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…

Though researcher dilemmas are not new to the pages of "Qualitative Inquiry," we argue that the current contemporary context has both altered and intensified issues associated with conducting qualitative research within sites most affected by more recent social, political, and economic shift. Navigating such sites as researchers poses…

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,…

The author describes her experience as special education teacher at Berkeley High School (BHS), an urban school with over three thousand students, and how she began to question the way the school defines disability. The diversity of any large urban school has its benefits, but the size itself will always be the downfall when the school focuses on…

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…

In this essay, Tyson Lewis theorizes current lockdown practices, zero-tolerance policies, and No Child Left Behind initiatives in U.S. schooling by drawing on Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben's analysis of the concentration camp and the state of exception. Agamben's theory of the camp provides a challenging, critical vantage point for looking…

One of the most persistent inequities in U.S. education is the gap in math achievement along income and race lines. Yet some secondary schools beat the odds, producing consistently strong math performance with students who likely would fail in traditional settings. This report advocates that the math achievement gap is not the result of poor and…

In light of the elimination of busing to achieve racial integration and judicial reluctance to consider creative, new ways to provide integrated, high quality learning environments for poor and minority children, advocates of the principles established by "Brown" must no longer accept the public schools as the best hope for providing integrated…

Engaging students requires giving them a say in what they learn and how they will learn it. However, in strictly disciplined, rule-bound schools with test-driven curricula, this cannot happen. Edison Schools, Inc., a for-profit Education Management Organization (EMO), and Confluence Academy, an Edison-run school located in one of the most…

Critiques research on the effectiveness of Direct Instruction (DI) over the past 3 decades, examining decreasing scores, variations in DI, instructional implementation, three approaches to improving instruction, the problem of outside demands, the problem of teacher turnover, phonics and comprehension, settings for instruction, and additional…

Reveals the lack of educational standards in America's poor urban public schools and explains why poor children are getting beyond third grade without being able to properly read. Promotional policies are discussed as well as the teacher's role in promotional decisions. It argues for adoption of explicit, commonly shared, grade-by-grade academic…

Argues that metropolitan school desegregation plans may reinforce problems associated with segregation and may worsen the situation of low-income Blacks. Describes an urban-suburban exchange plan and argues that it provides only the semblance of justice. Asserts that what poor Black students need most is neighborhood schools, effective teachers,…

Imagine a school that offers its students a safe environment, a rigorous college-prep curriculum, high expectations for student responsibility, and individualized attention. In this article, the author describes such a school, but it is not an elite private school for the wealthy. It is the Street Academy in Oakland, California, which serves a…

Education is an integral part of the urban crisis. The shape of urban education in the 1980s will be determined by the extent to which education planners and decision makers relate their activities to other facets of "the larger urban problems." (Author)

This paper reports and interprets the major findings of a study of 54 inner city private elementary schools in eight cities. The study, conducted during the 1978-79 school year by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, explores the schools' academic achievements; their growing appeal to low-income, minority families; the racial,…