Our educational system is undergoing great scrutiny. The success of our nation's schools and their students is under serious evaluation and interpretation. Currently, one of the most visible and pertinent "political products" impacting our schools and students is the federal legislation No Child Left Behind (2002). Specific concerns arise around…

Applying microeconomic theory to No Child Left Behind predicts that its use of significant consequences for schools that do not reach 100% proficiency on rigorous standardized tests by 2014 will likely prevent most, if not all schools, from providing a high-quality education for their students. The central problem is cost. Quality assurance models…

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has been proclaimed by some as a reform that will improve education for students from all backgrounds, in all locations. The main components of NCLB, however, are biased against students in small and rural schools. This bias, called "placism," discriminates against people based on where they live. This rural…

A key provision of No Child Left Behind is the opportunity for students to transfer from a low-performing school to a high-performing one. Drawing from a case study of school reform in Charlotte, North Carolina, this article examines the implementation and early outcomes of NCLB's voluntary transfer option for the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School…

This article identifies two presuppositions underlying No Child Left Behind's (NCLB) system of adequate yearly progress. The first is that each state must bring 100% of its students up to proficiency on state tests by the 2013-14 school year. The second is that each student's test score must effectively be treated by the state as if his or her…

Race is the social expression of power and privilege, and new racial configurations take shape in conjuction with alterations in the political economy of American society. This article examines the relationship of educational policy to the emergence of a new conception of racism that has appeared in the post-civil rights era: colorblind racism.…

A critical theoretical framework is used to analyze the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) federal legislation and its role in codifying and perpetuating educational practices and policies that contribute to growing campus militarism in urban schools serving low-income African American and Latino students. The author argues that NCLB Section 9528 is part…

This article addresses one of the fundamental flaws of No Child Left Behind (NCLB): the disconnect it creates between the lived culture of schools and the inflexible mandates focused exclusively on scientific research. Specifically, we examined NCLB's Reading First Program, a grant program that focuses on promoting specific "scientifically-based"…

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was put forward by President Bush to end what he called "the soft bigotry of low expectations." The Act passed Congress with broad bipartisan support, with many legislators agreeing to NCLB's testing regimen in exchange for White House promises of specific budget increases, embodied in the form of spending…

In some institutions offering certification for bilingual education and ESL teachers, the corresponding mainstream programs do little to ready their students to work effectively with language minority children. Yet today's mainstream classrooms are linguistically and culturally diverse, and all teachers must appreciate the role of language and…

This article examines the influences promoting social justice in the field of outdoor experiential education. The philosophical foundations of outdoor adventure including the work of John Dewey and Kurt Hahn are considered in light of social justice education. The historical evolution of social justice activism within the professional community is…

Vocational educational has long struggled with a reputation as a lower track and dead end for socially disadvantaged populations. Since the alarm call in the 1980s about the "forgotten half," significant efforts have been expended to develop reform programs that provide disadvantaged populations viable options that would enhance their academic and…

In this article, we discuss one of the central findings from our study of the long-term impact of school desegregation on adult graduates of racially mixed high schools: what graduates said about the impact of their schooling experiences on their current understandings about race, and on their lives in a racially diverse society. Of the 242…

This five-year study examined the effectiveness of an innovative approach to service-learning embedded in a one year site-based alternative route to teacher certification. The ten-week school-based study investigated the influence of service-learning on the multicultural perceptions, cross-cultural communication skills, and social justice…

Though, in theory, black students may have access to equal educational opportunity by occupying the same classroom space as their peers, they do not necessarily enjoy the same quality of experience. This inequality results from the race-related beliefs and norms and white privilege embedded in United States society. This study deconstructed one…