The New York Times published an article by Dana Goldstein asserting that Democrats are divided about vouchers. Her evidence: Democrats for Education Reform (DFER), the organization created by hedge fund managers to advocate for charter schools, for evaluation of teachers by their students’ test scores, for Teach for America, and for every other failed corporate reform idea, now, unsurprisingly, supports vouchers.
This is no surprise. DFER never represented parents, teachers, or students. They gained notoriety because they raised big dollars on Wall Street to persuade key politicians to join their campaign to undermine public schools. In D.C. and in state capitols, money rules.
Goldstein tells us that the teachers’ unions, the usual suspect, woo Democrats to support public schools, but that’s not entirely true.
Most people don’t want their public schools to be privatized. Most people don’t want public money to subsidize religious schools. The proof is there. Voucher referenda have been on state ballots numerous times since 1967, and the public has voted against them every time.
In the 2024 elections, vouchers were on the ballot in three states, and lost in all three states.
Now that a number of states have voucher programs that are well established, we know three things about them.
Most students who get vouchers are already in private schools. Their parents are already paying private school tuition.
As Josh Cowen demonstrates in his book “The Privateers,” the academic results of children who leave public schools to attend private schools are abysmal.
Vouchers diminish the funding available for public schools, since the state takes on the responsibility of subsidizing tuition for students whose parents currently pay the bills.
DFER still has money but it has no constituency. The Democratic Party is not split. Its leaders know that the vast majority of students attend public schools, and those schools need help, not a diversion of funds to religious schools, private schools, and homeschools.
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Trump has an almost mystical view about tariffs. He thinks that they are a payment that a country makes to the U.S. in return for selling their products here. He thinks that the U.S. will collect so many billions in tariff payments that the government can keep cutting taxes. He doesn’t understand that the cost of tariffs is paid first by American retailers, but ultimately by consumers. Tariffs mean higher prices for everything that is imported.
He apparently never learned in high school about the Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930, which led to retaliation and ultimately contributed to the Great Depression.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman has some lessons for Trump. Given Trump’s belief in his own great intellect, it’s doubtful that he’s interested in learning anything new.
Krugman writes:
Many investors seem to have deluded themselves into believing that Trump was done disrupting world trade, and some economists, myself included, were hoping that we wouldn’t keep having to write about stupid, feckless trade policy. But here we go again.
By now we were supposed to have scores of trade deals signed. Instead… Trump began posting letters on Truth Social (diplomacy!) telling a variety of countries that they would face high tariffs on Aug. 1. The first two letters were to South Korea and Japan, both told that Trump would put a 25 percent tariff on all their exports. Some countries are facing even higher tariffs. Overall, the tariff rates announced so far look very close to the widely ridiculed Liberation Day tariffs announced on April 2.
Honestly, I’ve written so much about tariffs that it’s hard to find new things to say. But let me offer a few notes on where we seem to be now.
These tariffs are really, really high
One way to look at the newly announced tariffs is in the light of history. The infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930 pushed the average tariff rate to about 20 percent. So far every country that has received a letter will be facing rates higher than that.
Another way to look at it to ask how much we would expect these tariffs to reduce trade. The key number is the elasticity of substitution in world trade — the percent fall in imports caused by a one percent rise in import prices. The median estimate from many studies is 3.8, which implies that in the long run 25 percent tariffs will reduce trans-Pacific trade by almost 60 percent. That’s a lot.
Side note: If I were a government employee, this post would probably be flagged for DEI because I just used the word “trans.”
There were never going to be genuine trade deals
These tariffs are going to hurt South Korea and Japan, although they’ll hurt U.S. consumers even more. So why didn’t Korean and Japanese negotiators make big enough concessions to satisfy Trump?
Because there was nothing for them to concede. South Korea has had a free trade agreement with the United States since 2012, so most U.S. exports to Korea face zero tariffs. Japan, like other wealthy nations, has very low tariffs on most goods. Neither country, then, was in a position to offer big tariff reductions, because their tariffs were already minimal.
Here’s part of Trump’s letter to South Korea, alleging that the country’s “Tariff, and Non Tariff, Policies and Trade Barriers” are responsible for the bilateral trade imbalance:
Notice that Trump offered no specifics — because there aren’t any. How were the South Koreans supposed to end unfair trade practices that exist only in Trump’s imagination?
Here’s an analogy that occurred to me: Imagine that you have a belligerent neighbor who threatens to take revenge unless you stop dumping trash on his lawn. You reply, truthfully, that you aren’t dumping trash on his lawn. His response is to accuse you of being intransigent and slash your car’s tires.
The only possible out here would be a series of fake deals, in which countries pretend to have offered significant concessions and Trump claims to have won big victories. Some people still think that will happen — the new tariffs aren’t supposed to take effect until Aug. 1. But the tone of those letters and Trump’s clear obsession with tariffs make me doubt that he’ll call the tariffs off, in part because of my last observation: Attempts to mollify Trump always end up emboldening him to demand more.
Why make a deal with a man who will surely break it?
As I already mentioned, South Korea and the United States have had a free trade agreement (KORUS) since 2012. This agreement wasn’t some vague memorandum of understanding. It was the result of years of tough negotiation, followed by intense political debate in both countries before our respective legislatures passed the enabling legislation.
Yet Trump is simply ignoring that hard-won agreement. His letter to the South Koreans doesn’t even mention KORUS, let alone explain why the United States is reneging on its solemn promises.
Japan doesn’t have a free trade agreement with the United States. But it does have Most Favored Nation status, which means that under international trade law it is entitled to face tariffs no higher than those America committed to under the last major global trade agreement, the Uruguay Round that concluded in 1994. Again, these tariff commitments weren’t embodied in some casual memorandum. They were the result of years of negotiation, whose results had to be approved by Congress.
And again Trump isn’t even trying to explain why he’s going back on a longstanding U.S. commitment.
The point is that Trump doesn’t feel bound by trade deals America has made in the past. Why should anyone expect him to honor any new deals he makes, or claims to make, now?
Obviously this behavior isn’t unique to tariffs. Many domestic institutions, from law firms to universities, have discovered that attempting to appease Trump buys you at best a few weeks’ respite before he comes back for more.
It’s possible that the governments receiving Trump’s tariff letters haven’t figured that out yet. But they will. And my bet is that the TACO people — Trump always chickens out — are wrong in this case. I’ll be happy to be proved wrong, but right now it looks as if deeply destructive tariffs are really coming.
