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The Supreme Court ruled in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973) that there is no constitutional right to education, but that has not stopped families and education activists from arguing that this right is implicit in the Fourteenth Amendment. Nicholas Tampio contends that, based upon the history of federal involvement in education, a constitutional right to education would likely lead to an increase in high-stakes testing. The way to prepare young people for citizenship is to raise them in communities, including communities of color, that govern the schools themselves without the oversight of federal judges.

Parents, educators, and students have criticized the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects for expecting students to regurgitate evidence from assigned texts rather than think for themselves. This article argues that this popular critique is accurate and that the Common Core, regardless of its advocates' intentions, has undemocratic consequences. Initially, the essay considers a democratic argument for the Common Core. Then, I show that the standards themselves, faithfully implemented, lead to assignments and assessments that give students few opportunities to articulate their own thoughts or responses. I argue that this kind of education does not inculcate democratic habits and that democratic education requires empowering people in the local school community to construct their own education standards.

This article, titled "Kantian Perfectionists, Muslim Perfectionists, and Intelligent Devils," discusses the book "Kant, Liberalism, and the Meaning of Life" by Jeffrey Church. The article explores the idea that progressive politics can be seen as a kind of religion, providing meaning to people's lives by fighting against ignorance and oppression. Church argues that Kant's philosophy offers a way to inspire progressive politics and counteract nationalist and right-wing populist movements. He suggests that Kant's philosophy, when understood in its entirety, provides a naturalistic and substantive vision of the meaning of life that is compatible with liberalism and cosmopolitanism. The article also examines how Kantian political liberalism can engage with different religious perspectives, such as Muslim perfectionists, and the challenges and potential strategies involved in doing so. [Extracted from the article]

Political theorists argue that justice requires treating people's time as having equal worth. In this article, I contend that justice sometimes requires making exceptions to uniform time rules. The article focuses on New York State's regulations for nonpublic schools and how they affect Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) Jewish day schools, or yeshivas. Dissatisfied yeshiva graduates, the state education department, and several liberal political theorists assert that the state should pressure yeshivas to dedicate more time to secular studies. Reconstructing Horace Kallen's argument against the melting pot conception of citizenship and for cultural pluralism, I maintain that liberal states should be generous toward non-liberal ways of life on condition that they do not systematically abuse children or pose a danger to public safety. A liberal education landscape may sustain many kinds of schooling, including ones that outsiders think waste time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]