Hello from Erica on Chalkbeat’s national desk. Before we dive into the news, we have a little bit of homework for you. It’s a survey on homework. 

As a parent, I have a lot of mixed feelings about homework. When my kids were small, getting them to sit still and focus after a long day at school could be a struggle. But when their elementary school ditched homework, I realized I lost important insights into how my kids were doing at school and where they were struggling. 

Let us know your feelings. Your responses help inform our reporting, and we really value them!

This week’s big story touches on a topic that might also inspire mixed feelings. We looked at what a recent Supreme Court decision on gender identity and parental rights means for schools and for students. 

Keep reading for more on the fate of Philadelphia’s small high schools, the fight over mayoral control of schools in New York City, Memphis’ last-ditch effort to stave off state takeover, and the debate over how to teach Jan. 6 in schools.

Conservative parents’ rights advocates say a recent Supreme Court decision puts school districts on notice if they have policies that limit disclosure when students want to go by a different name and gender at school. 

The 6-3 emergency decision in Mirabelli v. Bonta suspends a California law that aimed to ensure schools would be welcoming and inclusive places for transgender students. The law requires teachers to use students’ preferred names and pronouns, and it prevents schools from sharing information about a student’s gender identity without that student’s consent. 

“If you have been socially transitioning children at school without their parents’ knowledge, the Supreme Court of the United States has now told you in no uncertain terms: that is unconstitutional,” said Paul Jonna, special counsel at the Thomas More Society, a conservative law firm representing California parents and teachers who sued over the law. “Get your policies into compliance immediately.”

But what this means in practice is considerably more complicated. It seems clear that schools can’t withhold information that parents ask for, but it’s not clear under what circumstances schools would have a proactive obligation to reach out to parents. And while a decision on the so-called shadow docket gives a strong indication of how justices feel about an issue, it doesn’t create binding precedent. (That didn’t stop Republicans from citing Mirabelli in a Michigan debate about teaching students about gender identity at school.)

The stakes are high for everyone involved. One set of parents in Mirabelli said they did not know their child identified as a different gender until they were hospitalized for a suicide attempt. At the same time, between 20% and 40% of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ, with many reporting that parental rejection and abuse contributed to them leaving home. 

The decision leaves a lot of questions unanswered about the limits of parental rights and teacher free speech, as well as what rights children themselves have. Some of those could get clarified if the Supreme Court takes up one of the several dozen similar cases working their way through the lower courts. 

It’s also not clear what rights parents who support their children’s gender transition might have. Those parents were disregarded when the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care for minors.

“We are creating a harmful environment when we see school districts asked to forcibly out students, when we ask folks to chip away at the little pieces of independence that our youth are getting, as they try to figure out who they are,” one LGBTQ advocate said.

Read the full story here.

Some critics of states’ popular school voucher programs want to impose limits on them. Opponents of Arizona’s education savings account program are pointing to headlines about misspent money and abuse of taxpayer funds as proof that the program should have more oversight. Ohio lawmakers have also proposed a bill — with bipartisan support — to place an income limit on a voucher program there. Some of these efforts might be a sign that opponents are taking a measured approach to vouchers, rather than coordinating all-or-nothing campaigns to stop them.

Families are looking to states for help with civil rights enforcement in schools. With shifting priorities and far fewer staff at the federal Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, many complaints about civil rights violations have languished. The Associated Press reports that families are looking to existing state institutions for help, and lawmakers in places like Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Maryland are looking for ways to beef up state authority. Colorado lawmakers also have bills in the works to expand state civil rights capabilities. But replacing the federal role won’t be easy.

A new study points to long-term risks of holding students back in third grade. Third-grade retention policies are a key feature of many states’ efforts to improve students’ reading skills. If students can’t read well, the thinking goes, they should repeat third grade and move forward with a stronger literacy foundation. But a new study found that Texas third graders who repeated a grade were far less likely to graduate from high school or earn a good living as young adults, nearly two decades later. 

Virginia lawmakers expect Gov. Abigail Spanberger will sign a bill that would bar schools from teaching that the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection was peaceful or promoting false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rife with voter fraud. Lawmakers passed the Democrat-backed measure this month on party lines, though The Washington Post noted that “Republicans remained uncharacteristically quiet” as the bill moved through the legislature.

The sponsor of the bill, Democratic Delegate Dan Helmer, said lawmakers’ intent was to prevent any disinformation from permeating schools through what Helmer called a “massive disinformation campaign” on the White House’s part.

One Republican who did speak against the measure, Delegate Tom Garrett, likened it to Nazi Germany or Soviet-era policies that attempted to squash speech. Yet, Helmer pointed to a White House webpage describing Jan. 6 participants as “peaceful” and “unfairly targeted” as evidence the state needed to act.

The events of Jan. 6 — which saw protesters storm the Capitol demanding that lawmakers overturn the results of the 2020 election in President Donald Trump’s favor — are already a topic in the classroom in other states. 

Some Michigan history teachers are raising the incident in class to spark discussion about the importance of a peaceful transition of power. Legislators in New York are also trying to set policy around how the insurrection is taught. But they are taking a different strategy than Virginia: Democrats have proposed a bill that would require lessons about Jan. 6, alongside other civics education. The bill awaits consideration in state education committees.

State houses have been trying to legislate the cultural, religious, political, and personal beliefs taught in the classroom for a very long time. In March 1925, Tennessee passed a law that made it illegal to teach evolution in public schools. That law led to the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial, and eventually Tennessee lawmakers repealed its ban on teaching evolution.

Some Republican-led states have pushed for students to learn a different version of the Jan. 6 story. Oklahoma’s Supreme Court recently blocked social studies standards that falsely implied the 2020 election was subject to widespread voter fraud. Those standards came from former state Superintendent Ryan Walters, a dedicated culture warrior.

New Oklahoma social studies standards still reference the 2020 election, but instead the standards open the election up as a topic for students to “examine political polarization and constitutional issues.”

That’s the target Hawaii previously set for the proportion of the state’s school food budget to go to local food by 2030. But the state education department’s plans to make this happen “seem more professions of faith than statements of fact,” according to a recent state audit.

The audit found the state didn’t spend $1 million in federal grant funding meant for locally-grown produce one school year, food cost was sometimes tracked on handwritten index cards, and the officials struggled to identify what food counts as local.

That’s Cyniah Goodwin, 16, one of the Philadelphia high school students hosting the newly launched Peacemakers Podcast, part of a school-based internship with a gun-violence prevention organization. 

The podcast’s goal is to highlight student vulnerability about their emotions and probe some of the reasons for pervasive youth gun violence around the city.

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