An urban Pre-K through 5th grade school referred to as Westvale Elementary School was the focal point for this research study. Westvale was located within an urban district in New York State that was host to approximately 20,000 students. Both the school and the district were labeled as failing under the No Child Left Behind Act. Foucauldian…

An analysis of data from the second year of The After-School Corporation's (TASC's) national demonstration of an expanded school day for elementary and middle school students shows that ExpandED Schools improved school culture, decreased rates of students' chronic absenteeism and helped students develop positive learning habits and attitudes.…

Expanding accountability systems that impose policies across all schools have amplified assertions that rural teacher labor markets differ from non-rural labor markets in meaningful ways that complicate rural schools' efforts to comply with the policy directives. The analysis presented here examines this claim by exploring teacher labor market…

Eva Moskowitz (the founder and CEO of the Success Charter Network in Harlem) and Arin Lavinia offer practical, classroom-tested ideas for dramatically improving teaching and learning. Moskowitz and Lavinia reveal how a charter school in the middle of Harlem, enrolling neighborhood children selected at random, emerged as one of the top schools in…

Unlike predecessor Michelle Rhee, Chancellor Kaya Henderson of the District of Columbia Public Schools works to balance accountability with collegiality. Kaya Henderson's childhood in one of New York's most affluent areas, Westchester County, could not have been more different from that of the middle school students she taught at Lola Rodriguez…

This article examines the micropolitics of implementing New York City's Schoolwide Performance Bonus Program and school governance bodies (Compensation Committees) that determined distribution of school-level rewards among personnel. Drawing on a two-year, mixed-methods study, the author finds that although most participants surveyed described a…

There is growing evidence that the middle school years are critical to students' long-term success. In New York City, middle schools have been the target of several high-profile improvement initiatives. One factor that has the potential to facilitate or complicate these efforts is the stability of the middle school teaching force. Yet there have…

The technical appendices presented in this document correspond to the synthesis report, "'Who Stays and Who Leaves?' Findings from a Three-Part Study of Teacher Turnover in NYC Middle Schools." The appendices include: (1) Description of Data Source and Samples; (2) Methods; and (3) Who Are the Middle School Teachers in NYC? [The…

Publicly funded exam schools educate many of the world's most talented students. These schools typically contain higher achieving peers, more rigorous instruction, and additional resources compared to regular public schools. This paper uses a sharp discontinuity in the admissions process at three prominent exam schools in New York City to provide…

The documentary film "The Lottery" focuses on the battle between advocates for a New York City charter school provider, Harlem Success Academy Charter Schools (HSA), and those presented as charter school opponents. It uses the struggle of four students who hope to get into a charter school as a vehicle to examine how difficult it is for…

This article presents an analytical approach for documenting the identities for teaching that mathematics teachers negotiate as they participate in 2 or more communities that define high-quality teaching differently. Drawing on data from the first 2 years of a collaboration with a group of middle school mathematics teachers, the article focuses on…

"Value-added" measures of teacher effectiveness are the centerpiece of a national movement to evaluate, promote, compensate, and dismiss teachers based in part on their students' test results. Federal, state, and local policy-makers have embraced these measures in recent years as a means to objectively quantify teacher quality and to…

This study hypothesizes that course passing rates in remedial mathematics classes can be improved through early identification of at-risk students using a department-wide midterm, followed by a mandated set of online intervention assignments incorporating immediate and elaborate feedback for all students identified as "at-risk" by their…

Although mentoring programs can produce positive outcomes for youth, more research is needed that offers an account of how Black and Latino male mentors and mentees experience mentoring. This phenomenological study highlights the voices of a mentor and 14 Black and Latino males who are part of the Umoja Network for Young Men (UMOJA) an all-male,…

Community colleges play a vital role in higher education, enrolling more than one in every three postsecondary students. While the market share of these institutions has grown over the past 50 years, students' success rates remain low. Consequently, community college stakeholders are searching with mounting urgency for strategies that increase…