Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

Today’s teacher shortage is just the tip of the iceberg

Hilary Wething, Economic Policy Institute

The new school year has begun with some confusion over the state of teacher labor markets. News outlets have reported conflicting stories on the teacher shortage, with some saying it is over or improved, and others reporting still not having enough teachers to meet classroom needs. This two-part series looks at labor market conditions of educational professionals and teachers over time to make sense of these conflicting claims and dig deeper into how to diagnose and solve the teacher shortage. There are two key problems in the teacher labor market. Since at least 2018, and especially since the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, labor market data has clearly signaled a textbook labor shortage for public school teachers. Closing this shortage and attracting—and retaining—enough teachers to fill currently vacant positions should be a high priority for policymakers at all levels of government. To accomplish this, the obvious strategy is to increase the attractiveness of teaching jobs—both through higher compensation for teachers, but also via investments that make teaching easier and more rewarding.

How Project 2025 Would Devastate Public Education

Tim Walker, NEA Today

On the question of Project 2025, however, the American public is united: The 900+ page blueprint for another Trump presidency, produced by the Heritage Foundation, would be disastrous for the nation. The authors of Project 2025 describe it as “the next conservative President’s last opportunity to save our republic.” In fact, Project 2025 is a sweeping, detailed and dangerous plan to dramatically expand presidential power, gut our system of checks and balances, and pave the way for an extremist right-wing policy agenda. “It is a plan to return America to a dark past,” Vice-President Kamala Harris said in July. Donald Trump claims he “knows nothing” about Project 2025–even though many of his allies and former administration officials worked on it. 

School Curriculum Supports the Genocide. Here’s How Teachers Can Push Back.

Bill Bigelow, In These Times

Scholasticide. It’s a term coined in 2009, but has taken on new power as the devastation of Gazan schools, universities, and libraries becomes almost total. As Rice University Professor Abdel Razzaq Takriti of Scholars Against the War on Palestine said about the Israeli assault: ​“They’re demolishing universities and schools intentionally. They bombarded and destroyed every single university. They’re using schools as barracks and military stations.” But another facet of scholasticide can be found in our own schools in the United States — erasing Palestinian lives and hiding the history of Palestine-Israel from young people.

Language, Culture, and Power

Study: Rise in English Learner Students in “New Destination” States Helps, Does Not Hurt, Academic Outcomes for Existing Students

Tony Pals and Marla Koenigsknecht, AERA

English learner students represent the fastest growing student group in the United States over the past two decades, with numbers of EL students in public schools soaring in “new destination” states across the South and Midwest. Some commentators have expressed concerns about the possible adverse effect of immigrant students on current students if they require additional resources that are diverted from their peers. However, a new study finds significant positive spillover effects of new EL students in these states on existing students’ test scores, especially in reading. The study was published today in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Educational Research Association. It was conducted by Sy Doan, Samuel Enrique Morales, Umut Ozek, and Heather Schwartz, all from RAND, a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy and research institute.

For many immigrant students, school is their one safe place

Sophia Rodriguez, Chalkbeat

When I hear about President Joe Biden’s recent action to halt asylum from the U.S. Southern border, when I hear about efforts to deny undocumented students a free public education, and when I hear former President Donald Trump using hyperbolic, criminalizing anti-immigrant rhetoric from the presidential debate stage, I am reminded of the faces and voices of young people I have encountered who are or were undocumented or from mixed immigration status families. For the past 15 years, I have worked as a teacher, coach, and then ethnographer and education policy researcher to try to understand how newcomer immigrant students experience their schools and communities. In my research roles, I have interviewed hundreds of immigrant youth, and I have learned of their everyday realities, their enduring hope, and their struggle for belonging in the U.S.

A Law Was Meant to Target Teen Violence. Instead, 17-Year-Olds Are Being Charged as Adults for Lesser Offenses.

