Censorship/Book Bans
Race & Discrimination
February 4, 2026
The “Everyone is Welcome” saga is now a major legal battle. An Idaho middle school teacher has filed a federal lawsuit challenging a state law that led to her forced resignation after she refused to permanently remove motivational posters displaying messages of inclusion and hands of various skin tones from her classroom.
Sarah Inama, a sixth-grade world studies teacher formerly at Lewis & Clark Middle School in Meridian, filed the complaint this week in the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho, naming the Idaho State Board of Education, the Idaho State Department of Education, Attorney General Raul Labrador, West Ada School District, and school administrators as defendants.
The Posters at the Center of Controversy
The dispute centers on two posters Inama purchased from an arts-and-crafts store in 2021 and displayed in her classroom alongside world maps, an American flag, and other educational materials. Read More
February 1, 2026
Watching the news over the past several weeks, I have felt a mix of outrage, sadness, and horror. Since early December, federal immigration enforcement has intensified in Minneapolis, and by January, the escalation of violence became impossible to ignore. As a mother, educator, and counselor, I keep returning to our children, who are seeing and hearing much of the same things we are, but without the tools to make sense of them. In moments like these, I find myself pondering the role of educators.
In a matter of weeks, Minneapolis witnessed the fatal shooting of Renée Good, a 37-year-old writer and poet, and Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old ICU nurse, both U.S. citizens. Read More
January 23, 2026
The National Park Service began removing a slavery memorial at the President’s House in Philadelphia on Thursday afternoon — an exhibit that opened in 2010 and honored the lives of the nine people held there who were enslaved by President George Washington.
On Thursday afternoon, the Action Cam captured NPS staffers taking down boards and panels that told the stories of Austin, Christopher Sheels, Giles, Hercules, Joe Richardson, Moll, Oney Judge, Paris and Richmond.
Michael Coard, a Philadelphia attorney who founded an advocacy group that fought for a slavery memorial at the President’s House for decades, told ABC News that his group, Avenging The Ancestors Coalition, is planning to announce “powerful action shortly” in response to the removal. Read More
January 23, 2026
Over half of the states in the U.S. have enacted legislation to prohibit hair-based discrimination, and Pennsylvania has now followed suit. The Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair (CROWN) Act, signed into law on November 25, 2025, goes into effect on January 24, 2026. This state-wide measure follows CROWN Act ordinances passed by the Allegheny County and Pittsburgh City Councils in 2020 offering local protections, but Pennsylvania’s new law has several unique nuances.
The purpose of the CROWN Act is to address longstanding biases where natural hair and protective styles were deemed to be unprofessional or inappropriate, resulting in racial or religious discrimination. Read More
January 21, 2026
The University of Pennsylvania is pushing back on the Trump administration’s demand to release personal information about Jewish students, faculty, and campus groups.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission subpoenaed Penn as part of its investigation into antisemitism at the Ivy League school.
The EEOC wants emails, phone numbers, and home addresses released immediately, without consent.
Penn says doing so could put those involved at “real risk of antisemitic harm.”
The commission has until Tuesday to respond to Penn’s filing. Read More
January 12, 2026
President Trump thinks the Civil Rights Movement—a series of laws and events that brought the country closer to realizing the full humanity of Black people, LGBTQ people, and women—was “reverse discrimination.”
“Do you believe … that the civil rights protections that Americans had, starting in the 1960s and so forth, resulted ultimately in the discrimination against white men?” The New York Times’ David E. Sanger asked the president in an interview released on Sunday. Read More
December 20, 2025
A Montgomery County principal is on administrative leave and faces termination after allegedly making antisemitic remarks, Wissahickon School District officials said Friday.
Philip Leddy, principal of Lower Gwynedd Elementary School, reportedly made the comments after a phone call with a parent about a student issue.
District leaders say Leddy believed the call had ended when he made the remarks to another employee in the room, which was inadvertently recorded on a parent’s voicemail.