Last night, I read the story in the Wall Street Journal that was breaking news. The WSJ, owned by Rupert Murdoch, had somehow obtained a leather-bound book presented to Jeffrey Epstein for his 50th birthday. In it was a “bawdy” note from Donald Trump that hinted at their common interests.
At a time when other media outlets are hesitating and capitulating, Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal just stood up to President Trumpand scooped one of the biggest political stories of the summer. The print headline on Page One today reads “Trump’s Bawdy Letter to Epstein Was in 50th Birthday Album.” It is, of course, the most-read article on the Journal’s website.
And yet… Murdoch’s Fox News has not mentioned the story once.So let me take a stab at answering all the questions I’m getting about the media mogul and his role.
Murdoch, age 94, wants to have it both ways. He wants to be a newsman (that’s how he sees himself) but also needs to be a businessman. He wants a muscular Journal breaking big stories but he also needs Fox News to keep printing money for his family and other shareholders.
It’s been readily apparent for years that Fox succeeds when it is The Trump Show. So Fox does what it does, ignores what it ignores. But Murdoch, who has always cared most of all about old-fashioned newspapers, derives satisfaction and a sense of power from the Journal.
We wrote all about the operatic relationship between Murdoch and Trump in this CNN.com story overnight. I think this quote is quite telling: “Rupert loves to poke the president in the eye once in a while,” an executive who has worked with him closely told me.
Trump: I’m going to ‘sue his ass off’
Trump is, of course, taking this very personally. “I told Rupert Murdoch it was a Scam, that he shouldn’t print this Fake Story. But he did, and now I’m going to sue his ass off, and that of his third rate newspaper,” he wrote on Truth Social.
Trump’s post confirmed rumors that had been swirling in political and media circles for two days: namely, that the White House was trying to kill a damaging WSJ story. Trump said he personally spoke with both Murdoch and WSJ editor Emma Tucker.
As for a lawsuit, well… we’ll see, but no suit will take this story off the internet. The timeline is worth revisiting here. The WSJ approached Trump for comment on Tuesday. Trump derided the Epstein scandal as a “hoax” on Wednesday.
As I said on “The Source with Kaitlan Collins” last night, his well-trodden “hoax” talking point was a direct response to his concern about the looming WSJ report. Trump uses the word “hoax” to shut down conversation and discourage critical thinking; to tell his supporters to just ignore something altogether. TBD on whether it’ll work this time.
>> Inside Dow Jones HQ: After the story landed, Journal staffers expressed pride in their colleagues and in the publication for running the report despite the president’s attempt to squash it. There’s a real sense that publishing was an act of bravery…
>> BTW, WSJ has no comment on the lawsuit threat. Trump seems empowered by his settlements with Paramount and other media companies…
****************************************
Not part of Stelter’s commentary:
The note from Donald to Jeffrey:
The typewritten note was an imaginary conversation between Donald and Jeffrey, inside the outline of a naked woman.
“Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything,” the note began.
Donald: Yes, there is, but I won’t tell you what it is.
Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is.
Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it.
Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that?
Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you.
Donald: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.
If you were to show up at Natomas High School in the middle of the school day, you would likely stumble upon my students walking around the campus in lab coats and examining their environment, looking for answers to questions that they themselves have posed.
That’s because, as an Advanced Placement (AP) seminar and research teacher, I teach my students to think outside the box to fan the flames of their intellectual curiosity. And to this day, I never cease to be amazed by the theories they pose and the conclusions they draw.
There’s nothing more gratifying for me than challenging students who for too long have been shackled by low expectations to take my AP classes. Many of them are surprised to learn that these are often the most creative classes they’ve ever participated in. I then get to watch them thrive as they develop and practice life skills in research, collaboration and communication. In fact, a few of my students have gone on to be research assistants in college, using the skills we developed in my class as their foundation. And the critical thinking abilities that they develop through these classes expand far beyond the classroom walls — they promote intellectual curiosity no matter what career or life path students end up choosing.
I also think it’s time to shatter stereotypes about what an AP student should look like. Other people might look at the socioeconomic metrics of our school and see only despair, but I see unlimited potential. At Natomas High School, our total minority enrollment is 91%, with 72% of students coming from “economically disadvantaged” backgrounds. My AP classes also reflect the school’s diversity.
As a teacher, it’s my job to challenge and guide all of my students. In my experience, real learning is about meeting students exactly where they are and elevating their interests through a problem-solving approach. The fact is, students ask interesting questions in my classes. And when we explore them together, we take learning to the next level.
For example, one student wanted to know how sleep correlated with success in taking advanced classes. From that, we applied research methods including surveying peers through in-class polling activities and data analysis. Other students have asked questions focused on mental health and isolation after experiencing the pandemic. For that, students shared their personal experiences and analyzed them with both qualitative and quantitative data. These projects were meaningful not only in their content, but in the processes we used to explore them. Most importantly, this approach keeps my students engaged and actively learning.
When given the flexibility and resources we need, teachers have the power to make young people feel better about themselves, and eventually to help them become more confident as they consider what kind of humans they really want to be. My students know in their hearts that I believe in them to my core, and though many of them come from challenging circumstances, I strive to show them how to use their “lived experience” as motivation to build a better life for themselves.
This isn’t an empty mantra for me, and my students wouldn’t buy it for a second if it were. They know it’s authentic because I lived it too. I grew up with a single mom and a dad who was in and out of jail, with addictions he just couldn’t kick. But even though my mom didn’t have a college education or anyone to support her, she gave me everything she could — and more importantly, she believed in me.
I want to give that same gift to my students: a fundamental belief in themselves and the tools to become exactly who they want to be. But teachers like me need more than just basic resources to reach all of our students — we need the freedom to teach a curriculum that we know will resonate with them — because that’s when the magic of learning really happens.
I hope more students are presented with this opportunity to succeed and think about the world through a different lens. Once they put on that lab coat in my classroom to search for their own truth, they will find one that is uniquely and powerfully their own.
•••
Leonard Finch teaches AP Research and AP Language and Composition at Natomas High School in Sacramento.
The opinions expressed in this commentary represent those of the author. EdSource welcomes commentaries representing diverse points of view. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us.
Before he was elected President, John F. Kennedy published a book titled “A Nation of Immigrants.” He celebrated the fact that his family was descended from Irish immigrants, and almost every one else (excluding native Americans) was descended from immigrants. At the time, our immigrant heritage was widely acknowledged. Most celebrated their heritage, others embraced America because it rescued them from tyrannies.
Today, thanks to Donald Trump, we live in an era where immigrants are treated as invaders and enemies. He wants to deport millions of them and has even hinted that he has the power to expel American citizens, even to strip them of their citizenship.