Richard A. Webster, Verite News and ProPublica

In February, a prosecutor from a rural area outside Baton Rouge asked members of Louisiana’s Senate judiciary committee to imagine a frightening scene: You are home with your wife at 4 a.m. when suddenly a 17-year-old with a gun appears. The teenager won’t hesitate, District Attorney Tony Clayton said. “He will kill you and your wife.” According to Clayton, teenagers were terrorizing the state without fear of consequences. The only way to stop them was to prosecute all 17-year-olds in adult court, regardless of the offense, and lock them up in prison. Law enforcement officials from around the state made similar arguments. Legislators quickly passed a bill that lowered the age at which the justice system must treat defendants as adults from 18 to 17. But according to a review of arrests in the five months since the law took effect, most of the 17-year-olds booked in three of the state’s largest parishes have not been accused of violent crimes.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

About 3% of U.S. high schoolers identify as transgender, national survey finds

Jo Yurcaba, NBC News

About 3.3% of high school students identify as transgender and another 2.2% have at some point questioned if they were one, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The data, which was collected as part of the CDC’s national 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey of more than 20,000 students in public and private high schools in the United States, provides the first nationally representative estimates of trans identity among students. It found that trans and questioning students more often experienced violence, poor mental health, suicidal thoughts, unstable housing and less school connectedness than their peers who are cisgender, meaning they identify with the sex they were assigned at birth.

Being bullied in high school can make teens less optimistic about the future

Hannah Schacter, The Conversation

The effects of bullying on teens’ mental health are well-documented. But could bullying also shape their future aspirations? Our latest research reveals that teens who are bullied in ninth grade become more pessimistic about their educational and career prospects beyond high school. Specifically, being bullied increases teens’ risk for depression, which leaves them feeling hopeless about the future. As a developmental psychologist who studies adolescent well-being, I set out to better understand the long-term effects of bullying on teens’ expectations for the future. My research team recruited 388 high schoolers who had recently started ninth grade. We asked them to complete surveys every several months for three consecutive years.

Upgrading facilities can make schools safer and more sustainable, panel says 

Mallika Seshadri, Ed Source

From securing school entrances to making campuses more resilient to climate change, districts throughout the state are looking to voters to upgrade their facilities. An EdSource Roundtable on Tuesday, “Election 2024: How voters can help repair California schools,” discussed what a $10 billion state bond and $50 billion in local construction bonds on the November ballot could make possible. “To make the choice of going to an uncomfortable learning condition in our schools, or to stay at home … .is a choice that students should not have to make,” San Lorenzo Unified Superintendent Daryl Camp said during Tuesday’s discussion. “Students should be able to learn in an environment that’s comfortable for learning.”

Access, Assessment, Advancement

UC Berkeley Study Reveals Early Educators Still Among Lowest-Paid Workers

Daisy Nguyen, KQED

Early childhood educators still have one of the lowest-paying jobs in the nation despite unprecedented public funding to help programs that teach and care for young kids recover from the pandemic, according to a new study released Wednesday. The low hourly pay puts these workers, who are disproportionately women of color, in the bottom three percent of occupations. Although their wages increased slightly from an average of $11.65 per hour in 2019 to $13.07 per hour in 2022, their wage growth lags behind fast food workers and retail workers, the study by UC Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Child Care Employment found. In California, the median wage for early educators was slightly higher than the national average at $15.66 per hour, but the study’s authors say that’s still below the state’s living wage of $19.97 for a single adult.

The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books

Rose Horowitch, The Atlantic

Nicholas Dames has taught Literature Humanities, Columbia University’s required great-books course, since 1998. He loves the job, but it has changed. Over the past decade, students have become overwhelmed by the reading. College kids have never read everything they’re assigned, of course, but this feels different. Dames’s students now seem bewildered by the thought of finishing multiple books a semester. His colleagues have noticed the same problem. Many students no longer arrive at college—even at highly selective, elite colleges—prepared to read books.

Elite colleges accused of price-fixing to make divorced parents pay more

Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, Washington Post

Forty of the country’s top colleges were sued this week and accused of colluding in a price-fixing scheme that has increased the cost of college for students with divorced or separated parents.

A Cornell University alum and Boston University student filed the federal lawsuit Monday that takes aim at the CSS Profile, a form some schools use to determine a student’s financial need. The complaint alleges that the nonprofit College Board, which administers the form, conspired with schools named in the complaint to develop a policy in 2006 to consider the assets of noncustodial parents in its calculation. The point was to deny students institutional scholarships, the lawsuit alleges. By requiring both parents to fill out the CSS Profile, colleges could provide an artificially high estimate of what the family could afford to pay, even if only one parent provides financial support for the student, according to the complaint. Attorneys say the College Board pushed schools to adopt the policy, arguing that institutions should have a consistent approach.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

12th grade girls and boys in the U.S. have different views about gender discrimination in the workplace

Dana Braga and Carolina Aragão

As women have made gains in leadership roles and narrowed the gender wage gap with men, many U.S. teens say women still face discrimination in these areas. And girls are much more likely than boys to say this, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of survey data from the University of Michigan. Overall, shares ranging from 48% to 53% of the nation’s 12th graders said in 2022 that women face a great or good deal of discrimination when it comes to: Gaining leadership positions; Getting elected to political office; Getting equal pay for equal work.

