Just News 5.8.26

Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

Collective Bargaining Continues to Support Educators, NEA Report Reveals

Naomi Bethune, The American Prospect

Everyone knows that teachers are underpaid, overworked, and often unappreciated. In a time when education in the U.S. is undergoing a serious transformation from the top down, educators are in a particularly vulnerable position. With Teacher Appreciation Week approaching, the National Education Association’s (NEA) release of its annual reports on educator pay provide a comprehensive look into just how much teachers are making. While the pay gap between teachers and similarly educated professionals is stark, unionization and the power of collective bargaining are highlighted as a consistent vehicle for ensuring that educators are paid what they deserve.

School data goes stale after Trump administration cuts Education Department research arm

Matt Barnum, Chalkbeat

If there was one thing the Education Department did that seemed apolitical and effective, it was compiling basic facts about American schools. But now the work of disseminating this information has effectively ground to a halt. Since the Trump administration decimated the research arm of the Education Department, it has not updated a large swath of data that is part of the Digest of Education Statistics. This means we no longer have easily accessible, relatively up-to-date information about the basic realities of American schools. “The role of the national government is to collect statistics on K-12 [education],” said Amber Northern, the Fordham Institute’s vice president for research who is on contract with the Education Department to suggest ways to improve its statistical work. “Absolutely the Digest is integral to that. And we need to get it restarted.”

Five Things to Know About Largest Cell Phone Ban Study

Greg Topo, AP News

The largest study ever of school cell phone bans finds that they offer decidedly mixed results, with teachers reporting fewer distractions when students lock their phones away during the school day, but little evidence the bans quickly bring improved academic achievement or better behavior, as many advocates have hoped. The study, by scholars at Stanford University, Duke University, The University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania, compiled data from Yondr, a California startup that makes lockable pouches for schools, businesses and entertainment venues. Published Monday by the National Bureau of Economic Research, it looks at data from about 4,600 schools and is the first nationally representative look at cell phone bans.

Language, Culture, and Power

U.S. citizen students face an agonizing choice: Affording college or protecting parents from deportation

Meredith Kolodner, Hechinger Report

It hadn’t occurred to Ryan that going to college could endanger his parents’ safety, until he was halfway through filling out the financial aid form. He sat in his room at his computer, staring at the box he had to click acknowledging that his parents didn’t have social security numbers. It was in that moment that he understood for the first time the risk he was about to take. He worried it was too great and closed his laptop. “I don’t want to sacrifice my family for my possible success,” said the high school senior, a U.S. citizen who lives in Los Angeles and who asked that his surname be withheld to protect his family. “I felt like it was very selfish of me to put my entire family in jeopardy for the possibility of me getting into a good college.”

At this Monterey Park grade school, it’s reading, writing and … mahjong

Fiona Ng, LAist

The math club at Bella Vista Elementary School is not a quiet affair — not with more than a dozen 10- and 11-year-olds stacking sets of mahjong. But before the games can begin, it’s time for math lessons. “Remind me, math is the study of what?” fourth grade teacher Andy Luong asks the class. Student presents on large screen display showing Mahjong hand combinations and point values in classroom with teacher seated at desk. “Pattern, patterns,” the kids say.

Luong clicks through several slides, each featuring a mahjong tile the students call “seven sticks.” “When you first learned this tile, what did you use to memorize this?” Luong, co-founder of the Mahjong Math Club, asks.

Remember the Scottsboro Boys: Youth Justice Then and Now

Liz Ryan, The Imprint

In 1931, two years into the Great Depression, nine Black teenage boys between the ages of 13 and 19 boarded the same train going westward through Alabama in search of work. That train ride for Olen Montgomery, Clarence Norris, Jr., Haywood Patterson, Ozie Powell, Willie Roberson, Eugene Williams, Charlie Weems, Andrew Wright and Leroy Wright significantly changed the course of their lives. During a train stop in Paint Rock, Alabama, sheriff’s deputies removed the teens from the train and then arrested and detained them in the town’s adult jail. Several days later, a Jackson County grand jury indicted the youth for the alleged rape of two white women on the train. Over the course of the subsequent decades, the “Scottsboro Boys” endured multiple courtroom trials, convictions, death sentences, retrials and incarceration, collectively spending over 100 years in Alabama’s adult jails and prisons for a crime they did not commit. For years, they lived on Alabama’s death row. In the end, they were spared the electric chair, and throughout this experience all nine maintained that they did not commit the crime.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

We’ve Missed the Point on GLP-1s for Children

Julia Belluz, New York Times

When Dr. Aaron Kelly began studying the effects of GLP-1 weight loss drugs in children with obesity, he thought it would be difficult to recruit patients. The medication he was using required twice-daily injections. But dozens of families signed up. Since that trial over a decade ago, interest has only surged. Trying to keep up with new research on GLP-1s in kids is like “drinking from a fire hose,” Dr. Kelly, co-director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Pediatric Obesity Medicine, told me. Several of these drugs are now approved by the Food and Drug Administration for children ages 10 and older with obesity or Type 2 diabetes, and the results so far appear encouraging. Young people seem to experience benefits similar to those seen in adults: improved blood pressure, sugar control and cholesterol levels. The trade-off, as in adults, seems to be mainly short-term side effects, such as nausea and vomiting.

