Schools are valuable venues for research institutions. Research can also be beneficial to public schools. School administrators should be proactive in identifying research topics and establishing standards and expectations for the university researchers. This article describes the partnership between a university researcher and a K-12 director of…

This article offers a reflective analysis on how the author came to a deeper understanding of transformative learning while collaborating on a research project with Patricia Cranton from 2012- 2014, resulting in "A Novel Idea: Researching Transformative Learning in Fiction," published by Sense Publishers in 2015. They read six…

This co-authored article describes a community literacy oral history project involving 14 undergraduate students. It is intellectually situated at the intersection of writing studies, oral history, and African American rhetoric and distinguished by two features: 1) we were a combined team of 20 collaborators, and 2) our narrator, Frank Gilyard,…

Public school districts are locally controlled and funded through local property taxes. Funding schools this way perpetuates structural inequities in poorer school districts and as a result, students living in poverty have minimal access to critical resources that support student learning. Community schools are resurfacing in many of these urban…

This study investigated whether Pennsylvania school district superintendents acknowledge the importance of the 2008 ISLLC performance indicators that require collaboration to the same degree they practice them. Superintendents' ratings of importance and frequency were compared across demographic groups. A thirty-two question survey, derived from…

Partnerships between universities and school districts are increasingly being identified as a means to overcome the difficulties of preparing the next generation of urban high school principals. This article examines the development of such a multiorganizational partnership with a large urban school district, two universities, and a national…

Community coalition action theory (CCAT) depicts the processes and factors that affect coalition formation, maintenance, institutionalization, actions, and outcomes. CCAT proposes that community context affects coalitions at every phase of development and operation. We analyzed data from 12 "Connect to Protect" coalitions using inductive…

We report on the scaling up of a high school content literacy framework, Reading Apprenticeship, over a period of four years as part of the independent evaluation of an Investing in Innovation grant from the U.S. Department of Education to WestEd's Strategic Literacy Institute (SLI). Our goal was to understand the school processes that support…

This study investigated the nature of the literacy environment that public libraries construct and how they share the project of children's literacy development with homes and schools. It focuses on library programs for children, particularly story times. Its data came from observations of library activities, interviews with librarians and…

In a 2012 paper for the Center for American Progress, "The State of Evaluation Reform," Patrick McGuinn (Drew University) identified the opportunities and challenges facing education agencies in Race to the Top (RTTT) grant-winning states as they prepared for the implementation of new teacher evaluation systems. The 2012 study undertook…

Universities and schools are struggling with the critical issues surrounding teacher quality, student learning, and the gap between research and practice. This study employed a collective case-study design to explore the impact of leadership teams and school-university partnerships on teacher leadership, professional development, and overall…

This article takes the history of teacher research in one large urban school district over a period of 20 years as a telling case of the intensely local character of this work. Beginning with an overview of the variations and different conceptions of teacher research in the USA, we argue that teacher research is continually being invented and…

The Stoneleigh Foundation of Philadelphia has historically focused its strategic investments on improving outcomes for youth involved or at risk of involvement in the juvenile justice and child welfare systems. Stoneleigh began its support for youth courts by providing a fellowship award from 2009 to 2011 to public interest lawyer Gregory Volz to…

This study investigated the impact of a leader's sex on the climate of alternative schools. Specifically, the problem was "Does a principal's sex have an impact on the climate of alternative schools?" The research attempted to answer the following questions: (1) Do differences with regard to a principal's sex exist within the following…

This narrative case study research project focused on African American women principals and the leadership qualities and competencies that they bring to an urban school setting. The purpose of this study was to explore the lived experiences of African American women principals and examine the influence of this past experience, identify common…