Standardized testing is a top priority in schools, with conversations around teaching and learning reduced to raising student test scores. Often any other conversations about how schools should serve students are eliminated or pushed to the periphery. The central questions raised here are the following: how are student-teacher relationships…

Given the huge increase in the number of American families able to choose their child's school, the time is ripe to ask, "What do parents want?" Whereas before, millions of parents were hemmed in by school policies that required their child to attend a residentially assigned traditional public school, now more and more states are…

Many urban public schools are often perceived as inclusive due to the demographics of their diverse student populations. This myth of inclusivity reifies notions of equity in both education and broader society. However, upon closer inspection, this myth of inclusion crumbles once immersed within an urban high school. In this article, I present the…

This study investigates the role of religious politics in the dismissal of Mason in 1845. Related questions are (a) How volatile an issue was religious sectarianism during the early days of music in the Boston schools? (b) What were the religious backgrounds and convictions of the School Committee members responsible for dismissing Lowell Mason in…

Background/Context: This study deals with an intersection of educational history, queer history, and labor history involving the activities of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) teachers. The history of LGBT teachers, particularly before the 1990s, has been addressed by only a handful of historians. The prior research most relevant to this study is…

Drawing from oral history interviews and archival data from a nine-month ethnography, this article examines the activist practices of foundational bilingual teachers in Milwaukee's movement to launch Spanish/English bilingual-bicultural education (BBE). We use theories of critical consciousness to interpret the educators' daily activism as crucial…

Civics education in America is in crisis, and Americans should recommit themselves to the teaching of civics in the classroom and at home. As students understand how the past connects to the present, they will come to safeguard the sanctity of the American idea and appreciate the validity and relevance of its ideals to all Americans, especially to…

Background/Context: Current historical understanding of Hawai'i's territorial period celebrates American education as a crucial influence on the islands' political development. In particular, the territory's public school system represents an essential institution for spreading democratic freedom, fostering social mobility, and, more importantly,…

This paper provides a summary of the analysis of school enumeration returns in Ohio from 1925 through 1939, prior to state-wide school consolidation, in 26 counties. Data suggests that a wide range of students with disabilities were accommodated and included in the public-school system. The paper discusses legislation, medical, and clinical…

This essay provides the first account and examination of caste education in the work of W.E.B. Du Bois. In so doing, I argue that caste education plays a central role in realizing the political and social goals of racial capitalist society for Du Bois. Using Du Bois's caste analytic, I take up and articulate three biopolitical governing strategies…

Academic freedom has long been a sacrosanct principle in higher education; however, the same rights to intellectual autonomy have rarely been afforded K-12 practitioners. In times of national political crisis, the abilities of teachers to engage students in the crucial debates about contemporary public policy issues have been stretched to the…

Six years after "Brown v. Board of Education", Atlanta reluctantly complied with the order to desegregate its school system rather than risk having schools closed due to noncompliance. Out of 132 students, nine black high school seniors desegregated four of Atlanta's all-white high schools. The purpose of this study is to explore and…

State takeovers were an infrequently applied strategy to address the problems of financially and academically troubled schools for many decades. Although 23 states had the right to take over individual schools and No Child Left Behind (NCLB) required states to address persistently low-achieving schools, only five states had exercised their power…

A recent report from EdChoice documents two staffing trends in public schools. After a temporary pause during the Great Recession, school staffing in the U.S. resumed an upward trajectory, and hiring tilted toward non-teaching personnel as compared to teachers. The report concludes that staffing growth outpaces enrollment growth and that there has…

This research is an ethnography (Murchison, 2010) that describes the lived experiences of a university professor and former public school superintendent. The work explores racial integration and desegregation of America's public school system. Through a series of seven semi-structured interviews, background information has been collected about the…