ABSTRACT
Critical education scholars and educational researchers have thoroughly documented the deleterious effects of neoliberal ideology on K-12 schools, teacher satisfaction and student learning (Dorn, 2007; Hursh, 2008; Au, 2009; Nichols & Berliner, 2007; Weiner, 2012). Indeed, concerns over neoliberal impacts on education have drawn much focus in critical education scholarship for the better part of the last two decades. It has been important to study and critique the problems of using market-based logics to guide what should be pedagogical decisions. Yet - though much of this scholarship comes from professors working inside Schools of Education - Schools of Education themselves have not been sites of contestation of the policies which have ravaged schools and teaching professions. Schools of Education, as a whole, have not pushed back against the neoliberal policies which have become so typical in K-12 schooling. Nor have they engaged in resistance in how these policies influence teacher education. This stance of relative compliance influences both policy and practice, since institutions represent the contexts in which future teachers learn what the work of teaching comprises. This book describes how education faculty in New York State sought to intervene in a policy initiative in order to interrupt the negative effects of a standardized assessment on the development of teacher candidates, their own practice, and the field of teacher education.