Action News obtained the voicemail. The father, who asked not to be identified and has two children who attend the school, said Leddy had called him in response to an email about an incident involving his daughter.” Read More
December 8, 2025
The Arizona State Board of Education voted on Monday to begin the process of removing language related to diversity, equity and inclusion, commonly known as DEI, from state classroom standards. However, the board said they wanted more time to rewrite the policies.
State Superintendent Tom Horne, who proposed revisions in October, said the changes are necessary to protect Arizona schools from potential federal consequences despite federal courts blocking similar efforts by the Trump administration.
“He doesn’t usually bluff; he usually follows through,” Horne said of President Donald Trump. “If people did DEI, he would remove federal funding, which in this state is $866 million.”
“You never know when the ax is going to fall and it takes a while to fall to change standards, so we need to be proactive,” Horne said. Read More
December 3, 2025
On Nov. 19, the Center for Humanistic Inquiry (CHI) Salon welcomed students and professors to a discussion titled “Politics, Democracy, and Censorship: The Future of History Education in American Public Schools.” The discussion detailed the modern political battleground of K-12 history education in the United States.
Jamal Donnor, associate professor of education at the William & Mary School of Education, and Brendan Gillis, the director of teaching and learning at the American Historical Association, were invited to campus to discuss ongoing threats to K-12 history education and offer insights into the struggle for political control over curriculum. The event was hosted and moderated by Charles Hamilton Houston Professor of Black Studies and History Stefan Bradley, Department Chair of History Ellen Boucher, and Five College Professor of Education Studies Kristen Luschen. Read More
December 2, 2025
When my son, Jonathan, was born, one of the first children’s books I bought was “So Much” by Trish Cooke. I was captivated by its joyful depiction of a Black family loving their baby boy. I read it to him often, wanting him to know that he was deeply loved, seen, and valued. In an era when politicians are banning books, sanitizing curricula, and policing the teaching of Black history, the idea of affirming Black children’s identities is miscast as divisive and wrong. Forty-two states have proposed or passed legislation restricting how race and history can be taught, including Black history. PEN America reported that nearly 16,000 books (many featuring Black stories) were banned from schools within the last three years across 43 states. These prohibitive policies and bans are presented as protecting the ‘feelings’ of White children, while at the same time ignoring and invalidating the feelings of Black children who live daily with the pain of erasure, distortion, and disregard in schools. Read More
November 11, 2025
The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, which is supposed to protect students from discrimination based on race, ethnicity, sex, age and disability status, isn’t what it once was.
The Trump administration laid off nearly half the staff in March, shuttered seven of its 12 regional offices, shifted the hollowed-out agency’s focus to new priorities (including keeping transgender women out of women’s sports) and then reportedly terminated more employees amid the ongoing shutdown.
Philadelphia was among the cities that lost its OCR regional office in the first round of layoffs. Lindsey Williams, a Pennsylvania state senator who serves as minority chair of the Senate Education Committee, said the region’s cases now go to Atlanta, “where they may or may not be heard.” Read More
October 29 2025
Faith leaders, school officials and civic members joined the Mechanicsburg community for a “No Hate Here” event after recruitment cards seemingly promoting the Women for the Ku Klux Klan were found at a Halloween parade earlier this month.
“There is more love somewhere. I will reach out ‘till I find it. There is more love somewhere,” hundreds sang as they crowded into an alley next to the Gingerbread Man bar on Railroad Avenue as they promoted love and stood up to hate.
“It is not enough for us to say we are not racist, we have to be anti-racist,” said Rev. Elizabeth Eckman.
Organizers said silence is the welcome mat to hate, and that it’s time to get loud.
“Advertising by a hate group, especially in even the vicinity of children is a problem am I right?” Dr. Andrew Bitts, the Superintendent of the Mechanicsburg Area School District asked the crowd, to which they responded with an emphatic “Yes!” Read More
September 4, 2025
In April, the U.S. Department of Education used a landmark law intended, in part, to end racial discrimination to investigate Chicago Public Schools over a “Black Students Success Plan,” after a complaint that the program discriminated against students of other races.
