This article presents snapshots of an innovative program in which performing actor, musician, and dancer TAs work as substitute teachers. Through STARRRs (Substitute Teachers for the Arts and 3Rs) Program, New York City principals hire professional performers as licensed substitute teachers. Actors, musicians, and dancers bring their craft into…

In her new book, Valerie Kinloch, award-winning author of "Harlem on Our Minds", sheds light on the ways urban youth engage in "meaning-making" experiences as a way to assert critical, creative, and highly sophisticated perspectives on teaching, learning, and survival. Kinloch rejects deficit models that have traditionally…

Teachers are leaders when they function in professional learning communities to affect student learning, contribute to school improvement, inspire excellence in practice, and empower stakeholders to participate in educational improvement. From an equity perspective, teachers also lead when they serve as change agents who collaborate to use…

Why did the New York City school district once have the lowest ratio of minority teachers to minority students of any large urban school system in the country? Using an array of historical sources, this provocative book explores the barriers that African American and Latino candidates faced in attempting to become public school teachers in New…

Teachers are trained to be mentors, counselors, and friends to a group of advisees, shepherding them through the term papers and broken hearts of adolescence. Each advisory group of about a dozen students stays together, with the same adviser, until graduation. By creating that kind of culture, with promising indicators that it is paying off…

This article reports the promising outcomes of a new mentoring program that helps novice teachers in New York City improve their quality of teaching and stem the number of those who leave. Calling the program "possibly the largest, most aggressive overhaul of teacher induction in the country," researchers of the New Teacher Center at the…

In Baltimore, Chicago, New York, Oakland, California and Philadelphia, to name a few cities where it has been active, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has emerged as a major player in K-12 in education issues. Its army of organizers has tackled everything from a lack of stop signs to such vexing issues as teacher…

In this article, the authors describe their experiences in working with superintendents, principals, assistant principals, and teacher-leaders in New York City, embedding NSRF work into all their professional development efforts, and how responsive facilitation and using NSRF's principles of reflective practice, collaboration, and shared…

This paper describes early efforts underway at City College, New York, to introduce a disability studies content into an otherwise traditional special education programme. The paper draws on previously funded research projects that merged humanities-based disability studies in education, prior teaching experiences and excerpts from the writing of…

Introduces the new journal, "Educators for Urban Minorities," and explains the crisis looming in urban education as teacher shortages increase, and academic and professional standards for teachers are raised. Describes efforts made by Long Island University to help their linguistically and culturally diverse student body meet the…

Urban public schools and their teachers are under siege. From increased standardization, privatization and testing to a growing number of students whose needs are not being met by schools, urban public school teachers face a daunting task. Without a space in which to critically examine their daily experiences within schools, many well-intentioned…

In this thirteenth annual report, the Commissioner of Education discusses the Bureau of Education's work, with a list of its publications from the year. The Commissioner also presents summary data of institutions, instructors, and students; school age, population, enrolment, and attendance; legal school ages in the United States; teachers employed…