Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

These Activists Want to Dismantle Public Schools. Now They Run the Education Department

Megan O’Matz and Jennifer Smith Richards, ProPublica

Education Secretary Linda McMahon has been clear about her desire to shut down the agency she runs. She’s laid off half the staff and joked about padlocking the door. She calls it “the final mission.” But the department is not behaving like an agency that is simply winding down. Even as McMahon has shrunk the Department of Education, she’s operated in what she calls “a parallel universe” to radically shift how children will learn for years to come. The department’s actions and policies reflect a disdain for public schools and a desire to dismantle that system in favor of a range of other options — private, Christian and virtual schools or homeschooling.

Both/And: Students’ Academic Benefits of Sharing Race/Ethnicity and Language With Their Teachers

Michael Gottfried, Jennifer Freeman, and Anna J. Egalite, AERA Open

Empirically, research has shown that students from racial or ethnically minoritized backgrounds have higher educational outcomes when they have a teacher of the same demographic background. While numerous explanations for these results have been posited, few mechanisms have been explored. In this study, we address this important gap by examining when teachers share the same race and ethnicity as their students, as well as when English learner students have teachers with state-certified bilingual teaching authorization. To explore this, we use administrative data from a California school district largely composed of Hispanic and White students and teachers. Our findings suggest that Hispanic students have higher math scores (0.14 SD) and higher English language arts scores (0.07 SD). In math, we find that the effects are largest when Hispanic students have Hispanic teachers who also hold a bilingual teaching authorization from the state (0.37 SD). Implications for policy are discussed.

Building a Political Home

Cathy J. Cohen and Brandon M. Terry, Boston Review

Cathy J. Cohen is one of the most distinguished political scientists in the American academy. Over the course of her career, she has dramatically reshaped how many of us think about questions of inequality, stigma, and marginalization in American politics and pierced through unexamined assumptions about how Americans, especially youth, approach major questions of political life. Influenced by traditions of Black radical feminism, she is especially celebrated—as well as criticized—for her sharp critiques of mainstream Black and gay civil rights organizations, as well as the paradigms through which they are studied. While many scholars sought influence through more familiar venues of public intellectualism, Cohen quietly impacted successive generations of activists, organizers, students, and civic leaders in Chicago and elsewhere with her ideas and mentorship, especially in the early days of Black Lives Matter.

Language, Culture, and Power

‘Can I just be a kid?’ Students shaken by immigration raids seek help from school counselors

Ana B. Ibarra, CalMatters

A new school year brings an array of feelings: excitement, anticipation, nervousness, homesickness. Maria Caballero Magaña, a K-8 school counselor in Oxnard, knows these feelings well — familiar companions as students return to campus. This year, however, she and other counselors detected acute emotional reactions: anxiety, sorrow and fear after a summer of intensified immigration raids. Families in this majority Latino, agriculturally-centered part of Ventura County are still coming to terms with the mental health consequences of immigration enforcement. Children and their parents express worry that they may be ripped apart at any moment. Some already have.

How to improve restorative justice in NYC schools

Autumn Wynn, Chalkbeat

In New York City schools, restorative justice – or RJ – has been around for almost a decade. It’s a way to repair harm by bringing together the person who caused it, the person affected, and the community. Restorative justice circles are designed to help students heal, take accountability, and build stronger communities, but too often they feel like just another routine. Most RJ schools rely on circles — structured conversations that serve three tiers: Tier 1 community-building before harm occurs; Tier 2 conflict resolution when harm happens; and Tier 3 reintegration after healing.

Take a look! ‘Reading Rainbow’ is back

Anastasia Tsioulcas, NPR

After nearly two decades, the classic kids’ show Reading Rainbow is back — with a new host and a new digital format, but with the same mission of encouraging children to “take a look, it’s in a book.” The original show, which ran for 26 years on PBS with host LeVar Burton, won more than 250 awards, including 26 Emmys and a Peabody Award. It spurred a love of reading for generations of kids. The new host is library evangelist Mychal Threets, who became a social media star while working as a librarian in Solano County, Calif. (His tattoos include PBS cartoon aardvark Arthur Read’s library card.)