In July, the department ruled five Virginia school districts had violated another civil rights law, intended to protect women and girls from sex discrimination and harassment, by allowing transgender students to use school facilities based on gender identity, not biological sex.
And just last week, the Trump administration announced a similar finding against Denver Public Schools, warning the district to, among other things, “adopt biology-based definitions for the words ‘male’ and ‘female'” within 10 days or risk losing federal funding.
The country’s federal civil rights laws, written to protect marginalized groups from discrimination, have become an unlikely tool in the Trump administration’s efforts to end targeted support for students of color and protections for transgender students. Read More
September 3, 2025
A large Washington-based medical association announced Tuesday they had reached a settlement with the Trump administration requiring the restoration of dozens of public health web pages and datasets tied to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and gender identity.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) did not comment on the settlement, but told Fox News Digital it remains “committed to its mission of removing radical gender and DEI ideology from federal programs, subject to applicable law, to ensure taxpayer dollars deliver meaningful results for the American people.”
The Washington State Medical Association (WSMA) and Doctors for America sued HHS and other agencies in May after the Trump administration, following executive orders in January, directed the removal of hundreds of web pages and datasets that referenced gender identity or diversity, equity and inclusion, LGBTQ+ health, racism, vaccines, opioid use, and Biden-era abortion policies on federal health websites. Read More
August 15, 2025
A federal judge on Thursday struck down two Trump administration actions aimed at eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the nation’s schools and universities.
In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher in Maryland found that the Education Department violated the law when it threatened to cut federal funding from educational institutions that continued with DEI initiatives.
The guidance has been on hold since April when three federal judges blocked various portions of the Education Department’s anti-DEI measures.
The ruling Thursday followed a motion for summary judgment from the American Federation of Teachers and the American Sociological Association, which challenged the government’s actions in a February lawsuit. Read More
July 31, 2025
Twenty-three years ago, Black activists led a relentless effort to make slavery the focal point of an exhibit on a Philadelphia home once occupied by Presidents George Washington and, later, John Adams. It was a chapter of history that the National Park Service was — at first — hesitant to explore.
But the activists’ persistence helped transform the President’s House Site at Independence National Historical Park into what it is today: a powerful tribute to the nine people President George Washington enslaved there during the founding of the United States.
And now in a little over a month, by Sept. 17, those efforts could be altered or erased in another attempt to sanitize history in response to an order from President Donald Trump, who seeks to remove content at national parks that his administration deems to “inappropriately disparage” Americans past or living. Read More
July 31, 2025
Summer is popularly imagined as bringing joy to all young people. Yet it is not an equal break or of the same quality for all students.
Learning loss is the decline in academic skills and knowledge that can occur when students are not engaged in structured learning, especially during extended breaks like summer.
It disproportionately impacts Black and low-income students who face greater systemic disadvantages within the education system.
Black families face challenges in accessing culturally relevant and affirming summer opportunities. As work by education researcher Obianuju Juliet Bushi and others has documented, for many Black families, the question isn’t just “what will my child do this summer?” It’s also “where can my child go to be safe, affirmed and supported?”
Without access to affordable enrichment programs during the summmer, many students fall behind in reading and math, further widening the opportunity gap when school resumes in September. Read More
July 16, 2025
Kansas City tackles racial and social justice challenges with community responses. The curated articles highlight systemic issues, such as racism in schools, policing practices, and mental health support for Black men, while suggesting community-based solutions. One article reveals a student’s use of a racial slur at a Christian school, urging school leaders to enforce stricter anti-racism policies. Another article discusses policing on Prospect Avenue, cautioning against overpolicing while ensuring safety.
