In 2019, Oakland teachers joined the wave of teacher strikes across U.S. cities sparked by teacher activism against neoliberal reforms that cut funding to public schools, increased privatization, and led to school closures. As in other cities, a group of progressive rank-and-file teachers working toward transformative change moved their union…

The complexities of the civil rights movement are rarely presented in elementary social studies. Year after year, students repeat the same decontextualized "I Have a Dream" crafts and assignments, tasks that do little to help students understand the country's history of racism or the racial dynamics of today. Instead of perpetuating the…

This article analyses the narratives and counter-narratives which characterised the struggle between the Chicago Public School Board (CPS) and the Chicago Teachers' Union (CTU) preceding the 2019 Chicago teachers' strike. This was an extraordinary event which has received little scholarly attention. The paper explores the types and uses of the…

Many parents are unhappy with the way testing has altered, expanded and taken hold in primary schools in recent years. Some parents chose to express their objections to primary Standard Assessment Tests (SATs) in particular, through taking part in collective strike action. While research into testing abounds, the opinions of parents and their role…

In 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in "Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka," the South Lawndale neighborhood on Chicago's southwest side was home primarily to Polish and Czech immigrants. In the decades since, South Lawndale has undergone dramatic change. Eastern Europeans moved out, and people of Mexican…