Illustration: Katherine Streeter

COVER STORY
Marketing American Girlhood
By Elizabeth Marshall
American Girl isn't as vacuous as Barbie or as vile as Bratz, but don't be suckered by the ersatz feminism—the real deal is consumption and lots of it

Editorial:
An Open Letter to President-elect Obama
By The Editors of Rethinking Schools

Move Over, Sisyphus
By Linda Christensen
Get students passionate about writing and the grammar will follow

Remembering Mahmoud Darwish
By Naomi Shihab Nye
The Palestinian poet's richly descriptive style resonated with displaced peoples everywhere

The Prison Cell
Poem by Mahmoud Darwish

• Teaching Ideas: The Prison Cell

A Test Scorer's Lament
By Todd Farley
Scenes from the mad, mad, mad world of testing companies

Teaching's Revolving Door
By Barbara Miner
New teachers leave the profession at an alarming rate—and there's no single reason or easy solutions

• Who Leaves and Why

Decolonizing the Classroom:
Lessons in Multicultural Education
By Wayne Au
Multicultural education has to be based on dialogue—both among students and between students and teachers

Children as Guinea Pigs
By Deborah Menkart
Washington, D.C., bribes its students to perform

We Still Aren't in a Post-Racial Society
By Fred McKissack
Barack Obama's election isn't the end of racism

Hunger, Academic Success, and the Hard Bigotry of Indifference
By Gerald Coles
Food insecurity and hunger are a serious threat to children's lives

Documenting the Undocumented
By Ann Truax
When immigrant students count—and when they don't

College for All?
By Lori Chajet and Sierra Stoneman-Bell
Low-income students take the college admissions process into their own hands

The Square Root of a Fair Share
By Jana Dean
Lessons on school desks and dream homes

10 Quick Ways to Analyze Children's Books for Ableism
By Chloë Myers and Hank Bersani Jr.
Rooting out prejudice by able-bodied and able-minded people toward people with disabilities

COLUMNS AND DEPARTMENTS

Letters

Short Stuff

Good Stuff

Little Rebels
By Herb Kohl
A review of Tales for Little Rebels: A Collection of Radical Children's Literature and Childhood and Nature: Design Principles for Nature

Reviews

Demystifying the 'Dismal Science'
By Joan Dye Gussow
A review of Introducing Economics: A Critical Guide for Teaching

Resources