A third article advocates for the compensation of a family whose relative was unlawfully killed by a former police detective. It stresses the importance of upholding civil rights and holding officers accountable. Lastly, a discussion around Black men’s mental health showcases an initiative aimed at promoting open conversations and support among marginalized communities. These examples illustrate Kansas City’s efforts to address complex racial and social issues through collective action and accountability. Read More
July 11, 2025
When public school teachers return to classrooms this fall, they will confront a new legal landscape that has given parents expanded veto power over certain aspects of a child’s education.
A sweeping constitutional interpretation issued last month from the U.S. Supreme Court recognizes a fundamental right under the First Amendment to opt-out from classroom lessons that may pose what it called a “very real threat of undermining” sincerely held religious beliefs.
It has school districts and their attorneys nationwide scrambling to review curriculum for possible conflicts and fine tune protocols for when and how students can be excused from certain material.
“It marks a significant challenge for public education nationwide,” the Montgomery County, Maryland, Board of Education, which lost the case, said in a statement on the decision. Read More
June 25, 2025
Hair comes in all types, as varied and unique as the people whose heads it crowns. That’s why the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (PHRC) wants all Pennsylvanians to “Love Your Crown.”
What does that mean? It means that beauty, as expressed in hairstyles, allows no room for discrimination.
“Nobody should be discriminated against because they come with hair in locks, braids, twist, or hair that’s purple today or blown out like an Afro tomorrow,” says PHRC Executive Director Chad Dion Lassiter. “We should not be discriminating against people in the workplace or any other place because of their hair.”
The inherent beauty of hair representing Pennsylvania’s wealth of cultural and experiential diversity is the driving force behind the proposed CROWN Act. The legislation, HB 1394, would amend the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act to prohibit discrimination based on hair texture or style. Read More
June 12, 2025
The war on public education is nothing new. It’s a modern tactic rooted in a long history of denying Black people access to knowledge.
During slavery, it was illegal in many Southern states to teach enslaved people to read. After emancipation, white mobs burned Black schools and attacked Black educators. During Jim Crow, unequal funding and forced segregation were used to keep Black communities locked out of opportunity.
Today, the tools have changed — book bans, anti-“critical race theory” laws, defunded schools — but the goal is the same: to control what Black children know and, therefore, who they can become.
You can’t change the future without understanding the past. Some people have made it clear: They don’t want to understand the past and don’t want the future to look any different from the past they built. Read More
June 12, 2025
In November 2024, a Jacksonville, Florida, mother watched her 16-year-old son unravel.
Already the target of racist bullying at school, he was one of many Black students across the country who received racist text messages after the presidential election. It hit hard: the teenager became withdrawn, afraid to return to school, and was overwhelmed by a feeling that he didn’t belong.
He eventually returned a few weeks later, but much like the bullying, the school never addressed it publicly. The school and the world, his mother said, “just moved on from the story.”
But the situation almost cost him his life.
“He told me later that he didn’t want to go back to school and that the reason he gave me his phone was that he had been thinking about ending his life,” says his mother, who asked Word in Black to remain anonymous to protect their privacy. “And that’s when I just broke down.” Read More
June 9, 2025
Despite the promise of equal opportunity heralded by the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, a new WalletHub report reveals that America’s educational system remains critically unequal – especially for Black students. The disparities, experts say, have only widened in recent years, worsened by former President Donald Trump’s dismantling of federal education funding and his administration’s attacks on teaching real American history.
WalletHub’s analysis ranked states by racial equality in education, using key metrics such as gaps in graduation rates, college degree attainment, and standardized test scores between Black and white students. Wyoming, New Mexico, and West Virginia top the list for equity, while Connecticut, Minnesota, and Wisconsin rank lowest.
According to the report, school districts with predominantly white students receive $23 billion more in funding per year than districts with majority nonwhite students. Read More
May 25, 2025
The number of white nationalist, hate, and anti-government groups around the US dropped slightly in 2024—not due to shrinking influence, but rather the opposite. In its annual “Year in Hate and Extremism” report, released Thursday, the Southern Poverty Law Center said it counted 1,371 hate and extremist groups, a 5% decline from the previous year, per the AP. In 2023, “record numbers” of white nationalist and anti-LGBTQ groups were found.
