bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The Work Kids Do: Mexican and Central American Immigrant Children's Contributions to Households and Schools in California
Authors: Orellana Marjorie Faulstich
Published: May 2015

In this article, Marjorie Faulstich Orellana highlights the work immigrant children do as active agents in supporting and sustaining their families, households, and schools. Building on the work of sociologists who examine children's engagement in social processes, Orellana maintains that we should not lose sight of children's present lives and daily contributions in our concern for their futures. Similarly, we should not see immigrant children only as a problem or a challenge for education and for society while overlooking their contributions to family and school. Integrated into her discussion are the voices of Mexican and Central American immigrant children living in California as they describe their everyday work as helpers at home and school. These examples illustrate how immigrant children's work can be understood in many ways — as volunteerism, as opportunities for learning, and as acts of cultural and linguistic brokering between their homes and the outside world. (pp. 366–389)
More than "Model Minorities" or "Delinquents": A Look at Hmong American High School Students
Authors: Lee Stacey
Published: May 2015

Hmong American youth are often stereotyped by the popular press as either high-achieving "model minorities" or low-achieving "delinquents." In this ethnographic study, Stacey Lee attempts to move beyond the model minority image of 1.5-generation students and the delinquent stereotype of second-generation students to present a more complex picture of Hmong American students' school experiences. The author explores the way economic forces, relationships with the dominant society, perceptions of opportunities, family relationships, culture, and educational experiences affect Hmong American students' attitudes toward school, and the variation that exists among 1.5- and second-generation youth. This article provides insight into how forces inside and outside school affect attitudes toward education, and suggests possibilities for ways in which schools might better serve these students. (pp. 505–528)
The Sojourner Experience of Yemeni American High School Students: An Ethnographic Portrait
Authors: Sarroub Loukia
Published: May 2015

In this article, Loukia Sarroub explores the relationships between Yemeni American high school girls and their land of origin. She also illustrates the tensions that often arise between immigrant students' lives and the goals of U.S. public schooling. Sarroub begins by providing historical background on Yemeni and Arab culture and international migration. Then, drawing upon a larger ethnographic study set in the Detroit, Michigan, area, she presents a case study of one girl's experiences in the contexts of home, school, and community in both the United States and Yemen. Throughout the study, Sarroub makes thematic comparisons to the experiences of five other Yemeni American high school girls. She uses the notion of the "sojourner" to highlight the fact that many Yemenis "remain isolated from various aspects of American life while maintaining ties to their homeland." Sarroub describes the relationships between Yemen and the United States as social and physical "spaces" from which high school girls' networks and identities emerge. She suggests that in this particular Yemeni community, which was fraught with ritual and sanctioned norms, public schooling was both liberating and a sociocultural threat. This duality sometimes led girls to disengage with home and school worlds and to create "imagined" spaces that could bridge their Yemeni and American lives. Sarroub's study provide a larger lens through which to understand the multiple spaces students must negotiate and the sojourner experience of this Yemeni community in the United States. (pp. 390–415)
Further Comment: Pragmatizing the Imaginary: A Response to a Fictionalized Case Study of Teaching
Authors: Barone Tom
Published: May 2015

In the Voices Inside Schools section of its Fall 2000 issue, the Harvard Educational Review published an article entitled, "Historical Perspective as an Important Element of Teachers' Knowledge: A Sonata-Form Case Study of Equity Issues in a Chemistry Classroom." The article was coauthored by Zachary Dean Sconiers, a middle school science teacher, and Jerry Rosiek, a university-based teacher educator and research methodologist.
HER Classic Reprint: Empowering Minority Students: A Framework for Intervention
Authors: Cummins Jim
Published: May 2015

Jim Cummins presents a theoretical framework for analyzing minority students' school failure and the relative lack of success of previous attempts at educational reform, such as compensatory education and bilingual education. The author suggests that these attempts have been unsuccessful because they have not altered significantly the relationships between educators and minority students and between schools and minority communities. He offers ways in which educators can change these relationships, thereby promoting the empowerment of students, which can lead them to succeed in school. (pp. 656–676)
Resisting and Reversing Language Shift: Heritage-Language Resilience among U.S. Native Biliterates
Authors: Tse Lucy
Published: May 2015

