Amistad Academy is a bright shining star in public school reform. Founded in 1999 in a renovated warehouse in a blighted New Haven, Connecticut, neighborhood by a group of Yale law school students, the 289-student charter school has won the praise of the last two federal education secretaries. Educators throughout the country have traveled to the…

An effective school requires an effective leader, but great principals rarely just happen. They are cultivated. This Wallace Perspective draws on a decade of foundation research and work in school leadership to show how urban school districts can play a major role in ensuring they have principals who can boost teaching and learning in troubled…

This report lays out the case for career and technical education (CTE) in New York City. It examines 21 dedicated CTE high schools, the interests and needs of a business community eager to support career-oriented education, and the performance, problems and promise of a vein of educational programming whose time might finally be at hand. The…

Replacing boards of education conceived during the Progressive Era with mayoral control has been a popular reform strategy in urban districts such as Boston, Chicago, and New York City. A thorough review of the extant research, however, shows little evidence regarding its impact on governance, management, school organization, or teaching and…

In this article, we describe the development and implementation of a project, "Our Leaders Are Us: Youth Activism in Social Movements," that we undertook with New York City high school students exploring events leading up to and following the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Brown. As part of a 50th anniversary celebration of the…

Does motivating students to study harder with the promise of cash sound like innovation--or bribery? That's a question educators and researchers have been debating, amid concerns that money-for-achievement programs actually decrease students' intrinsic motivation to learn and send mixed messages about studying. But the idea is catching on, with…

From tuition vouchers for private schools to charter schools to voluntary transfer programs within and between public school systems, school choice has been at the center of the school reform debate for two decades. But with the voucher movement unable to sustain much momentum, charter schools still serving a small percentage of the nation's…

Research has begun to show associations between adolescents' mealtime practices and their engagement in problem behaviors. Few studies have addressed this longitudinally and/or examined lunchtime practices during the school day. This study tests for associations between urban multiethnic middle school students' (N = 1498) lunchtime practices in…

This book demonstrates through case studies and expert analyses the impressive educational gains children can make when the best educational research, policy, and practice are aligned. This volume is a valuable resource to aspiring leaders, educational researchers, and current practitioners and a must-read for anyone who cares about the public…

The present case study examines classroom interaction in an English as a second language (ESL) class in an urban high school. The study intends to explore the in-depth nature of teacher's effective teaching practices during the instructional time with focus on their influence on linguistically and culturally diverse English language learners'…

In this study, the authors examined the demographic characteristics of students entering the new small high schools in New York City and contrasted them with the characteristics of students entering the large high schools that closed. They also determined whether these high school reforms altered how different types of students are distributed…

"Between Public and Private" examines an innovative approach to school district management that has been adopted by a number of urban districts in recent years: a portfolio management model, in which "a central office oversees a portfolio of schools offering diverse organizational and curricular themes, including traditional public…

This presentation capitalizes on a three-year, longitudinal, school-randomized trial of the 4Rs Program, a comprehensive, school-based social-emotional and literacy program for elementary schools, to test intervention induced changes in features of classroom climate and key dimensions of teacher affective and pedagogical processes and practices…

This paper reports on the status of instructional supervision within the current New York City school reform movement. Reports from interviews with New York City public school teachers demonstrate the prevalence of directive, checklist and narrative approaches to supervision, raising serious questions for the future of instructional supervision.…

The tendency to view immigrant students as a monolithic group has masked the needs of specific groups of students. This study gives visibility to Sierra Leonean refugee students and indicates to policy makers, administrators, and teachers provisions that would facilitate the students' integration into the school system in the United States. The…