The federal government is deeply entrenched in American public education and virtually dictates what can be taught to students. Why? At what cost? And what are the benefits to public school students? To public schools? The author challenges the constitutionality of the feds in the classroom and reminds readers that public education has, until recently, been the function of state and local governments.

A teacher describes how she ran for public office with her sixth grade class managing her campaign as part of a hands-on civics lesson in democracy, in an account that examines the follies of America's two-party political system.

This book is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license. The book presents the Proceedings of the 13th International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME-13) and is based on the presentations given at the 13th International Congress on Mathematical Education (ICME-13). ICME-13 took place from 24th- 31st July 2016 at the University of Hamburg in Hamburg (Germany). The congress was hosted by the Society of Didactics of Mathematics (Gesellschaft für Didaktik der Mathematik - GDM) and took place under the auspices of the International Commission on Mathematical Instruction (ICMI). ICME-13 brought together about 3.500 mathematics educators from 105 countries, additionally 250 teachers from German speaking countries met for specific activities. Directly before the congress activities were offered for 450 Early Career Researchers. The proceedings give a comprehensive overview on the current state-of-the-art of the discussions on mathematics education and display the breadth and deepness of current research on mathematical teaching-and-learning processes. The book introduces the major activities of ICME-13, namely articles from the four plenary lecturers and two plenary panels, articles from the five ICMI awardees, reports from six national presentations, three reports from the thematic afternoon devoted to specific features of ICME-13. Furthermore, the proceedings contain descriptions of the 54 Topic Study Groups, which formed the heart of the congress and reports from 29 Discussion Groups and 31 Workshops. The additional important activities of ICME-13, namely papers from the invited lecturers, will be presented in the second volume of the proceedings.

How the United States can provide equal educational opportunity to every child The United States Supreme Court closed the courthouse door to federal litigation to narrow educational funding and opportunity gaps in schools when it ruled in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez in 1973 that the Constitution does not guarantee a right to education. Rodriguez pushed reformers back to the state courts where they have had some success in securing reforms to school funding systems through education and equal protection clauses in state constitutions, but far less success in changing the basic structure of school funding in ways that would ensure access to equitable and adequate funding for schools. Given the limitations of state school funding litigation, education reformers continue to seek new avenues to remedy inequitable disparities in educational opportunity and achievement, including recently returning to federal court. This book is the first comprehensive examination of three issues regarding a federal right to education: why federal intervention is needed to close educational opportunity and achievement gaps; the constitutional and statutory legal avenues that could be employed to guarantee a federal right to education; and, the scope of what a federal right to education should guarantee. A Federal Right to Education provides a timely and thoughtful analysis of how the United States could fulfill its unmet promise to provide equal educational opportunity and the American Dream to every child, regardless of race, class, language proficiency, or neighborhood.

After a half-a-century of school reform, a majority of Americans consider the public schools as worse today than when they attended school. Those reforms missed the mark because they were not focused on the backgrounds of the students’ parents--by far the most important indicator of students’ progress in school. The importance of parents was documented by the Coleman Report more than 50 years ago. School reform must be continued but re-directed to over-come the power of low parental socio-economic status. The best way to improve the schools is to create a better, fairer economy providing parents with good jobs and decent wages. In the meantime, good pre-school, after-school, and other aids are needed to help students from low income families. Teacher quality, although not as influential as the parents’ backgrounds, is the second most significant indicator of student success. Teachers, like parents, have not been the focus of the attention their importance deserves. In particular, teachers should be fairly paid, and their verbal and cognitive skills improved. The Coleman Report again documented the importance of those skills more than half-a-century ago. Instead, money, time, and effort have been spent on reforms that won’t bring about great improvement because they did not address adequately those two important factors.