In this article, Lucy Tse examines the experiences of one group of U.S. native bilinguals who have managed to develop high levels of literacy in both English and their home or "heritage" language (HL). This unique group has defied the typical pattern among U.S. minority language speakers of losing the home language while learning English. The results show that biliteracy development is aided by the coexistence of two sets of factors related to a) language vitality and b) literacy environment and experiences. Participants had high levels of perceived language vitality resulting from parental, institutional, and peer support, which helped in their formation of a social identity inclusive of their heritage language and culture. Having access to HL literacy environments and guidance from more literate adults and peers allowed the participants to observe the use of HL literacy in meaningful and socially important ways. Tse discusses these and other results in terms of social and cultural identity formation, literacy access and practices, and the social nature of literacy development. (pp. 677–709)
Teaching and Learning with Thoreau: Honoring Critique, Experimentation, Wholeness, and the Places Where We Live
Authors: Gruenewald David
Published: May 2015

In this essay, David Gruenewald weaves a narrative of his education and teaching together with Henry David Thoreau's comments on education, and with stories of Thoreau's own teaching and learning. Gruenewald's personal narrative begins with the discovery of Thoreau as a rare voice of social critique in the education of a typical middle-class adolescent, and then moves to a personal critique of the social context of schooling and the conventions of schooling from the author's perspective as a student and a high school teacher. The second part of the essay explores three teaching themes found both in Thoreau's writing and in biographical treatments of him: experimentation, wholeness, and the primacy of place. Gruenewald discusses each of these themes in terms of Thoreau's approach to teaching, learning, and living. Arguing against the culture of prescription that dominates teaching and learning in schools and colleges of education, he concludes not with more prescription, but with the Thoreauvian plea to reexamine everything we have been told.
Neoliberalism, Corporate Culture, and the Promise of Higher Education: The University as a Democratic Public Sphere
Authors: Giroux Henry
Published: May 2015

In this article, Henry Giroux addresses the corrosive effects of corporate culture on the academy and recent attempts by faculty and students to resist the corporatization of higher education. Giroux argues that neoliberalism is the most dangerous ideology of the current historical moment. He shows that civic discourse has given way to the language of commercialization, privatization, and deregulation and that, within the language and images of corporate culture, citizenship is portrayed as an utterly privatized affair that produces self-interested individuals. He maintains that corporate culture functions largely to either ignore or cancel out social injustices in the existing social order by overriding the democratic impulses and practices of civil society through an emphasis on the unbridled workings of market relations. Giroux suggests that these trends mark a hazardous turn in U.S. society, one that threatens our understanding of democracy and affects the ways we address the meaning and purpose of higher education.
Popular Culture and Democratic Practice
Authors: DOLBY NADINE
Published: May 2015

In this introduction to the study of popular culture in education, Nadine Dolby offers an insightful review of the literature informing this work. Her essay sets the tone and theme for this Special Issue, and begins to address why educators and educational researchers should pay particular attention to popular culture. Discussing the relevant literature and introducing readers to historical debates in the field, Dolby distinguishes between various understandings of popular culture and approaches to studying its relationship to education. Ultimately, Dolby argues, the importance of popular culture and its connection to education lies in the role it plays as a site for engaging in the process of democratic practice. She encourages educators to engage young people in a deep exploration of the multiple dimensions of popular culture and the public sphere, and highlights examples of this kind of engagement.
Racializing the Discourse of Adult Education
Authors: BROOKFIELD STEPHEN
Published: May 2015

In this article, Stephen Brookfield explores the "unproblematized Eurocentrism" that characterizes contemporary adult education in light of Herbert Marcuse's perspectives on repressive tolerance. Brookfield, a White English male, explores the implications of his own social location for his work in adult education by drawing on the works of Cornel West and Lucius T. Outlaw Jr., two prominent African American scholars who racialize the discourse of adult education. Brookfield further considers the broader implications for adult education practice and scholarship that emerge from West's and Outlaw's perspectives on critical thinking, which are paradigmatically different from the Euro-American traditions that tend to ignore issues of race and dominate the field. Finally, Brookfield offers recommendations to practitioners and scholars for actively exploring adult education's role in challenging the "the myth of neutral, non-impositional, adult educators."
Thinking Collaboratively about the Peer-Review Process for Journal-Article Publication
Authors: KUMASHIRO KEVIN , PINAR WILLIAM , GRAUE ELIZABETH , GRANT CARL , BENHAM MAENETTE , HECK RONALD , SCHEURICH JAMES JOSEPH , LUKE ALLAN , LUKE CARMEN
Published: May 2015

In this conversation, Kevin K. Kumashiro shares his reflections on challenges to publishing anti-oppressive research in educational journals. He then invites eight current and former editors of leading educational research journals—William F. Pinar, Elizabeth Graue, Carl A. Grant, Maenette K. P. Benham, Ronald H. Heck, James Joseph Scheurich, Allan Luke, and Carmen Luke — to critique and expand on his analysis. Kumashiro begins the conversation by describing his own experiences submitting manuscripts to educational research journals and receiving comments by anonymous reviewers and journal editors. He suggests three ways to rethink the collaborative potential of the peer-review process: as constructive, as multilensed, and as situated. The eight current and former editors of leading educational research journals then critique and expand Kumashiro's analysis. Kumashiro concludes the conversation with additional reflections on barriers and contradictions involved in advancing anti-oppressive educational research in educational journals.
Similarity and Superunknowns: An Essay on the Challenges of Educational Research
Authors: CLAIR RALF ST.
Published: May 2015