Simulating Redlining: When “Race Was the Real Currency”

Adam Sanchez, Rethinking Schools

“After learning about redlining, I can see it all around me now.” Reading my student Lilliana’s words reminded me of my own experience encountering the history of redlining. I don’t remember when it was, but I remember what it felt like. Something in my head just clicked — the streets that seemed like an invisible barrier between Black and white, the stark differences I’d observed between cities and their surrounding suburbs — the racialized physical environments I had grown up in, lived in, and worked in, all suddenly made sense. Growing up I was told that the South was where you’d find segregation, where the legacy of racism shaped the fabric of social and political life. But I spent most of my life living in cities — Los Angeles; Portland, Oregon; New York City; Philadelphia — profoundly shaped by decades of racist redlining policies and practices.

1 in 3 teens reports experiencing racism in school

Naaz Modan, K-12 Dive

Senior Reporter

About 1 in 3 high school students nationwide in 2023 reported having experienced racism in school, according to Youth Risk Behavior Survey results published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday. More than half of Asian students (57%) and nearly half of multiracial (49%) and Black (46%) students reported experiencing racism sometimes in their schooling. Non-White students reported experiencing racism in school at a rate two to three times higher than the 17% reported by White students.

Democracy and the Public Interest

PBS’ ‘Citizen Nation’ follows high school students competing in national civics competition

Kristi Turnquist | The Oregonian/OregonLive

For those feeling worried about whether high school students are learning about American democracy, “Citizen Nation,” a four-part PBS “Retro Report” documentary series that premieres Tuesday, will provide at least some reason to feel hopeful. The series follows students from a range of backgrounds who are preparing to compete in “We the People,” a national civics competition in which students must draw upon their knowledge of the U.S. Constitution and government. Oregonians have particular reason to pay attention to the national competition, because students from our state have traditionally performed very well. As The Oregonian/OregonLive.com reported in April, the team from Grant High School won the 2024 “We the People” competition.

Pulling Back the Curtain on the Right’s Ideas About Education

Eleanor J. Bader, The Progressive

Shortly after scholar Nikole Hannah-Jones’s “1619 Project” was launched in 2019, the Pulitzer Center announced that it was partnering with the project to create curricular materials for public school use. The initial response was nearly completely positive, with more than 3,500 classrooms in all fifty states opting to use the lessons. As the momentum built, the right took notice, and conservative historians and organizations like the Heritage Foundation and the Manhattan Institute set out to stop schoolhouse discussions of race, racism, and the ongoing impact of chattel slavery. A few months later, in early 2020, Arizona’s Republican Senator, Tom Cotton, sprang into action, introducing the Saving American History Act to curtail federal funding to all public schools that used resources from the 1619 Project.

If Trump wins, count on continued culture wars, school vouchers and a fixation on ending the federal Department of Education

Josh Cowen, Hechinger Report

As a political scientist with a background in policy analysis, I used to approach questions about policy plans in terms of which had data behind them and which didn’t — along with what such evidence might mean for decision-makers. However, no question about what a new Donald Trump administration would mean for U.S. education can be answered strictly with a debate about facts and figures. With the former president and his allies still denying that he lost the 2020 election, with Trump and his running mate embracing unfounded stories about Haitian immigrants eating household pets and with Trump’s obsession with the size of his cheering crowds, any analytical projection about his future agenda is all but impossible. With such an absence of facts or evidence-based policy designs, we must turn to past actions, current rhetoric and the priorities of Trump’s political alliances for a hint of what could come.

Other News of Note

Teaching truths: Educators speak on justice and liberation in the classroom

Lara Witt and Jesse Hagopian, Prism

Young people have long been catalysts for change throughout U.S. history, leading movements that have reshaped the nation’s social and political landscape. The 2020 uprising for Black lives was yet another powerful demonstration of this legacy, with young activists at the forefront, demanding justice and an end to systemic racism. Their energy and determination galvanized a movement that shook the status quo, forcing the nation to confront uncomfortable truths about its past and present. Some of the most significant victories of the 2020 uprising occurred when organizers successfully advocated for implementing Black studies and ethnic studies programs in schools and removed school resource officers from some schools across the country while pushing for more counselors.