Whole Children and Strong Communities

Social and Emotional Learning Programs Linked to Academic Gains

AERA

A new large-scale analysis of existing research finds that school-provided social and emotional learning (SEL) programs improve students’ academic achievement in addition to their social and emotional development. The study appears today in Review of Educational Research, a journal of the American Educational Research Association. The study was authored by Cheyeon Ha of the University of Southern California, and Michael F. McCarthy, Michael J. Strambler, and Christina Cipriano of the Education Collaboratory at Yale. In a systematic analysis of 40 studies involving more than 33,700 students in grades 1 through 12, researchers led by Cipriano concluded that students who participated in universal SEL programs performed better on academic outcomes—including grades and standardized tests—than students who did not. Universal programs are those that are provided to all students in a school. The examined studies were conducted across 12 countries between 2008 and 2020. 

The kids who sued America over climate change aren’t done yet

Anita Hofschneider, Grist

In 2015, nearly two dozen American youth sued the federal government, alleging that the United States violated their constitutional rights by facilitating the burning of fossil fuels and allowing greenhouse gas emissions to rise to dangerous levels. Their case, known as Juliana v. U.S., was dismissed in federal courts, but inspired dozens of youth climate lawsuits including successful climate cases in Montana and Hawaiʻi. Now, 15 of those same Juliana plaintiffs, including four Indigenous plaintiffs, are taking their case internationally in the hopes that the global community will pressure the U.S. government to act.

Students at this Detroit school got free bikes. Here’s how they say it helped attendance.

Hannah Dellinger, Chalkbeat

Some days, it takes Elyazar Holiday two hours and four buses to travel the 20 miles from his home on the far west side of Detroit to his school on the edge of the east side of the city. The Detroit school district has limited yellow bus service, and none for most high school students. Like many students in the city, the 17-year-old’s family doesn’t have access to a working car. Riding city buses to Davis Aerospace Technical High School is Holiday’s only option, but – with delays and missed buses – it often proves unreliable. Last year, Holiday received a gift from his school that made the trek easier: a bicycle. Principal Michelle Davis gave every student at the school a bike as part of a holistic approach to reducing chronic absenteeism. The bikes were funded through community donations.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

The Community College Is One of America’s Greatest Achievements—And It Needs Our Help

William Bruno, Current Affairs

My journey to becoming a fully-fledged academic and emergency medicine physician included more than twelve years of post-secondary education at five different institutions. With each step I accrued more knowledge, earned another degree or attained a professional certification. But it was my two years at a community college in Southern California that I rank as perhaps the most important educational experience of my life.  When I started at Santa Barbara City College, I was a 19 year old blue-collar kid with a middling educational track record.

Student support programs in peril after federal cuts at Hispanic-serving community colleges

Michael Burke, EdSource

Entering her senior year at Dinuba High School in California’s Central Valley in 2022, Sarahi Sanchez Soto wasn’t sure if she would attend college. Nobody else in her family had a postsecondary degree. Her older sister previously enrolled in college but dropped out, leaving Soto discouraged about her own prospects and wondering if she could handle college. Her plans changed that fall, when a counselor introduced her to a dual enrollment program in information systems with nearby Reedley College. By enrolling in the program, high school students get access to a state-of-the-art computer lab in Dinuba’s downtown area, where they take college-level classes in web development. The program even has a dedicated counselor, who Soto said connected her to resources, including a food pantry and a math tutoring center on the Reedley campus.

A fragmented legal system and threat of deportation are pushing higher education out of reach for many undocumented students

Vanessa Delgado, The Conversation

There are 408,000 undocumented students enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities – that’s about 2% of the entire U.S. college population. California and Texas have the greatest number, with about 21% of all undocumented college students living in California and 14% in Texas. Those numbers are likely to be an underestimate, as there are no official surveys that track this information. We don’t have strong data on the high school graduation rates of college students who are not living in the U.S. legally. The best estimates suggest that about 5% to 10% of all undocumented high schoolers go off to college.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

AI Could Wipe Out the Working Class [Video]

Sen. Bernie Sanders, Youtube

The artificial intelligence and robotics being developed by multi-billionaires will allow corporate America to wipe out tens of millions of decent-paying jobs, cut labor costs and boost profits. What happens to working class people who can’t find jobs because they don’t exist?

The Left Needs to Rethink How It Understands Inequality

Virgilio Urbina Lazardi, Jacobin

A paper published a few years ago in the American Economic Journal has raised eyebrows within and outside of the profession. Combining national accounts data with household surveys, its authors found that the United States redistributed a greater share of its gross domestic product through taxes and transfers to its poor than any of its wealthy, mostly Western European, peers. As it turns out, the “inequality gap” between the United States and Europe is not explicable by the comparative generosity of the latter’s welfare states, which are in fact funded by more regressive systems of indirect taxation. Rather, the key to Europe’s relatively higher levels of equality is a more egalitarian distribution of pretax market incomes.