In this article, Ralf St. Clair makes the argument that induction—the process of applying research findings from one setting to another — is logically unsupported, irrespective of method or methodology, due to the existence of superunknowns. Superunknowns are defined as factors that cannot be anticipated, not because of instrumentation defects, but because of their nature. On this basis, St. Clair asserts that we cannot increase the credibility of educational research by trying ever more strenuously to create general laws. Instead, St. Clair argues for educational research to be viewed as a means to generate empirical heuristics for thought and inquiry, and for wider recognition of the central—and essential—role of human judgment, as exercised by practitioners and researchers, in the research endeavor.
Community Forces, Social Capital, and Educational Achievement: The Case of Supplementary Education in the Chinese and Korean Immigrant Communities
Authors: ZHOU MIN , KIM SUSAN
Published: May 2015

Extraordinary Asian American educational achievement has often been credited to a common cultural influence of Confucianism that emphasizes education, family honor, discipline, and respect for authority. In this article, Min Zhou and Susan Kim argue that immigration selectivity, higher than average levels of premigration and postmigration socioeconomic status, and ethnic social structures interact to create unique patterns of adaptation and social environments conducive to educational achievement. This article seeks to unpack the ethnic effect through a comparative analysis of the ethnic system of supplementary education that has developed in two immigrant communities — Chinese and Korean — in the United States. The study suggests that the cultural attributes of a group interact substantially with structural factors, particularly tangible ethnic social structures on which community forces are sustained and social capital is formed. The authors conclude that "culture" is not static and requires structural support to constantly adapt to new situations.
Paulo Freire in Chile, 1964–1969: Pedagogy of the Oppressed in Its Sociopolitical Economic Context
Authors: HOLST JOHN
Published: May 2015

In this article, John Holst presents findings of his historical research on Paulo Freire's educational work in Chile from 1964 to 1969. Freire's Education as the Practice of Freedom, which was written in 1965 from notes he brought from Brazil, was informed by a liberal developmentalist outlook. In contrast, his Pedagogy of the Oppressed, written toward the end of his stay in Chile from 1967 to 1968, was influenced by Marxist humanist ideology. Considering this relatively rapid change in Freire's educational philosophy, Holst explores the manner in which Freire's time and work in Chile affected his ideological evolution. Holst contributes to Freirean studies by demonstrating that Freire's work in the Chilean political context proved to be decisive in his ideological and pedagogical growth. Freire's ideological evolution inspired his writing of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, widely considered one of the most important books on education in the twentieth century. Ultimately, Holst argues that Freire's pedagogy, like all pedagogy, can only be understood fully when seen within the specific sociopolitical and economic contexts within which it developed. Pedagogies are collective in nature, and Freire's, as he himself recognized, was no exception.
Social, Emotional, Ethical, and Academic Education: Creating a Climate for Learning, Participation in Democracy, and Well-Being
Authors: COHEN JONATHAN
Published: May 2015

In this article, Jonathan Cohen argues that the goals of education need to be reframed to prioritize not only academic learning, but also social, emotional, and ethical competencies. Surveying the current state of research in the fields of socialemotional education, character education, and school-based mental health in the United States, Cohen suggests that social-emotional skills, knowledge, and dispositions provide the foundation for participation in a democracy and improved quality of life. Cohen discusses contemporary best practices and policy in relation to creating safe and caring school climates, home-school partnerships, and a pedagogy informed by social-emotional and ethical concerns. He also emphasizes the importance of scientifically sound measures of social-emotional and ethical learning, and advocates for action research partnerships between researchers and practioners to develop authentic methods of evaluation. Cohen notes the gulf that exists between the evidence- based guidelines for social-emotional learning, which are being increasingly adopted at the state level, and what is taught in schools of education and practiced in preK–12 schools. Finally, he asserts that social, emotional, ethical, and academic education is a human right that all students are entitled to, and argues that ignoring this amounts to a social injustice.
Why Connecticut Sued the Federal Government over No Child Left Behind
Authors: BLUMENTHAL RICHARD
Published: May 2015