- Hate groups: Last year, there were 533 active hate groups in the US. These include groups who express views that are anti-LBGTQ+, anti-immigrant, antisemitic, and anti-Muslim. This number has been steadily declining since reaching a historic high of 1,021 in 2018.
- Anti-government groups: Last year, they totaled 838, an increase from recent years, according to the law center based in Montgomery, Alabama. These groups see the federal government as “tyrannical” and include militias and self-described sovereign citizens. Read More
May 22, 2025
The number of white nationalist, hate and anti-government groups around the U.S. dropped slightly in 2024, not because of any shrinking influence but rather the opposite. Many feel their beliefs, which includes racist narratives and so-called Christian persecution, have become more normalized in government and mainstream discourse.
In its annual Year in Hate and Extremism report, released Thursday, the Southern Poverty Law Center said it counted 1,371 hate and extremist groups, a 5% decline. The nonprofit group attributes this to a lesser sense of urgency to organize because their beliefs have infiltrated politics, education and society in general. Some of the ways they have done this are through pushing for bans on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, book bans and protests of drag story hours, the report says. Read More
May 5, 2025
More than 49 million young people attend public schools in the United States, and they have all been thrust into the center of President Donald Trump’s regressive agenda as he moves to use education funding as political leverage. Critics contend his attacks on public education will hurt disabled students, LGBTQ students, students of color, and those from low-income households the most.
“What’s coming out of Washington—it’s whiplash-inducing and tragic,” says one California middle school and high school history teacher who spoke anonymously for fear of being targeted. “To me, the message [has been] that education is unimportant and the needs of students [are] unimportant. Read More
April 25, 2025
A federal judge on Thursday blocked Trump administration directives that threatened to cut federal funding for public schools with diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by the National Education Association and the American Civil Liberties Union, which accused the Republican administration of violating teachers’ due process and First Amendment rights.
In February, the U.S. Education Department told schools and colleges they needed to end any practice that differentiates people based on their race. Earlier this month, the department ordered states to gather signatures from local school systems certifying compliance with civil rights laws, including the rejection of what the federal government calls “illegal DEI practices.” Read More
April 15, 2025
A storied civil rights legal group that helped desegregate U.S. public schools seven decades ago is suing the U.S. Department of Education over its efforts to stop diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in K-12 public schools.
Why it matters: The federal lawsuit by the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) on behalf of the NAACP is the latest challenge to the Trump administration’s attempts to end DEI programs and limit discussions of racism in schools.
The big picture: The lawsuit comes at the Trump administration is using a broad reinterpretation of Civil Rights-era laws to focus on “anti-white racism” rather than discrimination against people of color. Read More
April 14, 2025
Using the power of football to engage young people, Newcastle United Foundation delivers 19 free Premier League Kicks sessions every week, tackling anti-social behaviour and enriching the quality of childhoods through sporting opportunities in the community.
The visit to Byker Primary coincided with the Premier League’s No Room For Racism campaign, which runs from 5-14 April. Willock took the opportunity to join the Foundation’s coaching staff, before teaming up with Ameobi for a Q&A with the youngsters to illuminate the importance of diversity in sport and wider society. Read More
April 16, 2025
There are a lot of things 12-year-old G likes about school. She likes gym class; she likes to help other students; she likes to craft with her teacher.
But when you ask what she doesn’t like, G doesn’t hesitate.
“The blue room,” she says, sitting in her home outside Fort Wayne, Ind.
That’s a padded room G’s family says school staff sometimes lock her in.
“It feels like close spaces, and it’s like — it’s, like, scary in there.”
Her mother, Amy Cupp, says G has disabilities, and because of them, she sometimes has tantrums at school — lying on the floor; refusing to follow instructions; and trying to leave the room. Sometimes when this happens, school staff seclude her. Read More
April 10, 2025
In a memo, Pennsylvania officials complied with President Donald Trump’s anti-DEI executive orders but told school districts that they don’t need to change any of their diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, claiming there are “no federal or state laws generally prohibiting efforts,” the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.