Trump appointees insist they have a “mandate” to drive undocumented immigrants out of the U.S. and prevent new immigrants from coming in, and are launching a massive increase in Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and detention facilities to do so. But a poll released Friday shows that only 35% of American adults approve of Trump’s handling of immigration, while 62% disapprove.
The poll shows a record 79% of adults saying immigration is good for the country, with only 17% seeing it as bad. Only 30% of American adults say immigration should be reduced.
The poll shows that 85% of American adults want laws to allow “immigrants, who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, the chance to become U.S. citizens if they meet certain requirements over a period of time.” Seventy-eight percent of American adults want the law to allow “immigrants living in the U.S. illegally the chance to become U.S. citizens if they meet certain requirements over a period of time.” Only 38% want the government to deport “all immigrants who are living in the United States illegally back to their home country.”
The poll shows Americans eager to fix a problem that stems from a bipartisan 1965 law that reworked America’s immigration laws.
In 1924, during a period of opposition to immigration that fueled the second rise of the Ku Klux Klan, Congress had passed the nation’s first comprehensive immigration law. That law, known as the Johnson-Reed Act, limited immigration according to quotas assigned to each country. Those quotas were heavily weighted toward western Europe, virtually prohibiting immigration from Asia and Africa and dramatically curtailing it from southern Europe.
The Johnson-Reed Act simply taxed workers coming to the U.S. from Mexico, because from the time the current border was set in 1848 until the 1930s, people moved back and forth across it. Laborers in particular came from Mexico to work for the huge American agribusinesses that dominate the agricultural sector, especially after 1907 when the Japanese workers who had been taking over those jobs were unofficially kept out of the country by the so-called “Gentlemen’s Agreement.” Later, during World War I, the government encouraged immigration to help increase production.
The Depression, when the bottom fell out of the economy, coupled with the Dust Bowl, when the bottom fell out of the western plains, made destitute white Americans turn on Mexican migrants (as well as on their poor white neighbors, as John Steinbeck wrote about in The Grapes of Wrath). The government rounded up Mexicans and shipped them back over the border.
World War II created another shortage of laborers, and to regularize the system of migrant labor, the U.S. government in 1942 started a guest worker policy called the Bracero Program that ultimately brought more than 4 million Mexican workers to the U.S. The program was supposed to guarantee that migrant workers were well treated and adequately paid and housed. But it didn’t work out that way. Employers hired illegal as well as legal workers and treated them poorly. American workers complained about competition.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower returned about a million illegal workers in 1954 under “Operation Wetback,” only to have officials readmit most of them as braceros. Under pressure both from labor and from reformers who recognized that the system was exploitative at the same time that mechanization began replacing workers, President John F. Kennedy initiated the process that ended the Bracero Program in 1964. In 1965 the government tried to replace migrant labor with American high school students, but the “A-TEAM” project—“Athletes in Temporary Employment as Agricultural Manpower”—failed.
The end of the Bracero program coincided with congressional reworking of the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act. In the midst of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, Congress wanted to end the racial quota system of immigration and replace it with one that did not so obviously discriminate against Asia and Africa. In 1965, Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, or the Hart-Celler Act. It opened immigration to all nations, setting a general cap on total immigration levels.
But southern congressmen, appalled at the idea of Black immigration, introduced a provision that privileged family migration, arguing that “family unification” should be the nation’s top priority. They expected that old-stock immigrants from western Europe would use the provision to bring over their relatives, which would keep the effect of the 1924 law without the statute. But their provision had the opposite effect. It was new immigrants who wanted to bring their families, not old ones. So immigration began to skew heavily toward Asia and Latin America.
At the same time, Hart-Celler put a cap on immigrants from Mexico just as the guest worker program ended. The cap was low: 20,000, although 50,000 workers were coming annually at that point, and American agribusiness depended on migrant labor. Workers continued to come as they always had, and to be employed, as always. But now their presence was illegal.
In 1986, Congress tried to fix the problem of border security between the U.S. and Mexico by offering amnesty to 2.3 million Mexicans who were living in the United States and by cracking down on employers who hired undocumented workers. But rather than ending the problem of undocumented workers, the new law exacerbated it by beginning the process of guarding and militarizing the border. Until then, migrants into the United States had been offset by an equal number leaving at the end of the season. Once the border became heavily guarded, Mexican migrants refused to take the chance of leaving.
Since 1986, U.S. politicians have refused to deal with this disconnect, which grew in the 1990s when the North American Free Trade Agreement flooded Mexico with U.S. corn and drove Mexican farmers to find work, largely in the American Southeast. But by 2007, as Mexico’s economy stabilized and after U.S. border enforcement tightened significantly under President Bill Clinton, more Mexican immigrants were leaving the U.S. than coming.
Between 2007 and 2017, the U.S. saw a net loss of about 2 million Mexican immigrants. In 2017 about 5 million undocumented Mexicans lived in the United States; most of them—83%—were long-term residents, here more than ten years. Only 8% had lived in the U.S. for less than five years. Increasingly, undocumented immigrants were people from around the world who overstayed legal visas, making up more than 40% of the country’s undocumented population by 2024.
In 2013 the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform measure by a bipartisan vote of 68 to 32. The measure provided a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and increased border security. It also proposed to increase visas for immigrant workers. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the measure would reduce the federal deficit by $197 billion over 10 years and $700 billion over 20 years.
The measure had passed the Senate by a wide margin and was popular with the public. It was expected to pass the House. But then–House speaker John Boehner (R-OH) refused to bring the measure up before the chamber, saying it did not have the support of a majority of Republicans.
About that time, undocumented migration across the southern border was changing. By 2014, people were arriving at the U.S. border from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, where violence that approached warfare—much of it caused by gangs whose members had been socialized into gang culture in the U.S.—and economic stress from that violence created refugees. These migrants were not coming over the border for economic opportunity; they were refugees applying for asylum—a legal process in the United States.
Before the 2014 midterm elections, Republicans highlighted the new migrants at the southern border, although immigration numbers remained relatively stable. They also highlighted the death from the Ebola virus of a Liberian visitor to the U.S. and the infection of two of his nurses. They attacked the Democratic administration of President Barack Obama for downplaying the danger of the disease to the U.S. public and suggested foreigners should be kept out of the U.S. (In fact, the only Americans who contracted the virus in the U.S. were the two nurses who treated the Liberian visitor.)
