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Hello from Erica on Chalkbeat’s national desk.
Like everyone, we’re wondering why the FBI raided the home and office of Los Angeles Superintendent Alberto Carvalho this morning. We’ve rounded up what we know so far, and we’ll update that story as we learn more.
Our big story this week visits a small town in a conservative corner of Colorado where students are tackling one of the darker chapters of modern American history. We’ve also got the latest on the reorganization of the U.S. Department of Education, a closer look at AI training for teachers, and more news from around our network.
The Big Story
Granada High School students tell the story of Japanese American incarceration at a small museum they maintain and run. This work involves difficult conservations about America’s past and cleaning fingerprints off glass display cases. (Michael Noble Jr. for Chalkbeat)
When John Hopper was a new social studies teacher more than 30 years ago, he was looking for ways to make history more engaging for his students in a small town in southeast Colorado. He was also curious about the abandoned Japanese American incarceration site just outside of town, a place no one talked about.
So he put his students on the case. Over the years, they’ve interviewed survivors and their descendants, participated in archeology, and traveled to neighboring states and even Japan to give presentations. They’ve also developed a small, independent museum that preserves the legacy of one of the nation’s greatest civil rights violations.
Amache represents the kind of difficult American history that many teachers are wary of broaching in the classroom. Addressing it wasn’t popular back in the 1990s either, when Hopper first had his students send questionnaires to survivors.
“I had a lot of pushback from locals. ‘Leave it alone,’” Hopper recalled. “I was getting letters. I was getting phone calls. I was not very well-liked.”
Hopper is retired now, and the program has passed to the hands of a new teacher who was once one of his students. Tanner Grasmick is committed to telling the story of Amache “regardless of how uncomfortable it might be.”
This work has become politically sensitive again. The camp site became a national historic site in 2024, and the Trump administration wants national parks and historic sites to tell a more positive version of the American story. At the same time, visitors to the museum see present-day parallels.
Students are navigating these tensions with a focus on the facts and presenting a full picture of the Japanese American experience.
More National News
The FBI raided the home and office of Los Angeles Superintendent Alberto Carvalho. Carvalho has been an outspoken defender of immigrant students. The affidavits in the case are sealed, and federal officials have not provided much information. Here’s what we know so far.
The reorganization of the Education Department continues with more programs moving to other agencies. A new interagency agreement hands oversight of family engagement, community schools, and emergency response grants to Health and Human Services. Critics believe these agreements are illegal. The Education Department said services will not be disrupted. The Trump administration ultimately aims to shut down the department.
The long-term trend of school districts adding staff might actually be sustainable. School budget hawks have been sounding an alarm that the number of adults working in schools continues to rise even as the number of students declines. But there's nothing especially unusual about this. As funding has increased over decades, schools have been hiring (and maintaining) more staff. The question isn’t so much can school districts sustain these staffing levels, but whether these positions are the best use of resources.
Local Stories to Watch
An orientation for new Philadelphia school district teachers last year. A new report says the key to retaining new teachers is to give them — and their more experienced colleagues — more support in the form of "strategic staffing." (Carly Sitrin / Chalkbeat)
The teacher shortage in Pennsylvania makes for an “inhospitable” learning environment. That’s why a new report out from PA Needs Teachers pitches new teaching models, including team teaching strategies where 100 students might share a team of six teachers. Team teaching isn’t a new model — it was trendy in the 1960s, too. The report’s authors say it could be critical to maximize the staff the state has as educator attrition rates rise.
Michigan’s schools chief says the federal investigation into Detroit Public Schools and two other districts mischaracterizes state health education guidelines. The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating three districts over whether classes include “sexual orientation or gender ideology content” and if parents were notified they could opt of such instruction. Notices of the investigation cited new state health education guidelines. But state Superintendent Glenn Maleyko said health curricula is still set by local districts and parents continue to have the option to opt out.
Leaders of Colorado’s “first public Christian school” won’t reveal its location. The school has been displaced since late January when its original building was closed due to health and safety concerns. An attorney for the school’s authorizer has said it will move back eventually to its original location, but county planning officials have expressed alarm at the idea of a school in an industrial area. Meanwhile, the political fallout has been extensive for the school board that allowed the Christian school to open.
Spotlight on …
the race to train teachers in AI
Tech companies want teachers to be more AI literate — maybe so teachers will use their products.
Google just established a partnership with ISTE+ASCD, an educator professional development organization focused on technology, to provide training in AI for millions of teachers across the country, the 74 reported. The American Federation of Teachers announced a $23 million deal with tech companies last year to provide free AI training to teachers.
The Google training will present educators with examples of how to use AI, such as how they can build lessons individualized to students based on assessments, how to adapt course materials to meet individualized student needs, and how to create custom study guides, all while using Google AI products.
Google’s announcement came the same week as a slate of coverage from The New York Times about AI literacy in education, including a glimpse of what goes on in an AI class for high school seniors in Newark. In one instance, a student messaged with a chatbot about historical racial segregation.
Yet, AI’s impact on education is still a massive question mark. While many tech evangelists have claimed it will usher a transformation in schools, the AI work underway in classrooms is still largely experimentation.
That experimentation — and a lack of rules or regulation around AI in school — makes some educators wary of the technology. This month experts told Congress that teachers want “guidance and guardrails” on AI from the federal government, Education Week reports.
And while tech companies are focusing on how educators can utilize AI, it’s unclear how much training focuses on how teachers can navigate the ways the technology shapes the student-teacher relationship, including distrust over AI use.
Did You Know?
54%
That’s the share of teens who report they’ve used an AI chatbot for schoolwork, according to a new Pew Research Center report. And 10% of teens say chatbots help them complete “all or most” schoolwork.
About 12% said they’ve used a chatbot for emotional support or advice.
Quote of the Week
“I couldn’t tell you exactly when I’ve read each one of these titles, but I’ve read them within my lifetime.”
That was Cierra Clarke, a Twin Falls, Idaho, parent and fired substitute teacher, speaking to Idaho Education News. Clarke filed challenges to 95 books and asserted in each of the challenges that she had read the entire book.
Idaho Education News used a reading-time calculator to estimate that it would take one person 583 hours — just over 24 days of round-the-clock reading — to read all 95 books. The school district, in accordance with its book review policy, has enlisted 81 volunteers to ensure that three people read each challenged book to make a recommendation.
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