Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

How a Struggling Boston School Found Success in the Roots of its Haitian American Community

Jeff Bryant, The Progressive

In 2016, Boston’s Mattahunt Elementary was a school on the brink. A letter from the Massachusetts state education commissioner sent to Boston superintendent Tommy Chang threatened to use “state receivership”—essentially, a takeover of the school—unless the district could present “an effective plan” to “move the [school] out of underperforming status.” As WBUR, Boston’s public radio station, reported that year, Mattahunt had scored in the bottom 1 percent of public schools in Massachusetts for at least three years in a row. And since 2012, Mattahunt had been classified as a “turnaround school,” a designation given to schools and districts that have to be monitored by the state because of chronic underperformance. Flash forward to 2024, and Mattahunt is one of only three finalists for a School on the Move prize, an annual award given by local nonprofit Edvestors that “spotlights the most notable school-wide improvement efforts happening across Boston Public Schools.”

Today’s teacher shortage is just the tip of the iceberg: Part II

Hilary Wething, Economic Policy Institute

In a previous post, we highlighted the data indicating a shortage in teacher labor markets and offered solutions to address it. But closing the current labor shortage would not necessarily imply that we have invested enough of society’s resources in public schools. A teacher shortage means that demand for teachers (proxied by vacant positions) is greater than the current supply of willing teachers (proxied by new hires). But the demand side of the teacher labor market is not set through any market mechanism. In this country, we rightly think that education is a public good everyone deserves and, as a result, rely on policymakers to decide how much society should invest in public education. If policymakers set the demand for inputs into public education (like teachers) to be low relative to the socially optimal level of investment in public education (by not allocating enough funding for public schools), shortages are easy to avoid. Yet the absence of a shortage would not mean we got the level of education investment right.

A Bad Commute: Travel Time to Work Predicts Teacher Turnover and Other Workplace Outcomes

Francisco Arturo Santelli and Jason A. Grissom, AERA Open

Research suggests that longer commute times may increase employee turnover probabilities by increasing stress and reducing job attachment and embeddedness. Using administrative data from a midsized urban school district, we test whether teachers with longer commute times are more likely to transfer schools or exit the district. Both descriptively and in regression results employing multiple fixed effects, we find that teachers with longer commutes are more likely to transfer schools within the district. Regression results show that each 5-minute increase in one-way commute time predicts an increase in transfer probability of 0.8 to 1.0 percentage points over most of the commute time distribution. We also find evidence that teachers with the longest commutes (i.e., 40+ minutes each way) have higher district exit probabilities. Moreover, teachers with longer commute times are absent from work more frequently and receive lower observation ratings. We discuss potential implications for local human resources policy and practice.

Language, Culture, and Power

LAUSD’s Black Student Achievement Program Upended, Targeted By Conservative Virginia 

Howard Blume, Los Angeles Times

Under pressure after a conservative group took legal action, the Los Angeles Unified School District will overhaul a $120 million academic program for struggling Black students by eliminating race as a factor in determining which children will be helped. The decision has outraged supporters of the district’s Black Student Achievement Plan, who are demanding that officials stand by the original program, which had begun to yield some early, positive results.

Australian schools need to address racism. Here are 4 ways they can do this

Aaron Teo and Rachel Sharples, The Conversation

The Australian Human Rights Commission wants to see schools address racism, as part of a broader push to address the problem across Australian society. As it says in a recent report,

People are not born with racist attitudes or beliefs […] Addressing racism in schools is crucial to ensure that victims do not leave education facing lifelong disadvantage, and perpetrators do not enter adulthood believing racist behaviours are acceptable […]. But racism is hardly mentioned in the Australian Curriculum – for example, it is noted in passing in the health and physical education curriculum for years 5 to 8. However, there is no consistent approach across subject areas, or at the state level. This means teaching about racism is largely left up to individual schools and teachers. Yet research shows they can be reluctant to speak about these issues with students. This is for a range of reasons, such as worrying they will say the wrong thing. How should school systems, schools and teachers address racism? Here are four ways.

