Educational discourse, particularly since the advent of recent educational reform initiatives, has become saturated with a discourse of "high expectations." One can hardly hope to hold a conversation regarding the problems facing American schools without someone innocently remarking that of course students need to be held to "high…

In this article, Angela Hurley ponders a question centered on how well P-12 schooling experiences and the current accompanying education discourse on the importance of attending college actually match with traditional notions of the purposes of academic life held by college faculty. Does the current, performance data-driven system of P-12…

If a teacher instructs with greater attention to improving students' performance in order to protect her employment rather than solely to advance knowledge or character, is she acting immorally? This question has historical roots in Socrates's famed animosity toward the sophists. Socrates maintained that sophistic teaching was immoral because the…

The small school movement originated in the democratic ideology of Deborah Meier, who sought to create schools that gave students, parents, teachers, and all stakeholders in the communities they served a voice in education. In New York City, Meier's vision was implemented haphazardly by a group of business and political elites able to pour…

In this address, the author builds the case that a new political economy of education, dominated by what Pauline Lipman calls the "neo-liberal social imaginary," is changing the moral context in which educators imagine their professional roles. The author argues that educators are placed in relation to others in rather complicated…

Media portrayals and education policies have combined with anecdotes about charter school successes to produce a favorable assessment of charter schools by two-thirds of Americans. Such media celebrations often group an array of charter school types together, thereby disguising their differences. Indeed, the public seems unaware there are…

In this article, the author responds to the Presidential address, "Ethics for the New Political Economy: What Can It Mean to Be Professionally Responsible?" in which Michael G. Gunzenhauser defines, names, and proposes a professional ethics for educators: an ethics of the everyday. The author introduces her response by stating that…

The contradiction between the concept of equality found in the Declaration of Independence and that found in U.S. Constitution led the author to question what the Constitution had to say about education. After all, Montesquieu (1689-1755), a French "philosophe" whose work heavily influenced Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the U.S.…

The recent pop culture iconography of the Critical Race Theory (CRT) label has attracted more devoted (white) fans than a 90s boy band. In philosophy, this trend is evidenced by the growing number of white feminists extending their work in gender analogically to questions of race and identity, as well as the unchecked use of the CRT label to…