In April 2005, Connecticut attorney general Richard Blumenthal filed the first lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Education over the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). In this essay, Attorney General Blumenthal presents Connecticut's reasons for legally challenging NCLB. He argues that prior to ratification of the act, Connecticut had been nationally recognized for its assessment program aimed at closing the achievement gap and increasing accountability. NCLB mandates that require testing at all grade levels would force Connecticut to replace its formative assessments with summative assessments and divert their limited educational funds from supplementary educational programs to the expansion of the state's testing office. Blumenthal argues that NCLB's unfunded testing mandates are illegal and may prove detrimental to Connecticut students' academic achievement. While he strongly supports the goals of NCLB, Blumenthal concludes that if schools are to achieve those goals, it is imperative that the federal government allow for flexibility and assume financial responsibility for implementation of NCLB.
No Child Left Behind and High School Reform
Authors: DARLING-HAMMOND LINDA
Published: May 2015

Although No Child Left Behind (NCLB) aims to close the achievement gap that parallels race and class, some of its key provisions are at odds with reforms that are successfully overhauling the large, comprehensive high schools that traditionally have failed students of color and low-income students in urban areas. While small, restructured schools are improving graduation and college attendance rates, NCLB accountability provisions create counterincentives that encourage higher dropout and push-out rates for low-achieving students (especially English language learners), create obstacles to staffing that allow for greater personalization, and discourage performance assessments that cultivate higher-order thinking and performance abilities. In this article, Linda Darling-Hammond proposes specific amendments to NCLB that could help achieve the goal of providing high-quality, equitable education for all students by recruiting highly qualified teachers and defining such teachers in appropriate ways; by rethinking the accountability metrics for calculating adequate yearly progress so that schools have incentives to keep students in school rather than pushing them out; and by encouraging the use of performance assessments that can motivate ambitious intellectual work.
Real Improvement for Real Students: Test Smarter, Serve Better
Authors: STERNBERG BETTY
Published: May 2015

In this essay, Betty J. Sternberg argues that the increased money and time spent on meeting the summative testing requirements of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) adds little to the existing "gold standard" testing conducted by the State of Connecticut. Sternberg highlights the challenges faced by one state in meeting the requirements of NCLB: She identifies the diversion of multiple resources, the limited usefulness of summative testing, and the inability of testing companies to meet increased demands as impediments to improving student achievement. Using Connecticut's program-focused accountability model, Sternberg posits that the right combination of formative testing in conjunction with summative testing and supplementary programming ensures the academic success of all students.
The Effect of Loans on Students' Degree Attainment: Differences by Student and Institutional Characteristics
Authors: KIM DONGBIN
Published: May 2015

In this article, Dongbin Kim investigates the relationship between undergraduate student loan debt and degree attainment. Using data from the Beginning Postsecondary Student (BPS) surveys in 1995–1996 and 2000–2001, she examines whether the relationship between debt and degree attainment is different for students with different parental income levels or racial/ethnic backgrounds, and for students attending different types of higher education institutions. Controlling for a range of individual and institutional characteristics, Kim uses hierarchical generalized linear modeling to find that higher student loan debt in the first year of college is associated with lower probabilities of degree completion among low-income and Black students. Her findings suggest that students' increased reliance on loans for financial aid may widen the income and racial/ethnic gaps in degree completion, despite the fact that a primary goal of financial aid is to narrow those gaps.
Pathways to the Presidency: Biographical Sketches of Women of Color Firsts
Authors: VIERNES TURNER CAROLINE SOTELLO
Published: May 2015

According to recent data, only 3 percent of all college and university presidents are women of color. While the numbers remain disturbingly low, some of these women of color are making history as the "first" of their gender, race, and ethnicity to become president of a public, baccalaureate degree–granting college or university. In this article, Caroline Sotello Viernes Turner presents biographical sketches of three of these women. They are acknowledged to be the first Mexican American, Native American, and Asian Pacific/Asian American women who are presidents of such colleges in the United States. Women from these respective racial and ethnic groups have become university presidents only recently. Using in-depth interviews and cross-case comparisons, the author examines the paths these women presidents have taken and how their narratives contribute important information about women of color in higher education administration. She asserts that from their stories we can learn about the "pathway to the presidency" these women have helped to forge, about the ways universities can help support the leadership development of women of color, and about how to foster leadership in other women of color who aspire to be college presidents. Turner concludes that these women of color "firsts" continue to make important contributions to the field of higher education, and to pave the way for other women.
Community Colleges as Gateways and Gatekeepers: Moving beyond the Access "Saga" toward Outcome Equity
Authors: DOWD ALICIA
Published: May 2015