Despite his own history of using undocumented workers at his properties, Trump followed this practice of using immigration against the Democratic administration for political points, launching his presidential campaign in 2015 by claiming Mexico was sending “people that have lots of problems…. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” He promised mass deportation and to build a wall across the southern border and make Mexico pay for it.
In fact, Trump’s administration deported significantly fewer undocumented immigrants than Obama’s had, at least in part because Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Obama focused on deporting those who had been convicted of crimes, a much easier deportation process than that for immigrants without convictions. But it was still legal to apply for asylum in the U.S., a fact MAGA Republicans opposed as they embraced the “Great Replacement” theory: the idea that immigration destroys a nation’s culture and identity.
The covid pandemic enabled the Trump administration in March 2020 to close the border and turn back asylum seekers under an emergency health authority known as Title 42, which can be invoked to keep out illness. Title 42 overrode the right to request asylum. But it also took away the legal consequences for trying to cross the border illegally, meaning migrants tried repeatedly, driving up the numbers of border encounters between U.S. agents and migrants and increasing the number of successful attempts from about 10,000–15,000 per month to a peak of more than 85,000.
Title 42 was still in effect in January 2021, when President Joe Biden took office. Immediately, Biden sent an immigration bill to Congress to modernize and fund immigration processes, including border enforcement and immigration courts—which had backlogs of more than 1.6 million people whose cases took an average of five years to get decided—and provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
His request got nowhere as MAGA Republicans demanded the continuation of Title 42 as a
general immigration measure to keep out migrants and accused Biden of wanting “open borders.” But Title 42 is an emergency public health authority, and when the administration declared the covid emergency over in May 2023, the rule no longer applied.
In the meantime, migrants had surged to the border, driven from their home countries or countries to which they had previously moved by the slow economic recoveries of those countries after the worst of the pandemic. The booming U.S. economy pulled them north. To move desperately needed migrants into the U.S. workforce, Biden extended temporary protected status to about 472,000 Venezuelans who were in the U.S. before July 31, 2023. The Biden administration also expanded temporary humanitarian admissions for people from Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua.
Then, in October 2023, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) injected the idea of an immigration bill back into the political discussion when he tried to stop the passage of a national security measure that would provide aid to Ukraine. He said the House would not consider the Senate’s measure unless it contained a border security package. Eager to pass a measure to aid Ukraine, the Senate took him at his word, and a bipartisan group of senators spent the next several months hammering out an immigration bill that was similar to Title 42.
The Senate passed the measure with a bipartisan vote, but under pressure from Trump, who wanted to preserve the issue of immigration for his 2024 campaign, Johnson declared it “dead on arrival” when it reached the House in February 2024. “Only a fool, or a Radical Left Democrat, would vote for this horrendous Border Bill,” Trump posted about the measure.
And then Trump hammered hard on the demonization of immigrants. He lied that Aurora, Colorado, was a “war zone” that had been taken over by Venezuelan gangs—Aurora’s Republican mayor and police chief said this wasn’t true—and that Haitian immigrants to Springfield, Ohio, were “eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating—they are eating the pets of the people that live there.” A Gallup poll released Friday shows the MAGA attacks on immigration worked: in 2024, 55% of American adults wanted fewer immigrants in the country.
Trump was reelected in part because of his promise to strengthen border security, but now his administration is using attacks on immigrants to impose a police state. As Andrew Perez and Asawin Suebsaeng reported Saturday in Rolling Stone, the administration is fighting to impose its will on wrongly-deported Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom it rendered to a terrorist prison in El Salvador, because if they are forced to back down, “it could set a precedent that opens the floodgates to other legal challenges” to Trump’s other executive power grabs.
“The last thing you want to do here is contribute to a domino effect of decisions where suddenly you’re admitting you’re wrong about everything,” a close Trump advisor told the reporters. “That is why you gotta stand your ground on everything against the left, including on the [Abrego Garcia] situation.”
But it appears the American people simply want to fix a sixty-year-old mistake in the nation’s immigration laws.
By now, you have certainly heard that a 33-year-old Muslim democratic socialist named Zoltan Mamdani won the Democratic primary for mayor in New York City. Most remarkably, Mamdani upset former Governor Andrew Cuomo, the favorite. At the start, Mamdani was an unknown, Cuomo had name recognition. Cuomo ran on a platform touting his experience and promising to be tough on crime. Mamdani focused on the high cost of living and promised to freeze rents and to make city buses free. He also pledged to open a city-run grocery store in each of the city’s five boroughs, where prices would be low.
Mamdani had the support of a large number of enthusiastic young volunteers and a considerable segment of the working class. Cuomo had a huge financial advantage and the solid support of the Democratic Party’s leading figures, like former President Clinton and former Mayor Bloomberg. Mamdani skillfully used social media and his cheerful personality in the absence of a huge campaign fund. He pledged to pay for his promises by raising taxes on the rich.
Mamdani was born in Uganda to Indian parents. His father is now a professor at Columbia University. His mother is a successful film-maker. Mamdani graduated from the Bronx High School of Science, one of the city’s elite high schools that admits only those students who pass a test given on a single day. He graduated from Bowdoin College in Maine.
The General Election is in November. Mamdani will again face Cuomo and also incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who is running as an independent.
Adams has been in disrepute after being indicted by the U.S. Attorney’s office on multiple counts of corruption. Adams met with Trump, and Trump made sure that the indictments were dropped. Several experienced prosecutors in the US Attorney’s office resigned rather than sign the statement dismissing Adams’ indictment.
The business community opposes Mamdani; they fear his views. The big labor unions have endorsed Mamdani, most recently, the city’s biggest union, the United Federation of Teachers. It should be noted that Mamdani cannot raise taxes without the Governor’s approval, which is unlikely.
Into this unsettled situation comes The New York Times with a story that paints Mamdani in a bad light. The title of the story was: “Mamdani Identified as Asian and African American on College Application.” Someone hacked into Columbia University’s files and found Mandani’s college application. When asked about his race, he checked both Asian and African-American.
Margaret Sullivan, a journalist who previously served as ombudsman for The New York Times, wondered whether the newspaper was trying to undermine Mamdani. The story implied that he lied, but he was in fact born in Africa to parents of South Asian heritage.
Mayor Adams was quick to use the Times‘ story to say that Mamdani was falsely portraying himself as “African-American.” Supposedly this would help his chances of gaining admission to Columbia. However, Mamdani was rejected by Columbia.
In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Mamdani, 33, said he did not consider himself either Black or African American, but rather “an American who was born in Africa.” He said his answers on the college application were an attempt to represent his complex background given the limited choices before him, not to gain an upper hand in the admissions process. (He was not accepted at Columbia.)
