Reviews "Education and Democratic Theory: Finding a Place for Community Participation in Public School Reform" (A. Belden Fields and Walter Feinberg) and "The Color of School Reform: Race, Politics, and the Challenge of Urban Education" (J. Henig, R. Hula, M. Orr, and D. Pedescleaux). Both books examine the political aspects of…

These books are, in many ways, companion volumes addressed to educators working on curricular issues and educational reform. Both consider how postmodernism, feminism, and cultural studies contribute to contemporary educational theory and social criticism. The authors make a convincing case for critical "border pedagogy" that examines…

Reviews "The Politics of School Reform 1870-1940" by Paul Peterson, and "Power and the Promise of School Reform: Grassroots Movements During the Progressive Era" by William J. Reese. Notes that these two studies serve to bring politics, and political variables, back into the debate over educational policymaking, but are…

Reviews an ethnographic analysis of Teach for America, a 1990 educational reform program that illustrates how underlying assumptions about "marginal" urban and rural students and their "deficient" environments solidify existing power structures, acculturate students to middle-class norms, generate resistance to teachers, and…