Just News from Center X – September 11, 2026

9.11.26

Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

25 years later, teaching 9/11: How NYC educators navigate the anniversary

Amy Zimmer, Chalkbeat

Twenty-five years ago, about 1 million New York City children were in school on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when hijackers flew planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a Pennsylvania field. Today, some teachers as well as parents of children in the city’s public schools weren’t even born when the terrorist attacks occurred. But city and state officials are trying to ensure the day is remembered: The City Council recently announced $1 million for the 9/11 Memorial & Museum to provide free field trips to New York City students, with a focus on eighth graders. The museum also offers lessons for educators and also on-site and virtual visits for students in grades 3-12. The Education Department offers an instructional guide with links to books, lesson plans, archival materials, and more.

A Teachers Union and Microsoft Just Made An AI Safety Deal. But Compliance Remains an Open Question.

Alex Nguyen, Mother Jones

On Wednesday morning, in a Manhattan press room containing about 50 reporters and union members, one of the largest teachers’ unions in the US announced an agreement with Microsoft that, among other things, prohibits the tech company from tracking student use of its AI tools and applying student and teacher data to train AI models.

The guidelines listed in the American Federation of Teachers’ deal with Microsoft apply to any school district “that desires the same principles” when forming their own customer agreements with the company and purchasing its AI products. The union also gives Microsoft—and any other tech company that signs on (AFT President Randi Weingarten mentioned ongoing conversations with OpenAI and Anthropic during Wednesday’s announcement)—a 180-day deadline to delete records of AI data use from students and school districts on its active systems following a request.

The teacher pay penalty remained high in 2025

Sylvia Allegretto, Economic Policy Institute

This report updates a two-decade body of research tracking the teacher pay penalty—the growing pay gap between public school teachers and their college-educated peers.1 Because public school teachers must attain at least a bachelor’s degree to teach in the U.S., this research compares weekly earnings of public school teachers (elementary, middle, and secondary)2 with those of college graduates who chose other careers. Documenting the widening divergence between the wages of teachers and their college-educated counterparts over time allows for a historical analysis of an issue that is critical to the future of the United States: the quality of our education. If teachers’ compensation doesn’t catch up with that of similarly educated and experienced professionals, schools will struggle to retain and attract qualified workers into the profession.

Language, Culture, and Power

Dual Language for Whom? A Critical Race Spatial Analysis of Programming Allocation for Multilingual Learners in Texas

Emily Holtz AERA Open

The growing population of multilingual learners (MLs) in the United States has increased demand for bilingual education, particularly two-way dual language (TWDL) and one-way dual language (OWDL) programs. While TWDL programs are designed to serve both MLs and English-dominant students, OWDL programs primarily center MLs, using both the home language and English to support development. Although TWDL was originally intended to promote equity, it has increasingly been taken up as a form of educational marketization that attracts white, English-dominant families, often marginalizing the students whose linguistic resources make these programs possible. Using critical race spatial analysis (CRSA), this study examines the placement of TWDL and OWDL programs across Texas in relation to immigrant density, urbanicity, and socioeconomic factors. Findings show that TWDL programs cluster in more affluent, lower-immigrant areas, while OWDL programs are concentrated in higher-immigrant, lower-income communities, raising important questions about equity and access.

School-safety law, local discretion, and the boundaries of protected speech: A Tennessee case study

Dustin Hornbeck, EPAA

In this paper, I offer a critical case study of how a state law aimed at preventing mass violence in schools has been applied to restrict expression, both inside and outside educational settings. Tennessee’s threat-of-mass-violence statute has produced felony charges, expulsions, and detentions for students as young as 10, and, in its most extreme application, the arrest and five-week incarceration of a retired police officer for sharing a political meme with no connection to any school. This case raises questions about the interpretive reach of educational laws. Using the Foucauldian concept of governmentality, I examine how this educational policy extended beyond educational settings and into a politically charged context. I use a set of documented cases, anchored by one extreme and well-documented example, to explore the legal ambiguity and discretionary power embedded in a single state policy. 

Who Says Reading is Dead?

