In the late-2000s, Washington, DC achieved national notoriety for its embrace of market accountability in public schools and support for a steadily expanding charter sector. At the same time, the DC government pursued a concerted effort to attract new residents and investment to the city, a project that bore fruit in the form of some of the…

The Choice Neighborhoods Initiative (CNI), launched in 2010, provides funds for public housing authorities and other local entities and aims to redevelop distressed housing projects and transform the neighborhoods surrounding them into "mixed-income, high opportunity communities." From its inception, the CNI has included a strong focus…

This article discusses the notion of action and personal agency. The author discusses his experiences constructing an arts installation that supported a grassroots effort to revitalize Hunts Point, a community in the South Bronx that is home to 11,000 families, eighteen waste transfer stations, 40% of New York City's sewage, all of the Bronx's…

This case study focuses on the way a neighborhood association connects schools to broad change in an urban neighborhood of a large Midwestern city. The first section provides a review of the literature on community involvement in school and neighborhood reform. It reviews the historical origins of the current school-community relationship, the…

The U.S. Department of Education's Promise Neighborhood Initiative (DCPNI) is one of the Obama administration's major antipoverty initiatives and a core strategy of the White House's Neighborhood Revitalization Initiative. It is intended to improve educational outcomes by creating a continuum of school readiness, academic services, and family and…

This article examines the theory and evidence behind the increased policy and scholarly interest in the role that schools might play in promoting neighborhood revitalization, focuses on the extent to which schools might be a key component in the growing efforts across the country to address urban poverty by creating and sustaining mixed-income…

In schools across the country, students routinely encounter a range of safety issues--from overt acts of violence and bullying to subtle intimidation and disrespect. Though extreme incidents such as school shootings tend to attract the most attention, day-to-day incidents such as gossip, hallway fights, and yelling matches between teachers and…

The powerful, reciprocal connection between school and housing segregation has long been recognized. The housing-school link was a key element in both the 1968 Kerner Commission Report and in the legislative history of the Fair Housing Act. The relation of school and housing segregation was also explored in a series of school desegregation cases…

This report is the first phase of a three-part Quality Schools Project to help the District of Columbia create a firm analytical basis for planning for quality schools to meet the needs of the city's families. The Quality School Project is a joint effort of the DC Office of the State Superintendent of Education, the 21st Century School Fund, the…