Urban community leaders describe their perceptions of critical issues in education and offer recommendations for the creation of a college-going culture (CGC). This qualitative study employed a maximum entropy analysis. Results demonstrate critical issues with increasing educational attainment including complexity of the urban school system,…

This study addresses how teacher candidates committed to a social-justice-oriented urban teacher residency programme articulate and reflect why they want to be teachers in high-need public schools and what they expect from teaching so as to ascertain what they expect to do. The participants of this study included 77 graduates who participated in…

This study profiles tutoring programs that empower urban youth within the Regional Institute of Tutorial Education (RITE), a community collaborative of universities, youth agencies, community service organizations, and school districts. Representative members of RITE detail how they address shared urban problems of academic deficits, school…

Supporting students' mental health needs is critical in high-poverty urban school districts where many students are at risk for mental health problems. Although teacher-student relationships are at the core of student mental health promotion in the classroom, many teacher preparation programmes do not adequately prepare pre-service teachers…

Urban colleges and universities not only have a responsibility to engage in activities designed to improve the educational attainment of local urban youth, but also have extensive financial, human, intellectual, and organizational resources that may be directed productively toward this purpose. This article describes the multipronged approach that…

Disparities in college access for underrepresented urban students are one of the most urgent educational problems of America's education system. In response to growing national concern, this longitudinal study investigated how school leaders worked collaboratively with key stakeholders to implement research-supported student services in order to…

The purpose of this study is to review and follow up on a community, school, and university partnership that is in its third year of operation. A dissertation group at a top-tiered research university studied the partnership for the attributes that emerged during its first year of operation. This study is a follow-up to examine whether the…

In her ethnographic study of Lao American students at an urban, public high school, Bic Ngo shows how simplistic accounts of these students smooth over unfinished, precarious identities and contested social relations. Exploring the ways that immigrant youth identities are shaped by dominant discourses that simplify and confine their experiences…

This article reflects on outcomes of a playmaking project conducted with 14-20-year-old urban students in the USA. The playmaking experience was part of a larger research project designed to facilitate students' understandings of the ways in which their own experiences of discrimination are reflected in pervasive inequity at the societal level,…

Using a social justice orientation to teacher education and a sociocultural approach to learning, this exploratory study presents data from twenty pre-service urban teachers about their perceptions of and visions for teaching in urban schools. Findings reveal candidates' desires to care for and build relationships with urban youth as a foundation…

This article investigates the lasting legacy of the National Teacher Corps (NTC), which was created in 1965 by the U.S. federal government with two crucial assumptions: that teaching poor urban children required a very specific skill set and that teacher preparation programs were not providing adequate training in these skills. Analysis reveals…

Despite progress in urban teacher preparation over the past 40 years, concerns still remain about transforming programs and practices in order to affect teachers' capacities to work with culturally diverse communities. These concerns include time in course curricula for discussion and reflection on field-based work, adequate supervision in…

While America fights an international war on terrorism a greater war looms in our own backyard. Poverty, the lack of resources and a failing educational system continues to strangle our urban youth. Violence between youth in urban schools perplexes our society everyday. Within this context lie the ever growing confrontation between black and…

How can we better educate disadvantaged urban students? Drawing on over five years' experience in a broad partnership involving twelve urban professional development schools in five districts, a teachers' union, a comprehensive public university, and several community-based organizations, the contributors to this volume describe how they worked…

Teachers' views and expectations of students directly impact student learning, and unless they are challenged during the preparation period, these views are unlikely to change. This study investigated how a group of prospective teachers explained the shift in their perspectives of low-income, urban youth as a result of participating in a…