Background/Context: At the close of the first decade of the 21st century, the intersection of race, geography and opportunity is increasingly referred to as spatial racism. School quality and resources, municipal services, employment opportunities, accessibility of transportation, exposure to pollution, and tax rates all vary dramatically across a…

New Leaders for New Schools created the Effective Practice Incentive Community (EPIC) initiative in 2006 to learn from educators driving achievement gains in high-need urban schools. EPIC identifies school leaders and teachers whose students are making significant achievement gains and financially rewards these educators in exchange for sharing…

The Memphis, Tennessee, school district is trying to steady itself in the wake of controversies that have rocked its operations side, potentially complicating its search for a new superintendent and renewing talk about putting the city's mayor in charge of the system. In the past few months, the district has been contending with official probes of…

Communities face powerful challenges that require powerful solutions: a high-school dropout epidemic, youth unemployment, teen pregnancy. In an era of limited resources, those solutions must help communities to achieve more with less. A new kind of community collaborative--an approach that aspires to significant community-wide progress by…

The present study evaluated the stability of math learning difficulties over a 2-year period and investigated several factors that might influence this stability (categorical vs. continuous change, liberal vs. conservative cut point, broad vs. specific math assessment); the prediction of math performance over time and by performance level was also…

This column brings to the attention of "RT" readers the hot topic of redesigning teacher education programs. Featured are interviews with professionals involved in a statewide redesign initiative in Tennessee, the Ready2Teach (R2T) program. The interviews highlight major changes in how teacher education programs are being transformed to…

The nation's major city public school districts have substantial construction, renovation, modernization, and deferred maintenance needs because of the age and size of their school buildings, shifting populations, and the need to devote substantial resources to instructional personnel to meet their core academic mission. For instance, the average…

Is it appropriate to write an individualized education program (IEP) for preschool students who are identified as gifted? In this article, the author shares that she does not condone the elimination of programs for truly gifted children. Her concern has to do with identifying 3-year-old children as intellectually gifted. Is the motivation for this…

In 2006, Memphis City Schools was awarded $16,074,687 for a five-year period (2006-11) for the Memphis Striving Readers Project, in collaboration with the University of Memphis and Bellarmine University (Kentucky). It employs the Memphis Content Literacy Academy model as a schoolwide strategy and Scholastic's READ 180 for targeted intervention.…

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…

As part of a pilot program, the researchers sought to develop an instrument that would effectively measure the nature awareness of students. With this information, the researchers correlated nature awareness scores and science averages. According to Salomon and Perkins' theory of transfer, experiences in one situation can influence experiences in…

New Leaders for New Schools, a nonprofit organization committed to training school principals, heads the Effective Practices Incentive Community (EPIC), an initiative that offers financial awards to effective educators. New Leaders and its partner organizations have received from the U.S. Department of Education tens of millions of dollars in…

In an effort to improve academic performance for students receiving special education services, a large urban school district in Tennessee has implemented Integrated Service Delivery Model. The purpose of this study was to compare the performance of students receiving instruction in self-contained classrooms to the performance of students…

An understanding of Algebra I and the role that this foundational course plays as an entry to the college preparatory pathway in secondary education and its influence on mathematical achievement is an integral component for the education of American youth in the global world of science and technology. Achievements in high school curricula are…

In order to systemically improve student achievement in elementary literacy, a large urban school district partnered with a local university to develop a model for high-quality professional development that hopefully would result in long-term changes in teachers' literacy instructional/practices. Schools were selected based on their Adequate…