A number of urban U.S. cities that were traditionally Black and underinvested are now becoming enclaves to whites and upper-middle-class people. Consequently, a growing body of research on schools and gentrification is emerging. While most of this research has focused on the shifts that neighborhoods and schools undergo due to gentrification, we…

School counselors serve students' academic, career, and social/emotional needs through a comprehensive school counseling program, and center their work on concepts of equity, advocacy, social justice, and systemic change, to remove barriers and increase opportunities for all PK-12 students. Charter schools are also unique public school settings as…

This article uses interest convergence and market-based theories to examine a recently-adopted controlled choice school admissions model intended to desegregate a diverse, urban school district. Drawing on longitudinal, qualitative interviews with advantaged parents who articulated support for controlled choice, we find that these parents'…

Four-day school weeks are becoming increasingly common in the U.S., but their effect on achievement is not well-understood. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we conduct the most representative student-level analysis to date of the effects of four-day weeks on student achievement and within-year growth using NWEA MAP Growth data. We…

The creation of trauma-sensitive schools has become an increasingly central focus of school reform and urban school reform in particular. While these initiatives have been framed as social justice imperatives, this framing warrants critique. This critical analysis surveys the history, models, and documented outcomes of trauma-sensitive approaches…

There is a growing literature studying the 'non-traditional' type of international schools. However, a less explored and under-theorised area is the changing dynamics of the global-local interactions in the way these international schools are being redefined and shaped by local processes, regimes of control, and mechanisms. Drawing on empirical…

This mixed-methods case study examines the emergency financial management legislation enacted in Michigan from 2009 to 2018 as an education policy for governance reform in three local school districts: Detroit, Highland Park, and Muskegon Heights. From its inception, the emergency financial manager law was an intervention strategy for local…

In "The Enduring Promise of America's Great City Schools," Michael Casserly presents a forthright assessment of the past performance and future potential of large urban PreK-12 school districts in the United States. From a vantage of nearly five decades of work within the Council of the Great City Schools, which now represents…

Whole school restorative practice (WSRP) calls for creating supportive, equitable schools, requiring broad systems change. This case study explores the journeys of three schools piloting WSRP in one Midwestern district and examines how school leaders designed and implemented within their school contexts. Schools were purposefully selected from…

Researchers have shown that school districts can leverage the significant changes made to federal and state accountability systems to achieve more equitable outcomes for all students (Burns et al., 2019; Dodman, 2019; Hyler et al., 2021) It is also known that classroom practitioners use their agency to support or stall district level initiatives…

There were two purposes for this transformative mixed method study with an advocacy lens: to examine (1) the implementation of community school programming in a racially and ethnically diverse, high-poverty urban school and (2) the impact of implementation on student achievement. In-depth interviews, along with achievement data from two cohorts of…

Over the past two years, there have been calls for racial justice in nearly every sphere of social and political life, including the field of education. As much of the nation reeled at yet another life violently taken at the hands of a police officer, education workers faced the challenge of responding to local and national demands for policy…

In the spring of 2020, schools of all sectors across all nations were forced to close their doors as COVID-19 rippled through communities. Drawing upon the concept of liminality, which refers to a stage, state, or period of transition (Soderlund & Borg, 2017), this study investigated the intersections of the experience of liminality during the…

The voices of students of color often are left out of discussions of urban school reform conversations when they should be central to reform efforts. Jonathan Collins suggests looking at democratic reform as an avenue to bring those voices forward. Participatory budgeting, for example, introduces students to the idea that they could decide how…

Movement Integration has emerged as a new teaching practice involving infusing physical activity into classroom teaching to support learning. Implementing Movement Integration in primary and lower secondary schools has proven challenging, and teachers need help transforming Movement Integration into meaningful pedagogy. In this article, I examine…