On November 14th, 2022, a group of Black community leaders from the Saint Louis, Missouri, area met to discuss their experiences with the serious issues surrounding urban schools in their communities. Although this discussion is specific to a particular time and place, the concerns expressed, and solutions, offered are transferrable to many other…

Urban districts throughout the nation are contending with declining enrollment, aging facilities in disrepair, persistently low student achievement, increased competition with charters, and severe fiscal constraints. Philadelphia is a case in point. Over the past year, the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) was forced to borrow $304 million…

"Grow Your Own Teachers" describes the evolution of a local school reform movement in Chicago that now serves as a model for change in schools and teacher preparation programs across the country. Grounded in the grassroots organizing tradition, the Grow Your Own (GYO) teacher initiative involves collaboration between community-based…

Modeled upon the ecclesiastic community group concept of Latin America to unite and strengthen the bond between the Church and neighborhoods, a community-based organization created Vecinos Unidos por la Salud (Neighbors United for Health) to bring health messages into urban Latino neighborhoods. The model is based on five tenants, and incorporates…

Urban schools reflect their surroundings. Urban areas are becoming characterized by great diversity in race and class as the racial and ethnic makeup of the United States changes. In most urban schools, where the majority of students are minorities and large numbers live in poverty, the teacher attrition rate ranges from 30% to 50% within the…

Despite progress in urban teacher preparation over the past 40 years, concerns still remain about transforming programs and practices in order to affect teachers' capacities to work with culturally diverse communities. These concerns include time in course curricula for discussion and reflection on field-based work, adequate supervision in…

As blogs light up with lively conversations about iPads, netbooks, and smart phones, it's easy to forget one major roadblock to preparing all children for the future: the digital divide. Although middle-class students often take high-speed Internet access for granted, a full 65 percent of Americans who make less than $25,000 a year lack broadband…

Partnerships among schools, families, and community organizations can reconnect urban schools to their communities and improve results for young people and their families. This report provides an overview of Casey's investment philosophy and strategies, and its approach to defining and documenting grantmaking results. The report highlights the…

Teacher education programs have a long history of producing excellent health and physical education (HPE) teachers for suburban school districts. But graduates who start their career at high-need schools often feel poorly prepared to face the challenges of low-income school districts, schools, and students. This article is directed primarily to…

Oakland Community Organizations (OCO) has worked for over ten years to improve educational opportunities in low-income neighborhoods in Oakland, California. The work of thousands of parent, teacher, youth, and community leaders has resulted in the formation of nearly fifty new small schools and more than ten charters, creating settings for…

This book tells the story of an innovative approach to educational change in urban schools. Using a case study approach, the book describes how working class parents, public school teachers, clergy, social workers, business partners, and other engaged citizens have worked to improve education in inner-city schools. Their combined efforts are…

Since the state takeover, the Philadelphia school district has created a new governance model, in which for-profits, non-profits, and universities receive contracts to manage schools. Further, these and other organizations also receive contracts to provide a range of additional services. The shift to a public/private institutional structure,…

This is an account of a teacher education program's attempt to connect with a neighboring community in order to better prepare faculty to teach about the urban context in which their preservice teacher education students practice. Taking a feminist perspective, the two authors discuss their goals--the processes of using a community organization to…

This report summarizes the key findings, conclusions, and recommendations of an analysis of 1985-86 outcomes of New York City's state-funded Attendance Improvement-Prevention (AI/DP) program and the city-funded Dropout Prevention Program. The central goal of the evaluation was to understand conditions which encouraged success in middle school…

This paper analyzes community involvement in education and specifically discusses the activities of the Educational Priorities Panel of New York City. In the monograph's first chapter, citizen involvement in schools is studied in both an historical and contemporary context. The second chapter details New York City's fiscal crisis and the…