Teaching, Leading, and Social Justice

Newsom vetoes 2nd bill to help undocumented immigrants, this one about hiring UC, CSU students

Teresa Watanabe and Laurel Rosenhall, Los Angeles Times

Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill Sunday that would have directed the University of California, California State University and state community colleges to hire undocumented students for campus jobs — his second veto of legislation aimed at expanding aid to those who are not living in California legally. The action crushed the hopes of tens of thousands of students who were brought illegally to the United States as children and have not been able to obtain work permits to help finance their educations or qualify for research and teaching jobs crucial to their academic programs. An estimated 55,000 undocumented students in those straits attend California public colleges and universities; the state is home to a fifth of the nation’s undocumented college students. Despite California’s “proud history” of expanding educational opportunities for undocumented students, Newsom said he was vetoing Assembly Bill 2586 because of legal risks to state employees who could be deemed in violation of federal laws against hiring undocumented people.

Moving from a ‘parents’ bill of rights’ to a cross-partisan policy agenda to better support parents

Jon Valant, Brookings

For those who thought K-12 education would be sidelined from this year’s presidential race, we’ve gotten a couple of twists. One twist is a proposal to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education emerging as a campaign issue. Republicans have floated the idea over the years, but it captured the public’s attention—and concern—when it became the focal point of a Project 2025 chapter. Another twist is Kamala Harris’ selection of Tim Walz as her running mate. Walz is a former teacher who frequently cites his work on schools and parent supports as Minnesota’s governor. At a time when Democrats have seemed reluctant to talk about K-12 education, Walz provides an invitation—and a voice—to rejoin the discussion.

Key facts about public school teachers in the U.S.

Katherine Schaeffer

U.S. public school teachers have spent 2024 in the spotlight. The Democratic vice presidential nominee, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, has highlighted his previous career as a high school teacher and football coach. And a congressional hearing in June focused on multiple “crises” facing public school teachers, including low pay and overwork. Here are some key facts about the 3.8 million public school teachers who work in America’s classrooms. These findings primarily come from a fall 2023 Pew Research Center survey of public K-12 teachers and from federal data. 

Language, Culture, and Power

Haitian immigrants have dealt with lies and stereotypes for decades. Here’s how educators can help.

Wellington Soares, Chalkbeat

Maryse Emmanuel-Garcy came to the U.S. from Haiti in 1970 and enrolled in high school on Long Island in New York state. When she heard her classmates’ comments about Haitian students, she decided to speak up and push back. “People said that we didn’t speak English, that we were dumb, and that we smelled,” said Emmanuel-Garcy. “I told them what they could do with the soap they gave us.” She later became a social worker and one of the co-founders of the Haitian Family of Long Island, known as Hafali. As a community leader, a counselor, and through her family and social connections, she knows the hurdles that confront Haitian students and adults and the discrimination they’ve long faced. Such harassment against her community gained new strength recently, as false claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, started to spread on social media. GOP vice presidential candidate Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance amplified the claims, which then exploded when former President Donald Trump repeated them during the presidential debate.

The case for police-free schools

Tamar Sarai, Prism

Regardless of their size, location, or pedagogical approach, schools are spaces where young people learn about others and themselves. They are also places where young people are presented with challenges that model those they will surely encounter in adulthood. Ideally, they are sites of opportunity where students can gain information both directly and implicitly that will help them navigate an ever-changing world. But in a society where carceral surveillance is omnipresent, it stands to reason that features of the prison system have found themselves in the design of schools all across the country—particularly districts where demographics reflect the communities that are most targeted by mass incarceration. Increasingly, students have to wade through metal detectors before reaching their lockers, deal with punitive measures like suspensions and expulsions, and traverse hallways and classrooms patrolled by police officers.

Peer-led class at Vermont women’s prison teaches restorative justice principles [Audio]

Mae Nagusky, Maine Public Radio

Vermont’s only women’s prison has had restorative justice classes for the past three years. It’s a process that focuses on the offender repairing the harm caused by their actions, and uses dialogue and empathy rather than punishment. Last year, a retired University of Vermont professor got incarcerated women set up to run the class themselves. Vermont Department of Corrections officials say the class is an effort to give incarcerated women tools to navigate conflicts — and hopefully stay out of prison when they eventually leave.

