Using a learning design perspective on No Child Left Behind (NCLB), I examine how accountability policy shaped urban educators' instructional sensemaking. Focusing on the role of policy-rooted classifications, I examine conversations from a middle school mathematics teacher team as a "best case" because they worked diligently to comply…

US public education faces concerted attack by those bent on corporate control, privatization, regimented reading instruction, and high-stakes testing. One democratic, humanistic, and research-based alternative can be found in the theory and practice of whole language, which empowered teachers and students alike through the 1980s and 1990s -- until…

This essay is a critical humanist discussion of curriculum; a departure from the technicist view of education [education meant to support a global capitalist economy] and an analysis of curriculum considering critical humanism, political economy and critical race theory among other modes of critical analysis and inquiry. Our discussion supports a…

Since Mueller vs. Allen (1983), several legal decisions have attempted to clarify what is the appropriate relationship between religion and public education in a democratic society. During this time, the United States legal system has shifted, moving the historic "establishment clause" away from a strict "separationist" view…