Critical policy analysis examining how powerful actors use educational policies to reproduce unequal social structures presents many challenges. These challenges are amplified by the politics of spectacle, where duplicity comes to dominate how educational policies are conceptualized, presented to the public, and subsequently enacted. The pursuit…

There is a growing and inexplicable trend among professors to voluntarily fade into the online pedagogical background and allow someone--or something--to do the teaching for them. The professoriate should be concerned about three kinds of online courses that require minimal preparation: YouTube courses, PowerPoint courses, and publisher courses.…

Faced with repression and reform, humor has become tactical for public school teachers in Oaxaca, Mexico, engaged in a decades-old movement that after 2006 involved intensified street- and school-based pedagogies. This piece explores how humor adds to a political project via mocking names, images, and dictates of elite leaders to bring a here and…

When COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, the education sector soon faced the unprecedented challenge of moving courses online within no time. The rapid implementation of emergency remote teaching (ERT) led to students and teachers alike being thrown into an emotional terra incognita. This paper sets out to explore if foreign language (LX) grit,…

Diversity is valued and promoted in contemporary public discourse, but on the other hand, there is a strong tendency to homogenize differences in society. The tension between diversity and homogeneity is palpable on U.S. college campuses as the number of international students has been ever-increasing. A more nuanced approach is needed to grapple…

While many books outline the attributes of successful school leaders, few describe how those traits manifest in daily practice. "The Daily Practices of Successful Principals" goes beyond the outward picture of excellence and provides a compendium of daily practices used by successful principals in various settings. Written by former administrators…

With the need for rapid school reform amid changes in socioeconomic and political situations, evidence abounds that today's school principals operate in a stress-strained environment. Participants of this study identified at least a form of stress on the job. More than 96% claimed to have experienced work-related stress at a level they believed…

For a century, school reform has been a topic of local and federal government efforts. While the reforms have evolved and changed to a small degree during this time, the deficit focus of reform has been consistent, failing schools and failing systems. Education's focus on the deficits within the system has yielded reform that has yet to succeed in…

Humorous observations and suggestions by W. James Popham regarding the current state of school reform in the United States. (PKP)

Citing the rising frequency of automobile recalls as proof of the decline of the automobile industry, this article humorously proposes six suggestions for reforming the industry. The suggestions are remarkably similar to recent proposals for the reform of schooling. (PGD)

An imaginative solution to the rapid burnout of reform-minded teachers. (JF)

An imaginative, humorous alternative to the present state of affairs in secondary education, calling for students and their mothers to exchange their daily drudgery. (JT)

Modern school executives have a bewildering number of management philosophies to choose from and a seemingly limitless supply of buzzwords and fads. In this poem, St. Peter (Heaven's chief executive) has trouble forming committees of subluminaries to help him decide which managerial types should enter the pearly gates. (MLH)

The auditing culture and its concomitant, "performativity", have been at the core of the on-going public sector reforms of the last twenty-five years or so. The advantages and limitations of performance indicators as a managerial technique of control have long been known. Considered from an organisational, social and political…

Provides a satirical view of the extinction of school librarians. Highlights include educational technology development; changing professional environments; mainstreaming; certification; and the industrialization of education. (AEF)