What We're Reading: Giving Students the Education They Deserve

Public education is a cornerstone of our democracy, providing the core knowledge and critical-thinking abilities that give all students paths to opportunity and enable them to participate in civic life. But instead of supporting and investing in public schools, the Trump administration and right-wing extremists are trying to dismantle and destroy the entire system. Here, we highlight three resources that can help us fight for the public schools all students deserve. The first explains how book bans, which are one arm of extremists’ attacks, erode educational freedom and student engagement; it also highlights how we can protect the freedom to read. The next two resources focus on one key way to deliver on the promise of public education: create more community schools.

Banning Books Should Not Be Normal

PEN America’s October 2025 report, The Normalization of Book Banning: Banned in the USA, 2024–2025, documents the ongoing censorship crisis in US public schools. The report situates book bans within a broader campaign to restrict knowledge, undermine educators, and take ideological control of public education; the authors argue this “assault on students’ freedom to read” is ultimately symptomatic of the erosion of both public education and US democracy.

For the 2024–25 school year, PEN America recorded 6,870 instances of book bans across 23 states and 87 districts—part of a trend totaling nearly 23,000 bans across 45 states since 2021. Three states far outpaced the rest of the nation in bans: Florida led with 2,304, followed by Texas with 1,781 and Tennessee with 1,622. There were 3,752 unique titles banned; among the most removed were Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, Patricia McCormick’s Sold, Forever… by Judy Blume, and Wicked by Gregory Maguire.

The report identifies several notable trends in and takeaways from book censorship efforts in the last year. Among them are:

• Censorship is becoming normalized. Book bans are no longer isolated incidents but have become an entrenched feature of school governance, largely driven by state legislation, pressure exerted on school districts from national and local groups, and threats to educators’ professional licensing.
• Bans are increasingly enacted out of fear of legislation. Fear of violating new laws—not actual legal mandates—drove most bans. Of 2,520 books removed from shelves due to pressure from or the threat of state legislation, only 3 percent were required by law; the rest resulted from districts erring on the side of censorship from fear they might be found out of compliance.
• A persistent focus of bans is the erasure of diverse identities and representation. Fear-based rhetoric about “parental rights” and “protecting children” has been employed to remove books reflecting diverse identities and cultures and works that feature LGBTQIA+ themes and characters—which are increasingly conflated with “sexually explicit material.”
• Book bans harm schools and students’ learning. Schools are witnessing a chilling effect as their libraries empty and educators self-censor. Impacts to learning include decreased student engagement in reading, restriction of students’ voluntary inquiry and critical thinking, and interference in educators’ ability to deliver quality instruction.
• Communities are fighting back. This is the first year that PEN America has also tracked public resistance to book censorship. In 70 of the 87 districts with bans, parents, students, educators, authors, and community members fought to protect the freedom to read and return books to shelves.

The report closes with a warning that censorship has rapidly spread beyond school libraries, as other educational materials—including textbooks, curricula, and scholarships—are increasingly targeted for banning. The fight to keep this “slippery slope” of censorship from bankrupting students’ education, it concludes, will take all of us.

To read the report, visit go.aft.org/m4r.

Community Schools and the Rebuilding of Public Education

In stark contrast to the shrinking educational opportunity caused by censorship, community schools strengthen public education, improve students’ learning outcomes, and support student, family, and community well-being. New evidence for this well-established finding comes from the Learning Policy Institute’s report, Community Schools Impact on Student Outcomes, which examines early impacts of the $4.1 billion California Community Schools Partnership Program (CCSPP) grants—the largest investment in a state-level community schools initiative in the nation. Since 2021, California has funded 2,493 school sites to transform them into community hubs integrating health services, expanded and rich learning opportunities, family engagement, and collaborative leadership.

On average, 90 percent of students in CCSPP grantee schools are from families with low income, are English learners, or are in foster care. As in the rest of the nation, these students in particular have struggled in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic with its associated challenges—including chronic absence, deteriorating mental health, and increased behavioral incidents. Community schools seek to redress these challenges through a whole-child, asset-based, community-engaged approach that cultivates student success where traditional school structures have not been sufficient.

To evaluate the first cohort of 458 implementation schools, the study compared data from grant recipient schools with data from similar non-grantee schools from the 2018–19 to 2023–24 school years. In keeping with previous research on community schools, including evidence from large-scale studies in Maryland and New York, findings from the first full year of CCSPP implementation show consistent positive impacts on student attendance, exclusionary discipline, and academic achievement:

• Chronic absence fell sharply. On average, CCSPP schools—many of which saw chronic absence rates spike to over 40 percent in 2021–22—had absence reductions 30 percent greater than those in comparison schools. This reduction is roughly equivalent to 5,500 students attending school more regularly. Gains were strongest in elementary schools, suggesting strong attendance-focused interventions at that level.
• Suspensions dropped 15 percent. While comparison schools saw slightly increased suspension rates over the study period, CCSPP schools experienced a significant reduction in suspensions. The largest improvements were seen in secondary schools and in suspensions among Black students, where suspension rates were highest.
• Academic achievement rose. Students in CCSPP schools gained roughly 43 additional days of learning in math and roughly 36 additional days of learning in English language arts, while comparison schools declined. Black students showed the largest gains (equivalent to 130 additional days of learning in math and 151 in ELA), followed by English learners (58 and 72 additional days of learning in math and English, respectively) and socioeconomically disadvantaged students (58 and 43 additional days of learning in math and English, respectively). Improvement in chronic absence was strongly linked to test score improvements, and schools that had greater chronic absence reductions saw higher gains in academic achievement.

The researchers theorized that specific features of the community schools model helped close the attendance gap and facilitate learning. Improved access to health services potentially reduced illness-related absences and enhanced students’ physical readiness to learn. Increased mental health supports potentially reduced stress-related chronic absence and improved cognitive functioning and focus during instructional time. The improved family engagement associated with the community schools model likely strengthened parents’ commitment to their students’ regular attendance and their ability to support learning at home. Finally, the improved sense of belonging and student engagement seen in community school implementation may have motivated students to come to school more often and participate more actively, improving the quality of instructional time and enhancing their learning experience.

These results are further evidence that community schools effectively address educational inequities and provide quantifiable academic and behavioral benefits for the most vulnerable students. To read the entire report, visit go.aft.org/tmk. To learn more about the community schools model, including case studies from AFT locals and helpful resources to implement the model in your district, visit aft.org/position/community-schools.

Help Build Thriving Community Schools

Emily L. Woods’s new book, Making Community Schools a Reality, is more akin to a toolkit than a book; it offers a step-by-step approach for developing essential practices—like authentically engaging families—and growing into a community school. Written for school leaders (including but not limited to administrators), it includes detailed examples from community schools in rural and urban settings, a summary of relevant research, and practical tips on everything from establishing a high-level coordinator role and conducting an assessment of assets and needs to securing sustainable funding. Woods interviewed more than 40 principals about their successes and challenges as community school leaders, and their voices are featured throughout. But as Woods is careful to point out, this book has crucial lessons learned for everyone who is dedicated to turning their school into a community hub that offers community-driven health, education, and social services delivered by trusted community partners.

For a preview of the book that includes the full introduction, visit go.aft.org/k1w. And for an excerpt of Woods’s first book, The Path to Successful Community School Policy Adoption, see “Collaborative Community Schools” in the Fall 2023 issue of American Educator.