Education for this generation’s youth is the key for our nation’s future well-being but it is now threatened by political correctness. A politically correct environment seeks to avoid controversial issues by maintaining the status quo on matters related to workers in the education system while avoiding the best interests of the stakeholders, and it is for this reason that political correctness must be challenged on many issues in our school system, so that our children have a better chance for learning well and then living well. This book’s focus is on using accountability to pressure the system toward implementing reforms necessary for winning. It deals with educational policies, which are controversial and also identified by others for being problematic, rather than classroom practices. The solutions, or recommendations, proposed are intended to ensure that policies align with the best interests of students, parents, and taxpayers rather than with those of the service providers.

Political correctness, better known as “PC,” flourished in institutions of higher learning in the 1990s. With the rise of social media, a second wave of PC culture has emerged that is more aggressive than the first. It seems to many that nearly everyone is a target, at risk of being labeled a racist or misogynist based on one short tweet. The movement, though intended to be inclusive and pluralistic, has its detractors. Is political correctness protective or is it an attack on freedom? Do knee-jerk reactions cancel out the opportunity for thoughtful discourse? And what does this culture mean for our future?

The majority of students are required to attend their neighborhood public school unless their parents apply to an alternate program such as private and charter schools. Seldom is a comprehensive measurement program in place for parents to assist them in determining whether their local school is providing quality educational services and, when a reporting system is in place, an unbiased evaluation is lacking. This book demonstrates how parents can make informed choices regarding their local school or others within their community. The accountability model presented was highly rated by the U.S. Department of Education and its approach is used in Alberta and California. Fixed boundaries should be replaced and all schools labeled as “magnet centers” with locally developed mission statements to attract students without transportation costs. Democratizing the workplace is as necessary as democratizing our schools so that workers are recognized and rewarded according to their team’s performance.

This book traces back how male students are currently disadvantaged in school by instruction in an overwhelmingly female environment devoid of male role models, who can inspire the love of learning in male students. Further, teachers are unduly influenced by biases related to compliant behaviors which result in conflating assessments of student academic achievement with compliance. Therefore, males’ marks prevent to many from qualifying for courses leading to leading as well as achieving sufficiently high marks in those courses.

In this much-needed volume, Nel Noddings uses her extensive experience at every level of schooling to challenge the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). Noddings invites readers to think critically about the ideas underlying NCLB, the reform movement that shaped it, and the processes it has put into play. She considers such questions as, Is money the answer to raising test scores? Are failing schools mainly attended by poor children, or are all of our schools failing? Do all students need courses in advanced mathematics, physics, and chemistry? Should special education students be expected to meet the same standards as regular students? Does one standard curriculum serve the needs and interests of all students? Does our current system of schooling undermine the democracy it should support? This dynamic book: Challenges almost every provision in the No Child Left Behind Act. Argues for educationally justifiable interpretations of equality, accountability, standards, testing, and choice. Suggests an educationally and morally acceptable way of employing an enriched form of tracking to meet the needs of all students. Considers what is at stake for our children, schools, and democracy and offers suggestions for fresh thinking. “A must read for anyone who cares about our troubled public system of education.” —David C. Berliner, Mary Lou Fulton College of Education, Arizona State University “If you only have time to read one book, make it this one. Logical, lucid, wry, and wise, the book brings Noddings’s vast experience to bear on what’s wrong about current and recent efforts at school reform and what appropriate, humane reform might look like.” —Gerald Bracey, independent researcher and writer “Developing themes from her landmark volume The Challenge to Care in Schools, Nel Noddings provides a much-needed perspective on current educational reforms.” —Kenneth R. Howe, University of Colorado, Boulder

The public good is not merely an economic idea of goods and services, but a place where thoughtful debate and examination of the polis can occur. In differentiating the university from corporations and other private sector businesses, Governance and the Public Good provides a framework for discussing the trend toward politicized and privatized postsecondary institutions while acknowledging the parallel demands of accountability and autonomy placed on sites of higher learning. If one accepts the notion of higher education as a public good, does this affect how one thinks about the governance of America's colleges and universities? Contributors to this book explore the role of the contemporary university, its relationship to the public good beyond a simple obligation to educate for jobs, and the subsequent impact on how institutions of higher education are and should be governed.

This book resituates the political correctness debates in the humanities branch of the academy. It contends that conservatives have tainted entire academic disciplines to cause university humanists to go from irrelevant to dangerous overnight.