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      A Bronx Teacher Asked. Tommy Orange Answered.

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      When the author received an impassioned email, he dropped everything to visit the students who inspired it.Tommy Orange sat at the front of a classroom in the Bronx, listening as a group of high school students discussed his novel “There There.”A boy wearing blue glasses raised his hand. “All the characters have some form of disconnection, even trauma,” Michael Almanzar, 19, said. “That’s the world we live in. That’s all around us. It’s not like it’s in some faraway land. That’s literally your next-door neighbor.”The class broke into a round of finger snaps, as if we were at an old-school poetry slam on the Lower East Side and not in an English class at Millennium Art Academy, on the corner of Lafayette and Pugsley Avenues.Orange took it all in with a mixture of gratitude and humility — the semicircle of earnest, engaged teenagers; the bulletin board decorated with words describing “There There” (“hope,” “struggle,” “mourning,” “discovery”); the shelf of well-thumbed copies wearing dust jackets in various stages of disintegration.When Orange spoke, students paid close attention. Many identified with the characters in Orange’s book “There There” and with the world it portrayed. Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesHis eyebrows shot up when a student wearing a sweatshirt that said “I Am My Ancestors’ Wildest Dreams” compared the book to “The Road,” by Cormac McCarthy. When three consecutive students spoke about how they related to Orange’s work because of their own mental health struggles, he was on the verge of tears.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What Really Causes Poor Performance in School

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      More from our inbox:Becoming a Republican to Vote Against TrumpCountering Propaganda From the Fossil Fuel Industry Wayne Miller/MagnumTo the Editor:Re “We’re Not Battling the School Issues That Matter,” by Nicholas Kristof (column, March 7):I completely agree with Mr. Kristof’s column. The situation is serious, not only for education but also for our embattled democracy.I would like to add some nuance. I have been working on a state-by-state analysis of the possible influence of racism, specifically anti-Black racism, on educational achievement.What I have found so far indicates that some children are taught quite well: those in private schools, of course; Asian American children (particularly those whose families are from India); white children of families prosperous enough to be ineligible for the National School Lunch Program; children of college-educated parents; and Hispanic children who are not English-language learners.Some students are in groups that are not likely to be taught to read effectively: Native Americans, children who are poor enough to be eligible for the National School Lunch Program and Black children.None of this will be news to Mr. Kristof. What is surprising to me is the sheer extent and arbitrary nature of the failure by school authorities. Almost everywhere that urban schools, in particular, are failing, socioeconomically similar children are being taught much more effectively in the nearest suburban districts.Part of the reason is money: Per-student expenditure is associated with educational achievement.But part of the problem — most of it — is a matter of administrative decisions: placing the best teachers in schools with the “best” students; equipping schools, in effect, in accordance with parental income; offering more gifted and talented classes to white students — all the perhaps unconscious manifestations of everyday racism.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      James Crumbley Found Guilty in Michigan School Shooting Trial

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      Mr. Crumbley and his wife, Jennifer Crumbley, who was found guilty on identical charges last month, are the first parents in the country to be directly charged for the deaths caused by their child in a mass shooting.A jury found James Crumbley guilty of involuntary manslaughter late Thursday over his failure to prevent his teenage son from killing four fellow students and wounding seven others in Michigan’s deadliest school shooting.Mr. Crumbley and his wife, Jennifer Crumbley, who was found guilty on identical charges in a separate trial last month, are the first parents in the country to be directly charged for the deaths caused by their child in a mass shooting.Their prosecutions were seen as part of a national effort to hold some parents responsible for enabling deadly violence by their children. In the Crumbleys’ trials, “the prosecution here found a successful playbook,” said Mark D. Chutkow, a lawyer and former federal prosecutor in Michigan.Prosecutors argued that the Crumbleys ignored warning signs about the massacre, painting Ms. Crumbley as a detached and negligent mother, and accusing Mr. Crumbley of failing to secure the gun used in the shooting.“James Crumbley was presented with the easiest, most glaring opportunities to prevent the deaths of these four students,” Karen McDonald, the prosecutor in Oakland County, said in closing arguments on Wednesday. “And he did nothing.”Oakland County prosecutors charged the Crumbleys three days after the Nov. 30, 2021, shooting that killed Madisyn Baldwin, 17; Tate Myre, 16; Justin Shilling, 17; and Hana St. Juliana, 14.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      James Crumbley Declines to Testify in Oxford High School Shooting Trial

