Over a decade ago, the first edition of "City Schools and the American Dream" debuted just as reformers were gearing up to make sweeping changes in urban education. Despite the rhetoric and many reform initiatives, urban schools continue to struggle under the weight of serious challenges. What went wrong and is there hope for future…

This paper compares and contrasts two required building level school violence measures under NCLB, arrests and incidents of well-defined school misconduct acts, across 20 years of Pennsylvania's approximately 3,000 public school buildings. Generally, both arrests for school violence and incidents of school violence are rare events. Over 20 years,…

The reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) is 3 years overdue, and the Obama administration, through Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, has explained the urgency of revising and reauthorizing the law. Attention has been focused most acutely on the provisions that directly relate to academic performance and accountability.…

This paper considers contemporary "moral panics" around the underachievement of boys in school examinations in the UK and America. In the UK, in particular, the underachievement of boys is central to current "crisis accounts" about falling standards and failing pupils. "Underachievement" is a familiar word to those…

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) reauthorization requires State Education Agencies to establish a school choice policy for students attending a persistently dangerous school as defined by the state. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) stipulates that a school can be deemed unsafe as a whole entity or for an individual student who is the…

The image of schooling tends to be benign, lulling parents and guardians into an assumption of safety for at least 6 hours each weekday. The complement to safety as an imagined state of schooling contains incidents of school violence and tragedy that feed communities' and parents' primeval fears about the well being of their children. The…

Backers of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) based their support on the belief that teachers and administrators primarily were responsible for low levels of achievement by America's poor. But this one-sided view is both inadequate and unsupported by the evidence. The author argues that harsh social policies and the pernicious effects of poverty are more…

This article discusses one of the best defenses against a violent threat in schools -- practicing emergency and lockdown drills. In some buildings, classroom doors lack locks and exterior doors are old. Other buildings have public announcement systems that do not work well throughout a school building, or that lack speakers in restrooms. Still…

The reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) provides Congress with an opportunity to amend the Unsafe School Choice Option (USCO) provision to ensure that the intent of the law is met. Based on the experience the Office of Inspector General (OIG) gained through audits, they prepared this report to inform Department…

Despite its flaws, the USCO created the conditions for an unprecedented national statement on school safety. This study asks: How do states conceptualize school safety? While critics have denounced the dizzying assortment of states' persistently dangerous criteria, we argue that these differences have been grossly exaggerated. We contend that…

The No Child Left Behind Act requires state boards of education to identify schools that are unsafe. Schools that are identified by measures such as suspension and expulsion rates are subsequently labeled "persistently dangerous." To our knowledge there is no published research that attempts to characterize fighting behavior among youths…

Compelling empirical research shows that a positive and sustained school climate promotes students' academic achievement and healthy development. Not surprisingly, a positive school climate also promotes teacher retention, which itself enhances student success. Yet the knowledge of the effects of school climate on learning has not been translated…

The present study examined how public school administrators negotiate discipline policies that are intended to protect the common good and the educational rights of students with disabilities. We investigated the political nature of these decisions and the strategies used in reaching them through interviews with administrators in 9 public high…

In this essay, Tyson Lewis theorizes current lockdown practices, zero-tolerance policies, and No Child Left Behind initiatives in U.S. schooling by drawing on Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben's analysis of the concentration camp and the state of exception. Agamben's theory of the camp provides a challenging, critical vantage point for looking…

With its roots in clinical and educational psychology, school psychology is an ever-changing field that encompasses a diversity of topics. "The Oxford Handbook of School Psychology" synthesizes the most vital and relevant literature in all of these areas, producing a state-of-the-art, authoritative resource for practitioners,…