Updates

Unintended Lessons

by Terry Burant Recently, a friend told me that a former high school student of mine named his car “Terry” after me. When she asked him why, he explained, “She’s […]

Outlawing Solidarity in Tucson

by the editors of Rethinking Schools “Banned in Tucson.” As many Rethinking Schools readers know, in January Tucson school officials ordered our book Rethinking Columbus removed from Mexican American Studies […]

Tucson to Palestine: History As a Weapon

by Jody Sokolower The day the Tucson school board voted to kill the Mexican American Studies program, I was in Silwan, a neighborhood in East Jerusalem, learning about a different […]

Interrupting the Cycle of Violence

by Jennifer Morales This week, PBS stations across the country will be airing “The Interrupters,” a powerful documentary about a daring and intimate approach to stopping the cycle of neighborhood […]

Valentine’s Day at Casa del Migrante

Rethinking Schools co-founder and editor Bob Peterson wrote this poem after a visit to Casa del Migrante, a migrant shelter for men in Tijuana. Some of the men who stay […]

NCLB waivers give bad policy new lease on life

by Stan Karp The Obama Administration’s approval last week of 10 state applications for waivers from NCLB was another missed opportunity to learn from a decade of policy failure. Instead […]

“No History Is Illegal” Campaign: Pledge to Support Tucson

Dear Rethinking Schools friends, As we wrote earlier, on Jan. 13, we learned that our book Rethinking Columbus had been banned in Tucson schools as part of Arizona’s broader suppression […]

Behind the Curtain in Tucson: A letter from Curtis Acosta

[On Jan. 10, the governing board of Tucson schools voted to terminate the popular and enormously successful Mexican American Studies program, under pressure from the Arizona state superintendent of education. […]

Banning Critical Teaching in Arizona: A Letter From Curtis Acosta

Perhaps you’ve seen the wonderful film, Precious Knowledge, about the Mexican American Studies program in Tucson. One of the teachers featured is Curtis Acosta, along with his remarkable students. In […]

Rethinking Columbus Banned in Tucson

By Bill Bigelow Imagine our surprise. Rethinking Schools learned today that for the first time in its more-than-20-year history, our book Rethinking Columbus was banned by a school district: Tucson, […]

The Silence of Struggle in the Curriculum

by Bill Bigelow One of the great silences in the mainstream school curriculum is the role that social movements have played in making this a fairer, more peaceful, more democratic […]

Zombie NCLB still stalking our schools

by Stan Karp Anniversaries are often cause for celebration… but the 10th anniversary of No Child Left Behind is mostly a time for damage assessment. A new report from FairTest […]

‘Repeat After Me: The United States Is Not an Imperialist Country—Oh, and Don’t Get Emotional About War’

By Bill Bigelow You may have seen that an administrative law judge in Arizona, Lewis Kowal, just upheld the decree by the State Superintendent of Public Instruction that Tucson’s Mexican […]

Michelle Alexander on The New Jim Crow and the school-to-prison pipeline

by Jody Sokolower Last spring I went to hear Michelle Alexander, the dynamic author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. She spoke to an […]

From the Archives: Unwrapping the Holidays

A recent conversation in a Facebook group I’m a part of centered on the celebration of the holiday, specifically Christmas. The conversation started with this: “My school is very, very […]

Taking Teacher Quality Seriously: A Collaborative Approach to Teacher Evaluation

Next spring, we will release the book, Pencils Down: Rethinking High-Stakes Testing and Accountability in Public Schools, edited by Wayne Au and Melissa Bollow Tempel. The following original essay by […]

Children’s Literature for the 99%

by Elizabeth Marshall Children’s literature is inherently political, whether it upholds social and economic inequality or resists it. For educators, the Occupy Wall Street movement offers an opportunity to think […]

From the Archives: “Rethinking Thanksgiving: Myths & Misgivings”

Teacher educator Vera Stenhouse wrote “Rethinking Thanksgiving: Myths and Misgivings” for us for our Fall 2009 issue of the magazine. It’s reprinted below with a new introduction from Vera. For […]

A Letter in Support of CTU President Karen Lewis

A few right wing bloggers have been highly critical of the talk that Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis gave at the Northwest Teaching for Social Justice conference, and they […]

No One Said Transforming Unions Was Easy

by Stephanie Walters It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. I think that’s how many people would describe life as a teacher union staffer these […]

Occupy the Curriculum

by Bill Bigelow The other day on the Zinn Education Project’s Facebook page, we asked “What period in history—or theme in history—are you teaching this month?” The responses were fascinating. […]

Saviors and Burnouts: Rethinking Teachers in Popular Culture

by Elizabeth Marshall From movies such as Blackboard Jungle and Freedom Writers to televisions shows like Degrassi: The Next Generation and The Wire, teachers and students are regular subjects of […]

A Celebration to Remember

by Kris Collett Last Saturday, Rethinking Schools friends and supporters from the Milwaukee area (and a few fine folks from Chicago) had a rollicking good time celebrating 25 years of […]

Challenging Corporate School Reform and 10 Hopeful Signs of Resistance

On Oct. 1, 650 people attended the 4th annual Northwest Teachers for Social Justice conference in Seattle. Rethinking Schools editor Stan Karp gave a well-received talk on “Challenging Corporate Ed […]