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      Witness testimony in the trial ended on Wednesday. Mr. Crumbley faces involuntary manslaughter charges for the four students killed by his son.Testimony ended Wednesday morning in the trial of James Crumbley, whose son carried out Michigan’s deadliest school shooting more than two years ago, and whose wife was convicted last month in the same courtroom for failing to prevent the rampage.Prosecutors took the rare step of seeking to hold the Crumbleys partially responsible for the shooting at Oxford High School on Nov. 30, 2021, in which their son, Ethan, who was 15 at the time, killed four people and injured seven others.“That nightmare was preventable, and it was foreseeable,” Marc Keast, an Oakland County prosecutor, said in an opening statement last week. He accused Mr. Crumbley of failing to secure the gun that his son used in the shooting.Mr. Crumbley has been jailed since December 2021, when he and his wife, Jennifer Crumbley, were each charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter. They requested separate trials, and unlike his wife, Mr. Crumbley chose not to testify in his own defense.The witness lists in the two trials were similar, but there were a few key differences in the evidence that was presented.At Ms. Crumbley’s trial, lawyers pored over her communications with her son, including months of text messages, as prosecutors tried to paint her as a detached and negligent mother.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Regulators to Review Death of Nex Benedict, a Nonbinary Student, in Oklahoma

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      The U.S. Department of Education said it had opened an investigation into whether a high school “failed to appropriately respond” to reports of harassment of Nex Benedict, who died a day after a fight in a school bathroom.The U.S. Department of Education said on Friday that it had opened an investigation into the Oklahoma school district where a 16-year-old student, Nex Benedict, died a day after an altercation inside a high school bathroom.The department said in a letter on Friday that it was investigating whether Owasso Public Schools, outside Tulsa, had “failed to appropriately respond to alleged harassment of students” in violation of federal law, including Title IX. It said the investigation was in response to a complaint brought by the Human Rights Campaign, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group.The death of Nex, an Owasso High School sophomore who was nonbinary, drew national attention after gay and transgender rights groups said Nex had been bullied at school because of their gender identity. Nex used they and them pronouns as well as he and him pronouns, friends said.After the altercation, Nex spoke to a police officer at a local hospital and, according to a video of the interview released by the Owasso Police Department, described pouring water on three girls who had been picking on Nex and Nex’s friends for the way they dressed. The girls then attacked and fought with Nex, who told the police officer that they fell to the ground and “blacked out” at one point.The next day, Nex’s grandmother and guardian called for an ambulance to rush Nex back to the hospital, where they were pronounced dead.The cause of Nex’s death remains under investigation by the state medical examiner. The Police Department said in a statement last month that the death was not the result of trauma, but has not elaborated.Nex’s death brought scrutiny to Oklahoma’s restrictive laws and policies for L.G.B.T.Q. students and to the bullying that family members and friends said Nex had suffered at school.Karen E. Mines, an acting regional director with the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights, said in the letter that the opening of an investigation “in no way implies that O.C.R. has made a determination on the merits of the complaint.”In a statement, the school district said that it was “committed to cooperating with federal officials” and that it “believes the complaint submitted by H.R.C. is not supported by the facts and is without merit.”The Human Rights Campaign’s president, Kelley Robinson, said, “We need them to act urgently so there can be justice for Nex, and so that all students at Owasso High School and every school in Oklahoma can be safe from bullying, harassment and discrimination.”At a vigil for Nex last month, Robin Ingersoll, a 16-year-old sophomore and friend of Nex at Owasso High School, said that Nex identified as transgender and that L.G.B.T.Q. students had struggled to find acceptance in their corner of Oklahoma.“In Owasso, it’s worse than the bullying,” Robin said. “We could all learn more acceptance of others, and be better so something like this doesn’t happen again. We could all grow for Nex.”Ben Fenwick More

