In the current restrictive educational atmosphere of high-stakes testing and narrowed, scripted curriculum, teachers' voices are often muted by bureaucratic mandates. The narratives in this collection, first-person accounts by teachers who had much to lose both professionally and personally, resound with courage, tenacity, and hope. Their combined stories create a frightening and compelling picture of "education as usual" in America.

ReLeah Cossett Lent and Gloria Pipkin are the perfect editors to prepare such a book, having told their own courageous story in the extraordinary account, At the Schoolhouse Gate. They know what is demanded of teachers each day and how the decisions made in boardrooms and legislative chambers have far-reaching, detrimental effects on those who have the least power: students. They have gathered the stories of dedicated, principled teachers whose costly stands on critical educational issues create a disturbing mosaic. This book may well change the way you view your own neighborhood school. Read about

• an elementary teacher interrogated at his home by a sheriff for posting flawed standardized test items online
• an adult education teacher who uncovered the dismissal of 522 students from Alabama schools in an attempt to raise the district's test scores
• a member of the National Reading Panel who filed the minority report, shuffled out of sight, which questioned the panel's so-called scientific findings.