ESSA: NCLB Repackaged
Its total failure and the movement against standardized testing finally brought the demise of No Child Left Behind. But is its successor, the Every Student Succeeds Act, any better?
Features
Prizes as Curriculum
A paraprofessional exposes the harm of substituting compliance for content at a school for special needs students.
Sacrifice Zones
An English language teacher uses Naomi Klein’s concept of sacrifice zones—from This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate—to help her immigrant students understand connections between oppression in their home countries and in the United States.
Zonas de Sacrificio
Una maestra de inglés usa el concepto de zonas de sacrificio de Naomi Klein, de Esto lo cambia todo: El capitalismo contra el clima, para ayudar a sus estudiantes inmigrantes a entender las conexiones entre la opresión en sus países de origen y en los Estados Unidos.
Language Is a Human Right
Educator Debbie Wei, co-founder of a folk arts-based school in Philadelphia’s Chinatown, describes her journey—from growing up as the child of Chinese immigrants who never spoke to her in their native language, to advocating for heritage language programs.
Uchinaaguchi: The Language of My Heart
Returning to her home country of Okinawa at 13, Moé Yonamine was hit by a teacher for speaking her Indigenous language. She reflects on the history of colonial oppression in Okinawa and the importance of keeping culture and language alive.
“I See Birds Everywhere I Go”
A science teacher in Washington, D.C., overcomes her students’ fear of nature by turning them into avid birdwatchers.
Advocating for Arabic
The executive director of San Francisco’s Arab Resource and Organizing Center describes the successes and obstacles for a community-based campaign to offer Arabic language instruction in the district’s schools.
How the edTPA Disrupts Relationships
The edTPA has become a credentialing requirement in many states. Its implementation has distorted relationships throughout teacher education.
I Can’t Answer These Test Questions About My Own Poems
Sara Holbrook’s poems appear on the Texas STARR tests. Her efforts to answer the questions about her own poetry expose the narrowness of standardized testing.
A Midsummer Night’s Gender Diversity
Middle schoolers explore how Shakespeare plays with gender expression and expectations in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Baby Mamas in Literature and Life
Inspired by students’ responses to her own pregnancy, a high school English teacher develops a unit based on teen pregnancy and motherhood—rejecting the usual deficit-based narrative of teen parenting.
The Hidden Agenda of High School Assemblies
A high school teacher realizes that, despite her school’s diverse student body, the students on the stage at assemblies are virtually all white and male. She sets out to understand why and to change the pattern.
Who Made the New Deal?
High school students play the Widget Boom Game to understand how overproduction and underconsumption helped cause the Great Depression.
“The Most Gentrified City of the Century”
Middle school teachers collaborate to help students understand and critique the changes that have taken place in their Portland, Oregon, neighborhood. Their inspired students create an online resource of local history and heroes.
Believe Me the First Time
A 2nd grader and a 4th grader share experiences on their paths toward gender identity, then join forces to create and teach a lesson promoting understanding and support.
Cultivando sus voces
Emerging bilingual 1st graders research farmworkers by visiting a strawberry farm and reading lots of books. Then they write their own stories.
Education Under Occupation: East Jerusalem
An on-the-ground account of the impact of the Israeli occupation on Palestinian children from the perspective of East Jerusalem.
English-Only to the Core
Is the Common Core better than current approaches to English language learners—or the next salvo in more than a decade of attacks on bilingual programs?
Activism Is Good Teaching
Two elementary school teachers in Albuquerque resist the proliferation of harmful standardized tests. They see it as a professional responsibility.
Blaming Mothers
A legal professor who advocates for children with disabilities details how school and district administrators blame mothers rather than providing a “free and appropriate education” to all children.
Cracking the Box
A high school language arts teacher shares mementos from his father, who was killed in Viet Nam, to open up discussion about the long-lasting pain of war.
Who Made the New Deal? Part II
A history teacher helps his students see the conservatism of the early New Deal and the impact of organizing and mass resistance.
The Koch Brothers Sneak into School
The Koch-funded Bill of Rights Institute cherry-picks the Constitution, history, and current events to hammer home the lesson that freedom means freedom to make money.
They Deserve Good Teaching, Too
A teaching assistant working with students with autism realizes the behavior modification-based teaching strategies she is told to use are robbing her students of voice and independence. She tries something else instead.