Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

With COVID-19 relief gone, teachers are losing their jobs. It’s a blow to diversity.

Kayla Jimenez, USA TODAY

Erica Popoca’s ninth grade English students were livid in the spring when she told them she wouldn’t be back to teach this fall. The district where she works in Hartford, Connecticut, terminated her contract because the COVID-19 relief money that covered her salary was about to dry up. Newer teachers such as Popoca were the first to be cut. Her students wrote letters urging school board members to change their minds.  Popoca, the founding adviser of the multilingual student club, worried she would lose bonds with Latino students she had taught for two years who identify with her culturally as a Latina and as one of the few teachers who speaks Spanish at the school.

Moms for Liberty Changes Course

Laura Pappano and Nirvi Shah, Slate

Apparently, there is not enough joy to go around, and some “joyful warriors” are upset about, among other things, what they see as their nickname being ripped off. Joy has become a theme of the Democratic ticket—Vice President Kamala Harris proclaimed herself and running mate Tim Walz “joyful warriors” against their Republican opponents. The conservative parent group Moms for Liberty made a point of attacking the Democrats’ use of the phrase during its four-day annual summit over Labor Day weekend in Washington, D.C. “I want to remind people who are the OG joyful warriors,” Moms for Liberty co-founder Tina Descovich said Friday evening, ahead of an appearance by Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump.  As a whole, the summit sent dual messages. One cast Moms for Liberty and the broader Republican Party as working to appeal across party lines. The other unleashed strikingly vitriolic language about supposed dangers of the Harris-Walz ticket—especially to parents. Leaders made one particular issue—transgender students—the focus of their messaging.

Help or Harmful? The Federal Role in Supporting Students with Disabilities in Schools

Edward García Fierros, NEPC

Between now and November 5th, we are running a series of 10 Q&As with NEPC Fellows about education issues relevant to the 2024 federal election. The goal of the series is to inform readers about the education-related stances of the nation’s two major political parties, drawing upon the Republican and Democratic parties’ national platforms and on Project 2025. Q&A participants were selected on the basis of their research expertise on the topics they have been asked to address. In addition to describing the parties’ positions, each expert is providing background information, with a focus on summarizing research findings. In today’s installment, Edward García Fierros addresses the federal role in supporting students with disabilities.

Language, Culture, and Power

Lawmakers Push to Fully Implement English Learner Roadmap in California Schools

Zaidee Stavely, EdSource

California published a guide for how districts should serve English learners seven years ago. It’s called the English Learner Roadmap Policy, and it’s largely seen as groundbreaking. But many districts still haven’t used that road map to change their practices, advocates say. “It’s not systemic across the state,” said Shelly Spiegel-Coleman, strategic adviser to Californians Together, a coalition of organizations that advocates for English learners. “You can go to school districts and ask teachers, ‘Have you ever heard of the road map?’ And they look at you like you’re from Mars. They’ve never heard of it.” Lawmakers are now pushing to fully implement the road map, by passing Assembly Bill 2074, introduced by Assemblymembers Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance) and David Alvarez (D-Chula Vista). If signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, the bill will require the California Department of Education to create a state implementation plan for the English Learner Roadmap with goals and a system to monitor whether those goals are met.

These Alaska moms couldn’t find a Yup’ik children’s book. So they made one themselves [Audio]

Julie Depenbrock, NPR

Nikki Corbett was desperate. The mother and small business owner had searched online and in stores near her home in Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula, but she could not find any books to teach her young children the Yup’ik language. Growing up, Corbett says, she was more fluent in the language – because she lived in the largely Yup’ik community of Bethel, Alaska. “And so obviously being immersed in that, you understand more and can speak more,” Corbett says. “But being away from it – the community that I live in, it’s not a language that’s normally spoken.”

Displaced From Sudan, Young Refugees Find Solace at School

Walaa Alshaer and Elle Kurancid, The Nation

After 16 months in the all-out crossfire of two warlord-led forces, Sudan is devastated by the largest displacement crisis in the world, and one of the most neglected. There, children endure a 480 percent increase in grave violations, and the weapon of sexual violence is brutally wielded against women and girls—all with impunity, and dangerously inadequate levels of humanitarian funding from the international community. Neighboring Egypt, home to millions of Sudanese nationals, is a key refuge for civilians fleeing the bloody power struggle that erupted in April 2023 between Sudan’s de facto ruler, who commands the Sudanese Armed Forces, and his ex-deputy and partner in mass atrocity crimes, the head of the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The majority of the over 500,000 new Sudanese arrivals known to the UN Refugee Agency in Egypt are women and children once caught in the generals’ catastrophic “war on people.” From nightmares to dreams, here are some of their stories, collected in June, across the Egyptian capital Cairo.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

Today’s school children practice running for their lives – but there are better ways to keep students safe from shooters

Luke Rapa, The Conversation

A 6-year-old girl lost one of her white Adidas lace-up sneakers as she and her 21 classmates practiced fleeing for their lives after an imaginary intruder entered their school. The girl’s teacher told her to keep moving without her shoe, then grabbed it herself and gave it back to the girl when the class settled into their designated safe location. The girl recently recounted the story of losing her shoe during a morning car ride to school. It was just one of several times the girl or her siblings described what they were supposed to do – run “over to that fence,” “across that field” or “into those woods” – if an intruder enters their school building. The reason I know this story is because the girl is my daughter.

