Students go on strike.

• Author: Jaffe, Sarah

The teachers' union in Philadelphia lost the legal right to strike when the state took over the city's public schools more than a decade ago. Then, last October, the Philadelphia School Reform Commission unilaterally voided the teachers' contracts in the name of budget cuts. The students, in a move that is becoming emblematic of the new wave of organizing spreading across the country, went on strike because the teachers could not. Outside of the High School for Creative and Performing Arts in Philly, around 175 students danced and sang, holding signs that declared that education is a right--and that their teachers deserve health care.

Not too far away, in Newark, New Jersey, this September Newark Student Union activists took two days of action. They held blockades in front of three local high schools in the morning to encourage other students to join them and then marched to downtown Newark, where the Board of Education is located.

On the first day, they held a "know your rights" training.

On the second day, they shut down a major intersection. For nine hours.

"We're known for having events for long periods of time," Tanaisa Brown, secretary of the Newark Student Union, says. "The police think that we're going to just give up after an hour because kids have to use the bathroom, and they're not disciplined enough and have to eat eventually. We had all that planned out."

The Newark Student Union was founded in the spring of 2012 to fight budget cuts. This fall, the students were calling attention to the "One Newark" reform plan, heavy on charter schools and privatization, pushed by school superintendent Cami Anderson. Like the Philadelphia schools, Newark's schools are controlled by the state, and Anderson was appointed by Republican Governor Chris Christie.

In Colorado, it was a school board resolution that aimed to change the history curriculum that drove students into the streets. A Jefferson County school board member proposed a resolution that Advanced Placement history should emphasize "patriotism and ... the benefits of the free enterprise system" and should not "encourage or condone civil disorder." Apparently, though, the students had already learned about civil disobedience. Following two "sick-outs" by teachers angered by the board's decision, several of them took to Facebook and proposed a walkout. More than 1,000 students joined the protest.

According to Ashlyn Maher, one of the students who planned the action, students have...