“Most college applications don’t have a box for Indian-Ugandans, so I checked multiple boxes trying to capture the fullness of my background,” said Mr. Mamdani, a state lawmaker from Queens.
The application allowed students to provide “more specific information where relevant,” and Mr. Mamdani said that he wrote in, “Ugandan.”
Sullivan points out that the story was given to the Times by an intermediary whom she describes as a “white supremacist.” She wondered why the Times would publish a story based on hacked information.
She wrote:
For one thing, it came to the Times due to a widespread hack into Columbia’s databases, transmitted to the paper through an intermediary who was given anonymity by the paper. That source turns out to be Jordan Lasker, who – as the Guardian has reported – is a well-known and much criticized “eugenicist”, AKA white supremacist.
Traditional journalism ethics suggests that when news organizations base a story on hacked or stolen information, there should be an extra high bar of newsworthiness to justify publication. Much of Big Journalism, for example, turned their noses up at insider documents offered to them about JD Vance during last year’s presidential campaign, in part because the source was Iranian hackers; in some cases, they wrote about the hack but not the documents.
Sullivan points out that the rightwing media ecosphere used the story to pummel Mamdani, whom they already hated because he is both a Muslim and a socialist:
The rightwing cable network was having a field day with Mamdani, a Muslim and social democrat, even before the Times story. President Trump has called him a communist and suggested he should be deported. Other rightwing outlets picked up the story, too, presenting it as a DEI scandal – that Mamdani lied about his race in order to take advantage of the affirmative action admission policy at Columbia. (Making the story even more absurd is the fact that Mamdani didn’t get in.)
Mamdani has become a national figure almost overnight as a result of the controversy. The right happily portrays him as the frightening face of the Democratic Party. Democrats are torn between those who embrace the energy he has brought to a party known for aging leaders and those who are frightened that he will scare away white, middle class voters.
Student debt relief advocates gather outside the Supreme Court on Capitol Hill in Washington on Feb. 28, 2023, ahead of arguments over President Joe Biden’s student debt relief plan.
Credit: AP Photo/Patrick Semansky
This month, payments on student loan debt for millions of borrowers across the country restarted after the three-year pandemic pause. California has some of the lowest tuition rates in the nation, but the state’s residents carry higher than average student debt balances, risky graduate school debt, and have a unique reliance on parent-held debt, according to a recently released report from The Century Foundation.
Here’s what borrowers need to know if they already have student loans:
When do repayments restart?
The pandemic-era pause on federal student loan payments has ended. Repayment for most borrowers resumed Oct. 1. Interest has already restarted accruing, as of September. However, if you’re currently enrolled in school or recently graduated, then for most federal student loan types, you have a six- to nine-month grace period from the moment you graduate, leave school or drop below half-time enrollment. And for most loans, interest accrues during your grace period.
The U.S. Department of Education is giving borrowers a one-year “on ramp” to repayment through September 30, 2024, that prevents people from falling into delinquency or default if they miss payments. Interest will still accrue, but any missed payments won’t lead to negative credit reporting.
What repayment plans are available?
Standard: Payments are a fixed amount that ensure your loans are paid off within 10 years, or 10 to 30 for consolidated loans.
Graduated: Payments are lower at first and then increase, usually every two years, and are for an amount that will ensure loans are paid off within 10 years or 10 to 30 years for consolidated loans.
Extended: Borrower must have more than $30,000 in outstanding direct loans. Payments are fixed or graduated and will ensure loans are paid off within 25 years.
Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) Plan, formerly the REPAYE plan
Monthly payments will be 10% of discretionary income, which the department defines as the difference between annual income and a percentage of the poverty guideline for a borrower’s family size and state of residence.
Payments are recalculated each year based on updated income and family size.
Spousal income or debt is considered if the borrower files a joint tax return.
Any outstanding balance is forgiven if the loan isn’t repaid after 20 years for undergraduate study or 25 years for graduate or professional study.
Pay-as-you-earn repayment plan (PAYE)
Must be a new borrower on or after Oct. 1, 2007, or received a loan on or after Oct. 1, 2011.
Monthly payments will be 10% of discretionary income but never more than what you could pay under the 10-year standard repayment plan.
Payments are recalculated each year based on updated income and family size.
Income-based repayment plan (IBR)
Must have high debt relative to income.
Monthly payments will be either 10% or 15% of discretionary income, but never more than what you could pay under the 10-year standard repayment plan.
Payments are recalculated each year based on updated income and family size.
Spousal income or debt is considered if the borrower files joint tax returns.
Any outstanding balance.
Income-contingent Repayment Plan: Monthly payments are the lesser of what you would pay on a repayment plan with a fixed monthly payment over 12 years and adjusted based on income, or 20% of your discretionary income, divided by 12. Parent PLUS borrowers are eligible if they consolidated the debt into a direct loan.
What about my interest rate?
Interest rates remain unchanged from what borrowers had prior to the pandemic pause. However, you may see a different rate if you chose to enter a new repayment plan or consolidated your loans.
Interest rates are set by the Department of Education and tied to the 10-year Treasury note. Federal student loans borrowed after 2006 have fixed rates.
Why does the government charge interest on student loans?
“One argument would be we want people to have incentive to pay back the loans, hence their interest rates,” said Peter Granville, a fellow at The Century Foundation studying federal and state policy efforts to improve college affordability. Other arguments include appealing to Congress to get rid of interest rates, or moving to debt-free college altogether, he said.
“Having debt is an emotionally weighty circumstance to be in, and nobody wants to take on debt, but we do it to finance the education that people need,” Granville said.
Does the federal government make money off student loans?
It’s unclear. Last year, a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found the Department of Education miscalculated the cost of the federal student loan program. The department initially estimated that it would generate $114 billion from federal direct student loans; however, the GAO discovered that as of 2021, the program cost the government $197 billion. Part of the shortfall is due to the cost of the three-year pandemic pause, but most of it is because the department failed to consider the percentage of borrowers who would choose to enroll in income-driven repayment plans, the GAO concluded.
The GAO further explained it’s difficult to estimate future costs because borrowers’ incomes, family sizes and payment decisions change over time. It’s also difficult to examine past costs because there is a lack of historical data when new changes are introduced to student loan programs.
The Congressional Budget Office in 2022 projected that the only loan program the government would see revenue from is the Parent PLUS program. The government loses money or subsidizes undergraduates, graduates and Grad PLUS loans.