John McWhorter, New York Times

I hate to go all Andy Rooney, but why do so many people watch stuff with the captions on? I used to think that if the captions were on when I started streaming a show, it must be a mistake, and I’d irritatedly turn them off. But now it seems that captions-on is the default mode for streamers. To me, captions have been for the hard of hearing or when the source is in a foreign language. But one survey found that most Americans use captions sometimes or always, and among younger people, 40 percent use them often or always. This includes most people I know.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

What Trump’s new study says about support for trans rights — and why experts are worried

Orion Rummler, Jasmine Mithani, The 19th

A new study from the Trump administration is sending alarm bells through pro-democracy groups for its potential to fuel a crackdown on Americans who support LGBTQ+ rights — or anyone with left-leaning views. Last week, the Department of Health and Human Services released a study that reaches a dramatic conclusion: Those who support transgender people may be more likely to justify political violence. The study also claims that those who agree with statements like “all political conservatives are fools” or “anyone who opposes gay marriage must be homophobic” may also be more likely to support political violence. 

School Nurses Face Largest Measles Outbreak in 35 Years

Cindy Long, NEA Today

Allison Palombo, a school nurse in the Beaver Area School District in western Pennsylvania, says she and her school nurse colleagues are on high alert as a measles outbreak across the state has led to hundreds of cases, hospitalizations, and two measles-related deaths. “We’re in the middle of an outbreak with the third highest number of measles cases in the country,” Palombo says. “Having this happen at the beginning of the school year is literally the worst timing ever.” But she’s rolling up her sleeves, scouring student immunization records, and calling families to connect them with primary doctors, pop up clinics, pharmacies, and urgent care centers that offer free vaccines to make sure students have the required immunizations. She’s also answering parent questions with science-backed information to encourage them to get their children vaccinated.

More schools close in Indonesia due to worsening haze from forest fires

Muhammad Hatta and Niniek Karmini, AP News

 Schools in the capital of Indonesia’s South Sumatra province switched to remote learning Wednesday as worsening haze from forest and peatland fires pushed air pollution to unhealthy levels, adding to disruptions that have already affected more than 1.4 million students across the country, officials said. Indonesia has been plagued by forest and land fires for decades but an intensifying El Nino pattern and a prolonged dry season made the impact of the fires especially dire this year. Toxic haze and smoke have spread far beyond Indonesia’s borders in Southeast Asia, creating a regional health crisis. The smoke has drifted as far as the Philippines, more than 800 kilometers (500 miles) away, and breached Malaysia’s emergency-level threshold, forcing authorities to declare an emergency last week in a town in Sarawak state on Borneo Island.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

English-only proposal for Head Start would set kids back, say parents and program leaders

Jackie Mader, Hechinger Report

Over the past few years, Ginger Williams has watched the number of children learning English inch up at the six Head Start sites she runs across Snohomish County, Washington, just north of Seattle. The federally funded preschool program has long been required to provide special support for what it calls “dual language learners.” If a majority of children in a program speak a language other than English, that program must have at least one staff member who also speaks that language — a regulation in place since the 1970s. Teachers are also required to focus both on teaching students English and helping their development in their home language.  

There are more homeless infants and toddlers in California. What does this mean for early learning programs and schools?

Betty Márquez Rosales, Ed Source

Nearly 86,000 of California’s children ages 0 to 3 — more than 5% of the state’s infants and toddlers — are estimated to have experienced homelessness in 2023-24, according to new data analysis by SchoolHouse Connection and Poverty Solutions at the University of Michigan. This is a 15% jump from about 74,000 young children in the year prior. Only about 12,000 of those children in 2023-24 were enrolled in early learning programs. It is often in early learning programs where staff members are able to identify children experiencing homelessness and provide critical services for their development. That just 14% of the youngest children experiencing homelessness are in these programs is potentially a troubling sign, experts say. It may indicate the state is not set up to accurately identify and reach most of these children.

Students are suffering from US colleges’ shaky finances. Trump policies are making everything worse

Marina Villaneuve, The Guardian

Nalia Mutz started her freshman year at the University of Lynchburg in 2022 knowing exactly where she wanted to be four years later: right on track toward her dream of becoming a doctor. When the university eliminated a dozen majors in 2024, the resulting layoffs left fewer professors to teach the science courses she needed to graduate. She began to fear earning her biomedicine degree the way she had planned could take two extra years. “It was just a lot of cuts all around, and then they just didn’t have enough staff,” Mutz, 21, said. Higher education has faced fiscal headwinds in recent years as hundreds of institutions grapple with declining enrollment because of demographic trends and growing public skepticism about the value of a college degree.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

Why we need an International Panel on Inequality

Joseph E. Stiglitz, Adriana E. Abdenur, Winnie Byanyima, Jayati Ghosh, Imraan Valodia & Wanga Zembe-Mkabile, Nature

