Conflict over the curriculum is nothing new in American public education, which has never been insulated from the culture wars. In the past few years, conflict over the teaching of race has torn through history and social studies classrooms, inciting the most serious fight over America's past since the last “history war” in the 1990s. At issue in the current conflict are debates over what schools should teach K-12 students about the history of race and racism in the United States. The chief flashpoint in this fight has been the New York Times’s 1619 Project, led by journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, which seeks to retell the story of America's founding through the lens of racial inequality. Pushback on the 1619 Project has included the Trump administration's 1776 Commission, which produced a series of proposals seeking to ban 1619-aligned curricula and oppose critical race theory.

For this policy dialogue, the HEQ editors asked Donnalie Jamnah and Jonathan Zimmerman to discuss the latest round of history wars in K-12 public education, exploring the extent to which the past helps us understand the troubled present, as well as what the future might hold. Donnalie Jamnah is the K-12 Partnerships Manager for the education team at the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. In that role, she manages several programs including the 1619 Educator Network. Prior to joining the Pulitzer Center, she worked as a classroom teacher and instructional coach. Zimmerman is a past president of the History of Education Society and the Judy and Howard Berkowitz Professor in Education at the University of Pennsylvania. His work examines how education practices and policies have developed over time, and the myths that often cloud our understanding of teaching and learning. He is the author of nine books, including Whose America? Culture Wars in the Public Schools (2002), which the University of Chicago Press will release in a revised twentieth-anniversary edition in 2022.

HEQ policy dialogues are, by design, intended to promote an informal, free exchange of ideas between scholars. At the end of the exchange, we offer a list of references for readers who wish to follow up on sources relevant to the discussion.

This article examines the complex drivers of change in language education that have resulted in Australia having the highest number of students learning Italian in the world. An analysis of academic and non-academic literature, policy documents, and quantitative data helps trace the trajectory of the Italian language in the Australian education system, from the 1960s to the 1990s, illustrating the interaction of different variables that facilitated the shift in Italian's status from a largely immigrant language to one of the most widely studied languages in Australia. This research documents the factors behind the successful mainstreaming of Italian into schools, which, in addition to the active support it received from the Italian community and the Italian government, also included, notably, the ability of different Australian governments to address societal transformation and to respond to the emerging practical challenges in scaling up new language education initiatives in a detailed and comprehensive manner.

The United States occupations of Cuba and Puerto Rico following the War of 1898 instituted immediate reforms to the educational systems of the islands. The imposition of public school systems modeled on those of the United States and a concurrent wave of Protestant schools established by American missionaries are well-known features of the imperialist project. Yet American reforms were shaped by what was known in the nineteenth century as “the school question,” or the controversy over the appropriate relationship between schooling, religion, and the government that had pitted the Protestant majority against Catholics and resulted in a consensus that religious-affiliated education should be permitted but relegated to the private sphere. The implementation of this consensus as the basis of occupation policy in Cuba and Puerto Rico, majority Catholic societies, contributed to the significant growth of a system of private Catholic schools and sparked debate about the relationship between religion, education, and nationalism. In an imperial context, “the school question” led to political polarization in the face of persistent US hegemony.

Since No Child Left Behind was signed into law, test-based accountability has become a core feature of the K-12 public education system in the United States. The approach, it would seem, is here to stay. Yet that is not to say that anything resembling a consensus has emerged. Over the past twenty years, critics have continued to raise questions about the theory of change underlying test-based accountability, and scholars have detailed a variety of unintended consequences associated with it.

If test-based accountability is both likely to persist and imperfect in its design, then it is critical to consider how its shortcomings might be addressed. In service of that aim, and in keeping with the mission of this feature, this Policy Dialogue explores future possibilities by starting, first, with a look at the past. In this particular case, participants were asked to address one simple question: “What have we learned from two decades of high-stakes testing?”

As regular readers of HEQ are aware, these dialogues usually feature a historian in conversation with a scholar or practitioner from the world of policy. In this case, the choice of Diane Ravitch was a natural one, particularly given the fact that she is a member of HEQ's editorial board. A research professor at New York University, she is also a former assistant US secretary of education and the author of several books about measurement and accountability.

Rather than select a single interlocutor, however, the editors chose to pair her with three leaders who represent the broad range of viewpoints in the field: Denise Forte, Princess Moss, and Paul Reville. Denise Forte is the interim CEO of The Education Trust. She brings to our conversation twenty years of experience in congressional staff roles, including as the staff director for the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Princess Moss is vice president of the National Education Association and cochair of the NEA's task force on measurement and accountability. In prior work with the NEA's Executive Committee, she helped develop the group's position on reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act—from NCLB to the Every Student Succeeds Act. Paul Reville is the Francis Keppel Professor of Practice of Educational Policy and Administration at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and former secretary of education for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Nearly a decade before the passage of NCLB, he played a key role in the development of the Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993, which instituted standards-based accountability across the state.

HEQ Policy Dialogues are, by design, intended to promote an informal, free exchange of ideas between scholars. At the end of the exchange, we offer a list of references for readers who wish to follow up on sources relevant to the discussion.

As the world reckons with the existential threat posed by climate change, the US remains deeply divided about the need for action. The solution to this problem, many have argued, begins with teaching environmentalism in primary and secondary schools and fostering receptivity to environmental issues and environmental science among the next generation. This strategy, of course, comes with its own set of challenges. Where does climate change fit in the school curriculum? What can teachers do in their classrooms to mitigate the influence of partisan politics? How can an abstract global phenomenon be made real at the local level? If K-12 education has a role to play in the broader project of environmental conservation, such questions need to be answered.

For this Policy Dialogue, the HEQ editors asked Zeke Baker and Hunter Gehlbach to explore the challenges and opportunities inherent in educating the next generation about climate change, drawing on analogues from the past and scholarship from the present to help us better understand the future. Gehlbach is a professor and vice dean at the Johns Hopkins University School of Education. Thanks to a mid-career fellowship from the Spencer Foundation, much of his research focus has shifted toward investigating how social psychological approaches might improve environmental education. Baker is an assistant professor of sociology at Sonoma State University. His research explores the development and use of climate science, especially insofar as climate knowledge is embedded in social relationships of power.

HEQ Policy Dialogues are, by design, intended to promote an informal, free exchange of ideas between scholars. At the end of the exchange, we offer references for readers who wish to follow up on sources relevant to the discussion.