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      After Nex Benedict’s Death, Oklahoma Schools Chief Defends Strict Gender Policies

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      The Oklahoma school superintendent, Ryan Walters, said “radical leftists” had created a narrative about the death of 16-year-old Nex Benedict that “hasn’t been true.”In his three years as state superintendent for Oklahoma’s public schools, Ryan Walters, a former high school history teacher, has transformed himself into one of the most strident culture warriors in a state known for sharp-edged conservative politics.Following the death earlier this month of a 16-year-old nonbinary student a day after an altercation in a high school girls’ bathroom, gay and transgender advocates accused Mr. Walters of having fomented an atmosphere of dangerous intolerance within public schools.In his first interview reacting to the death of the student, Nex Benedict, Mr. Walters told The New York Times that the death was a tragedy, but that it did not change his views on how questions of gender should be handled in schools.“There’s not multiple genders. There’s two. That’s how God created us,” Mr. Walters said, saying he did not believe that nonbinary or transgender people exist. He said that Oklahoma schools would not allow students to use preferred names or pronouns that differ from their birth sex.“You always treat individuals with dignity or respect, because they’re made in God’s image,” Mr. Walters said. “But that doesn’t change truth.”Nex BenedictSue Benedict/Sue Benedict, via Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Support for Teaching Gender Identity in School Is Split, Even Among Democrats

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      Americans are deeply divided on whether schools should teach about gender identity, two polls found. But there was broader support for teaching about race.Americans are deeply split over whether gender identity should be taught in school, according to two polls released this week that underscored the extent of the divide on one of the most contested topics in education.Many groups, including Democrats, teachers and teenagers, are split on whether schools should teach about gender identity — a person’s internal sense of their own gender and whether it aligns with their sex assigned at birth, according to a survey by researchers at the University of Southern California and a separate survey by Pew Research Center.But on issues of race, another topic that has fueled state restrictions and book bans, there was broader support for instruction. That extended to some Republicans, the U.S.C. survey found.The results highlight nuances in the opinion over two of the most divisive issues in public education, even as the American public remains deeply polarized along party lines.The U.S.C. survey polled a nationally representative sample of nearly 4,000 adults, about half of whom lived with at least one school-age child, and broke responses out by partisan affiliation.Democrats were by and large supportive of L.G.B.T.Q.-themed instruction in schools, yet were split when it came to addressing transgender issues for younger students in elementary school.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Many Southern California Schools Will Remain Open Despite Floods

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      Most school districts in Southern California, including Los Angeles Unified, the second-largest in the country, were planning to keep most classrooms open on Monday, officials said, even as the state battled heavy rain, flooding and mudslides.Many students depend on schools for basic nutrition, the Los Angeles superintendent, Alberto Carvalho, said at a news conference on Sunday, explaining why he had decided not to close most of the district. The impact of the wind and rain will also vary greatly by neighborhood, he said, meaning that many schools will not be as badly affected.On Monday morning, Los Angeles Unified said that winds were forecast to diminish in the morning, citing it as a reason to keep schools open. Los Angeles Unified has more than 400,000 students in more than 700 schools across the district. At least one, Vinedale College Preparatory Academy in Sun Valley, will be closed because it is in a mandatory evacuation area. Those students will report to a different school, according to the district. A flash flood warning was in effect for more than 85,000 people in Los Angeles County and Ventura County until 9 a.m. Pacific on Monday, the National Weather Service said.Other districts in Southern California, including Santa Monica-Malibu, Long Beach and San Diego, also had not announced any plans to close as of early Monday morning.Long Beach Unified School District said on social media that it would trim trees and remove debris from roofs to “eliminate potential hazards.” It also asked parents to prioritize safety and leave more time for drop off and pickup.Santa Barbara Unified Schools, a smaller district north of Los Angeles, was closed on Monday as a precautionary measure, officials said. “This decision prioritizes the safety and well-being of our students and staff during potentially hazardous weather conditions,” the school district said in a statement. More