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What Rorty's book also draws attention to is the power of narrative and the way in which the American Dream is a specific narrative that comes into being at a particular time and place and then can be "read back" onto American history - on the Puritan beginnings and those who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It is a narrative that can be "read forward," projected onto the future, as a means of establishing a vision for a society and economy. This is the art of narrative retellings of the America Dream, which, in the hands of Rorty or Barack Obama, becomes a shining beacon to unify the people in recognizing what is best in America. The question is whether, in a time of radical change and transition - when America is losing its world position as the only superpower, when millions of Americans are losing their homes and jobs as a result of the recession and financial crisis, when America enters into a massive budget-cutting and deficit-financing mode - whether the American Dream can be reclaimed, refurbished, re-articulated and retold in era of decline.

Battles over school curriculums occasionally make national news, but quickly fade. However, the banning of the Mexican-American studies program in Tucson has assumed much greater significance. The action precipitated by the Arizona legislature - and signed by Gov. Jan Brewer -- brazenly suppresses educating a multicultural society in a school district where the majority of students are of Mexican descent. The documentary "Precious Knowledge: Arizona's Battle Over Ethnic Studies" brilliantly details the energy and critical thinking of students in the Mexican-American studies program as compared to the bigoted cliches of the politicians seeking to deprive them of the knowledge that empowers non-Caucasian young people.

Citizens for Public Schools (CPS) believes the compromise reached by the Massachusetts Teachers Association and corporate-funded Stand for Children would avoid the worst aspects of Stand's proposed ballot question, which was a deceptive and destructive proposal that failed to address real obstacles to educational quality and equity. The compromise was passed by the legislature and signed into law by Gov. Deval Patrick today, June 29. In exchange, Stand said it would drop the ballot measure it proposed to put on the November ballot. "Stand for Children has become a vehicle for a few billionaires who want to control how we run our public schools," said CPS President Ann O'Halloran, who was the 2007 Massachusetts History Teacher of the Year. "I'm relieved that Stand was blocked from achieving its full agenda, but CPS and our allies must be prepared to resist similar efforts down the road. We need to raise awareness of this as a national problem, not just a Massachusetts issue."

"First I want to clarify what I mean by us all. I believe the Chicago teachers strike is an important stand in the battle to improve, even save, public education in the United States. The strike, if successful, will benefit teachers, students and parents, not only in Chicago but across the entire country, as well as both unionized workers and non-unionized workers. This strike has the potential to go down in history along with other labor actions, such as those in Homestead, Lawrence, Paterson, Ludlow and Flint that ultimately built the union movement in the United States and transformed life for what used to be known as the working-class but what politicians today euphemistically refer to as the middle class. That is why I strongly support this strike and why I am wearing a red t-shirt to work in support of the teachers and public education."

Opponents of Success Academy Cobble Hill recently created perhaps the most apropos hashtag in the brief history of Twitter: "#nosuccess." Some might find it rather odd that, in a city suffering from so much educational failure, those claiming to speak for children would promote "no success." While the intended meaning of the hashtag was obvious, let's be clear: While our opponents don't want our schools to exist, they also block much-needed reforms that could bring about far-reaching success. But what else would we expect from the United Federation of Teachers, which has stopped at nothing to prevent great new public charters from opening and to shut down high-performing charters? (It sued to do just that this spring; thankfully, it lost.)

The next big idea in "education reform" is online instruction and cyber charters. I know that teachers are doing wonderful, creative activities with technology, and there is no doubt that technology can bring history, science, and other studies to life in vivid ways. But there is a cloud on the horizon, and that is the growth of the for-profit cyber charters. I confess that it troubles me to think of children sitting at home, day after day, with no opportunity for discussion and debate, no interaction with their peers, no face-to-face encounters with a real teacher.

Through the years there have been many bitter teacher strikes and too many student protests to count. But a principals' revolt? "Principals don't revolt," said Bernard Kaplan of Great Neck North High School on Long Island, who has been one for 20 years. "Principals want to go along with the system and do what they're told." But President Obama and his signature education program, Race to the Top, along with John B. King Jr., the New York State commissioner of education, deserve credit for spurring what is believed to be the first principals' revolt in history.

The charter-run schools that are a part of the New Orleans Recovery School District have shown some dramatic gains in student performance, but the schools that are managed directly by the district have not shown the same level of improvement, according to a report on the tumultuous eight-year history of Louisiana's Recovery School District.

This was written by Mark Naison, professor of African and African American Studies at Fordham University in New York and chair of the department of African and African-American Studies. He is also co-director of the Urban Studies Program, African-American History 20th Century. This first appeared on the blog With A Brooklyn Accent.