‘Vote on behalf of me’: Undocumented students talk civic engagement, democracy

Allie Seibel and Hannah Parcells, Rocky Mountain Collegian

The ability to vote is one that every citizen gets at the age of 18 in the United States. Voters in this country get to decide who is going to represent them at the local, state and federal levels, but citizens aren’t the only ones directly impacted by policy. As of 2022, there were nearly 19 million college students enrolled in the United States, most of whom were eligible to register to vote and cast ballots in elections at every level of government. According to a 2021 survey, among those millions are 408,000 undocumented students, none of whom are allowed to vote in federal, state or most local elections, meaning they are unable to participate in the electoral process and make democratic decisions in the same way as their American citizen peers.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

A Southern California school plants a ‘Moon Tree’ grown with seeds flown in space

Amy Taxin, AP News

To cheers and applause from kids wearing spacesuits and star-studded T-shirts, a tree was planted in California that is out of this world. The so-called “Moon Tree” — grown with seeds that were flown around the moon — was wheeled out in a wagon accompanied by several students carrying shovels to help dig its new home at Santiago STEAM Magnet Elementary School in Lake Forest. The school, which has roughly 500 students in grades K-12, was among those selected to receive a seedling for a giant sequoia that was grown with seeds flown on NASA’s Artemis I Mission in 2022. “It’s kind of crazy,” said Emily Aguesse, a sixth grader who participated in Monday’s ceremony welcoming the tree. “I’ve always wanted to go to space but this motivates it even more.”

More schools than ever are serving vegan meals in California. Here’s how they did it.

Frida Garza, The Grist

Three years ago, Erin Primer had an idea for a new summer program for her school district: She wanted students to learn about where their food comes from. Primer, who has worked in student nutrition within California’s public school system for 10 years, applied for grant funding from the state to kick off the curriculum, and got it. Students planted cilantro in a garden tower, met a local organic farmer who grows red lentils, and learned about corn. “Many kids didn’t know that corn grew in a really tall plant,” said Primer. “They didn’t know that it had a husk.” The curriculum, focused on bringing the farm into the school, had an effect beyond the classroom: Primer found that, after learning about and planting ingredients that they then used to make simple meals like veggie burgers, students were excited to try new foods and flavors in the lunchroom.

National School Lunch Program and the 2024 Elections

NEPC

Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach and NEPC

From a historical perspective, why has the federal government been engaged in this issue? The Federal government’s engagement in this issue can be traced back to 1932 and a series of New Deal investments in aid for school lunches. The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) was made permanent by the 1946 National School Lunch Act, which provided assistance to states for nonprofit school-lunch programs. It was justified as a “measure of national security, to safeguard the health and well-being of the Nation’s children and to encourage the domestic consumption of nutritious agricultural commodities and other food.” From early days, the program included both cash assistance and distribution of surplus foods. During the 1950s and 1960s there was increasing participation in the NSLP, which is administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service, and the funding formulas were altered several times.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

Transitional kindergarten can’t expand without the right kind of classrooms

Zaidee Stavely and Lasherica Thornton, Ed Source

Transitional kindergarten for all 4-year-olds has been touted as a way to boost declining enrollment and offer universal preschool. One major roadblock: Some districts just don’t have the space. Some districts do not have room to accommodate additional transitional kindergarten, or TK, classes at all schools. Others, especially those in less affluent areas, lack the resources to add toilets and playground equipment made for 4-year-olds. A lack of state funding makes the problem worse. “We’re going to see inequitable outcomes as a result of the inequitable access to appropriate facilities for transitional kindergarten,” said Jessica Sawko, education director at Children Now, an advocacy organization. “The state needs to continue to invest in the facilities that it has asked school districts to create.”

Tribal College Campuses Are Falling Apart. The U.S. Hasn’t Fulfilled Its Promise to Fund the Schools.

Matt Krupnick, ProPublica

In the 1970s, Congress committed to funding a higher education system controlled by Indigenous communities. These tribal colleges and universities were intended to serve students who’d been disadvantaged by the nation’s history of violence and racism toward Native Americans, including efforts to eradicate their languages and cultures. But walking through Little Big Horn College in Montana with Emerson Bull Chief, its dean of academics, showed just how far that idea has to go before becoming a reality. Bull Chief dodged signs warning “Keep out!” as he approached sheets of plastic sealing off the campus day care center. It was late April and the center and nearby cafeteria have been closed since January, when a pipe burst, flooding the building, the oldest at the 44-year-old college. The facilities remained closed into late September.

Grad Students Are Unionizing in Droves. Can Postdocs Lead the Next Wave?

Marie-Rose Sheinerman, The Nation

When Marjorie Levinstein, 35, began working as a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute on Drug Abuse in 2021, she knew from the outset that she wanted to advocate for her fellow postdocs. At the University of Washington, where she had received her PhD in neuroscience, she saw firsthand “how the union really fought to improve our lives.” But the unionization movement at her new employer, the National Institutes of Health, didn’t have that infrastructure. In July 2021, it amounted to “five people on a Zoom call,” Levinstein told The Nation.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

#IAmLeandro Mobilizes NC to Move a $5.54 Billion Settlement out of the Courtroom

Kody Boye, USA Today

These words by Rebecca Trammel, founder of Community Conversations, resonate now more than ever. With an appetite for justice, this determined advocate – a woman without children and no direct connection to education – dedicated her life to equality in the public school system. Her passion reflects the broad impact of current issues permeating education, sending a clear message: “Society will never be whole until we educate every child.”  Though Community Conversations began its work in New Hanover County, its mission today transcends geographical boundaries, promising a brighter future for North Carolina, the US, and beyond. The organization centered its pursuit around the #IAmLeandro initiative, a movement launched earlier this year. The campaign is on a mission to promote awareness for a 5.54-billion-dollar investment and comprehensive strategy, required by a North Carolina Supreme Court ruling.

