As challenges to U.S. democracy proliferate, public schools have been caught up in the controversies. Columnist Robert Kim explains that the challenges to both public education and democracy are not new. These attacks occur on multiple fronts, involving funding, equity, and curriculum. And efforts to respond to the threats will require various…

Teacher unions are working in challenging times. Building power is important for teacher unions to resist neoliberal reforms that have aimed to restructure school education and weaken collective organisation. Yet we have few understandings of the democratisation project that teacher unions have engaged in to build and renew internal power in this…

This article deals with the question of what has happened to 'the public' in the Swedish education system during the last three decades. In our search for an answer we illuminate and discuss how the process of marketisation, together with the learnification and individualisation of education, replaced 'the public' from public education with the…

From the 1960s until his death in 1997, Albert Shanker was a major force in expanding the labor movement, defending and improving public education, and fighting for all people to live freely in democracies. As president of the United Federation of Teachers in New York City and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), he became known…

In June 2023, the Oklahoma Virtual Charter School Board approved the establishment of a charter school by the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City. This amounts to state funding of a religious school. Robert Kim discusses how this decision goes against Oklahoma's constitutional and legislative history, why allowing religious charters is not the…

In the wake of the racial reckoning created by the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, several states have enacted multiple anti-equity educational measures. Florida is central in this discussion as it leads the US policymaking with 23 bills introduced and passed into law. Further, Florida's particular constellation of educational reforms has…

In this paper an unusual informant is asked about the relationship between public education and democracy. Discussed also are the differences between schooling as preparation for employment vs. schooling for democratic living. The latter requires a curriculum different from that often found in America's public schools. An example of what one such…

In this paper, the argument that we make is that public education emerges from when democracy is put into practice in education. For the purposes of this paper we use pedagogic rights as proposed by Basil Bernstein as a way to frame and support this 'putting into practice'. Democracy, we argue, has to be practiced in two senses: (1) it does not…

Successive governments, in embracing a neoliberalist ideology of decentralization and privatization, have radically reformed the nature of community-based, comprehensive state education. The transition from 'government to governance' (Rhodes, 1997) combined with the ideology of academization (DfE, 2010a) has created a democratic deficit1 (Corbett,…

Unions have played a decisive role in promoting democracy and social justice in Tunisia. In 2023, two teacher unions led a yearlong 'silent strike' of withholding student marks from administration. Based on interviews with 60 teachers, this article analyses teacher views on the unions and on ongoing protests. While unions are still considered the…

In this article, I detail how I revised a social foundations of education course to center major Supreme Court cases relating to K-12 public schools. Scholars in social foundations of education have articulated a vision for the field that fosters and promotes democracy and democratic dispositions. Focusing on the Supreme Court in a social…

This paper examines how public education can ensure equity and diversity by clarifying the "democratic aspects" that can be captured through school-community collaborative activities in Japan and the U.S. As a result of comparison and analysis, it is indicated that in both Japan and the U.S., these activities are conducted in the context…

In this essay, Michele Moses and Terri Wilson explore the recent movement to opt out of state tests. They situate this activism within a diverse line of efforts to refuse aspects of public education, asking how to evaluate the democratic legitimacy of different kinds of refusal in public education. Drawing on specific examples of opting out, they…

This book examines the role of teaching within public education. It critiques its function in today's educational policies and theories and establishes an alternative way of understanding teaching. It explores teaching from within a Sophist tradition of educational practice and thought. The first part of the book discusses the vital link between…

As the privatisation of the public sector has grown rapidly in Sweden in the last decade, private companies have become an imperative part of education. Private companies sell and deliver consultancy, hardware, software, services, etc. to schools and municipalities. This study examines a growing rate of activities from companies and businesses…