Joseph L. DeVitis has taught at five universities in his 40-year academic career. A prolific scholar and public intellectual, he is the recipient of the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Three of his recent books, Critical Civic Literacy (Peter Lang, 2011), Character and Moral Education (Peter Lang, 2011) and Adolescent Education (2010), won Critics Choice Awards from the American Educational Studies Association.
Kenneth Teitelbaum is Dean and Professor in the Watson College of Education at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. His research and teaching interests focus on critical reflection in teacher education and teachers' work, school reform as it relates to democracy, social justice and diversity, and school knowledge in current and historical contexts.

Although the authors of School Reform Critics do not abandon their own ideas about the need for progressive changes in K-12 schooling, they critique in specific ways the current so-called school reform movement, focusing on education in a democracy, context and policy implications, teachers and teacher education, and diversity and social justice.

Contents: Nel Noddings: Education in a Democracy - Susan Ohanian: And They Call It Education Reform - Dennis Carlson: Picking Up the Pieces of Neoliberal Reform Machines in Urban Schools - Lawrence C. Stedman: Subverting Learning and Undermining Democracy: A Structural and Political Economy Analysis of the Standards Movement - John Smyth: «It Need Not Have Been This Way»: School Reform Around the Socially Just School in Australia and Lessons from the Finnish Educational Miracle - Kenneth J. Saltman: Schooling in Disaster Capitalism: How the Political Right Is Using Disaster to Privatize Public Schooling - Kenneth Teitelbaum: Teacher Education in Volatile Times: Forward to the Basics - Carolyn M. Shields: A Critical Examination of Today's (Un)Democratic Reform Agenda for Teachers, Administrators, and Teacher Education - Daniel P. Liston: Teacher Education and Markets Matter - Christine E. Sleeter: Diversity, Social Justice, and Resistance to Disempowerment - Donyell L. Roseboro: Rethinking School Reform and Neighborhood Schools - Tian Yu: Obama and Antiracist Education: Lessons for Teachers - Martin J. Wasserberg: No Voices Left Behind - Christopher Leahey: Teaching Under the Weight of Race to the Top in New York State - Joshua P. Starr: Danger Signs: Neglecting the Systemic Complexities of School Reform.

Much of school reform during the past decade has been influenced by neoliberal and neoconservative economic and social policies and Rightist politics. Although the authors of School Reform Critics do not abandon their own ideas about the need for progressive changes in K-12 schooling, they critique in specific ways the current so-called school reform movement, focusing on education in a democracy, context and policy implications, teachers and teacher education, and diversity and social justice. Their insightful chapters make a major contribution to our thoughtful consideration of where we are headed and in what direction we should be going if we seek to advance the public good, ensure a stronger democracy, and create more academically meaningful and equitable schools for all children. The book will especially engage readers in such courses as foundations of education, educational policy, curriculum studies, and teacher education.