Community colleges are essential – though often overlooked – institutions of higher education. In this essay, Alicia C. Dowd draws attention to the challenges facing community colleges as they seek to balance their roles as both gateways and gatekeepers with their multiple missions, which include meeting the diverse needs of students at the postsecondary level and responding to the changing educational and economic needs of U.S. society. Using research from the California Benchmarking Project, Enhancing Institutional Effectiveness and Equity, Dowd offers insights about the ways community college leaders, staff, and partners might navigate these dual and often divergent roles. Her essay raises important questions about the nature of higher education accountability in the context of community colleges and the way these institutions are used, managed, and evaluated.
Expanding Equal Opportunity: The Princeton Experience with Financial Aid
Authors: TILGHMAN SHIRLEY
Published: May 2015

In this essay, Shirley M. Tilghman discusses the purpose, design, and impact of Princeton University's no-loan financial aid policy, which was enacted in 2001. As the centerpiece of an aid and recruitment strategy that seeks to improve college access despite growing socioeconomic stratification, the policy obliges Princeton to meet all student financial need with grants rather than loans. Thanks to its financial wellbeing, the university is now able to remove the financial barriers to enrollment and free its students from the obligation to repay tuition debt upon graduation. While not intended to be a prescription for all, Princeton hopes to set an example for other institutions to improve their own financial aid programs in an effort to meet student need in a generous, equitable, and transparent manner.
College Admissions in Twenty-First-Century America: The Role of Grades, Tests, and Games of Chance
Authors: ZWICK REBECCA
Published: May 2015

In this essay, Rebecca Zwick confronts the controversy surrounding the use of standardized tests in college admissions. She examines the degree to which the SAT and its lesser known cousin, the ACT, limit access to college, particularly for racial and ethnic minorities, and considers two alternative admissions policies that do not involve tests: class rank admissions systems and admissions lotteries. She finds that these initiatives carry their own controversies and have little impact on campus diversity. Zwick notes that some small liberal arts colleges have deemphasized tests and have achieved some success in increasing campus diversity while maintaining high academic standards, but highlights the difficulty of replicating these policies at large institutions. Her analysis sheds light on the ongoing tension between maintaining college selectivity and promoting equal opportunity.
Beyond Writing Next: A Discussion of Writing Research and Instructional Uncertainty
Authors: COKER DAVID , LEWIS WILLIAM
Published: May 2015

Drawing on their experiences as high school writing instructors, researchers, and teacher trainers, David Coker and William Lewis examine an often overlooked dimension of adolescent literacy: writing proficiency. The authors explore recent research on the skills and strategies students need in order to write with competence and describe analyses of interventions that help students attain writing mastery. They also address divisions and gaps in the field of writing research and instruction and offer suggestions for overcoming these rifts in order to advance understanding of adolescent writing development and effective writing instruction.
Teaching Disciplinary Literacy to Adolescents: Rethinking Content- Area Literacy
Authors: SHANAHAN TIMOTHY , SHANAHAN CYNTHIA
Published: May 2015

In this article, Timothy and Cynthia Shanahan argue that "disciplinary literacy" — advanced literacy instruction embedded within content-area classes such as math, science, and social studies — should be a focus of middle and secondary school settings. Moving beyond the oft-cited "every teacher a teacher of reading" philosophy that has historically frustrated secondary content-area teachers, the Shanahans present data collected during the first two years of a study on disciplinary literacy that reveal how content experts and secondary content teachers read disciplinary texts, make use of comprehension strategies, and subsequently teach those strategies to adolescent readers. Preliminary findings suggest that experts from math, chemistry, and history read their respective texts quite differently; consequently, both the content-area experts and secondary teachers in this study recommend different comprehension strategies for work with adolescents. This study not only has implications for which comprehension strategies might best fit particular disciplinary reading tasks, but also suggests how students may be best prepared for the reading, writing, and thinking required by advanced disciplinary coursework.
Unpacking the Placement of American Indian and Alaska Native Students in Special Education Programs and Services in the Early Grades: School Readiness as a Predictive Variable
Authors: Hibel Jacob , Faircloth Susan , Farkas George
Published: May 2015

In this article, Jacob Hibel, Susan Faircloth, and George Farkas investigate the persistent finding that American Indian and Alaska Native (AI/AN) students are overrepresented in special education. Using data from the kindergarten cohort of the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, the authors compare the third-grade special education placement rate of AI/AN students to that of other racial/ethnic groups. They find that approximately 15 percent of AI/AN third-graders received special education services, a rate far higher than that of the other racial and ethnic groups. However,using multilevel regression analysis to control for a number of confounding factors,including socioeconomic status and test scores at school entry, they find no statistically significant difference between the special education placement rates of AI/AN and non-Hispanic white students. Controlling for a range of school characteristics,they also find that schools with a higher proportion of AI/AN students place these students in special education at rates similar to those of other schools in the United States. The authors conclude that the strongest predictor of special education placement is a student's academic readiness on entering kindergarten as measured by the student's pre-reading and pre-mathematics scores. They discuss the implications of these findings for future research and practice in the education of AI/AN students.
War News Radio: Conflict Education through Student Journalism
Authors: Hager Emily
Published: May 2015

