watches or listens to the news regularly knows that education in our nation is in a crisis. As a historian of literacy educa- tion, I know that, while there is a great deal of false propaganda both for and against public education during these ucational system of the United States. Where there is crisis, there is attention, and where there's attention there is usually money. The current crisis in education has two essential facets: accountability and national- ization. well as being the most visible of public institutions, and as costs rise, politicians have been making hay by calling for accountability for the expenditure of those complexities of educating large numbers of students, they tend to treat schools as though they were facto- ries that are producing flawed products. They call for teachers to be judged by the quality of the "prod- ucts" they produce (i.e., their students). states that have signed on to Race for the Top are re- quired to have accountability systems where student performance becomes a part of teacher quality meas- ures. the bar for people entering the teaching profession. It now costs nearly $1,000 for a teacher candidate to take all of the tests and pass all of the clearances nec- |