How Much Does It Really Cost to Raise a Child?

NEPC

$502,152. That’s the average combined public and private cost of raising a child from birth to age 18, according to a new analysis, published in the journal Nature Communications. The article is authored by David Blazar, Michel Boudreaux, Steven Klees, NEPC Fellow Jennifer King Rice, Marvin Titus, and Jiehui Zhao, all of the University of Maryland. The amount varies by parental income, from $557,382 (in 2024 dollars) for families earning in the highest quintile of household incomes, to $471,038 for those in the lowest quintile. The analysis represents an effort to quantify the entire cost of raising a child. This includes formal education to basics like food, clothing, and housing. It also includes parental time and money invested in informal educational experiences such as homework help or museum visits.

Who Are California’s Homeless K–12 Students?

Brett Guinan, PPIC

Rates of student homelessness among California’s K–12 students increased in nearly two-thirds of the state’s counties during the 2024–25 school year, according to the California Department of Education’s most recent cumulative homeless data. Statewide, the share of homeless students reached 5%—nearly 300,000 students. (These numbers capture all students who experienced homelessness at any point during the year and are higher than the recently released single-day count of student homelessness taken in fall 2025). Rates of homelessness vary across demographic groups and housing situations, with the vast majority of students across groups “doubled up”—sharing housing due to economic hardship.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

Messing With Childcare Ratios Is a Terrible Idea

Elliot Haspel, Jacobin

he New York Times recently ran a story on Alex Adams, President Donald Trump’s pick to run the Administration for Families and Children (ACF). Adams, who used to oversee Idaho’s Department of Health and Welfare, has reportedly suggested he wants federal childcare regulations to “fit on an index card in my back pocket” and is preparing to “barbecue a lot of sacred cows.” Based on Adams’ tenure in Idaho, one of those cows he may set his sights on — and perhaps the most dangerous to kill — is the idea of maximum child-to-adult ratios in childcare settings. Child-to-adult ratios cap the number of children a single caregiver can supervise. The numbers shift by age — for instance, while these vary by state, a common ratio is six two-year-olds per adult. Intuitively, this makes sense: while most providers have no desire to cram thirty little kids into one room, there’s good reason to prevent someone from doing just that to hike up revenue — a real situation investigators uncovered in 2019 in, you guessed it, Idaho.

College Students Left Behind As Universities Cut Programs

Julie Huynh, The Progressive

When Isabella Yagmin tried to declare an English major in the spring of her freshman year at Lasell University in Newton, Massachusetts, she was shocked to find out the program was in the process of being phased out. “At the time, on their website, it still said they had an English major,” Yagmin, who enrolled at Lasell without a declared major, tells The Progressive. “There were still active people at my school that were English majors, so I had no idea that was happening.” In 2023, Lasell announced the elimination of five majors—English, history, global studies, sociology, and fitness management—citing financial strain and low undergraduate enrollment in the programs in recent years. Since Lasell no longer offered her desired major, Yagmin transferred schools after her freshman year to Boston College, where she now studies English just down the street from her previous institution.

Millions to see higher student loan payments atop rise in gas, food, healthcare costs

Ira Porter, Christian Science Monitor

Kathleen Naranjo was almost eight years into paying off her portion of $50,000 in student loans when a federal appeals court last month ended one of the most affordable loan repayment plans in history. That Biden administration-era plan had reduced her monthly payments to $92 and she was working toward the day when the remaining balance would be forgiven after 10 years of payments doing public service as a nurse. Now amid soaring gas and food prices, Ms. Naranjo is enrolling in her next best option. Her monthly payment will triple, scrambling her personal finances at a moment when she is hunting for her first house. “That’s the only way that I can really do it, otherwise I’m going to be paying this loan until I die,” she says.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

California’s education funding level rises compared to other states

John Fensterwald And Justin Allen, EdSource

It may come as a surprise to Californians who know the state has consistently ranked low in how much it spends on students compared to other states: California’s ranking has soared to the 13th-highest in the nation for how much it funds education per student. That’s not all. California’s equity ranking — comparing how fairly it distributes money to districts in high-poverty communities — rose to the second-highest in the nation, capturing the impact of the state’s equity-focused funding formula for schools, known statewide as the Local Control Funding Formula. These are just some of the findings of Making the Grade, a report from the Education Law Center, a national education advocacy organization that has been ranking states since 2019.

