The release of new U.S. census data led many pundits to opine about what demographic changes mean for the future of the country. But, as Joshua P. Starr explains, educators have been watching their classrooms and schools become less white for many years. What's important now is not the change itself but how we interpret the change. The stories…

In this personal account, the author recounts navigating a school uniform policy as a new teacher in a large public high school in Baltimore. He loosely situates this telling in the recent history of the public school uniform movement, of which Baltimore was central. Writing in an urgent present tense, the author details the many complexities…

Over the past 30 years, the charter school movement has become a significant factor in U.S. public education. Charter schools were originally designed to be alternative public schools that would allow for greater experimentation and innovation within the public school system. As the number of charter schools has expanded to more than 7,000…

Over the past 30 years, the charter school movement has become a significant factor in U.S. public education. Charter schools were originally designed to be alternative public schools that would allow for greater experimentation and innovation within the public school system. As the number of charter schools has expanded to more than 7,000…

Over the past 30 years, the charter school movement has become a significant factor in U.S. public education. Charter schools were originally designed to be alternative public schools that would allow for greater experimentation and innovation within the public school system. As the number of charter schools has expanded to more than 7,000…

Over the past 30 years, the charter school movement has become a significant factor in U.S. public education. Charter schools were originally designed to be alternative public schools that would allow for greater experimentation and innovation within the public school system. As the number of charter schools has expanded to more than 7,000…

This practice article examines the design, implementation and impacts of a collaborative German language learning (LL) field trip in the United States through the conceptual framework of LL and teaching beyond the classroom. We explore the affordances of semi-structured out-of-class experiences in supporting world language students' target…

Two philosophers of education, Sarah Stitzlein and Lauren Bialystok, have recently expressed criticisms of so-called "Parental Conscience Acts," which allow parents to opt their children out of aspects of the public school curriculum that they find objectionable. (These laws and policies should be distinguished from those which allow…

No longer can teachers in the US simply close their classroom doors and isolate themselves, their classrooms, their students; that is, if they ever could. More than ever before, larger political, sociocultural and ideological forces find their way into the classroom on the backs of so-called educational reforms. But not every educational reform…

This is a perilous time for the dream and promise of education. With Betsy DeVos heading the Department of Education, some states are already making moves to privatize education. Arizona is promising $5,000 per child for parents to spend as they like. What kind of private school charges only $5,000? I worry about the kind of education that…

One of the unfortunate consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic is that the sharp downturn in tax revenues, in the absence of a federal bailout, likely foretells unprecedented cuts in state and local budgets. This will in turn mean large cuts in teaching positions across the country; indeed, some projections suggest that the number of teacher layoffs…

Many liberals and secularists believe that religious schooling should not be publicly funded or that it should simply be banned. Challenging those views, I claim that although liberal states may refuse to fund and may even ban certain illiberal separate religious schools, it is impermissible, for distinctively liberal reasons, to completely ban…

Children living in poverty face numerous challenges that negatively affect their wellbeing and thus their ability to learn. The consequences of poverty that interfere with students' learning include inattentiveness, demotivation, and feelings of powerlessness, shame, and anger. To reach these children, with the goal of helping them become healthy,…

In their article, "Is the Liberal Defense of Public Schools a Fantasy?" presented in this v58, 2017 issue of "Critical Studies in Education," Michael S. Merry and William S. New offer what they call a "leftist critique" of standard liberal defenses of the public school. In this response, Kathleen Knight Abowitz…

This paper is a theoretical discussion of "The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and Black Study" (Harney & Moten, 2013) as a contribution to critical education in public schools. The undercommons serves here as an epistemic device, or a way of seeing and knowing, in relation to public education. The function of this device is to…