This book takes a close look at the tensions that exist between federal mandates and contemporary literacy needs and how those tensions impact classroom practices, challenging readers to (re)consider whether meeting test performance benchmarks should be the hallmark of school success.

Current U.S. school reform efforts link school success, student achievement, and teacher performance to standardized tests and narrowly prescribed curricula. How do test-driven, mandated curricula in urban school systems overtly and subtly impact teachers' efforts to provide technologically advanced, challenging classroom environments that foster literacy development for all students? How do these federal policies affect instruction at the classroom level? The premise of this book is that, in order for teachers to confront and/or counteract the pressures placed on them from these policies, it is necessary to first understand them. This book takes a close look at the tensions that exist between federal mandates and contemporary literacy needs and how those tensions impact classroom practices. Providing a clear sociopolitical overview and analysis, it combines theoretical explanations with examples from current ethnographic research. Readers are challenged to (re)consider whether meeting test performance benchmarks should be the hallmark of school success when the goal of test performance supersedes the goal of producing highly literate, productive citizens of the future.

"This book will certainly stimulate important discussion." Jacqueline Edmondson, Associate Vice President and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education, Penn State University, USA "This volume not only lauds the possibilities of the power of the new technologies but critiques its uses and makes suggestions on how the power of technology can be used in school and community settings to empower learners." Yetta Goodman, Regents' Professor Emerita, University of Arizona, USA