Report: Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights is Flunking

Julia Métraux, Mother Jones

Last Tuesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT.) released a report showing just how intensely the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights has failed students. The report found that there were zero resolution agreements in 2025 “involving sexual harassment, sexual violence, seclusion or restraint, racial harassment, or discriminatory school discipline.” Overall, just one percent of complaints submitted to the Ed Department’s OCR received a resolution agreement. Sanders noted that OCR has been “decimated”—nearly half of OCR employees received a reduction-in-force notice in March 2025. The report highlighted the fact that 2025 saw the fewest resolution agreements in 12 years. “When a child with a disability is denied the education they are entitled to, when a student faces racial or sexual harassment — they turn to the Office for Civil Rights for help,” Sanders said in a press release. “Yet the Trump administration has decimated this office. As a result, tens of thousands of students facing discrimination have been left with no recourse. That is beyond unacceptable.”

France serves up €1 meals to all university students in effort to cut hardship

The Guardian

French universities have begun offering €1 (86p) meals to all students regardless of income in a measure designed to address financial hardship. Student unions have been pushing to extend the €1 rate – down from the usual €3.30 – for a three-course meal to all students, which was previously only available to those with low incomes or receiving financial aid. For Alexandre Ioannides, an 18-year-old student in Paris, the measure will drastically cut his monthly canteen expenses. “I come here 20 times a month. That’s about €60. Whereas now, I’ll pay €20,” he said, adding the savings would go towards “going out or eating at a restaurant”.

Democracy and the Public Interest

When the Circus Came to Town [Audio]

Have You Heard

Sarasota Florida was supposed to be the new capital of Magamerica. But a funny thing happened on the way to making this coastal community and its school board the epicenter of right wing activism. A whole lot of Sarasotans woke up to the reality that their schools, vulnerable students and indeed local democracy hung in the balance. Call it the backlash to the backlash or the revenge of the normies, the resistance is alive and well in southwest Florida. Description The financial support of listeners like you keeps this podcast going.

Florida Creates a More Conservative U.S. History Course to Rival A.P.

Dana Goldstein, New York Times

Florida has created a new American history course that advances a more conservative interpretation of the nation’s story. It focuses on the Protestant faith of the founders, argues that the U.S. Constitution is an antislavery document and recommends a textbook written explicitly to build patriotism. The class, which will roll out as a pilot program this fall, is meant to serve as an alternative to Advanced Placement U.S. History, a behemoth that reached more than half a million high school students last year. Many historians and educators say A.P. United States History is well balanced and avoids any single ideological interpretation of the American story.

Boards in the Balance: Governing Higher Education Amid Anti-DEI Policy

Ishara Casellas Connors, Nathan Peterson X, Mikayla Slaydon, and Alfredo Valenzuela, AERA Open 

This study explored how public higher education governing boards interpret and respond to anti–diversity, equity, and inclusion (anti-DEI) legislation. Drawing on frameworks of interest convergence/divergence and public accountability, we conducted a critical discourse analysis of governing board meetings across six states where anti-DEI policies have been adopted. We found that board discourse is characterized by a rhetoric of minimization and deflection, which frames DEI restrictions as administratively manageable and ideologically neutral. Boards rarely acknowledge the implications of these policies for marginalized communities, instead emphasizing compliance, institutional resilience, and reputational risk management. These findings reveal how governing boards serve as political actors—strategically shaping institutional responses in ways that reinforce dominant state ideologies and marginalize equity-oriented commitments. This study contributes to the literature on public governance and DEI by positioning governing boards as central agents in the discursive construction of diversity policy in an era of growing political polarization.

Other News of Note

The Forgotten Visionary of Reparations: Queen Mother Moore called for liberation, not just compensation

Robin D. G. Kelley, The Yale Review

In December 20, 1962, an organization called the Reparations Committee for United States Slaves’ Descendants, Inc., filed a reparations claim with the federal government. Arguing that chattel slavery had impoverished generations of Black people while enriching white America, the petition demanded that billions of dollars be distributed to Black Americans and made a case for giving them “preferential treatment,” including quotas designed to quickly achieve racial parity. The claim was the brainchild of Audley Moore, a former member of the Communist Party and a Black nationalist who had spent four decades in the Black liberation movement. In a pamphlet called Why Reparations?, published the following year, Moore wrote that the claim was “the battle cry for the economic and social freedom of more than 25 million descendants of American slaves,” and called on the U.S. to pay reparations as compensation for centuries of unpaid forced labor and premature death, as well as a century of lynchings, Jim Crow, disfranchisement, rape, and police brutality. The legal basis for the claim, it asserted, was the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, which had freed Black people from bondage and granted them legal rights, and the United Nations’ charter and conventions prohibiting “cruel and oppressive treatment.”