There is a faltering sense of democracy in America's current political climate due to polarized opinions about leadership's decisions and antagonistic political parties. John Dewey (1916) proposed that education is the place to foster democracy, as schools can provide a platform to actively engage students in authentic democratic experiences that…

In an article written for The Clearing House in 1974 titled, "Alternative schools: Can they survive?", Gerald Brunetti described features of schools that served as an alternative to mainstream public education. He raised the question of whether or not such schools would continue to exist in the future. A search of the literature reveals…

Over the last two decades, federal and state policy makers have launched a number of ambitious, large-scale education reform initiatives--No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, the Common Core State Standards, and others--only to see them sputter and fail. In 2017, the authors convened a number of leading scholars to explore why those initiatives…

The landscape of teacher leadership in school improvement is a changing landscape that is getting more complex over time. As teachers are expected to take on more roles school improvement efforts, there is a particular need to know if and how they are prepared to meet the increasing demands of their jobs. This paper discusses the role of teacher…

We have two goals for this article: to question the efficacy of evidence-based practice as the foundation of reading education policy and to propose practice-based evidence as a viable, more socially just alternative. In order to reach these goals, we describe the limits of reading policies of the last half century and argue for the possibilities…

When President Obama took office in 2009, his administration quickly seized on teacher evaluations as an important public-policy problem. Today, much of his legacy on K-12 education rests on efforts to revamp evaluations in the hopes of improving teaching across the country, which his administration pursued via a series of incentives for states.…

School systems have access to more data than ever before, but most teachers and school leaders lack the skills to use the data for student and school improvement. Current attempts to use data have lacked depth and have been more focused on accountability and meeting state and federal requirements than on systematically investigating the factors…

In this paper we consider more than three decades of research on teachers' unions in the United States. Focusing on unions' role in shaping education policy, we argue that collective bargaining and political organizing comprise the two central but distinct forms of influence at the district, state and national levels of decision-making. We note…

Success in Sight focuses on the interrelated parts of an education system. This systemic school improvement intervention is designed to address schools' specific needs while building their capacities to plan, implement, and evaluate school improvement practices. It is intended to help schools, leadership teams, and teachers systemically engage in…

In 2012, the School District of Philadelphia closed six schools. In 2013, it closed 24. The closure of 30 schools has occurred amid a financial crisis, headlined by the district's $1.35 billion deficit. School closures are one piece of the district's plan to cut expenditures and close its budget gap. The closures are also intended to make…

Since the passage of No Child Left Behind, data-driven decision making has become one of the central foci in schools in their attempt to attain and maintain adequate levels of student academic performance. The importance of early childhood education is well established with language and literacy proficiency in the early years being viewed as a…

Using a critical postmodern framework, this article analyzes the relationship of the decision-making processes of anarchism and neoliberalism to that of deep democracy. Anarchist processes are found to share common core principals with deep democracy; but neoliberal processes are found to be antithetical to deep democracy. To increase the joy in…

This article documents perceptions of superintendents and principals when working under the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) in 2004-06. It uses data collected through the Voices 3 Project to consider three factors associated with instructional leadership as applied under NCLB, defining the school's mission, managing the instructional program, and…

This case study of an urban school board's experiences under high-stakes accountability demonstrates how the district leaders eschewed democratic governance processes in favor of autocratic behaviors. They possessed narrowly defined goals for teaching and learning that emphasized competitive, individualized means of achievement. Their decision…

The West Comprehensive Center (WCC) is working with the Arizona Department of Education (ADE), the Nevada Department of Education (NDE), and the Utah State Office of Education (USOE) to assist districts and schools that are implementing activities to improve outcomes for Indian students. As a first step, WCC staff reviewed state and national law,…