Another State Could Mandate Period Education. Will It Catch On?

Brooke Schultz, Education Week

California is poised to become the next state to require schools to teach students about menstruation after legislation passed both chambers—making it one of the few to have a requirement for curriculum on the topic as lawmakers nationally scrutinize what can be discussed about gender in the classroom. The bill, which passed the Democratically-controlled state Senate unanimously on Aug. 28 and now goes to the desk of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, would require that students in grades 7-12 receive menstrual health education as part of their comprehensive sexual health education, which also addresses human development, sexuality, pregnancy, contraception, and sexually transmitted infections. California will become one of only a few to mandate that schools have a curriculum about menstrual health, according to advocates for the measure. The legislation was propelled in part by a push from students, who saw how the gap in education was affecting them personally. The premise was proposed by one student who lost her period and didn’t know why.

Families paying for school lunches grapple with recurring online transaction fees [Video] 

John Yang and Andrew Corkery, PBS Newshour

Schools are increasingly turning to online payment systems for school lunches. Those systems are run by payment processing companies, which typically charge transaction fees. According to federal analysis, families qualifying for reduced-price meals may be paying as much as 60 cents in fees for every dollar spent. John Yang speaks with Associated Press business reporter Cora Lewis for more.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

Child Care Does Not Need To Be a Crisis

Mindy Isser, The Progressive

I have always wanted to be a mom. Despite the deeply emotional and primal desire, I never thought too hard about the logistics of motherhood, like maternity leave and child care; I just assumed everything would work itself out. My own mother always told me, “There’s never a good time to have a kid,” and I took that to heart. I knew my husband and I would never have enough money, enough time, enough room in our house—but I also knew so many people do it with less than we had and that we would be OK. And it’s true; we are. At night, while we watch through the baby monitor as our child sleeps, I say to my husband, “We are the luckiest people in the world.” We own our home, we have two good union jobs, and we found a child care situation that only (only!) costs $175 per week, $700 a month, $9,100 per year, (although we just got notice the cost will increase starting in September by 33 percent). We are making it work. Many parents in the United States can’t say the same.

I’m a College President, and I Hope My Campus Is Even More Political This Year

Michael S. Roth, New York Times

Last year was a tough one on college campuses, so over the summer a lot of people asked me if I was hoping things would be less political this fall. Actually, I’m hoping they will be more political. That’s not to say that I yearn for entrenched conflict or to once again hear chants telling me that I “can’t hide from genocide,” much less anything that might devolve into antisemitic or Islamophobic harassment or violence. But since at least the 1800s, colleges and universities in the United States have sought to help students develop character traits that would make them better citizens. That civic mission is only more relevant today. The last thing any university president should want is an apolitical campus.

Lessons from the student anti-apartheid movement [Audio]

Erin Lawson, Pearl Robinson, Bill Minter, Thula Simpson, The Take

A powerful campus protest and boycott movement in the US played a crucial role in helping to bring down apartheid in South Africa. Today, many US student activists are heading back to school, ready to continue the fight to end what they refer to as Israeli apartheid and genocide. What lessons do the veterans of South Africa’s anti-apartheid movement see echoing today?

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

The most successful and influential Americans come from a surprisingly narrow range of ‘elite’ educational backgrounds

Jonathan Wai, Stephen M. Anderson, Kaja Perina, Frank C. Worrell & Christopher F. Chabris, Nature

The most influential people in many sectors of American society—politics, the military, business, science, academia, arts, and the media—often wield considerable power, and their decision-making and gatekeeping activities have bearing on the broader culture. The military and science sectors are respected institutions. Politicians and business leaders have clear influence and power. Both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, whose editors and writers have enormous gatekeeping power regarding public attention, found themselves in disputes over what views were acceptable to publish. In politics, the words and actions of the President, as well as Senators, members of the House of Representatives, and other prominent politicians from the two major political parties influenced consequential decisions on health, the economy, and education. These policy debates are often dominated by individuals who have university degrees from a small set of “elite” institutions—out of the roughly 4000 degree granting postsecondary institutions one might choose to attend—and who expect their own children to obtain these degrees as well, illustrating just one consequence of social stratification due to education and its implications for society.

NYC girls outperform boys in academics. But they’re unhappier in school.

