre Louis, NBC News

In the heart of Boston’s Mattapan neighborhood, a quiet revolution is taking place at the Mattahunt Elementary School, whose Toussaint L’Ouverture Dual Language Academy is not just breaking down language barriers but also fostering pride, empowerment and a deep connection to Haitian culture among its students. It’s the first two-way immersion Haitian Creole dual-language preschool program in the country, and it’s fitting that it operates in Boston, the city with the third-largest Haitian population in America. Priscilla Joseph, a founding teacher of the academy, said it was created in 2017 to meet the needs of the surrounding Creole-speaking neighborhood. “Boston Public Schools and many community partners felt that the Mattahunt would be the best location, especially in Mattapan, which has a high Haitian population,” said Joseph, who leads the K-5 program at the school.

Scholar Hopes to Diversify the Narrative Around Undocumented Student [AUDIO]

Jeffrey R. Young, EdSurge Podcast

When Felecia Russell was a high school student growing up near Los Angeles, she was getting good grades and plenty of encouragement to go to college. But when it came time to do the paperwork of applying to a campus and financial aid, Russell asked her mom for her social security number. “My mom was like, ‘yeah, you don’t have one,’” she remembers. Russell didn’t have a social security number because she didn’t have permanent legal status in the U.S. She was “undocumented.” She had moved to the U.S. from Jamaica when she was about 12.

‘A lot of collective trauma’: Sweden’s Indigenous Sami people speak to truth commission

Miranda Bryant, The Guardian

Before starting “nomad school” – a segregated church-run school system for Indigenous children that existed in Sweden until the 1960s – aged seven, Lars Stenberg had only ever known the safe environment of his family. But after three years of bullying at the institution – which the Swedish church has since admitted to being racist – he was left with emotional scars so deep they still haunt him today. It is only now, at the age of 76, that he has been able to share his experiences with Swedish authorities as part of a long-awaited Sami truth commission.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

Extreme heat shuts schools for millions, widening learning gaps worldwide

Gloria Dickie and Ruma Paul, Reuters

Hena Khan, a grade nine student in Dhaka, has struggled to focus on her studies this week as temperatures surpassed 43 degrees Celsius (109 degrees Fahrenheit) in the Bangladesh capital.

“There is no real education in schools in this punishing heat,” she said. “Teachers can’t teach, students can’t concentrate. Rather, our lives are at risk.” Khan is one of more than 40 million students who have been shut out of classrooms in recent weeks as heatwaves have forced school closures in parts of Asia and North Africa. As the climate warms due to the burning of fossil fuels, heatwaves are lasting longer and reaching greater peaks. In turn, government authorities and public health experts across the world are increasingly grappling with whether to keep students learning in hot classrooms, or encourage them to stay home and keep cool.

Majority of LGTBQ+ students’ mental health impacted by recent policies

Naaz Modan, K-12 Dive

An overwhelming majority of LGBTQ+ students say their mental health is impacted by anti-LGBTQ+ policies, according to an annual survey released by The Trevor Project, a nonprofit that provides crisis support services for LGTBQ+ people. In 2024, 90% of LGBTQ+ youth said their well-being was negatively impacted due to recent politics, compared to 66% last year who said that hearing about potential local or state laws banning LGTBQ+ issues at school worsened their mental health.

Beyond a bed: What this L.A. home offers young adults experiencing homelessness [AUDIO]

Education Beat Podcast

Sam Prater knows what it feels like to be homeless. After he dropped out of high school, he was evicted twice in his hometown of Detroit. So when he saw homeless students being offered just 14 days in college dorms in California, he knew he had to try something different. Prater’s organization now has four homes in L.A. that offer wraparound services to young people experiencing homelessness, to help them jump-start their lives and their college education. A visit offers a peek at what these homes offer.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

How states are excelling in quality preschool and reducing inequality [Audio]

Here and Now, WBUR

Alabama is scoring high marks for supporting children in preschool. That’s no surprise to Keri Lee, a lead pre-K teacher at Good Times Center YMCA of Greater Montgomery. “The state of Alabama doesn’t get much recognition for education besides our football programs. We do football very well in the South,” Lee says. “But for Alabama, our pre-K in the State Department of Early Childhood really has done a great job with this program. And it is one of the best things that Alabama is doing right now for our young children.” Researchers at The National Institute for Early Education Research say Alabama, Hawaii, Michigan, Mississippi and Rhode Island are the only five states to meet all 10 of their minimum quality standards for state preschool in the latest State Preschool Yearbook.

Maryland becomes the third state to completely ban legacy preference in admissions

Hallie Miller and Olivia Sanchez, Hechinger Report

Jazz Lewis wound up at the University of Maryland not by luck or privilege but by the strings of a guitar. Now a member of the Maryland House of Delegates, Lewis said he paid for his college degree with a mix of scholarships and money paid from stints with his church band. As one of the first men in his family to attend college, he said higher education was by no means a given; he earned it. That’s why, Lewis said, he co-sponsored legislation designed to eliminate the use of legacy preferences at Maryland universities. “I’m a Terp; I would love for my son to go there,” he said of the main campus at College Park. “But I just think, as a matter of public policy, state money shouldn’t be helping fulfill these types of preferences.”