The liberals of the education reform movement, often more surreptitiously than the overstated former Washington D.C. Chancellor of Schools during Democratic Mayor Adrian Fenty's term in office Michelle Rhee, have for decades advanced negative assumptions about public school teachers that now power the attacks by Christie, Walker, Kasich and their ilk. This is particularly true of Teach for America (TFA), the prototypical liberal education reform organization, where Rhee first made her mark. The history of TFA reveals the ironies of contemporary education reform. In its mission to deliver justice to underprivileged children, TFA and the liberal education reform movement have advanced an agenda that advances conservative attempts to undercut teacher's unions. More broadly, TFA has been in the vanguard in forming a neoliberal consensus about the role of public education-and the role of public school teachers-in a deeply unequal society.

A common thread runs through opposition to desegregation and advocacy for charter schools: the rhetoric of choice. This rhetoric emphasizes the power of individual action and decision-making and veils the deep influences of policy and politics. Examining the gap between the rhetoric and the reality clarifies the history of desegregation and contributes to a respectfully critical look at school "choice" in practice today.

A meta-analysis of charter school studies revealed that about 75 percent of them do not meet rigorous research standards because they don't account for the differences in academic background and academic histories of students attending charters, when comparing them with those attending traditional public schools, according to the review, published in the renowned journal Science. Those studies typically fail to "disentangle school quality from the preexisting achievement level," or student self-selection of schools, the article says.

Arizona's ban on ethnic studies proscribes Mexican-American history, local authors, even Shakespeare

There have been few moments in our history when the nation so badly needed institutions to unify the country, overcome divisiveness, and dispel the unfounded "jealousies and prejudices" that our first president warned against. As George Washington wrote to Alexander Hamilton, bringing together the youth "from different parts of the United States" at a university would allow young people to learn there was no basis for "jealousies and prejudices which one part of the union had imbibed against another part." Yet if the Supreme Court decides to hear a case called Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin , colleges could be severely restricted in continuing to serve this unifying function.

School funding in Texas is in turmoil. State lawmakers slashed more than $4 billion from education this school year - one of the largest cuts in state history - and more than 12,000 teachers and support staff have been laid off. Academic programs and transportation have been cut to the bone. Promising reforms are on hold or on the chopping block. Next year, the cuts could go even deeper.

If you follow newspaper accounts about school reform, you can't help but notice that various school reforms that have inundated public education over the past decade of mayoral control of the New York City public schools have failed.

Today, The Los Angeles Times published an editorial reflecting on the parent trigger's lack of success, and described Parent Revolution's retooling effort: Instead of choosing the schools for a possible parent trigger and engineering the petitions, Parent Revolution now leaves it up to parents to determine whether they want to initiate major reforms and what kind. The article charitably describes the organization's success at this new strategy as "modest." Of course, this "new" strategy is the primary strategy used by all effective community organizers in modern times, and by successful organizers in history before the term was even coined.

By day, Wade Brosz teaches American history at an A-rated Florida middle school. By night, he is a personal trainer at 24 Hour Fitness. Brosz took the three-night a week job at the gym after his teaching salary was frozen, summer school was reduced drastically, and the state bonus for board certified teachers was cut. He figures that he and his wife, also a teacher, are making about $20,000 less teaching than expected to, combined.

It all started a few days ago when Edison scoundrel and Broadyte Chris Cerf published a fact-free diatribe extolling the charter school solution to a non-existent problem. To say that Cerf plays fast and loose with facts would be the understatement of the summer, but his most mendacious statements (and a grievous factual error) occur in regards to the venerable Albert Shanker. The incorrigible Cerf isn't the first corporate snake oil salesman to try and misrepresent the late President of the American Federation of Teachers' views, or for that matter, spin the original purpose of charters to be a gateway drug to vouchers. The latter argument is usual spun as "charter schools were created to be schools of choice." Anyone familiar with actual history knows that Shanker intended charters to supplement public schools by serving the most difficult to educate students (the ones current charters avoid like the plague), he never supported the core segregationist tenet of "school choice." In fact, most high profile corporate education privatizers have perpetuated these outrageous lies at one time or another.

Often teachers have low expectations for some students, especially those who had a history of struggling, living in poverty or are transient. Those students are often separated into smaller ability groups for more direct instruction. Separating students by ability is often done in K-12 settings. It happens in schools when students take electives and advanced placement classes, but it also happens within elementary classrooms when teachers do ability grouping. Tomlinson and Javius say, "The logic behind separating students by what educators perceive to be their ability is that it enables teachers to provide students with the kind of instruction they need." So what is wrong with that? Shouldn't educators work with groups by ability so they can help students close the gap? Tomlinson and Javius are concerned that ability grouping may further widen the gap between struggling learners and those who excel.