In this essay, Sarah M. Fine explores the misalignment between instructional practices in secondary classrooms and the interests and capabilities of adolescent learners. Drawing on a series of ethnographic cases, she explores the potential consequences of this misalignment and attempts to conceptualize an alternate reality in which high school…

The history of Mexican American school segregation is complex, often misunderstood, and currently unresolved. The literature suggests that Mexican Americans experienced de facto segregation because it was local custom and never sanctioned at the state level in the American Southwest. However, the same literature suggests that Mexican Americans…

In this article, Kristen L. Buras examines educational policy formation in New Orleans and the racial, economic, and spatial dynamics shaping the city's reconstruction since 2005. More specifically, Buras draws on the critical theories of whiteness as property, accumulation by dispossession, and urban space economy to describe the strategic…

Children of immigrant backgrounds--children who are immigrants themselves or were born to immigrant parents--are the largest segment of growth in the U.S. school population. In this exploratory interdisciplinary analysis, Filindra, Blanding, and Garcia Coll ask whether the context of policy and political receptivity, even when they are not…

From the unique perspective gained heading Obama's education policy transition team, Darling-Hammond describes President Obama's commitment to making the education of every child a collective responsibility and reviews the major tenets of the new administration's plans for education. She reflects on the importance of suggested policy changes,…

In this essay, Charles Payne and Tim Knowles argue that given President Obama's support of charter schools, it is time for educators and policymakers to closely consider both the possibilities and the limitations of these schools in the context of urban school reform. The authors discuss the unique flexibility of charter schools--namely in…

In this essay, Wayne Au carefully considers the educational stance of Barack Obama by exploring the president's speeches and his personnel and policy choices. Au considers the election of Obama as a moment of possibility for change in American education, but also questions whether Obama's hopeful message about education will be fully realized,…

In this essay, William Ayers calls for a more vital and effective public education system, one guided by the basic democratic principle that all human beings are of incalculable and irreducible value. Ayers argues that to achieve such a system we must reclaim schools from the industrial model of the twentieth century and build classrooms that…

In this article, Michele Moses and Lauren Saenz explore a growing trend in education policymaking--the ballot initiative. Specifically, the authors question whether information presented to voters is sufficiently substantive to permit educated decisionmaking about influential policies. Their study, a content analysis of print news media related to…

In this essay, Rebecca Zwick confronts the controversy surrounding the use of standardized tests in college admissions. She examines the degree to which the SAT and its lesser known cousin, the ACT, limit access to college, particularly for racial and ethnic minorities, and considers two alternative admissions policies that do not involve tests:…

In this article, Victoria-Maria MacDonald, John M. Botti, and Lisa Hoffman Clark trace the evolution of higher educational opportunities for Latinos in the United States from the Higher Education Act of 1965 to the designation of Title V in the Act's 1998 reauthorization. The authors argue that this evolution moved through stages, including…

In this article, Betty Achinstein and Rodney Ogawa examine the experiences of two new teachers who resisted mandated "fidelity" to Open Court literacy instruction in California. These two case studies challenge the portrayal of teacher resistance as driven by psychological deficiency and propose instead that teachers engage in "principled…

Multilateral donors like the World Bank and bilateral agencies such as the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the British Department for International Development exert a great deal of influence in international educational development--particularly in sub-Saharan Africa--both in the programs they fund and the types of…

In this article, Jonathan Cohen argues that the goals of education need to be reframed to prioritize not only academic learning, but also social, emotional, and ethical competencies. Surveying the current state of research in the fields of social-emotional education, character education, and school-based mental health in the United States, Cohen…

Nearly twenty years after the publication of Michelle Fine's essay "Sexuality, Schooling, and Adolescent Females: The Missing Discourse of Desire," the question of how sexuality education influences the development and health of adolescents remains just as relevant as it was in 1988. In this article, Michelle Fine and Sara McClelland examine the…