Whole Children and Strong Communities

All Learning, No Questioning: How Schools Smother Curiosity

Alfie Kohn, Education Week

When Susan Engel, a developmental psychologist at Williams College, decided to spend a few months observing suburban elementary schools, she had a specific goal in mind: to study variations in rates of children’s curiosity. Which kids asked lots of questions? Which classrooms tended to encourage that? But Engel discovered that it was almost impossible to make valid comparisons because “there was such an astonishingly low rate of curiosity in any of the classrooms we visited.” What she kept encountering—during that project and since—were children who had learned not to bother wondering. If a classmate did volunteer a fascinated observation (“A bird flew right into my house!”) or a question (“Why would it do that?”), it was soon obvious that the teacher would probably offer a perfunctory response and then direct the child back to the planned lesson. In one classroom, Engel heard the teacher say, “I can’t answer questions right now. Now, it’s time for learning.”

Is it possible to go to school when bombs fall and your family is displaced? [Audio]

Joanna Kakissis, Emmanuel Akinwotu, Daniel Estrin, NPR Morning Edition

Children in the U.S. have begun another school year. But overseas, what are the challenges for the children who live in three of the worlds most active war zones: Gaza, Sudan and Ukraine?

Roberto Hernández: Working for La Comunidad, 1944–1994 [Video]

PBS Wisconsin

Roberto Hernández’s story shines a spotlight on the fight for better educational opportunities for members of Milwaukee’s Latino community during the 1960s and 70s. Roberto grew up in a Mexican American family in Texas. His family was part of the migrant labor workforce that did important agricultural work throughout the country, including in Wisconsin. Some workers stayed and made homes in locations like the Milwaukee area, finding new work in places like factories. Two of Roberto’s family members came to Wisconsin for work, and Roberto later joined them and went to school in Milwaukee. A chance meeting with an activist while in college set him on the path to advocate for better educational opportunities for fellow Latino students and a lifelong commitment to helping others.

Access, Assessment, Advancement

U.S. ‘Catastrophically Wrong’ to Separate Early Child Care from Education

Amanda Geduld, Yahoo News

Wed, September 25, 2024 at 12:30 PM PDT·12 min read

In Dan Wuori’s upcoming book he argues that America’s early childhood policy has been premised on a harmful myth: “This is the myth of daycare,” he writes, “which — in reality — simply doesn’t exist.” How could a system millions rely on simply not exist? Wuori’s answer: That a “crisis of misunderstanding” has turned early childhood centers into an exceedingly expensive and “industrialized form of babysitting” based on the false idea that child care is somehow separate and distinct from education. Instead, Wuori says babies learn from birth — and some research suggests even before that — and their time outside the home should be treated as schooling, not as a place for them to be watched over while their parents work.

Is Higher Education Ignoring Inequality and Failing Disadvantaged Students?

Rich Barlow, The Brink

As an Amherst College freshman in the early 2000s, Anthony Abraham Jack had to deal with a problem that never blips affluent students’ radars: the closing of the dining hall during spring break. Coming from a low-income Miami family, Jack couldn’t afford the plane fare home and was staying on campus. How would he eat? He lucked out, getting a job at the college’s gym to earn money for meals—and for his mother, who asked him for whatever he could spare to help pay bills back home. “While Amherst had opened its doors to welcome poor students like me, they forgot to keep the doors open for those of us who couldn’t afford to leave,” Jack writes in his new book Class Dismissed. As part of his research for the book, Jack, faculty director of Boston University’s Newbury Center, which supports first-generation college students, interviewed 125 Harvard University undergraduates, “from families across the economic spectrum,” to reveal the daunting problems—aggravated, but not created by COVID-19 campus closures—that still confront disadvantaged students.

Addressing How Student Parents Are Underserved

Lois Elfman, Diverse

Two new reports from The California Alliance for Student Parent Success (The Alliance) detail the challenges that student parents face at California institutions. The reports analyze the available data and call for more research to be gathered so that this population can be served more effectively. Approximately 300,000 undergraduate student parents are currently enrolled at institutions of higher education in the state of California. While pursuing their education, they grapple with a number of challenges in a higher education system that has historically overlooked their needs and experiences, according to the report. Childcare, housing, balancing school with work and family obligations are key issues.

Inequality, Poverty, Segregation

I Have Studied Social Mobility for Years. Here’s How Kamala Harris Can Build an ‘Opportunity Economy.’

Raj Chetty, New York Times

At the start of her debate with Donald Trump, Kamala Harris spoke about building an “opportunity economy.” What does that mean, and how can we create one? I’ve been studying the science of economic opportunity for many years with my Harvard-based group, Opportunity Insights. We’ve analyzed all sorts of data, from anonymized tax returns to school-district databases and the social networks of hundreds of millions of Americans. An opportunity economy prioritizes equality of opportunity rather than equality of outcomes. In such an economy, we all have the chance to achieve our potential, even if some people ultimately end up earning more than others. Right now, opportunity is not equally distributed in America: People’s chances of achieving success vary widely depending upon their parents’ income, racial background and ZIP code.

