This article explores the sociopolitical context of education policy, particularly as it relates to Latina/o education. The authors highlight the status of Latinas/os within the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) to examine the impact of education policy designed to benefit few and disenfranchise most. They draw attention to the injustices of Latinas/os…

Ellen Condliffe Lagemann's (2000) "An Elusive Science" provides the most comprehensive history of education as a field of academic study. As such it is important for those in the education community to read and reflect upon the text in order to take stock of the field. Foundations scholars who read Lagemann's work may be struck by a stark irony,…

Many diversity courses that prepare pre-service teachers do not address the significance or the impact of language barriers on linguistically diverse learners. Often time, new and veteran teachers construct their bilingual and/or bidialectical students as others and are unaware of how to use their students' social, cultural, and political…

In 1982 civil rights activist Rev. Jesse Jackson criticized President Ronald Reagan's attacks on busing to coerce school desegregation for targeting "not the bus, but us." Two decades later, the United States Supreme Court ended the thirty-two-year-old Charlotte, North Carolina, plan which had launched the era of court-ordered busing…

The authors use Noddings (1984; 1992; 1999) and Beauboeuf-Lafontant's (2002) theories of caring in education to look at how race (conceptualized to include Whiteness) affected the implementation of the A+ Schools Program, an arts-based reform designed to augment student achievement and appreciation for the arts. They examine the implementation of…

The current school reform era has moved through a series of phases, coupling state centralization with a focus on school-level change at each step. Yet this era of reform also has a deeper history. Its deeper history reveals the dynamics that would plague the school reform era until the present day. While the school reform era seemed to focus on…

To the now-expansive literature on the causes and consequences of segregation in schooling and of inequality in educational opportunity in the United States, the author would like to add a call for more attention to the politics of school districting--that is, to how and why districts are created, in the service of whose interests, and with what…

Policy "alternatives" begin as general ideas, and are inherently distinct from an innovation or reform that has been adopted by policy makers in a specific context in order to serve particular purposes. However, the interplay between the idea itself and that moment in time when it is adopted has often not been fully understood. In this article,…

Highlander Folk School is an adult education center located in eastern Tennessee that was formed in 1932 by Myles Horton and continues today. Myles Horton (1905-1990) hoped to create an independent adult learning center where people could come together and address their problems. He wanted to create a public space where people could learn from…

Re-introduces contemporary educators and policymakers to the spirit of equal educational opportunity that animated their predecessors prior to the introduction of the excellence movement, noting that reformers generally understate the demands of authentic equality of educational opportunity in a society characterized by chronic divisions of class…

Illuminates one example of a critical ethnography in practice, exploring the life of Dr. Huey P. Newton, a leader in the African-American community, and arguing that critical ethnography cannot teach African Americans how to overcome oppression. The suggested postcritical ethnography would be part of African Americans looking to their own…

Examines why multiculturalism's attention to difference expands on liberal democratic assumptions, arguing that our democratic society's commitment to equal educational opportunities legitimizes the implementation of multicultural education programs designed to create a culturally relevant pedagogy for students who are marginalized by the white,…

Discusses how various Christian fundamentalist groups have succeeded in imposing their ideology on public schools. Such groups have been disrupting school practice since the 1980s, with school curriculum and reading material content usually at the center of disputes. Recommends that local school districts take such groups seriously to keep them…

This paper reexamines the logic supporting ideas of differences and inclusion for students with disabilities, critiquing a range of perspectives on special education and suggesting that people consider the ways that the symbiotic relationships between regular and special education constrain theory making. (SM)

This paper argues that rural poverty remains relatively invisible because, although shameful, it is profitable, and the rural poor pose little threat to their suburban neighbors. This is illustrated via interrogation concerning a rural poultry plant fire. The paper examines implications of this case for foundations scholars and educational…