March 17, 2025
The Pennsylvania House of Representatives on Monday again passed a bill that would add hairstyle to the state’s anti-discrimination law.
The bill passed nearly unanimously and would amend the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act to clearly state that the law’s prohibition on racial discrimination includes hair — a specific concern for Black women who have faced prejudice over the texture and style of their hair, according to the bill’s supporters.
In recent years, the Democratic-majority House has passed several expansions of the Human Relations Act, but these haven’t been brought forward in the Republican-controlled state Senate. Read More
February 21, 2025
Under President Donald Trump’s administration, Allentown School District Superintendent Carol Birks said she’s now afraid to use the “E-word”: equity.
“The new administration has been actively implementing policy changes, many of which have a direct impact on public education,” Birks said Thursday at Allentown School Board’s Policy Committee meeting.
The U.S. Department of Education on Feb. 14 sent a letter to educational institutions that get federal funding, issuing new guidance on how federal laws should be interpreted in regard to diversity, equity and inclusion, Birks said. Read More
February 17, 2025
In a recent guest column for the Tennessean, Tennessee educator Joseph Murray lambasted DEI, arguing that the acronym stands for “division, excuses and identity” instead of “diversity, equity and inclusion.”
Of particular concern, he wrote, is the impact of DEI in the classroom. And though he focused much of his attention on Frances Rosales’s opinion that diversity amongst teachers is important, Murray opened his piece with a discussion of Morgan Freeman’s 2005 appearance on “60 Minutes.”
In the interview, Freeman said that “Black history is American history” and called the concept of Black History Month “an insult.” Read More
February 1, 2025
A Pennsylvania school district has launched an investigation after photos of a sign prohibiting school bus riders from speaking Spanish circulated on social media.
The sign was allegedly posted in a school bus for the Juniata County School District, which outsources busing to Rohrer Bus, of Duncannon.
It prohibited the speaking of Spanish “out of respect to English only students” per “owner/management.”
Christie L. Holderman, superintendent of the Juniata County School District, released a statement on the matter Saturday morning, saying the district became aware of the matter Friday morning and “took immediate and appropriate action to address the situation.” Read More
January 28, 2025
A Central Dauphin Middle School teacher has resigned amid an investigation into a racist comment allegedly made to a student of Middle Eastern descent.
Several dozen people — including the child’s parents — attended Central Dauphin School District’s board meeting Monday night to voice concerns that the district had not treated the matter with sufficient gravitas and has not been proactive in dealing with racial harassment issues.
School board president Michael Jacobs read a statement — which had already been released by the district — during the meeting, saying that “this alleged incident goes against staff policies and the values that our district is built upon.” No other school officials addressed the issue during the public portion of Monday’s meeting. Read More
Janurary 13, 2025
2025 marks the 14th year of this teacher-focused blog, and, during this time, hundreds and hundreds of educators have offered advice on just about every classroom topic imaginable.
Now, here are all the posts—categorized, linked, and with detailed descriptions for each:
Race and Racism in Schools
Parent Engagement
Using Technology in the Classroom
Student Motivation and Social-Emotional Learning
Student Voices
Challenging Normative Gender Culture to Support All Students
Schools and the Pandemic
Classroom Management
Cooperative, Collaborative, and Project-Based Learning Read More
January 10, 2025
Recent incidents of racial harassment in schools and Trump’s re-election have intensified concerns among Black parents about their children’s safety and well-being on campus.
“As we inch closer to January 20th, I worry for my son and his friends who are about to graduate, a milestone we should be celebrating, but who have instead had to endure racism and harassment in spaces where they are supposed to be learning,” says a Jacksonville mother, who requested anonymity to protect her 16-year-old son’s privacy.
Her concerns aren’t unfounded. In the hours following Trump’s win, a wave of racist text messages targeted Black students across the nation — and her son was one of the recipients. Read More