Volume 10, No.4

Summer 1996

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  • What Is the Purpose of Assessment?

    By Monty Neill

    A coalition of education and civil rights groups proposes a system of assessment that is fundamentally different from the typical standardized testing.

  • Resisting the High School Canon

    By Bakari Chavanu

    Despite an abundance of engaging Black literature, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “To Kill a Mockingbird” remain high school students’ primary introduction to issues of race and racial oppression.”

  • The Role of Whites in Combating Racism

    By Milton Meltzer

    The Black experience and white racism are central to American life. No teacher can afford to view them as just an old curiosity.

  • Why the Wisconsin Legislature Approved Vouchers for Religious Schools

    By Mordecai Lee

    Mordecai Lee, vice-chairman of a coalition opposed to vouchers for religious schools (and a former state senator), analyzes the reasons his side lost this battle.

  • Problems Escalate at Voucher Schools

    By Barbara Miner

    Financial difficulties, including nonpayment of teachers, plague four Milwaukee voucher schools.

  • Gay Youth Groups Proliferate

    By Eric Johnson

    Across the country, support for gay and lesbian student groups is growing.

  • Schools Should Not Prepare Students for Work

    COMMENTARY A Forum for Reader Opinion

    By Gerald W. Bracey

    Should schools collude in preparing students to endure the boredom of doing the meaningless, small, and repetitive tasks known as work?

  • Louis Gerstner’s Double Standards

    From Coaxing Smokers to Nurturing Students

    By Derrick Jackson

    At the national education summit, IBM chief Louis Gerstner behaved as the self-proclaimed pope of education. Not long before, he was chief executive of a cigarette company.

  • Navigating the World of Portfolios

    One Teacher's Experience with Alternative Assessment

    By Marc Osten

    How one teacher uses portfolios and self-assessment activities in his second-grade classroom.

  • Moving Beyond Name Games

    The Conservative Attack on the U.S. History Standards

    By Robert Cohen

    As conservatives attack the National Standards for U.S. History for being insufficiently Eurocentric and insufficiently patriotic, students and teachers lose out.

  • ‘One Country! One Language! One Flag!’

    By Bill Bigelow

    A look at the history of the Pledge of Allegiance and ideas for teaching students about it.

  • Students Must Be Involved in Setting Standards and Goals

    By Nel Noddings

    National performance goals and a national curriculum won’t work. A professor of education considers the reasons.

  • Michael, the Student Who Inspired Me to Quit Teaching

    By Lora Lee Duncan

    A teacher watches and learns as a potential dropout becomes an active learner.

  • Bibliography on Homelessness

    Books and curriculum resources for teaching about homelessness and housing for kindergarten through high school.

  • An Invitation to Join NCEA

    Dear Rethinking Schools readers, For almost a decade, we have been involved in an effort to build a multiracial organization of public school teachers, parents and community organizers known as […]