This self-reflective article describes my experience as a disabled-Latino faculty member in a teacher preparation program at a minority-serving urban university. This personal narrative of the physical, emotional, attitudinal, and resource aspects of the author's experience highlights barriers and challenges experienced in the educational and…

This commentary suggests that new school design is a fertile policy context for advancing research-practice partnerships. The authors represent four public universities that have created new school designs in partnership with urban school districts. Unlike the laboratory schools of previous generations, these university-partnered public schools…

Noting the nation's renewed attention to remedying school segregation, "Segregation, Race, and Charter Schools" presents evidence about the extent of school segregation and its relationship with improving student achievement for students of color. The report argues that school segregation has remained flat for decades and also argues…

Much of the history and study of leadership in general has omitted "other" perspectives in the literature. The same is true in educational leadership in general, and the principalship in particular. The discourse of the history of African Americans and their struggle to achieve equity in education has been enhanced by the work of noted scholars.…

The articles included in this volume of "Education and Urban Society" inform the special issue theme that poses the question "Are We There Yet?" An examination of educational equity in the era of school reform and accountability. Despite two decades of dramatic shifts in educational reform and policy among states and local…

This article presents the author's views about the school district deconstruction in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He discusses his 30-year experience as a principal and central office administrator with the School District of Philadelphia and his involvement in the efforts to lead urban school reform in the country. He also describes the reform…

Previous research has suggested that competitive classroom environments can play a role in perpetuating race and class inequalities. However, classroom competition can also promote learning, and eliminating it could do students a disservice. This paper draws on research literature and data from a qualitative study by Konstantinos Alexakos, Jayson…

Rochelle Gutiérrez has spent 15 years researching effective, urban high school mathematics departments that served Black, Latin@ and low-income adolescents (see, e.g., Gutiérrez, 1996, 1999a, 1999b, 2000, 2002). These were schools where students took more mathematics than was required by their district; where English learners, recent immigrants,…

In this article, the author questions why the resegregation of U.S. schools into two systems--one poor and urban and one well-off and suburban--has remained unnoticed by the public and policy makers. As for state and national policy makers, they have diverted attention away from the deep political, social, and economic forces that have conspired…

From the nefarious achievement gaps, to the racial isolation in increasingly segregated schools; from the digital divide that results in kids not having access to computers, to the poverty gulf that results in kids not having homes; from boys' reading difficulties and girls' problems with math, to the disparities among rural, suburban, and urban…

A fundamental consideration in discourses on risk and schooling for primary and secondary school-age students focuses on gender inequalities in the classroom. Gender equity in education debates have raged for several decades and so remain an enduring concern of educators and researchers across the nation. However, educational research often…

Jonathan Kozol's visit to Portland, Oregon, in April 2005 included a dialogue with 55 urban middle and high school students about inequities in American schools. Students left this conversation with a stronger sense of the systemic impediments to equal education. They also felt that their voice had been heard on a topic of national import. This…

In this article, the author talks about the disaster in the United States that reignited a debate about poverty and the responsibility of government--and government schools--that had never really gone away in the first place. Hurricane Katrina was one of the biggest natural disasters in the U.S. that swept through four states, killed more than…

Defends the exam school concept. Using Boston Tech as an example, argues that clearing the admittance-exam hurdle motivates students. Views the magnet school concept as an idealistic vision that Boston has not accepted. (LHW)

Federal court intervention to make Boston Latin School a magnet school rather than an exam school was beneficial to the life of the school. Academic elitism cannot be reconciled with the imperative to eliminate racial dualism. (LHW)