Watchdog finds Black girls face more frequent, severe discipline in school [Audio]

Claudia Grisales, NPR

Black girls face more discipline and more severe punishments in public schools than girls from other racial backgrounds, according to a groundbreaking new report set for release Thursday by a congressional watchdog. The report, shared exclusively with NPR, took nearly a year-and-a-half to complete and comes after several Democratic congressional members requested the study. Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, later with support from Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, asked the Government Accountability Office in 2022 to take on the report.

Report from Edmonton researchers shows stark student accounts of anti-Palestinian racism

Mrinali Anchan, CBC News

A report from Edmonton researchers has found stark student experiences of anti-Palestinian racism in Alberta schools. The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA) published Our Schools/Our Selves – Palestine and the Canadian education system in its Aug 27 issue. The issue is focused on looking at what anti-Palestinian racism is and how it shows up in the classroom.  The issue features chapters from Canadian academics and advocates featuring reports and discussions on settler-colonialism, liberation, racism and how that is taught in schools. Muna Saleh, an associate professor with Concordia University in Edmonton, looked at the experiences of Palestinian Muslim students in K-12 schools in Alberta. 

Democracy and the Public Interest

100 Years of 100 Things: School Culture Wars [Audio]

Jonathan Zimmerman, Brian Lehrer Show

For the centennial series “100 Years of 100 Things,” Jonathan Zimmerman, professor of history of education at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of several books, including Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools, traces the history of the so-called “culture wars” in public education, from the Scopes trial, to religion in schools, sex ed and the controversies of today over critical race theory, masks during COVID and more.

What Does ‘Public Education is the Cornerstone of Our Democracy’ Really Mean?

Joel Berger, NEA Today

“Greatly increased cost of living.” “Overwork in over-crowded classrooms.” Sound familiar? These concerns were in fact raised 120 years ago by Margaret Haley, an early NEA activist and Chicago teacher, in her remarks to the 1904 NEA convention in St. Louis, Mo.  Sadly, they likely still resonate with many educators today. An old black and white photograph featuring a woman elegantly dressed in a white gown. Margaret Haley, an early NEA activist and Chicago teacher during the 19th and 20th centuries. Concluding her speech, Haley contrasted the “industrial ideal” of the early twentieth century—one that “subordinates the worker to the product and the machine”—with “the ideal of democracy, the ideal of the educators, which places humanity above all machines.” In a society that often devalued the lives of factory workers (and their children, some of whom joined them on the factory floors), Haley saw public schools as an antidote—a space for poor and working-class children to experience the joy of learning and cultivate their higher-order thinking skills and ethical awareness so that they could become meaningful participants in American democracy.

Wray-Lake on Civic Engagement Among Young People [Audio]

Laura Wray-Lake, Luskin

UCLA Luskin Professor of Social Welfare Laura Wray-Lake joined KBLA Talk 1580’s “First Things First” broadcast (starting at 6 min, 30 sec) on National Voter Registration Day to discuss civic engagement among young people. Wray-Lake, whose research is focused on youth civic engagement, is co-author of the 2024 book “Young Black Changemakers and the Road to Racial Justice” (Cambridge University Press). Host Dominique DiPrima started the conversation on youth engagement by noting that “what we hear is a lot of assumptions, stereotypes and condemnation of young people being thrown around.” But young people are leaders, visionaries and changemakers in many different ways, Wray-Lake said. Today’s youth are thinking about society in new ways, not hemmed in by the status quo, she said. “They can sort of picture social change much more visually and imagine those things more than some adults can.”

Other News of Note

September 27:  Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” is published

History Channel

Rachel Carson’s watershed work Silent Spring is first published on September 27, 1962. Originally serialized in The New Yorker magazine, the book shed light on the damage that man-made pesticides inflict on the environment. Its publication is often viewed as the beginning of the modern environmentalist movement in America. Carson received a master’s degree in zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1932 and spent the next several decades researching the ecosystems of the East Coast. She rose through the ranks of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and published many works on the environment, including The Sea Around Us. In the late ’50s, she became concerned by reports of the unintended effects insecticides were having on other wildlife, and the Audubon Society approached her about writing a book on the topic. Silent Spring was the result of this partnership and several years of research, focusing primarily on the effects of DDT and similar pesticides. Carson was diagnosed with breast cancer during this time, causing the book’s publication to be delayed until 1962.