Research indicates that there is a discrepancy in academic outcomes between students attending school in urban environments and those attending school in suburban environments. While educational reform efforts have focused on providing in-school academic interventions, they often do not consider variables that address well-being, nor are they…

Discover how one public higher education institution was able to succeed despite the many obstacles and challenges that it faced. This is the story of how and why Baruch College of The City University of New York became a "positive outlier," overcoming serious financial constraints, physical space limitations, and other difficulties to…

In recent years, arts education has become a focus of some school improvement efforts, with consistent evidence emerging that vibrant arts programs can improve factors commonly listed as goals in school improvement plans, including engagement, attendance, and school climate. Such models mainly make use of arts integration, an approach that marries…

This longitudinal case study utilizes critical event narrative methodology and intersectionality to examine the experiences of one female Caribbean teacher as she sought to enact her vision of socially just science education in secondary schools in the USA. This research explored how the convergence of racial, cultural, and science teaching…

Despite ongoing reform efforts, academic achievement in the U.S. educational system is declining both on internal measures as well as on international comparative assessments. While students from affluent backgrounds continue to do well academically, there is a growing achievement gap as underprivileged urban students fall further behind. This…

There was a period in U.S. history when Black teachers were heavily employed within the educational workforce and were leading examples of excellence (Anderson, 1988). Black teachers, teaching within their communities, were able to directly impact their students' achievement and behavior while also reinforcing shared family values. As a result of…

Three 1.5-generation immigrant, Nigerian American, women students attending a diverse urban university participated in face-to-face interviews and a focus group to share their experiences as science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors. Qualitative analysis revealed influences from their African heritage, identities as African…

The challenge of reopening US public schools in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic has high-lighted the significant role that local teachers unions play in setting policy. The politics of school reopening during the pandemic has brought to the national spotlight the outsized role that teachers unions play in managing big cities. Bureau of Labor…

This study was guided by two key questions: First, what dimensions of continuous improvement do school leaders believe are most important to foster student performance in urban K-12 schools? Second, how does Alabama compare to national leaders regarding their approach to continuous improvement? Initially developed by Meehan et al. (2002), the…

The COVID-19 global pandemic created challenges for educators across the United States and worldwide. Without the skills, prior experience, or preparational training, educators were tasked with continuing to provide instruction (and support) for their students while teaching remotely. Due to these challenges in education, the researcher chose to…

Increasingly, immigrant families in North America are sending their newborns to the parents' country of origin to be raised by relatives until the children reach school age. Then they are returned to their parents. This practice results from lack of childcare in the host countries, low wages among immigrant parents, and/or intergenerational…

This paper is based on the ethnographic multiple case study of four refugee background youths from Burma at four different schools in a midwestern urban school district in the US. My research finds that the normalization of English constructed the focal youths' language-related identities. I also argue that through this normalization, language…

This report highlights the results of Austin Independent School District's 4th- and 8th-grade students on the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation's Report Card.

This report highlights the results of Austin ISD 4th- and 8th-grade students on the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation's Report Card.

This paper examines the perceptions of three Somali mothers on science, science topics taught in urban US schools and the challenges that they encountered in dealing with science and their own social and cultural practices. The article focuses on Somali mothers, who were highly interested in articulating how science and science professions could…