Increasing inequality demands action. The richest 10% of adults globally receives more than half (53%) of the world’s income, whereas the poorest half receives 8%. Wealth is even more concentrated, with the richest 10% owning around three-quarters of global wealth while the poorest half owns just 2%. Almost two-thirds of people live in countries where inequality is rising. The consequences are well established. A growing body of research links higher income inequality to lower social mobility, poorer health outcomes and slower economic growth. Unequal access to education, health care, housing and finance shapes the opportunities that direct people’s lives. Yet, all this knowledge has not produced a policy response. One reason is political: inequalities create powerful beneficiaries. Another is practical: a gap between science and policy remains to be filled. Evidence on inequality is dispersed across disciplines and institutions. Research on policy effectiveness — showing what has worked, in which contexts and through which mechanisms — is insufficiently synthesized and often inaccessible.

The School Behind the Billionaires and the Billionaire Tax

Josh Burney, The Nation

Something of an identity crisis is taking shape in the Bay Area at the University of California system’s flagship university. The foggy region is being torn in two as programmers and progressives duke it out in a battle over California’s Proposition 40, or “Billionaire Tax,” on the ballot in November. Since its announcement last November, it has spurred a pricey political spar to the tune of tens of millions. On one side of the brawl are academics and students spearheading the effort to pass the progressive measure. On the other are some of the wealthiest names in Big Tech pouring millions into efforts to stop it.

Keepin’ It Legit: On Abolitionist Studies “in a Nice Field Like Education”

Brian Cabral, Educational Researcher

This essay provides a concise historical overview of U.S.-based abolition within a longue durée of struggle, paired with its conceptual and theoretical refashioning in subsequent centuries. I then interrogate the nearly nascent, yet robust, abolition theorizing and the attempted linguistic cementing of it within education research. Ultimately, I make a heretical case for continued fomenting of abolitionist studies in education, keepin’ it legit, and doing so through an echo of intellectual demands, cautions, guidance, and commitments requiring scholars to offer political clarity, rather than mere definitional certainty, in their/our engagement with it.

Democracy and the Public Interest

A ‘Gold Rush Moment’ for Private Education

Jacob Godwin, The Progressive

The U.S. government is about to spend a historic amount of public money on an unproven and lightly regulated school voucher-like program. The beneficiaries of similar programs at the state level have largely been wealthier families already enrolled in private school. But with upward of 80 percent of U.S. students attending public schools, the fact is that the federal program diverts money from public schools that desperately need funding. Because this new voucher program is not mandatory, each state has a decision to make: Accept or reject what might amount to a subsidy for the rich. The new federal program, which was part of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, takes a different form than traditional school vouchers. It allows for individuals to donate to a scholarship granting organization (SGO), which is a nonprofit organization set up to dispense school vouchers, and receive up to a $1,700 tax credit. 

When plastic companies write the lesson plans

Joseph Winters, Grist

This fall, 54 million K-12 students are headed back to the classroom for another year of lessons in all the classic subjects: math, English, history, biology. But there’s another subject that’s been sneaking into school curricula: plastics. A new report from the nonprofit Plastic Pollution Coalition documents the many ways the plastics industry has been inserting its agenda into classrooms across the U.S. — including through lesson plans and worksheets, hands-on science experiments, and a program called “PlastiVan” that travels from city to city teaching students about “the contribution plastics make to modern life.”

Lonnie Bunch on his legacy and protecting the Smithsonian from political pressure

Geoff Bennett, Anne Azzi Davenport, Courtney Norris, Hunter Bonaparte, Amalia Huot-Marchand, PBS Newshour

Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie Bunch announced that he is stepping down as the institution he leads faces an escalating battle with the Trump administration over how it tells the American story. Geoff Bennett spoke with Bunch about the political pressure, what’s at stake for the Smithsonian and how he sees his legacy. It’s for our Art in Action series exploring the intersection of art and democracy.

Other News of Note

Young Voters Disrupt Meeting to Urge USPS Board of Governors to Reject Trump Attack on Voting

Brad Reed, Common Dreams

A group of young voters on Wednesday crashed a meeting of the United States Postal Service Board of Governors and demanded that they not carry out President Donald Trump’s executive order to disrupt the mail-in voting process. The voters, which were organized with the help of Sunrise Movement, walked into the Board of Governors’ meeting in Potomac, Maryland, and asked members if they would commit to delivering all ballots sent through the USPS for November’s midterm elections.