Stella C. Batagiannis is Associate Professor of Educational Leadership in the College of Education and Public Policy at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne. Her research interests are in qualitative research focused on courage in leadership, the dispositions of leadership, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), and action research. She serves as co-editor of scholarlypartnershipsedu.Barry Kanpol is Dean of the College of Education and Public Policy at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne. His research, which includes 12 books and more than 75 articles, has linked the «critical» role of teachers in the social order to race, class, and gender-structural configurationsAnna V. Wilson is Associate Professor of Cultural and Curricular Studies in the College of Educational Studies at Chapman University. Her publications include LGBTQ Teacher and Student Voices: Changing the Culture of Schooling (2012); Oh Do I Remember: African American Teachers’ Voices During Desegregation (2001); and Introduction to Education: Teaching in a Diverse Society (2004).

• Contents: Kenneth Tye: Introduction – Barry Kanpol: True to Self and the Institutionalization of a New Public Identity: It’s Not Only up to Barack Obama! – Kathleen A. Murphey: The First Step toward School Reform: Building Alliances of Consent through Deliberative Democracy – Jonathan C. Hilpert: Deciphering the Narrative of School Failure: Misconceptions about Public School Reform – Stella C. Batagiannis: Obama’s Educational Policy: Disposition of Authenticity or the Politics of The Emperor’s New Clothes – Marisol Rexach/Tom Wilson: Obama Drama: A Play among Hope, Education, and Discontinuity – Brian L. Fife: Federalism, Education, and Citizenship in an Era of Democratic Deliberation – Jane A. Grant: A New American Social Compact: Finding the Space and Compassion to Discover Common Purposes – Penny S. Bryan: Democracy’s Hope – Stella C. Batagiannis: Afterword.