Yes We Can: Improving Urban Schools through Innovative Educational Reform is a empirically-based book on urban education reform to not only proclaim that hope is alive for urban schools, but to also produce a body of literature that examines current practices and then offer practical implications for all involved in this arduous task. This book is…

Students at Elmont Memorial Junior/Senior High School in a working class neighborhood of Nassau County, Long Island, can count on graduating on time with their friends and going on to college. So can students at the Frederick Douglass Academy in Harlem. Students at both schools take the PSAT early and often, visit colleges each year, take Advanced…

An indispensable book for administrators, policymakers, scholars, and practitioners, "Urban School Reform" presents a revealing portrait of reform efforts while identifying the full range of issues that education reformers will need to address in districts across the country in the years ahead. Today's urban school reformers face a…

States that central to any efforts to improve urban schools is the relationship between the school managers and the teachers' union. Recommendations include creating learner-centered schools; focusing on improving the knowledge and skills of teachers; negotiating "Living Contracts"; and expanding school choice by making public schools…

Compares the Schools Reaching Out programs at two elementary schools in Roxbury (MA) and New York City with four similar projects elsewhere. Describes how an intervenor not involved with the ordinary operation of the school can help design, direct, motivate, and assess a school outreach program. (DM)

For more than a decade, a principal of a large innercity elementary school in New Haven, Connecticut, convened a committee of parents and school personnel to interview candidates for positions as teachers and aides. About 50 persons were hired using this process, and all the teachers were successful. The interviewing process has since become…

Older volunteers are helping urban students in developing the confidence and skills to succeed. Older adults, with their life experience and strong commitment to social service, can make a special contribution in underfunded and understaffed urban schools.

An urban school district was able to improve its students' reading achievement substantially by implementing a variety of literary coaching models. The six literary coaching process strategies used by schools are discussed.

This case study describes processes in an urban high school, which contribute to excellence in urban pedagogy, and investigates teachers' and educational leaders' perceptions of the factors influencing their commitment to school success. Six themes related to excellence in urban pedagogy were identified. Data in the form of semi-structured…

Principals in urban high schools can play an important role in improving school effectiveness by adopting an educational philosophy that focuses on development of the students' sense of self-worth. (PGD)

The Los Angeles Public School District is experiencing considerable overcrowding and deterioration of its public schools without adequate funding or planning to build new ones. This document presents the recommendations of a task force that assessed the district's public school crisis in the following areas: school maintenance; new facilities…

Commitment is combined to classic learning with innovative citizenship education grounded in public debate by the Northtown Academy campus of Chicago International Charter School (CICS). KIPP Academics rely on academic pressure and tough love to help students meet state standards.

Three urban school principals from the US have described their efforts to turn around their performing schools and create sustainable leadership. They describe about the challenges they had faced while reorganizing the school, recruiting new teachers, spending extra time on teacher evaluations and remaining the instructional leader.

During the past several years, school superintendents and educational leaders from around the country have convened at the Pearson Education Instructional Leadership Council to discuss solutions for some of the most pressing issues they confront, especially regarding teaching and learning. Several common change principles have emerged from these…

This book presents essays written by school reformers that discuss the reform movement and examine the partnership that inspired the creation of small, intimate school communities known as charters. They also reflect on the comprehensive changes that inform each charter and the personal and collective struggles to institutionalize these new…