Whatever else might be said about the No Child Left Behind Act, it has the potential to be one of the most important pieces of education civil rights legislation in a generation. Its goals are an indispensable component of a renewed commitment to promoting racial and ethnic justice. The emphasis on accountability gives essential urgency and…

New DEEL does not refer to a specific policy or reform, but rather to an ideology, unencumbered by international borders and domestic politics. In this paper, we first endeavor to identify the rhetoric of New DEEL and social justice, and the reality of its implementation in schools today; spending time on the NCLB Act which we postulate is a major…

The purpose of this article is to describe the emergence of the New DEEL (Democratic-Ethical Educational Leadership) and the role it is attempting to play in confronting the excesses of the current accountability movement typified by massive standardized testing and No Child Left Behind legislation in the United States. This article depicts the…

Critical whole language practice, like any other pedagogy, is enacted within a particular time and place. We present several features of critical whole language practice (as distinguished from two other variants of critical education: critical literacy and critical pedagogy) and illustrate each with examples from one year in one elementary school…

This article presents the author's reaction to Catherine Marshall and Michael Ward's article on research on social justice and training for leadership. The author read Marshall and Ward's article carefully, making mental notes in preparation for his reaction. In the midst of his reflection about the study, the author suddenly realized that he was…

This article shares findings from an exploratory case study about an advanced leadership development program for administrator-certified practitioners in a Central Appalachian school district. The goal of the Principals Excellence Program, one of 24 projects supported by federal funds through the No Child Left Behind School Leadership Development…

Analyzes the impact of recent policy developments in the USA associated with school accountability according to the best interests of the student. With the mandated implementation of the US federal law entitled the No Child Left Behind Act approaching, minimal attention has been afforded to the complex ethical dimensions associated with policies…

In this article, the author identifies two current--and competing--discourses concerning teaching and public education in general. One is the "official" discourse, embodied in "No Child Left Behind" language, with a focus on accountability, standards, credentials, and testing, accompanied by punitive measures for failing to…

All across the country, critical educators are fighting on dozens of fronts, searching in both form and content for a coherent pedagogical expression that captures their opposition to what they perceive as major developments of world-historical importance: the pandemic of economic globalization; United States geopolitical imperialism and the rabid…

This article presents answers to the question: What do powerful educational leaders think about training practitioners for social justice? The data are drawn from interviews with a former governor and leaders from the American Association of School Administration (AASA), National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP), National…