Rethinking Schools is a grassroots publisher that amplifies social justice education inside and outside of the classroom. Our magazine, books, and other resources promote equity and racial justice in the classroom.
1986: Milwaukee education activists — teachers, teacher educators, and community members — meet to talk about how they can bring more critical voices into the conversation about public schools and libraries. The first issue of Rethinking Schools magazine is published — initially, as a newsprint tabloid, distributed free of charge with a press run of 6,000.
1988: RS editors and writers participate in a gathering of social justice teachers, parents, union and community activists in Lisle, Illinois, that leads to the formation of the National Coalition of Education Activists (NCEA), a multiracial coalition of progressive education activists.
1988: Rethinking Schools editors are central in community organizing in Milwaukee to establish La Escuela Fratney, Wisconsin’s first two-way Spanish-English bilingual school.
1989: Rethinking Schools’ first foray into Palestine solidarity, with editors’ trip to East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza, on an educators delegation sponsored by the Middle East Justice Network.
1990: RS reports on grassroots struggles against “ability group” tracking in Selma, Alabama, and later co-sponsors a national speaking tour of Alabama activists/advocates.
1991: Barbara Miner hired as RS managing editor, Mike Trokan as office manager. Until now, entirely volunteer-run, the audacity of Rethinking Schools hiring employees signals that we believe we are here for the long haul. Miner was instrumental leading RS in the fight against school privation in our booklets and the tabloid magazine.
1991: The American Indian Movement (AIM) organizes against Columbus Day parades in Denver. Rethinking Columbus published; sells 1,000 copies a day for three months, more than a quarter million copies in its first years of publication. We launch a Rethinking Columbus project with the Network of Educators on the Americas (now Teaching for Change) — lead workshops for thousands of teachers throughout the United States and Canada.
1992: Our Rethinking Columbus project expands into a Rethinking Our Classrooms project, with the first institute led in Milwaukee before the annual NCEA conference.
1992: False Choices booklet published — critiques vouchers and other attempts to use “school choice” to undermine public schools. We distribute it to all RS subscribers.
1994: Rethinking Our Classrooms published — first K–12 storying of social justice teaching in all disciplines. It sells tens of thousands of copies and inspires other publishers to initiate “teaching for social justice” books.