Tiara Moultrie, a fellow at The Century Foundation focusing on higher education accountability, said there is concern among those analyzing student loans that the government will lose more money on student loans as more people enroll in income-driven repayment plans like the new SAVE plan. The CBO estimates that by 2027, the total percentage of borrowers in an income-driven plan would increase by about 12% annually. Typically, for every $1 invested in an income-driven covered loan, the government loses 17 cents.
Currently, out of 43.4 million borrowers, 8.5 million are in an income-driven repayment plan.
What if I have trouble repaying my loan?
Contact your loan servicer to discuss options. You may choose to change repayment plans as a way to lower monthly costs, request deferments, or enter forbearance, which allows you to temporarily stop making payments.
What is the department’s relationship to loan servicers?
Loan servicers like MOHELA, Nelnet, EdFinancial and ECSI are private contractors hired by the department to service loans. They are assigned to handle billing, payment plans, and advise and assist borrowers with their student loans at no cost to borrowers.
Your servicer may have changed during the pandemic from one company to another because their contract with the department wasn’t renewed, or a new servicer was awarded a contract. These contracts typically last five years until renewal or cancellation. Sometimes a change happens when a borrower enters a new repayment or forgiveness program — for example, only one servicer handles Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
The servicers should notify borrowers if there is a change.
Can I discharge my loans in bankruptcy? Yes, but it depends on the terms of the bankruptcy court’s decision. Those terms may include full discharge, a partial discharge, or full repayment but with different terms like a lower interest rate.
How can I get my student loan forgiven, canceled or discharged? There are a variety of ways to get a federal student loan canceled. For example, teachers are eligible for up to $17,500 in forgiveness through the Teacher Loan Forgiveness program. Government employees, nurses, police officers, nonprofit workers and other people who work in public service may qualify for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program. For those with a disability, there is the Total and Permanent Disability Discharge program. Finally, borrowers who participate in income-driven repayment plans are eligible for loan forgiveness if they’ve been in repayment for 20 or 25 years.
Loans are also discharged or forgiven if your college or school closed while you were enrolled or shortly after you withdrew, or, if your college misled you or engaged in some other misconduct. Such forgiveness plans are known as closed-school discharge and borrower defense.
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden announced $9 billion more in student debt relief for borrowers under Public Service Loan Forgiveness, disability forgiveness, and other income-driven repayment plans.
What happens to my loans if I die?
Loans will be discharged after the required proof of death is submitted.
What happens to my parent’s PLUS loan if my parent dies, or if I die?
The loan will be discharged if your parent dies or you, the student, dies.
For students applying for loans
How do I apply for student loans?
You may be offered student loans as part of your college’s financial aid offer. Loans can come from a variety of sources, such as private banks, organizations and the federal government.
What types of federal student loans exist?
Undergraduate students who demonstrate financial need can receive Direct Subsidized Loans. Direct Unsubsidized Loans do not require students to demonstrate need. They are available to eligible undergraduate, graduate and professional students.
Complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid. Your college will tell you how to accept all or part of the loan offered. However, before receiving money you are required to enter loan entrance counseling and sign a Master Promissory Note.
There are also Direct PLUS Loans:
Grad PLUS loans are given to graduate or professional students to help cover expenses. Borrowers do not need to demonstrate financial need, but they are subject to a credit check. People with poor credit histories must meet additional requirements.
Parent PLUS loans are given to parents of dependent undergraduate students to cover expenses. Borrowers do not need to demonstrate financial need, but they are subject to a credit check. People with poor credit histories must meet additional requirements.
How much can I borrow?
Undergraduate students can receive direct subsidized and unsubsidized loans from $5,500 to $12,500 per year, depending on the year they are in school and their dependency status.
Graduate and professional students can borrow up to $20,500 each year for unsubsidized loans. PLUS loans are uncapped and determined by the student’s school to cover any expenses not covered by other financial aid.
Yosadara Carbajal Salmerón was always a very involved parent, from the time her children were in Head Start.
She would volunteer in the classroom and sign up for parent committees throughout elementary and middle school.
But Carbajal Salmerón didn’t realize that her children, who attend school in Pomona Unified, were still considered English learners after years of school, or how that might affect them. Then one day she received notification that her son had been reclassified as fluent and English proficient when he was in eighth grade.
Her first question was, “Why hasn’t my daughter reclassified?”
Carbajal Salmerón’s daughter Mia Mirón was younger and had never learned to speak Spanish fluently, in part because she had always spoken English with her older brother.
“I couldn’t understand it,” Carbajal Salmerón said in Spanish. “My son was the first born and he only spoke Spanish when he entered school. But why would my daughter still be an English learner, if she had had a harder time learning Spanish?”
Courtesy of Yosadara Carbajal Salmerón
Yosadara Carbajal Salmerón (right) with her children Andrew and Mia Mirón at Mia’s eighth grade graduation.
Parents of English learners are often unaware of their children’s progress learning the language, according to advocates from the Parent Organization Network, based in Los Angeles.
The organization is launching a campaign to help parents learn to monitor their children’s progress and advocating for changes in how districts communicate the information to families.
Students are classified as English learners when they first enroll in school if their parents speak a language other than English at home and they do not score high enough on the English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC). English learners have to continue to take the test every year, until they show proficiency in English, in addition to meeting other requirements, such as meeting grade level on state standardized tests in English language arts. At that point, they are reclassified as “fluent English proficient.”
As long as students are classified as English learners, they must take English language development classes in addition to their regular classes. If they are not reclassified before middle and high school, those language classes can take up so much of their schedule that they cannot take as many electives as other students, and they may not be able to access as much academic content in other classes.
Araceli Simeón, executive director of Parent Organization Network, said that parents often rely on report cards to monitor their children’s academic progress. “If they’re getting A’s and B’s, they don’t look at anything else,” she said.
Districts have to send information to parents of English learners every year about their children’s progress on the ELPAC, but the reports are often sent in the mail, separate from a child’s report card. Even when parents do receive the scores, they do not always understand what they mean or what their children need to do in order to be reclassified.
In addition, more and more districts are using online portals to share students’ scores on state standardized tests in reading, math and English language proficiency, Simeón said. Often, those portals can be difficult to navigate for parents who don’t speak English or aren’t as comfortable with technology.
“If you don’t know how to navigate that, then essentially years go by without you receiving a note about your child’s progress on the test,” Simeón said.
Last year, staff from Parent Organization Network trained more than 80 parents in three districts – Los Angeles Unified, Long Beach Unified and Pomona Unified.
In one of those trainings, Carbajal Salmerón learned for the first time about the process for students to be reclassified.
