This demonstration brief provides teaching and learning stories from districts and schools implementing PBIS with an integrated systems focus and is organized across the following areas: (a) the context of the school/district, (b) the changes made in the systems, (c) the impact of the changes made in the systems, and (d) next steps to improve the…

In cities where public charter schools serve a large share of students, the costs of ongoing sector divisions and hostility across district and charter lines fall squarely on students and families. Exercising choice and accessing good schools in "high-choice cities" can be difficult for many families, especially some of the most…

There is considerable speculation and some empirical evidence that teacher collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) in urban school districts are more restrictive to district administrators than CBAs in other districts. We build on prior work by comparing urban with nonurban CBAs in three states--California, Michigan, and Washington--and, for a set…

Districts across the country, including some of the nation's largest, are facing a spate of superintendent vacancies. Schools chiefs or interim superintendents will be leaving this year or next in at least 17 well-known districts, including Baltimore, Maryland; Boston, Massachusetts; Clark County, Nevada; Indianapolis, Indiana; and Wake County,…

The Pittsburgh Promise is a scholarship program that provides $5,000 per year toward college tuition for public high school graduates in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who earned a 2.5 GPA and a 90% attendance record. This study used a difference-in-difference design to assess whether the introduction of the Promise scholarship program directly…

This report provides a new resource for understanding the state of urban public schools in the U.S. Geared specifically toward city leaders who want to evaluate how well traditional district and charter schools are serving all their city's children and how their schools compare to those in other cities, the report measures outcomes for all public…

NAEP Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) results in mathematics and reading are based on representative samples of 1,100 to 2,300 public school students at grade 4 and 900 to 2,100 public school students at grade 8 in each participating urban district in 2013. Twenty-one urban districts participated in the 2013 assessments. The assessments…

The Nation's Report Card[TM] informs the public about the academic achievement of elementary and secondary students in the United States. Report cards communicate the findings of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), a continuing and nationally representative measure of achievement in various subjects over time. Results from the…

Written through the prism of Critical Race Theory (CRT), this paper addresses the question, "How can schoolhouses best serve the students within them?" The author begins by introducing "environmental racism" through a review of the literature. The author argues that CRT proponents, by allying with whites and using geographic…

For as long as there have been struggling schools in America's cities, there have been efforts to turn them around. But overall, school turnaround efforts have consistently fallen far short of hopes and expectations. Quite simply, turnarounds are not a scalable strategy for fixing America's troubled urban school systems. Fortunately, findings from…

The recent appointment of a new superintendent, the need for priority-setting in the face of dramatic state budget cuts, and increased national attention on school reform have elevated the performance of the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) to the forefront of local media and civic attention. Consequently, the need for an understandable and commonly…

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), in partnership with the National Assessment Governing Board and the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), created the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) in 2002 to support the improvement of student achievement in the nation's large urban districts. The TUDA focuses attention on urban…

Mayoral control of public schools is nothing new. Boston pioneered the practice in 1992, replacing elected school committee members with mayoral appointees. Since then, a dozen urban districts--including Cleveland, Chicago, New York City, and Washington, D.C.--have undergone a similar change in school governance that has shifted some or most of…

In recent years policymakers have increasingly looked to Extended Learning Time (ELT) as a means of improving student outcomes. As a result, some school districts have increased academic time for students by adding time to the school day or days to the school year. In other communities, schools and community-based organizations have partnered to…

In this study, the authors examined the academic performance of 18 urban districts that participated in the 2009 Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) of the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP). The districts participated in grade 4 and grade 8 reading and mathematics assessments. Eleven of these districts also participated in the…