Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

The Contract Fight In Education Unions

Lois Weiner, Z News

How do Trump’s latest onslaughts, like sending the National Guard to DC and threatening to do the same to major cities with Black mayors, relate to US contract fights of education workers? The answers lie in how the Right’s current assault relates to what preceded Trump1 and Trump2, starting with an international project in education, organized by powerful elites, supported by both US political parties. Though the global nature of the first neoliberal assault seems distant in time and space from our local contracts and Trump’s ideological, cultural, social, political, and economic offensive, that history configures what we face now.

A Labor Day Lesson Plan: Teach High-Schoolers About Workplace Rights

Terri Gerstein, The New Republic

Cute guys serving pizza, cute girls scooping ice cream, a passionate and mostly innocent fling, and a bittersweet march toward the end of August. In the movies, summer job storylines are filtered through a warm gauzy lens. Career experts, too, have a sunny view of summer employment: That’s when young people learn about responsibility, discipline, and teamwork.  But when our sons and their friends had their first jobs, the picture was sometimes less rosy. The manager at a chocolate shop stole a worker’s tips. A neighborhood Italian restaurant required new employees to work unpaid “training” weeks. A theater concession operator paid workers per shift, with hourly rates lower than minimum wage.

State Legislature passes bills to restrict immigration enforcement at schools

Zaidee Stavely, Ed Source

The California Legislature passed two bills on Tuesday that attempt to restrict immigration enforcement on school campuses and inform students and families of the presence of immigration officers on campuses. Assembly Bill 49, if signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, will prohibit schools from allowing immigration enforcement officers to enter a school campus or question a student unless they have a judicial warrant or court order. It will also prohibit schools from sharing information about a student, family or employee with immigration officials, unless the officials present a judicial warrant or court order.

Language, Culture, and Power

“You Are Safe Now”: Migrant Youth Constructions of Safety and Schooling in the U.S.

Michelle J. Bellino, Gabrielle Oliveira, Anthropology & Education Quarterly

Drawing on multisited ethnographic research with migrant families from Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras who were detained, separated, or endured prolonged transit due to US immigration policies, we articulate how ideas of “relational safety” are situated in relationships with people, place, and time. Contrasting abundant literature preoccupied with physical and structural violence that migrants suffer, we consider what we learn by listening to young people construct experiences around the ideals of safety, rather than the prevalence of violence.

Immigration agents signed up to recruit at a California university. Then the protests started

Mikhail Zinshteyn, Cal Matters

Cal Poly Pomona postponed its annual fall job fair this week after students, alumni and community members criticized its inclusion of Customs and Border Protection as an in-person recruiter, underscoring the heightened sensitivity about immigration agencies on college campuses this fall. The interim president of the Los Angeles County campus with nearly 28,000 students — the majority of whom are Latino — said leadership responded to the criticism and decided to rethink their approach to job fairs. “We have listened carefully and are leveraging this input to design career programming this fall that is more personal and better tailored to the evolving needs of our students and to workforce demands,” said Iris S. Levine in a public letter Monday. “I want to thank those of you who reached out and shared your perspectives with honesty and passion,” she added.

Photojournalist documents arrests outside of immigration hearings [Video]

Sam Lane, PBS Newshour

As another part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation push, immigration enforcement officials have conducted arrests outside courtrooms as people show up for hearings with immigration judges. The detentions have led to sometimes dramatic scenes, with families pleading to let their loved ones go and confrontations with officers. We spoke to one photojournalist who spent weeks documenting arrests at federal facilities in Manhattan.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

‘Urban Heat Zones’ Making Schools Even Hotter

Calvin Macatantan, NEA Today

In Tempe, Arizona, history teacher Dylan Wince asks his students each year to think about the hottest day they can remember.  Some recall waiting for the public bus in 110-degree heat with no shade. Others talk about losing hundreds of dollars in groceries when a power outage spoiled everything in their refrigerator. A few mention how the heat interacts with medications, making them dizzy or sick.  “At first,” Wince says, “the response is, this is our normal. Then they realize, there’s a name for this [and] a reason.” 