Letter to Columbia President Minouche Shafik

Robin D. G. Kelley, Boston Review

Dear President Nemat Minouche Shafik, As a former Columbia University faculty member and father of a Columbia graduate (PhD ’21), I am quite frankly appalled by your draconian, unethical, illegal, and dishonest actions toward your own students and faculty. In the name of keeping students safe, you bring the NYPD on campus to break up a peaceful encampment, thereby endangering hundreds of student protesters—many of whom are Jewish students and students of color—and the campus community at large. Given the NYPD’s racist record, the fact that you would subject Black, Latinx, Arab and South Asian students to police repression suggests that you are either unaware or indifferent to the trauma our communities have experienced with the police. And your administration’s decision to evict students from their dorms, strip them of their meal cards, and have them charged with trespassing is nothing less than vindictive. After taking their tuition and fees, you render them houseless and potentially food insecure. How does this make students safe?

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

Israeli and Palestinian singers bring their hope for peace and justice to U.S. [Video]

Jeffrey Brown, Anne Azzi Davenport, Ted Everett, PBS Newshour

Amid the ongoing trauma in Israel and Gaza, the Jerusalem Youth Chorus is trying to do what few others seem able to these days: see each other as people and enjoy each other through a love of music. Jeffrey Brown spent a day with the group composed of Israeli and Palestinian singers for our arts and culture series, CANVAS.

‘We Must Do Better’: School Support Staff Still Earn Below Living Wage

Tim Walker, NEA Today

Too many school support professionals, like classroom teachers, endure a lack of respect, lack of support, and poor working conditions. They are also egregiously underpaid. These factors are driving the chronic staff shortages in school districts and on college campuses across the nation, which have hit the ranks of education support professionals (ESPs) who include school bus drivers, food service professionals, paraeducators, campus security staff, custodial and maintenance staff and more, especially hard. School support staff, who make up more than one-third of all public school employees, are essential members of the education workforce. Instead of being rewarded or their dedication, NEA President Becky Pringle said, “they have persevered despite low pay, and staffing and supply shortages that have made it increasingly difficult for them to provide the necessary supports our students need and deserve.”

Jaylen Brown on a mission to change inequality in education system

Nicole Yang, Boston.com

Jaylen Brown still remembers the tears hitting the page. Brown, then an incoming freshman at Cal Berkeley, was reading “Keeping Track: How Schools Structure Inequality’’ by Jeannie Oakes. Oakes explains how publicly defining and separating students by their apparent intellectual capabilities generates damaging and unfair consequences. As Brown combed through terms such as social stratification (the system of categorizing people based on socioeconomic factors) and curricular tracking (the practice of grouping students based on their perceived ability), he couldn’t help but cry.

Democracy and the Public Interest

The Right’s Attack on Children

Marci Hamilton, Democracy

Remember the Dark Ages in America for children? Child labor? No public schools? No vaccinations? Now, right-wing politicians, Christian nationalists, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are waging a multifront legislative campaign to bring back those Dark Ages. And they are succeeding. The anti-vaxxers are responsible for increasing measles cases dramatically. By mid-March this year, there were already as many measles cases in the United States as in all of 2023. Presidential candidate Donald Trump has pledged to defund public schools that mandate childhood vaccines. And vaccines are just the tip of the iceberg of the religious right’s threats to our children. In states across the country, conservative lawmakers are rolling back child labor and compulsory education laws even as they enact extreme religious liberty laws that empower parents against their children.

Ruby Bridges Blasts Book Bans As “Ridiculous” Attempts to “Cover Up History”

Julianne McShane, Mother Jones

Civil Rights icon Ruby Bridges is an integral part of U.S. history lessons in classrooms nationwide, given her status as the first Black child to integrate an elementary school in the South. But to the right-wing culture warriors behind efforts to ban books about American history—including systemic racism and discrimination against LGBTQ people—Bridges has become something else: a threat. Books recounting Bridges’ story—several of which are authored by Bridges herself, including one published in January—have been banned or challenged by schools in Pennsylvania, Texas, Iowa, and Tennessee. And last year, a school in Florida stopped showing a Disney film about Bridges’ life after a parent complained it might make kids think white people hate Black people.

Cardona defends a stretched-thin civil rights office in hearing on campus unrest

Mackenzie Wilkes & Juan Perez, Jr., Politico

A number of Republican lawmakers, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, have called on Cardona to cut off federal funds of colleges and universities for not cracking down hard enough on antisemitism. In a roughly three-minute-long opening statement in front of Senate appropriators, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona mentioned nearly every major issue in higher education today — except campus unrest.

Other News of Note

Jeannie Oakes: 1943-2024

John McDonald and Joanie Harmon, UCLA News

The famed education philosopher John Dewey believed that education should be about something more than economic competitiveness. In his lecture at the dedication of UCLA in 1930, he noted, “Its goal should be the creation of human beings in the fullness of their capacity.” UCLA Presidential Professor Emerita Jeannie Oakes, was the embodiment of that goal. After a life and career that informed and inspired many, Oakes, 81, passed away on April 25, at her home in Berkeley. Her research, teaching and scholarship reached for the fullness of their capacity and set the direction for a UCLA School of Education and Information Studies intent on helping all students achieve their own. Oakes’ ideas and work at UCLA set a moral compass for a department of education committed to opportunity, equity, and justice, and established a research and teacher education program to develop educators to “change the world.”

Jeannie Oakes, Education Reform, 2017 [Video]

2016 AERA Presidential Address: Jeannie Oakes [Video]