Michael Elsen-Rooney, Liza Greenberg and Kae Petrin, Chalkbeat New York

By nearly every academic measure, girls in New York City’s public schools are outperforming boys. Their four-year graduation rate is 10 points higher. After graduating, they attend college at a rate 11 percentage points higher. They far outpaced boys on 3-8 grade English state tests, while performing similarly to them in math. Yet despite their academic success, girls report far less satisfaction with their school experiences. A Chalkbeat analysis of responses to the 2023 New York City school survey, a massive annual questionnaire in which more than 350,000 middle and high school students participated last year, found girls report significantly lower levels of satisfaction across a range of questions about students’ classroom experiences and their interactions with peers and adults.

Black enrollment dips at some top colleges after Supreme Court affirmative action ruling

Alexandra Chaidez and Char Adams, NBC News

There has been a dip in Black enrollment at some of the nation’s top universities since the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action, sharply limiting public colleges and universities from considering race in admission. Amherst College, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Washington University in St. Louis are among at least a half-dozen schools that have seen drops in Black student enrollment for the 2024 academic year. Mount Holyoke President Danielle Holley said the court’s ban on inquiring about race in admissions demographic data meant the school had to rely on outreach programs, personal statements and other application materials in attempts to meet their diversity goals. “The feeling was pretty catastrophic,” Holley said of the Supreme Court’s decision. “It fundamentally changed,” the application process, she added. “That demographic information that used to be readily available for a student’s file is now masked.”

Democracy and the Public Interest

From School Librarian to Activist: ‘The Hate Level and the Vitriol Is Unreal’

Alexandra Alter, New York Times

One Sunday morning two years ago, Amanda Jones, a middle school librarian in Watson, La., woke up and saw an email on her phone that left her shaking and breathless. The expletive-laced message from a stranger accused her of being a pedophile and a groomer, and concluded with a threat: “You can’t hide. We know where you work + live. You have a LARGE target on your back,” it said. “Click … Click … see you soon!” It was part of a deluge of online threats and harassment that Jones has faced since the summer of 2022, when she was one of around 20 people to speak out against book banning during a July meeting at her local public library. A fight broke out over whether the library should remove books with content that some deemed inappropriate for children. Like many librarians across the country, Jones found herself caught in a vicious battle over which books belong in libraries — a debate that has divided communities and school boards as book bans have surged in the United States.

Black Girls Lead: The Link Between Public Schools and a Voter Surge

Quintessa Williams, The Atlanta Voice

When Vice President Kamala Harris replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket, she became the first woman of color with a realistic shot at the presidency and an instant inspiration to Black women — some of whom raised $1.3 million on her behalf in just a few hours. Harris’s groundbreaking campaign has now spearheaded another phenomenon: young Black women are currently leading the recent surge in voter registrations. According to data from TargetSmart, the voter registration rate for young Black women in 13 key battleground states has skyrocketed to 175% — nearly triple the rate from the last presidential election four years ago. The registration rate for Black women in general, experienced similar growth — increasing by 98%, while the overall Black voter rate also rose by 85%, according to TargetSmart data.

Will Urban Youth Fundamentally Change African Politics? [Audio]

Nic Cheeseman, Amy Patterson, and Megan Hershey, Democracy in Africa

Will Africa’s increasingly youthful population lead to new democratic and development breakthroughs? Or will it generate fresh instability as frustrated young people demand economic opportunities their governments cannot provide? In this episode, DiA’s very own Nic Cheeseman (aka @fromagehomme) talks to Professors Amy Patterson and Megan Hershey about their recent book Africa’s Urban Youth. They explain how young people across Africa are contesting marginalization and claiming citizenship, and set out the broader context that led to Kenya’s youth-led protests of June/July 2024. They also push back against simple binaries that depict the youth as either a problem or a solution – the reality, they point out, is both more nuanced and more interesting.

Other News of Note

Los Angeles Teachers’ Road to Durable Power, 2014–2016

Alex Caputo-Pearl, Jacobin

From the 1990s to the mid-2010s, the dominant forces within the Democratic Party helped create, shape, and drive bipartisan neoliberalism in public education. Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Arne Duncan, Michelle Rhee, a variety of billionaires, and others promoted a model based on austerity, market-based carrots and sticks, attacks on teachers’ unions, and unregulated growth of charter schools that undermined traditional public schools. These policies reinforced historic racial and class-based inequities in schools and demonized educators themselves. Fast forward to 2019, when House Democrats proposed cuts to federal funding for charter schools, and the party began constructing a 2020 platform that would, for the first time, call for guardrails, accountability, and transparency for charters. At United Teachers Los Angeles’s (UTLA) leadership conference following its historic 99.9 percent–participation strike in January 2019, US presidential candidate Bernie Sanders signed on to support the pro–public education coalition California Calls’ statewide referendum to close corporate tax loopholes, Schools and Communities First (SCF). SCF challenged the iconic national symbol of austerity and the “third rail” of California politics, Proposition 13, which passed in 1978; by severely limiting property taxes, the measure starved public services in California. Presidential candidates Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, and Cory Booker followed suit and endorsed SCF.