Race Frames as an Alternative Typology of Parental Engagement in a Diverse School

Idit Fast, AERA Open

The literature on parental engagement in diverse schools has examined the role of parents’ class, race, and ethnicity in shaping their engagement. It argues that while White and socioeconomically privileged parents often align with school expectations and wield influence, parents of color and low-income parents may struggle to shape school policies. Studies suggest that additional factors such as advocacy styles, prioritization of social-emotional well-being, and perceptions of racial inequalities can also explain parents’ engagement. Drawing on fieldwork in an urban, diverse, public (non-charter), gentrifying school implementing a diversity in admissions policy, I propose parents’ “race frames” and their alignment with the administration’s race frames as an additional typology of parental engagement. I analyze a conflict over discipline policy, a topic at the heart of education, gentrification, and race relations to illustrate the role of race frames in parents’ engagement. The findings underscore the importance of examining parental values and alignment with school values to understand effective parental engagement and promote progressive school policies.

School in Benin recovers ancestral language in the classroom to combat colonial legacy

Pedro Stropasolas, Peoples Dispatch

At a small school in the commune of Kloukname, in southwestern Benin, near the border with Togo, the daily routine is marked by a unique celebration: the teaching of the Adja language, of the Aja people. The school is the Saint Salomon learning center, established in 2014. The school is an exception in a country where French, a colonial legacy, is the official language and a prerequisite for universities and jobs, but is spoken by only 35% of the population. Benin has over 70 national languages, a diversity that remains marginalized by the formal education system. In this context, Saint Salomon’s initiative emerges as an act of resistance. “Language is culture. You can’t be traditional in a destroyed language. Everything we do, we do in our language, and that’s how it’s done,” says student Ninivi, summarizing the project’s mission.

Florida plans to become first state to eliminate all childhood vaccine mandates

Curt Anderson, AP News

Florida plans to become the first state to eliminate vaccine mandates, a longtime cornerstone of public health policy for keeping schoolchildren and adults safe from infectious diseases. State Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who announced the decision Wednesday, cast current requirements in schools and elsewhere as “immoral” intrusions on people’s rights that hamper parents’ ability to make health decisions for their children. “People have a right to make their own decisions, informed decisions,” Ladapo, who has frequently clashed with the medical establishment, said at a news conference in Valrico. “They don’t have the right to tell you what to put in your body. Take it away from them.”

Access, Assessment, Advancement

When did caring for America’s most vulnerable kids become political?

Chabeli Carrazana, The 19th

For 60 years, Head Start has provided child care for the most vulnerable children in the United States with little controversy. It was established by a Democratic president, Lyndon B. Johnson, in 1965, and supported by a slew of Republicans since, including Richard Nixon, who called it “valuable”; Ronald Reagan, who established Head Start Awareness Month in the 1980s; and George H. W. Bush, who increased its funding. Legislators from both parties have supported Head Start, which operates in all 50 states, and is the only child care option available in some rural parts of the country. 

Judge reverses Trump administration’s cuts of billions of dollars to Harvard University

Collin Binkley and Michael Casey, AP News

A federal judge in Boston on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to reverse its cuts of more than $2.6 billion in research funding for Harvard University, delivering a significant victory to the Ivy League school in its battle with the White House. U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs ruled the cuts amounted to illegal retaliation for Harvard’s rejection of the Trump administration’s demands for changes to Harvard’s governance and policies. The government had tied the funding freezes to Harvard’s delays in dealing with antisemitism, but the judge said the university’s federally backed research had little connection to discrimination against Jews. “A review of the administrative record makes it difficult to conclude anything other than that (the government) used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities,” Burroughs wrote.

The Leader of Trump’s Assault on Higher Education Has a Troubled Legal and Financial History

Peter Elkind, and Katherine Mangan, ProPublica

When Los Angeles attorney Leo Terrell, a legal commentator, lifelong Democrat and fiery fixture on Fox News, announced on the network’s “Hannity” show that he was voting for Donald Trump in 2020, the MAGA universe went wild. Oliver North hailed him on his “Real American Heroes” podcast. Fox News signed him on as a paid contributor, at a six-figure salary.

Terrell, meanwhile, rebranded himself as “Leo 2.0,” complete with red Trump-style caps he offered for sale online. Leo 1.0 had slammed Trump for cozying up to white supremacists, blamed him for a surge in violent attacks on Jews and donated to Democrats. Leo 2.0? He attacked “DEI nonsense,” compared Black Lives Matter to ISIS and declared the 2020 election was “stolen from President Trump and America!”

