Critical Digital Literacies, Educational Reform, and Urban Teachers’ Right to The City

Urban teachers are prime targets in school failure narratives, which underwrite the reorganization of public space through school closure and centralized control of teaching and assessment. This article analyzes teachers’ online comments about education reform through the lens of the right to the city. We collected data using Internet searches linking urban teachers and educational reform. We asked how urban teachers’ utterances function in the struggle over the reorganization of public space implicit in public education reform. Data were coded to identify trends in the arguments used by those who present themselves as urban teachers to respond to educational reform. We found that these arguments mitigated criticism of teacher effectiveness and critiqued reform narratives. The notion of everyday life reaching an oppressive breaking point gives special significance to these arguments and the digital environments in which they are being constructed. Teacherauthors used their location, relationships, and work in cities to reject narratives emanating from outside and above the communities in which they work and isolate the key factors alienating them from their work and workplaces. Public debate over high-stakes testing and national standards represents a watershed moment in the history of urban education in the United States that points to the significance of civic participation and action in and through digitally mediated environments.