Rethinking Schools Editorial
Rethinking Schools began as a local effort to address problems such as basal readers, standardized testing, and textbook-dominated curriculum. Since its founding, it has grown into a nationally prominent publisher of educational materials, with subscribers in all 50 states, all 10 Canadian provinces, and many other countries.
Articles by this author
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Views Friday, August 11, 2017 Little Kids, Big Fears: How to Talk About Nuclear War and Donald Trump with 2nd-Graders Recently, a Rethinking Schools editor was a chaperone on a field trip when he overheard a 2nd-grade student talking about how he wanted to “nuke the world.” Taken aback, he asked the child what he meant. “Everything is just so bad. We should just nuke the world and start over.” When pressed further... Read more |
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Views Friday, May 16, 2014 The Gathering Resistance to Standardized Tests U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan touched off a torrent of criticism last November when he told a group of state school superintendents that opposition to the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) was coming from “white suburban moms who—all of a sudden—their child isn’t as brilliant as they... Read more |
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Views Thursday, January 30, 2014 Connecting the Dots for a Better World The 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom this past summer produced some brilliant commentary about the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. Read more |
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Views Wednesday, June 26, 2013 Corporate Education 'From Above' and the Trouble with Common Core It isn't easy to find common ground on the Common Core. Already hailed as the “next big thing” in education reform, the Common Core State Standards are being rushed into classrooms in nearly every district in the country. Read more |
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Views Tuesday, March 27, 2012 Occupy Education: Seizing the Momentum to Reclaim Our Schools The South African poet and activist Breyten Breytenbach once said, “You Americans have mastered the art of living with the unacceptable.” We hope this is coming to an end—in schools, and in the rest of our society. Read more |
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Views Friday, February 24, 2012 Outlawing Solidarity in Tucson “Banned in Tucson.” Read more |
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Views Sunday, January 08, 2012 Stop the School-to-Prison Pipeline “Every man in my family has been locked up. Most days I feel like it doesn’t matter what I do, how hard I try—that’s my fate, too.” —11th-grade African American student, Berkeley, Calif. Read more |
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Views Friday, June 24, 2011 This Is What Solidarity Looks Like All of us have learned some lessons about the meaning of solidarity from the recent events in Wisconsin. Gov. Scott Walker’s so-called “budget repair bill” was a draconian assault on workers’ rights and unions. He followed this with what the Wisconsin education superintendent called “the greatest state cut to education since the Great Depression” and a host of other cuts that disproportionately affect poor people and people of color. Read more |
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Views Saturday, April 02, 2011 Our Climate Crisis Is an Education Crisis In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) wrote, “Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.” According to environmentalist Bill McKibben, unless we immediately begin to change course and dramatically reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we may “lose forever the basic architecture of our planet,” with unimaginable consequences. Read more |
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Views Sunday, February 06, 2011 Every School a Sanctuary In the 1980s, as refugees from U.S.-sponsored wars in Central America sought safety in the United States—only to be declared “illegal aliens” by the government—progressive churches and communities throughout the country decided to become sanctuaries and offered protection. They were continuing the proud tradition of the Underground Railroad. Read more |