Chapter 6: Teacher Education for Democracy & Teacher-Pupil Planning in Middle Level Social Studies

Public education in the United States has been an ambitious, extraordinary, and ongoing endeavor that has also been fraught with tremendous challenges, as many of the broader social issues get played out through educational policies as well as individual classrooms. Most recently, both federally and at the state level, we have focused significant attention to quantitative measures of student success and achievement and corresponding school, district, and state accountability schemes. These narrow measures are not unreasonable, they are simply too narrow, and the laser-like focus has perpetuated an over-emphasis on some of the goals of public schooling at the expense of others.