This article analyzes the role of STEM initiatives designed by city and corporate elites in a large urban district and outlines an alternative, grassroots vision for (STEM) education and city schools. Within a neoliberal context of gentrification, displacement, disinvestment, and privatization, STEM schools have become strategic components of…

This article provides an example of, and lessons from, teaching and learning critical mathematics in a Chicago public neighborhood high school with a social justice focus. It is based on a qualitative study of my untracked, 12th-grade mathematics class, a full-year enactment of mathematics for social and racial justice. Students were Black and…

Displacement was part of students' realities--gentrification in North Lawndale (a Chicago community), deportation in Little Village, and foreclosures in both. The author started the unit in his 12th-grade "math for social justice" class by telling the story (with family permission) of Carmen, a student in his class. Her grandmother paid…