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Summer 2009 Issue

Abstracts

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

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Obama, Where Art Thou?:

Hoping for Change in U.S. Education Policy

Wayne Au

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.

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Wayne Au’s work broadly encompasses critical educational theory and social justice education. He is currently an assistant professor at California State University–Fullerton and serves as an editor of the progressive education journal Rethinking Schools. Au most recently authored Unequal By Design: High-Stakes Testing and the Standardization of Inequality (2009).