This article contributes to the practice of critical policy analysis by using de Certeau’s concept of consumption to analyze how writing teachers resist policies that work to systemize and commodify student writing. Through narratives, we represent the ways teachers tactically and strategically sidestepped the mandated curriculum in an effort to support their sociocultural views of writing. We use a poem built from participant responses to represent discomfort that teachers felt from dominant forms of organization that tried to define writing instruction. These multiple forms of representation extend the practice of critical policy analysis by allowing us to evoke the grind of resistance to local policy.

What follows is a transcript of the first such community conversation focused on the recent progression of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation. During the 2021-22 legislative session at least 15 states have considered or passed bills that would affect ways of discussing, addressing, or interacting with LGBTQ+ youth in schools. This legislation includes prohibitions of curriculum and instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity for students in kindergarten through 8th grade, prohibitions against school personnel providing gender-affirming care, requirements for parental consent for club participation (including LGBTQ+ clubs), requirements for parental consent regarding pronoun usage, the banning of books with LGBTQ+ themes in schools and libraries, and protections for teachers who refuse to use a student’s pronoun that is different from their sex at birth. Our conversation focused on understanding the evolution of these types of policies and the potential impact on students, families, teachers, and school leaders.

The current neoliberal policy regime that has dictated school reform policies such as standardized testing and performance accountability challenges the professional values of teachers. As a result, they become policy subjects who either accept or resist the neoliberal agenda. Given the high turnover of novice teachers in schools governed by neoliberal policies, this study sought to understand first-year teachers’ feelings of efficacy and career decisions. This paper applies Duncan-Andrade’s (2009) theoretical concepts of false and critical hope to the narrative experiences of three first-year teachers working in high-poverty schools. The findings indicate that teachers’ ideologies may match the false hope of equal opportunity and hard work that are embedded in the neoliberal policy regime. Additionally, first-year teachers may also develop some skepticism of the polices they are forced to implement. However, if they are unsure how to express their skepticism, they may experience hopelessness over time. This paper argues that critical hope presents an opportunity for teachers, administrators, and students to confront neoliberal policies that contradict their vision of schooling and provide a less prescriptive, more universal education. Additionally, it reveals insights into how policy regimes impact the experiences and identities of novice teachers.

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Background/Context: In this study, we draw on evolving definitions of opportunity to learn (OTL) to conceptualize mathematics OTL has having two main components: structural OTL, defined by gatekeeping access to specific mathematics courses through the process of tracking, and instructional OTL, defined by the learning experiences of students in their mathematics courses. We also conceptualize both of these aspects of OTL as occurring in the current educational milieu, where sociopolitical factors reward or punish specific school strategies. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This study seeks to examine, using an OTL framework, the relationship between high school math teachers’ instructional practices, students’ course tracks in mathematics, students’ perceptions of mathematics, and students’ distal measures of academic attainment, including completion of advanced math coursework and completion of a high school diploma. Research Design: Using latent class analysis, this secondary data analysis analyzed the 2009 High School Longitudinal Study data from the National Center for Educational Statistics to examine mathematics instructional OTL based on math teachers’ objectives of emphasis and its relationship to structural OTL in the form of course tracking. Findings/Results: We identified “Enriched” and “Rote Knowledge and Skills” latent classes of math OTL. Teachers providing Enriched OTL emphasize the widest variety of objectives, including cognitively demanding problem-solving and logic objectives and practical applications of mathematics, while teachers providing Rote Knowledge OTL emphasize basic computation, algorithms, and computation skills. Black students, Hispanic students, and students living in poverty were more likely to be in math OTL classes focused primarily on basic concepts, algorithms, and computation, with little to no emphasis in more applied and cognitively demanding math course objectives, and they were less likely to be enrolled in advanced ninth-grade math courses. Students in Rote Knowledge OTL courses with little to no emphasis in applied and cognitively demanding math course objectives had lower mathematics identity and self-efficacy, and math achievement. Conclusions/Recommendations: This study adds to the literature suggesting that students in the United States experience an opportunity gap rather than an achievement gap, and that opportunity gaps are both structural and instructional. This study also adds to the literature suggesting student sorting systems are inherently unequal and must be addressed through policy, leadership, and cultural shifts in both schools and districts.