A middle school teacher organizes a tribunal for her students on responsibility for the COVID-19 crisis in the United States. Among those on trial are Mother Nature, Gen Z/Millennials, the Healthcare Industry, Racism and White Supremacy, the Chinese Government, the U.S. Government, and the Capitalist System.
Before I was taught a single teaching technique, I was taught to fight school shooters. At the start of the Stanford Teacher Education Program, we took a seat in the […]
As schools begin to reopen, within teacher unions around the country, teachers have been coming together to discuss the risks they’re willing to take — both to protect public health […]
New York City has become the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, and its public schools, which serve 1.1 million students and employ nearly 135,000 people, officially closed on March 17. […]
There are so many voices right now grieving what we have lost with the school closure — our relationships with students and co-workers, the laughter and energy that echo down […]
On April 20, 2020, blogger LittleGrayThread made a Facebook post of a note her daughter had written. She reported that in a Zoom class meeting, one of her daughter’s 2nd-grade […]
As former K–12 teachers who are now teacher educators in California, we share grave concern regarding the expectation for preservice teachers to complete their Teacher Performance Assessment (TPA) in order […]
Last fall, California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, signed a sweeping array of progressive legislation into law. Among the many bills he enacted included legislation granting collective bargaining rights to the […]
Educators know firsthand what lack of paid family and medical leave means for their students and families — and for themselves. Now, the pandemic has dramatically elevated the need for […]
Horror movie sequels are notoriously bad. This one may be the worst. In 2009, federal intervention during the last financial crisis gave rise to the Obama administration’s signature education initiative: […]
International Movement for Public Education Privatization, standardized tests, funding cuts, attacks on teachers’ unions and contracts—the issues that are central to teacher activism in the United States are international. In […]
A high school English teacher reorients his classroom to be a space for student organizing for climate justice.
Back in the 1980s, I taught an elective class at Jefferson High School in Portland, Oregon, called Literature and Social Change. It centered around the questions “What is a good […]
For the adjacent Chicago neighborhoods of Little Village and North Lawndale, two working-class, low-income communities (the former predominantly Latino/a and the latter African-American) on the southwest side of the city, […]
During the night and on into the morning of Wednesday, Aug. 25, 2004, a determined band of Chicago Public School (CPS) parents and community activists camped at the front door […]
Years of writing about public relations and propaganda has probably made me a bit jaded, but I was amazed nevertheless when I visited America’s Army, an online video game website […]
First graders, three at a time, use classroom computers to take standardized tests. Their teacher explains the impact on the students and herself.
Scripted curriculum de-skills teachers and rewards students for passivity, not critical thinking. A teacher educator urges teachers to organize and fight back.
The failures of the corporate education “reform” movement leave it vulnerable to genuine grassroots school transformation.
The author of Lockdown High: When the Schoolhouse Becomes a Jailhouse reviews the history, impact, and future of zero tolerance policies.
A group of students from Chicago’s North Lawndale College Preparatory High were in the middle of a weeklong summer training to become Peace Warriors—peer nonviolence leaders. Suddenly, a sophomore named […]
To build an effective movement against the top-down strategies that are ripping public education apart, we need to take a closer look at who wants reform and why.
A new era requires new thinking
The problem is this: Testing is killing education. Not only is it narrowing the curriculum generally
In these bleak NCLB days of regimented