In this essay Emily Hager presents an example of conflict education through student journalism. War News Radio is a student-organized and student-produced program developed at Swarthmore College in which participants produce for a global audience nonpartisan weekly radio shows and podcasts focused on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hager shares her experiences of reporting for and producing War News Radio and explains how these experiences have helped her learn skills, attain information,and develop responsibility while growing in her understanding of the complexity of and humanity behind armed conflict.
Curriculum and Civil Society in Afghanistan
Authors: Jones Adele
Published: May 2015

Although research has traditionally discussed the ways in which societies in conflict develop educational practices, only recently have scholars begun to examine the role of education in creating or sustaining conflict. In Afghanistan, changing regimes have had an impact on state-sanctioned curricula over the past fifty years, drastically altering the purpose and ideology of education. In this article, Adele Jones traces the changing nature of Afghan curricula since the 1960s, highlighting the conflict surrounding curricula during the Soviet regime. She posits that resistance to statesanctioned curricula was seen as resistance to the state regime, often putting schools at the center of conflict. This continues today, as Taliban groups resist the Western-influenced curricula of modern Afghanistan. Jones argues that understanding this cycle of resistance is critical for Western agencies aiming to support educational efforts in the country.
A Dialogue: Our Selves, Our Students, and Obama
Authors: Mclaughlin Jennifer , Kelly Kim
Published: May 2015

The following essay is a dialogue between two high school English teachers at a small,progressive public school on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Throughout their dialogue, Jen, whose voice appears in italics, and Kim, whose voice appears in plain text, discuss the factors that motivated their decisions to become teachers, tell of the distinct impact that Obama's election has had on their practice and their students,and suggest that many students feel ambivalent about the extent to which President Obama could effect real change in their lives. The article concludes with an anecdote,suggesting that educators can engage in a process of inquiry with students to help them make connections between Obama's election and their lives.
Educating Latino Immigrant Students in the Twenty-First Century: Principles for the Obama Administration
Authors: Suárez-Orozco Carola , Suárez-Orozco Marcelo
Published: May 2015

In this essay, Carola Suárez-Orozco and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco address one of the most critical challenges facing President Obama's administration: meeting the educational needs of Latino and other immigrant children in the United States. The authors first provide a brief overview of past policies and agendas that have created a situation in which the educational and economic needs of immigrant children and their families remain grossly unmet. They then present three overarching principles to guide the Obama administration toward a more humane and effective policy agenda for immigrant children, and outline specific policy recommendations that reflect these principles to better serve this rapidly growing population and secure the future well-being of our nation.
Barack Obama and the Fight for Public Education
Authors: Ayers William
Published: May 2015

In this essay, William Ayers calls for a more vital and effective public education system,one guided by the basic democratic principle that all human beings are of incalculable and irreducible value. Ayers argues that to achieve such a system we must reclaim schools from the industrial model of the twentieth century and build classrooms that respond to the broad and complex needs of the actual students who arrive at the schoolhouse door. Stories of the 2008 election punctuate his argument about the urgency of seizing this moment to disrupt the dominant framework defining public education reform. He calls on each of us to promote an alternative discourse as we simultaneously challenge and assist the Obama administration in envisioning and creating schools that more authentically reflect the ideals of a democracy.
Obama, Where Art Thou? Hoping for Change in U.S. Education Policy
Authors: Au Wayne
Published: May 2015

In this essay, Wayne Au carefully considers the educational stance of Barack Obama by exploring the president's speeches and his personnel and policy choices. Au considers the election of Obama as a moment of possibility for change in American education,but also questions whether Obama's hopeful message about education will be fully realized, given the decisions the administration has made or said it will make. Finally, he calls for individuals to build a movement that demands educational justice in order to achieve the vision of equitable education set forth by Obama.
Reclaiming Our Freedom to Teach: Education Reform in the Obama Era
Authors: Behrent Megan
Published: May 2015

High school teacher Megan Behrent reflects on the impact of Obama's election on the students in her high school classroom. Obliged to temper her students' joyful exuberance on the morning of November 5, 2008, Behrent found that the election fervor highlighted for her the ways that schooling under NCLB has constrained both educators and students, taking away teachers' freedom to teach and students' freedom to learn. In this essay, she examines the many ways in which the high-stakes testing industry punishes public school students and teachers, continually disenfranchising those who struggle to learn without adequate resources. While Obama's election may bring hope to learners of all ages, Behrent advises skepticism toward the changes education secretary Arne Duncan might bring, and she calls on teachers, families, and unions to collaborate in demanding the freedom to nurture true learning.
An Insurrectionary Generation: Young People, Poverty, Education, and Obama
Authors: Gillen Jay
Published: May 2015