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

Unveiling Ableism in Education: A Critical Examination of its Normativity and Implications for Learning in Schools

Franziska Felder, Educational Theory

In this article, I critically examine the concept of ableism within educational contexts, highlighting its normative dimensions and implications for learning in schools. Drawing on neo-institutionalist theories of education, I explore how normative expectations around ability shape educational practices and contribute to the marginalization of students with disabilities. I argue that ableism is not merely a matter of individual prejudice but is embedded in institutional structures and cultural norms. In this article, I critique the conceptual ambiguity in current ableism discourse—particularly the conflation of normativity and normality—and call for a more precise analytical framework.

How DEI initiatives guide education and school culture in Saranac Lake [Audio]

David Escobar, North Country Public Radio

When Saranac Lake Central School District rolled out its diversity, equity and inclusion committee in fall 2020, Superintendent Diane Fox said the move was not prompted by a state mandate. Months earlier, Saranac Lake High School valedictorian Francine “Franny” Newman had used her graduation speech to reflect on the anti-Asian racism she encountered growing up in the Adirondacks. “We all knew her,” said Fox. “She was a student to look up to, so her then sharing a story that was not the story we would be hearing was enlightening and motivating to the board.”

Ukrainian Students Start New School Year in Underground Classrooms [Video]

Jiawei Wang, New York Times

With Russian attacks ongoing and peace talks stalled, some students in Ukraine are attending classes underground. For some, it is their first in-person learning in more than three years of war.

How Declining Enrollments Can Become an Opportunity for School Transformation

Linda Darling Hammond, Forbes

Across the country, public school enrollments are declining, adding to the list of concerns currently worrying many policymakers and administrators, especially in places where funding levels decline along with pupil count. But, as we describe below, this decline could be a boon or a bane to the future of public education, depending on how policymakers and educators approach it. The country experienced a historic 3% enrollment drop in 2020, associated with the onset of the pandemic, from roughly 50.8 million to 49.4 million students. This marked the largest single-year drop since World War II.

Democracy and the Public Interest

Do you care about democracy? Then you should care about threats to elected school boards in Canada

Joel Westheimer, Toronto Star

Elected school boards are under siege across Canada. In Ontario, the Ford government is the latest to have signalled its intent to eliminate or weaken them and fold decision making ever more tightly into the Ministry of Education. Officials have framed the move as a matter of efficiency. In reality, it’s a power-grab and another step toward centralizing authority in order to sideline communities, parents and students. School boards are far from perfect. Elections are typically marked by low voter participation, and boards are sometimes mired in controversy or even, very occasionally, corruption.

Religious freedom ruling raises messy questions for schools

George Theoharis, Syracuse.com

As students and teachers head back to school, implementing the Supreme Court Mahmoud v. Taylor ruling from this past June is, at best, messy, and, in reality, troubling. The case centered on picture books that were part of the regular curriculum. These picture books had LGBTQ+ characters and families. The Supreme Court decided that families should be able to opt out their children from school content that does not align with their religious beliefs. The ruling indicated that merely being exposed to this content is a burden on the family’s religion because exposing students to the curriculum normalizes that same religion-conflicting content.

A century after Scopes, vouchers and Supreme Court deliver wins for religious right

Liam Adams, Knoxville News

For the better part of the last century after the Scopes Monkey Trial sparked religious conservatives’ fight to shape schooling in America, the movement has mobilized around public-school policies and with antagonism toward the U.S. Supreme Court for placing limits on religion in schools. But that script has flipped lately. The 2025-26 school year marks the beginning of Tennessee’s new law expanding publicly funded vouchers for private school tuition. More than a dozen other red states have passed similar legislation in recent years, a peak moment for a nationwide push for “School Choice.” The single greatest beneficiary of these voucher expansions are religiously affiliated private schools.

Other News of Note

The Responsibility of Intellectuals in the Age of Fascism and Genocide

Robin D. G. Kelley, David Waldstreicher, Jennifer Zacharia, Martin O’Neill, Boston Review

Fourteen years ago, Noam Chomsky published “The Responsibility of Intellectuals, Redux” in these pages. He used the occasion of the tenth anniversary of 9/11 to revisit his classic 1967 essay on the subject, although the immediate occasion for the piece was the assassination of Osama bin Laden by U.S. Navy Seals. As the Obama administration (and much of America) celebrated, Chomsky exposed the operation as a violation of U.S. and international law. The singular goal was to kill bin Laden, not capture him and bring him to trial. There was no pretense of habeas corpus since his body was summarily dumped into the sea. Chomsky thus reiterates his original contention that it is the “responsibility of intellectuals” to tell the truth about war—in this instance, the war on terror and the crimes of U.S. imperialism in the Middle East, Latin America, Asia, and Africa.