Louisiana’s CRT Ban Continues the Long History Suppressing Black Education

Jesse Hagopian, In These Times

As more than 700,000 students across Louisiana recently headed back to the classroom, a troubling reality looms: Black history wasn’t allowed in with them. In an increasing number of states, books on Black history and lesson plans about systemic racism are barred from schools — and Louisiana has followed suit. Gov. Jeff Landry’s executive order in late August bans critical race theory — on top of previous restrictions already in place — and makes Louisiana the latest state to pass a law prohibiting antiracist education. Incredibly, laws preventing honest education about race impact nearly half of all public school students in the United States.

Protecting Children from Dangerous Work

Reed Shaw and Nina Mast, Governing for Impact

Most nights after school, a 16-year old boy named Duvan Thomas Perez clocked into his graveyard cleaning shift at a chicken processing plant in Mississippi.  He donned ill-fitting safety equipment and navigated the cavernous facility, in which an array of sharp, high-powered machines sat atop floors slicked with animal blood, fat, and harsh chemicals.  One night in July 2023, Duvan was doing a deep clean of a piece of machinery in the plant’s deboning area.  Proper supervision and precautions failed and a moving component on the machine caught Duvan, pulling him in, and killed him.  

Democracy and the Public Interest

Breaking the Public Schools

Jennifer C. Berkshire, The American Prospect

Education spending in North Carolina is about to go way up, thanks to lawmakers’ largesse. But the extra funds—close to half a billion dollars—won’t go to the public schools attended by the vast majority of children in the state, or to hike teacher pay, despite a worsening shortage. Instead, the huge influx of cash will go to pick up the tab for private school tuition, including for well-off families, a priority for North Carolina’s Republican supermajority. In fact, according to recent state analysis, funding for the state’s public schools will drop by nearly $100 million as a result of voucher expansion. While Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, vetoed the bill, legislators are expected to override him. As one school district leader stated, “It feels like to me that there’s a desire to suffocate traditional public schools to justify their demise.”

Students want more civics education, but far too few schools teach it

Liz Willen, Hechinger Report

Three weeks before a ferociously contested U.S. election, the views and voices of students should be heard louder than ever – even those of young people who aren’t yet eligible to vote. Trouble is, many won’t have learned enough about the issues to develop informed and thoughtful opinions. That’s partly because civics education in schools has significantly declined, a conundrum we’ve followed for years at The Hechinger Report. Many teachers say they are afraid to teach these topics in these sharply divided times while principals, too, fear discussing civics is simply too divisive.

Panthers, Communists, Black Nationalists, and Liberals in Southern California

Gerald Horne, Black Perspectives

The Urban Rebellions of the 1960s were assuredly a landmark in the complex history of the Black Liberation Movement. And although they have received significant chronicling, the next generation of scholars would do well to provide more analysis of how and why so many took to the streets—at times armed—just as it appeared that the hateful system of Jim Crow was seemingly in retreat. Allow me to point you to my most recent book—Armed Struggle? Panthers and Communists; Black Nationalists & Liberals in Southern California through the Sixties and Seventies—in order to illuminate issues sketched below. As the title suggests, this work does not look at these diverse ideological forces in isolation from one another but, instead, limns their interactions. This approach allows for tracing the influences of one trend upon another.

Other News of Note

Voices of Student Success: Supporting College Readiness for Incarcerated Students [Audio]

Ashley Mowreader, Inside HigherEd

In July 2023, Congress lifted a ban on federal Pell Grant funding for incarcerated individuals in prison education programs, but barriers to enrollment and success for these learners remain. The Petey Greene Program, a nonprofit organization that partners with prisons and higher education institutions, launched a College Bridge program in 2020 to increase college-level writing, reading and math skills for incarcerated students.  In this episode, host Ashley Mowreader speaks with Chiara Benetollo, executive director of the Puttkammer Center for Educational Justice and Equity, and Katherine Meloney, director of the Villanova program at SCI Phoenix, to discuss the bridge program and the ways higher ed can support justice and learning for incarcerated individuals.