“For the first time, someone explained to me the exam that they have to take once a year and that they have to learn how to write, listen, speak and read. The teachers had never told me that my daughter had a 3 in reading, for example, or a 2 in writing. No one had ever told me that,” said Carbajal Salmerón.
Maribel Bautista is another parent who took the training. She has 14-year-old triplets in Long Beach Unified. All three were classified as English learners when they entered kindergarten because the family speaks Spanish at home. When Bautista would receive reports on how her triplets were doing in English, she assumed it was in English language arts, rather than learning the language itself.
When Bautista took training with Parent Organization Network and began to analyze the reports she had received, she realized that one of her triplets was reclassified in second grade and another in third, but one had never been reclassified, and he was in eighth grade.
“I think the most important thing is explaining to parents what the classification of English learner means, why their kids are being placed there, and what steps they need to take to pass the exam before they go to middle school,” Bautista said in Spanish. “It’s about communication.”
Courtesy of Maribel Bautista
Triplets Nick, Jeson and Kendrick Figueroa attend school in Long Beach Unified.
Asked what steps they are taking to help parents understand the reclassification process and their children’s progress, the districts where Parent Organization Network trained parents responded in different ways.
The superintendent of Pomona Unified, Darren Knowles, said that collaborating with Parent Organization Network “led to a complete overhaul of the documents that we use to inform parents about the reclassification process.”
Knowles said over the last four years, Pomona Unified redesigned a resource page for parents about reclassification criteria in English, Spanish, and Mandarin. The district also conducts regular presentations and training for parents about what students need in order to reclassify. In addition, he said the district is printing ELPAC score reports to give to families during parent-teacher conferences. Recently, he said the district sent out information about ELPAC scores to parents and offered in-person meetings if they wanted to review their children’s progress. He said 92 parents from 18 different schools requested an in-person meeting.
Spokespersons from Los Angeles Unified and Long Beach Unified shared fewer details. “Our families have various opportunities including notification and consultation letters,” said the LAUSD statement. “The District also offers over a dozen meetings throughout the year where families can deep dive into their student’s educational journey. In addition, families are welcome to call and set up a school visit with the English learner designee or school principal.”
“LongBeach Unified is dedicated to ensuring parents of English language learners receive student progress and reclassification information,” said Long Beach Unified School District spokesperson Evelyn Somoza. “Parents of students who have not yet been reclassified receive information on their student’s English language proficiency at the start of every school year through U.S. mail and our online portal. Parents receive phone calls and emails when test scores from assessments completed during the school year become available.”
Both Bautista and Carbajal Salmerón attended universities in Mexico and want their children to go to college, too. They want their children to be able to enroll in the college preparatory classes they need in high school, which can be hard for students if they are still classified as English learners.
After understanding the process, they began to push for more help for their children and encourage them to work on their English reading and writing skills to improve their scores on the ELPAC.
Carbajal Salmerón’s daughter Mia took a summer school intensive English class, began to attend English classes on Saturdays, and started focusing on improving her reading.
Finally, in the first semester of ninth grade, she was reclassified, allowing her to stop taking English language development classes and freeing up her schedule to take more electives.
Now a sophomore, Mia hopes to go to college to study ethnic studies. She credits her eighth grade English language development teacher, who spoke with her and other English learners and explained to them that they had to pass the English proficiency test in order to be reclassified as fluent.
“She was a teacher that really wanted everybody in the class to reclassify, and she put in the energy and time to really create a connection with every single one of us,” Mia said. “I feel like personally it’s all in the teacher. If they motivate you and make you see that you personally are capable of doing and achieving and reclassifying, it’s the greatest compliment ever.”
Students at UCLA Community School pass by one of several outdoor campus murals on their way to class.
Credit: Allison Shelley/EDUimages
EdSource asked Martin Blank for his perspective on California’s massive investment in community schools in the context of the community schools movement that he was instrumental in creating.
For 20 years after he co-founded it in 1997, Blank directed the Coalition for Community Schools, a national organization that advocates for policies that support the implementation of quality community schools. He also served as president of the Institute for Educational Leadership, the coalition’s home.
Marty Blank
After serving as a VISTA volunteer in the Missouri Bootheel region, Blank, an attorney, was a senior staff member at A.L. Nellum and Associates, the nation’s first African American-owned consulting firm.
Through two-year planning and five-year implementation grants, more than 2,000 schools could become community schools to broaden services to meet children’s multiple needs and schools’ connections with the community. More than a place, the book says, a community school “is a set of partnerships built on a foundation of mutually beneficial relationships between schools and communities.”
With growing gaps in wealth and an increase in poverty, is it important that schools take a larger role than traditionally people have thought schools should take?
Yes, the school should have a larger role, but that role should be as an ally with an array of partners with expertise and people who want to help kids thrive.
The idea that schools could take on a larger role and do everything is mistaken. You open up the school to the community, you open up the potential for greater family engagement, and you get people to think about kids in different ways. Health people, youth people, school people, organizers all have a slightly different view of the world and how it should change. When you put them together, you can really create a synergy that leads to a better strategy and better results. It’s the wisdom of the group, rather than a single entity being in charge of everything.
The title of your book is “The Community Schools’ Revolution: Building Partnerships, Transforming Lives, Advancing Democracy.” What’s revolutionary, and how would parents and teachers know that they’re in the middle of a revolution?
That partnerships are essential in today’s public school and policy environment is a revolutionary concept. The power of partnership between schools and community is the essence of our work. We’ve begun to demonstrate how powerful that is.
Listen: How parents, teachers, and the community can tell if the community schools “revolution” is in their midst
We also have leaders in community schools who are thinking and acting differently. Principals are not only focused on their school, on their academic responsibilities, but they also recognize their ability to build a community of parents, teachers and now partners that support their students.
The community schools revolution is also demonstrated by their growth. There are thousands of schools across the country. We have evidence of success, and we have a growing investment. California’s is significant and we’ve got substantial federal money. Maryland has embedded community schools across all school districts, by including them in the school funding formula, and a growing number of states are funding community schools development.
California’s is the biggest bet yet on community schools. In part, it was driven by money. California had a huge surplus, and so the Legislature and the Newsom administration, at the encouragement of State Board of Education President Linda Darling-Hammond, put down $4.4 billion over seven years. It made this commitment without really anything in place as a state system. Does it concern you that it might fall short of its potential?
If I could control the way policy functions, one might do very careful planning, then implement, then evaluate. But in the United States, we don’t do policy that way. It’s all a bit chaotic, and that makes it really hard for school people.
