ABSTRACT
Th is chapter frames the Social Justice, Peace, and Environmental Education (SJPEE) project within the historical context of the neoliberal reform movement that has dominated the national educational agenda since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and his administration’s A Nation at Risk report (1983). It will examine 1) the movement for academic standards and high-stakes testing, 2) the taxpayer revolt and public retreat from social justice programs, 3) the movement for charter schools, vouchers and privatization, and, 4) the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB, 2001). Finally, the chapter will demonstrate the pressing need for a new vision for educational reform that will be genuinely democratic, for democracy is both a pre-condition and an essential concomitant of social justice. Over the past quarter century, the ideal of democratic education has been subverted by an anti-democratic “reform” project based on the ideology of neoliberalism. But this era is fading fast, for the contradictions and limitations in neoliberalism have brought it to an impasse, which opens the way to restoring the democratic purpose of education, and thus to advance the ideal of social justice.