The Baltimore Algebra Project is a student-run, student-staffed nonprofit that employs public high schoolers and recent graduates as math study group leaders and as organized advocates for quality education as a constitutional right. In this essay Jay Gillen draws on his experiences as a facilitator of the Algebra Project to argue that only a generation of young people—and particularly young people in poverty—has the potential and the necessary boldness to break the caste system of schooling. In this struggle, they follow their ancestors who "earned" the insurrections required to break the slave and sharecropper systems. How young people in poverty interpret Obama's election, asserts Gillen, will determine what Obama means for educational justice.
Note to Educators: Hope Required When Growing Roses in Concrete
Authors: Duncan-Andrade Jeffrey
Published: May 2015

In this essay, Jeff Duncan-Andrade explores the concept of hope, which was central to the Obama campaign, as essential for nurturing urban youth. He first identifies three forms of "false hope"—hokey hope, mythical hope, and hope deferred—pervasive in and peddled by many urban schools. Discussion of these false hopes then gives way to Duncan-Andrade's conception of "critical hope," explained through the description of three necessary elements of educational practice that produce and sustain true hope. Through the voices of young people and their teachers, and the invocation of powerful metaphor and imagery, Duncan-Andrade proclaims critical hope's significance for an education that relieves undeserved suffering in communities.
Obama's Dilemma: Postpartisan Politics and the Crisis of American Education
Authors: Giroux Henry
Published: May 2015

In this essay, Henry Giroux frames the election of Barack Obama as an opportunity to shed the outdated neoliberal perspectives of previous presidential administrations and to recreate democracy and education for this new age. He argues that education must be reconceived as a tool for instituting the democratic values and social consciousness required for broad social change, and he questions the extent to which Obama's "postpartisan" political approach will move our society away from a preoccupation with markets and toward a greater sense of civic responsibility. Critiquing current approaches to education reform, Giroux identifies an inherent conflict between Obama's professed commitment to instating democratic equality and his appointment of Arne Duncan as secretary of education.
Discourse, Narrative, and National Identity: The Case of France
Authors: Greenwalt Kyle
Published: May 2015

France provides an ideal context for beginning to understand how schooling affects students' understanding of their national identity. In this article, Kyle Greenwalt examines the discursive practices through which a group of French secondary students constructed their national identity. Following an appraisal of the historiographical literature of nineteenth-century French nation-building, the author proceeds with a phenomenological analysis of the discourses students used to make sense of their lived experiences with teachers and schooling. Greenwalt evaluates the continued presence and salience of traditional versions of French national identity, suggesting the need to reconsider the relationships among social solidarity, pluralism, and national identity and calling into question the contemporary relevance of structural representations of the nation-state.
"They're in My Culture, They Speak the Same Way": African American Language in Multiethnic High Schools
Authors: Paris Django
Published: May 2015

In this article, Paris explores the deep linguistic and cultural ways in which youth in a multiethnic urban high school employ linguistic features of African American Language (AAL) across ethnic lines. The author also discusses how knowledge about the use of AAL in multiethnic contexts might be applied to language and literacy education and how such linguistic and cultural sharing can help us forge interethnic understanding in our changing urban schools. The article not only fosters an understanding of how AAL works in such multiethnic urban schools, but also sheds light on opportunities for a pedagogy of pluralism—a stance toward teaching both within and across differences.
Sin Papeles y Rompiendo Barreras: Latino Students and the Challenges of Persisting in College
Authors: Contreras Frances
Published: May 2015

Undocumented Latino students in higher education represent a resilient, determined,and inspirational group of high achievers who persevere and serve as a model for success. Here, Frances Contreras presents a qualitative case study consisting of twenty semistructured, in-depth interviews with undocumented Latino students in an effort to help readers understand the experiences and challenges facing them in higher education in Washington State. Contreras's research explores the navigational processes these students employ in pursuing higher education and fulfilling their educational aspirations. Her findings provide insight into the implementation of HB 1079—the Washington State DREAM Act—in multiple institutional contexts and make recommendations for national and state policy communities. Her findings also demonstrate the critical need for universities to examine their institutional practices and efforts to support these achievers who have already beaten tremendous odds by entering the halls of higher education.
Dimensions of the Transfer Choice Gap: Experiences of Latina and Latino Students Who Navigated Transfer Pathways
Authors: Bensimon Estela Mara , Dowd Alicia
Published: May 2015