UNICEF warns that number of children in Haiti displaced by violence has nearly doubled

Dánica Coto and Evens Sanon, AP News

The number of children displaced by violence in Haiti has nearly doubled to 680,000, according to a new UNICEF report released Wednesday that warns minors are increasingly facing hunger, violence and recruitment by armed groups in the Caribbean nation. Overall, around 6 million Haitians — half the country’s population — need humanitarian assistance, including more than 3.3 million children, UNICEF said. “Without decisive action, the future of an entire generation is at stake,” the report stated.

Democracy and the Public Interest

Federal Vouchers, Treasury Regulations, and State Flexibility

Kevin G. Welner, NEPC

The 2025 Reconciliation Act, or “One Big Beautiful Bill,” creates a federal school choice program offering tax credits for donations to Scholarship Granting Organizations that fund private-school tuition. Though promoted as flexible for states, forthcoming Treasury Department regulations are expected to limit state control and expand largely unregulated voucher programs. This policy memo warns that such programs have historically led to academic declines, inequities, and weakened public schools. It urges governors to either reject participation or condition their involvement on guarantees of state-level control, transparency, and non-discrimination protections

Trump’s push for ‘patriotic’ education could further chill history instruction

Liz Willen, Hechinger Report

High school history teacher Antoine Stroman says he wants his students to ask “the hard questions” — about slavery, Jim Crow, the murder of George Floyd and other painful episodes that have shaped the United States. Now, Stroman worries that President Donald Trump’s push for “patriotic education” could complicate the direct, factual way he teaches such events. Last month, the president announced a plan to present American history that emphasizes “a unifying and uplifting portrayal of the nation’s founding ideals,” and inspires “a love of country.” Stroman does not believe students at the magnet high school where he teaches in Philadelphia will buy this version, nor do many of the teachers I’ve spoken with. They say they are committed to honest accounts of the shameful events and painful eras that mark our nation’s history.

AI and Education: The Kids are in Danger

Martin Hart-Landsberg, Socialist Project

Big tech, ever on the hunt for new markets for their generative artificial intelligence (AI) systems, are pushing hard to get them into public schools as well as colleges and universities. Their interest goes beyond short-term profits – it is also about “grooming” a new generation to accept, if not embrace, the world big tech seeks to shape and dominate. We need to expose and resist this effort – their success would be a disaster for our youth and a major setback in the struggle to build a just, sustainable, and democratic society. Chatbots are going to school.

Other News of Note

Celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day 2025

The Getty Center

In honor of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Getty hosts its fourth annual family event to learn about Southern California’s vibrant Native American cultures. The theme this year celebrates libraries and storytelling, with activities sharing traditional and contemporary Indigenous perspectives and narratives. This year’s celebration is presented in partnership with The Chapter House.

Indigenous Peoples Day, City of San Fernando

In 2015, Mayor Joel Fajardo and City Council of San Fernando first city in Southern California to recognize Indigenous Peoples Day. This year, on October 14, 2017, the City along with the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians are celebrating its 2nd Annual Indigenous Peoples Day Celebration in the beautiful City of San Fernando, on the village of Paséknga. Indigenous Peoples Day celebrates the sovereignty, cultures, and lives of all indigenous peoples. The event will host songs and dances of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, as well as traditional storytelling. There will be indigenous food, drum circles, traditional games, arts and crafts workshops, educational booths, and interactive stations.

Fire Kinship: Southern California Native Ecology and Art

Fowler Museum

Prior to the colonization of Southern California in the 18th century, Native communities throughout the region used controlled fire practices to ensure the vitality of their local ecosystems. Fire-based land management practices ranged from small burns to spur healthy plant growth, to larger ones that strategically eradicated invasive species and reduced fuel loads (preventing catastrophic fires). Fire Kinship counters the attitudes of fear and illegality around fire, arguing for a return to Native practices, in which fire is regarded as a vital aspect of land stewardship, community wellbeing, and tribal sovereignty. These conversations have been shaped by key community leaders throughout Southern California: Lazaro Arvizu Jr. (Tongva), Marlene’ Dusek (Payómkawichum, Kúupangawish, Kumeyaay, and Czech), William Madrigal (Cahuilla/ Payómkawichum), Wesley Ruise Jr. (La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians), Stanley Rodriguez (Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel), William Pink (Pala Band of Luiseño Mission Indians), Lorene Sisquoc (Mountain Cahuilla/ Fort Sill Apache), and Myra Masiel-Zamora (Pechanga Band of Indians).

See also:  Meztli Projects