Illustration: David McLimans

COVER STORY
Arne Duncan and the Chicago Success Story: Myth or Reality?
By Jitu Brown, Eric (Rico) Gutstein, and Pauline Lipman
Yes, he played basketball with the president, but there's more to know—and be worried about—when it comes to the new secretary of education

FEATURES
Dunking on Arne Duncan
By Dave Zirin
Arne Duncan's got game on the court, but public education needs somebody better

When '21st-Century Schooling' Just Isn't Good Enough: A Modest Proposal
By Alfie Kohn
Compete, nothing! We're out to win the global education race, right?

Knock Knock: Turning Pain into Power
By Linda Christensen
When poet and Obie-winning playwright Daniel Beaty speaks, people listen, learn, and are inspired

Knock Knock
By Daniel Beaty

Silenced in the Classroom
By Seth Wessler
The saga of New York's Khalil Gibran Academy

Reinventing Schools That Keep Teachers in Teaching
By Deb Meier
It's time to consider how to create schools that are themselves centers for the continual learning of everyone involved

Tellin' Stories, Finding Common Ground
By David Levine
A Washington, D.C., school shows the promise of how parent organizing contributes to equity-driven urban school reform

• Tellin' Stories Project

Six, Going on Sixteen
By Geralyn Bywater McLaughlin
Fighting "age compression" and the commercialization of childhood

10 Ways to Move Beyond Bully-Prevention (and Why We Should)
By Lyn Mikel Brown
Thinking critically about bully-prevention programs

REVIEW
Dignity and a Haircut
By Wayne Au
A review of the film American Pastime and baseball under mass incarceration

Teaching Objection
by Zachary Bullock
How textbooks distort and lie about conscientious objection to World War II.

COLUMNS AND DEPARTMENTS

Short Stuff

Letters

Editorial

• Goodbye to Schools as Businesses
  By the Editors of Rethinking Schools
  For 100 years, business leaders have proven they’re clueless when it comes to public education

Good Stuff
By Herb Kohl
There is plenty to learn from Steven Johnson’s The Invention of Air

Resources
Our picks for books, websites, and other resources for social justice teachers