We were worried when New York expanded from 40 community schools to 150, because we thought that was going to be challenging. And it was. But in time, because the school system and the city government and the community-based organizations and the school leaders stayed together, there are now 420 plus community schools in New York, and they’re working toward a set of common goals. Are there challenges? Do we worry that money is going to be taken away? Of course, but sustainable partnerships emerging.
Listen: Whether California’s approach to community schools, through planning grants, followed by implementation grants on a mass scale, makes sense
We saw measurable progress in New York. A report by Rand demonstrated there was some improvement in math achievement, that students were more connected to adults and to the school, that there were improvements in attendance. We saw progress in California, where there are community schools that people could draw on — in San Francisco, West Contra Costa, Oakland, Los Angeles and other places.
We’re hoping that school and community organization leaders will realize that if they go beyond vendor and contract relationships, to really become partners, there will be a foundation on which to continue. Grants may come, but if the relationship between the school and their partners remains, then the essence of the community school will remain.
California is investing many billions of dollars in other services, too, such as mental health, transitional kindergarten, and an extended day and year, particularly for low-income schools. What difference will this make in a community school?
California represents a real opportunity. If it works the way we hope, the person in charge of new mental health money, the person running the after-school program, and other partners will be talking to each other and educators about what they want to accomplish. I remember a principal telling me he was responsible for all partners. They would ask for space and for equipment. He held a meeting and said, “Who are you and why the hell are you here?” What we want is for those potential allies to sit and talk regularly, to listen to students and their families and figure out how to make progress together.
Oakland and UCLA are prominent in your book. Any school would be fortunate to be associated with a university like UCLA. And Oakland has more nonprofits than coffee shops. But there are lots of communities that don’t have those opportunities. If you are in rural San Bernardino County or Humboldt County, what do you do?
The first thing is to go out in the community and talk to the business community, to the religious community. In every community, there are some nonprofit organizations. Every community has resources. We’ve had community schools where the emphasis was on bringing in elders from Appalachian communities to teach about the local history. We’ve had community schools where the kids have learned about the fishing industry. 4H is a significant player in many rural communities.
It’s a mindset issue. People have assets and expertise. If you assume there’s nothing, it puts the school and the teachers in a very negative mindset about what they’re trying to accomplish.
A crucial person will be the community schools coordinator, which all community schools in California must hire to receive state funding. Whom should districts be looking for, and why is that person important?
A community school coordinator is a bridge builder. We’ve had innumerable principals say, “I don’t know how I managed before I had a community school coordinator.” A community school coordinator is vital to connecting the work of partners and school staff. They should be collaborative and like to work with other people; they should be someone who knows how to listen to families and young people, who can bring ideas from partners to the principal and teachers and be part of the school leadership team.
The California Teachers Association has taken a position and some local unions in negotiations that the community schools coordinator should be a certificated teacher. A number of districts have said that first and foremost, the person should come from the community and know the community. What’s your view?
Sometimes you’ll find a social worker with community organizing training. Or a teacher who was a Peace Corps volunteer, a parent or community resident with strong relational skills. We need someone who can build bridges to the community whether they work for a school system, a nonprofit organization or a higher education institution. We should not limit ourselves when we think about where we look for people.
What might be early wins that might set the right tone and culture for community schools?
Attendance is a big issue and really a critical place to start. People are worried about it all across the country. When you have partnerships, whether it’s around health and mental health or just outreach with the ability to talk to parents and meet in their homes or workplaces, you can encourage improvement in attendance. In Baltimore, grassroots groups of Black men, some of whom are formerly incarcerated, have become involved with schools to try to make connections.
I can imagine some principals and teachers might say, “We welcome the partnerships, we welcome the additional resources, but leave instruction and learning to us.” How can what goes on in the school day be integrated into the community school?
We’ve seen teachers do walk-arounds in neighborhoods, so they understand their students’ lives and communities and use that knowledge in the classroom. At the UCLA Community School, the kids have worked on immigration and housing issues. We’ve seen young people get involved in dealing with hunger and nutrition issues in their neighborhoods. Partners can help facilitate that.
Listen to kids. You can build a standards-based curriculum that involves kids dealing with science and math, and everything else around problems that matter to them and to their neighborhood.
Listen: How principals must open up schools and themselves for community schools to succeed
The community can be a resource for learning apprenticeships and internships. The University of Pennsylvania has students going into labs and doing summer work. All of that is part of what can happen in a community school.
For this $4 billion public investment, what metrics should the public use to gauge whether community schools are making a difference in the lives of students including, academic achievement?
They would see better attendance. They might see reductions in disciplinary incidents because they’ve applied restorative justice practices. They might see indications of improvement in mental health, not only because young people have had access to mental health professionals, but also because they’ve just had more opportunities to be on a team, whether it’s a robotics team or a football team, They should be looking for parents to stand up and say, “This school works for our kids” and for kids to be saying the same kinds of things.
I was told by a high school principal who was a community schools manager that building trust can be difficult and that the initial efforts can be frustrating. Parents are busy, and perhaps their own experiences may have turned them off to school.
It’s a never-ending process. Each of us, in our personal lives, in our professional lives, has had situations where we built some trust, we lost the trust, we had to rebuild it. Parents are busy, but if you knock on doors and listen to them, you can capture the essence of what they want. Educators and partners build trust when they look at data together to solve problems.
You mentioned timing may be both right and difficult now, with so much scrutiny on schools for various reasons and tensions brought into schools from the outside. Your book ends with this quote: “Now more than ever, with a deeply divided electorate and an often toxic political environment, community schools may represent a strategy that can bring people together, build community, and even bridge ideological divides.” Why are you confident that a community school can achieve such ambitions?
If you’re not a dreamer or ambitious, then you’re not going to be able to overcome the historic inequities that have existed in our public school system and society. I’ve been at this work for 60 years, and it’s been urgent for all 60 years. When we first opened the migrant education program in a formerly segregated school in southeast Missouri, it was urgent. Now, with our politics so divided, the fact that there can be community schools in Florida and Idaho, in New York and California, in Wisconsin and Texas, indicates there’s a power in the idea of public school being the vehicle around which we build community.
School leaders have to realize that they gain power by being more open. And that’s a challenge, given the politics of the moment. But our schools are a place that everyone knows, where we can all come together and act democratically. It’s not the only solution, but it offers the possibility of creating the kind of trust, the kind of relationships and the kind of places where people can come and see that we all care about each other’s kids.
Community schools show how people and organizations can come together to solve problems.
