This paper addresses issues of teacher negotiation and development of a critical literacy curriculum through reporting data from a 3-year ethnographic case study of an urban middle school in the United States. The researcher and a reading teacher met one hour each week to co-develop a critical literacy curriculum. The research findings reveal the possibilities to actualize democratic and liberation education under the pressure of meeting the constantly changing state-level and national proficiency standards in urban schools with limited resources. The study suggests that educational researchers who advocate for progressive education and the school teachers who strive to implement the progressive ideals must join together in a pluralistic community of workers for democracy. The researcher concludes that the field of curriculum studies should be relocated to local school sites in order to understand the transformative goals of educational scholarship. (Contains 47 references.) (Author/RS)