This article draws on the voices of three Latina and two Latino students who navigated transfer pathways from a community college to four-year colleges. Although all but one of these students was eligible for admission to the selective University of California system, none of them exercised that choice. In fact, only one enrolled in a selective university. The transfer outcomes for the group interviewed illustrate the informational and cultural barriers that students must overcome in order to exercise choice in the selection of transfer institutions. The findings indicate that institutional"transfer agents" are needed to help qualified community college students overcome informational and cultural barriers to transfer into selective institutions. The students' transfer stories reveal the detrimental consequences of lack of access to transfer agents.
Ángeles, Sacrificios, y Dios: A Puerto Rican Woman's Journey Through Higher Education
Authors: Rivera Marisa
Published: May 2015

Moving from young adulthood to her experiences as a nontraditional student at Pace University, Rivera chronicles her path to independence in this poignant essay about determination, support, and sacrifice. Evoking powerful images, she introduces the people and forces that served to inspire, recharge, and steady her resolve to succeed in her second chance at college. The role of faith is clearly articulated in this story of a student whose identity as a mother serves to remind her why her persistence is so important.
Toward a Sexual Ethics Curriculum: Bringing Philosophy and Society to Bear on Individual Development
Authors: Lamb Sharon
Published: May 2015

For over a decade, battles have raged between conservative Abstinence Only Until Marriage (AOUM) sexuality education advocates and liberal Comprehensive Sexuality Education (CSE) advocates. While these battles have focused on the inclusion of health information about contraception and whether or not a curriculum must advocate abstinence as the best and only method to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, these debates have often ignored other important values about sex. In this article, Sharon Lamb reviews the recent history of these sexuality education battles, criticizes both AOUM and CSE curricula, and discusses how, in CSE's accommodation to AOUM objections, ethical dimensions of sex education may have been neglected in favor of evidence-based practice. She then suggests ways in which the current curricula could teach ethical reasoning and make sex education a form of citizenship education, focusing on justice, equity, and caring for the other person as well as the self.
Unfair Treatment? The Case of Freedle, the SAT, and the Standardization Approach to Differential Item Functioning
Authors: Santelices Maria Veronica , Wilson Mark
Published: May 2015

In 2003, the Harvard Educational Review published a controversial article by Roy Freedle that claimed bias against African American students in the SAT college admissions test. Freedle's work stimulated national media attention and faced an onslaught of criticism from experts at the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the agency responsible for the development of the SAT. In this article, Maria Veronica Santelices and Mark Wilson take the debate one step further with new research exploring differential item functioning in the SAT. By replicating Freedle's methodology with a more recent SAT dataset and by addressing some of the technical criticisms from ETS, Santelices and Wilson confirm that SAT items do function differently for the African American and White subgroups in the verbal test and argue that the testing industry has an obligation to study this phenomenon.
Scholarship Girls Aren't the Only Chicanas Who Go to College: Former Chicana Continuation High School Students Disrupting the Educational Achievement Binary
Authors: Malagon Maria , Alvarez Crystal
Published: May 2015

Drawing from extensive oral history interviews with five Chicana women, Malagon and Alvarez (re)conceptualize the way educational scholarship defines "high achieving."As attendees of California continuation high schools, all five women defy societal expectations by moving from these alternative educational spaces to community colleges, then transferring into four-year universities and going on to enroll in graduate programs. The article highlights the resistance strategies these young women employ through their critique of social oppression, with the authors using critical race theory, Latina/o critical theory, and Chicana feminist epistemologies to make sense of the women's narratives and their journeys through the educational pipeline.
The Role of Subjective Motivation in Girls' Secondary Schooling: The Case of Avoidance of Abuse in Belize
Authors: Anderson-Fye Eileen
Published: May 2015

As in other Latin American and Caribbean nations, young women in Belize have made remarkable strides in enrollment in and completion of secondary schooling. In fact, adolescent girls did so well during the 1990s that the usual explanations of increased access to schooling and governmental policy aimed at increasing girls'education did not appear to fully explain girls' success at the time. Here, Eileen Anderson-Fye argues that secondary schoolgirls' subjective motivations played a key role in their educational experiences during the late 1990s. Based on data collected from a longitudinal study conducted between 1996 and 2001, Anderson-Fye suggests that many of the young women in this study saw education as a route to independence or as a way to avoid gender-based maltreatment for themselves and their future children. She asserts this "push" factor, combined with the "pull" factors of increased economic opportunities for young women with high school diplomas, led to increased educational outcomes for girls at this time. Through this case study of one cohort of girls in San Andrés, Belize, Anderson-Fye provides several important insights for educational researchers and practitioners working with young women today.