This special issue of the Harvard Educational Review considers the challenges and opportunities facing President Barack Obama in his efforts to reform educational policy and practice in the United States.

With contributions from leading education scholars, school practitioners, and K-12 students, the volume offers an uncommonly rich array of perspectives on Obama’s election and presidency—and on what the new administration might accomplish on behalf of schools and students in the United States. A volume that takes the full measure of the problems confronting today’s educators—but also of the sense of promise and excitement inspired by the new president and his administration—this issue of the Harvard Educational Review is an indispensable account of this dramatic and eventful moment in American education.

Contributors include Wayne Au, William Ayers, Prudence L. Carter, Linda Darling-Hammond, Jeffrey M. R. Duncan-Andrade, Henry A. Giroux, Maxine Greene, Tim Knowles, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Robert P. Moses, Charles Payne, Vanessa Siddle Walker, Carola Suárez-Orozco, Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, and others.

Table of Contents

Editors’ Introduction

Note to Educators: Hope Required When Growing Roses in Concrete
Jeffrey M. R. Duncan-Andrade

A Dialogue: Our Selves, Our Students, and Obama
Jennifer McLaughlin and Kim Kelly

President Obama and Education: The Possibility for Dramatic Improvements in Teaching and Learning
Linda Darling-Hammond

Promise and Peril: Charter Schools, Urban School Reform, and the Obama Administration
Charles Payne and Tim Knowles

Reclaiming Our Freedom to Teach: Education Reform in the Obama Era
Megan Behrent

Obama’s Dilemma: Postpartisan Politics and the Crisis of American Education
Henry A. Giroux

Second-Class Integration: A Historical Perspective for a Contemporary Agenda
Vanessa Siddle Walker

Equity and Empathy: Toward Racial and Educational Achievement in the Obama Era
Prudence L. Carter

It Wasn’t Easy to Get Here
Kathleen Mayse

Obama, Where Art Thou?: Hoping for Change in U.S. Education Policy
Wayne Au

Praise Song for Teachers: A Call to Action
Ariane White

Educating Latino Immigrant Students in the Twenty-First Century: Principles for the Obama Administration
Carola Suárez-Orozco and Marcelo Suárez-Orozco

Education for Everyday People: Obstacles and Opportunities Facing the Obama Administration
Gloria Ladson-Billings

An Insurrectionary Generation: Young People, Poverty, Education, and Obama
Jay Gillen

An Earned Insurgency: Quality Education as a Constitutional Right
Robert P. Moses

Barack Obama and the Fight for Public Education
William Ayers

Coda: The Slow Fuse of Change: Obama, the Schools, Imagination, and Convergence
Maxine Greene

Youth Voices

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