In looking at four broad factors related to teacher assignments in the Los Angeles School District--instructional load, homophily, colleague qualifications, and professional culture--researchers of urban education policy at the University of Southern California discovered three main lessons for practice: First, that teacher working conditions are…

In 2017, Matthew Chingos and Kristin Blagg of the Urban Institute convened a group of researchers to analyze students' school choices and travel to school in five cities-- Denver, Detroit, New Orleans, New York, and Washington, D.C.--where families are able to select from among many charter and district schools. The team found that a large number…

District-Charter Partnerships (DCP) is an initiative that is part of the Equity and Excellence for All agenda established by Mayor De Blasio. Its goal is to support meaningful collaboration between the district and charter sectors in order to increase educator capacity and student learning in all New York City public schools. Campus District…

The teacher preparation programs at University of Central Florida graduates approximately 1,000 prospective teachers annually. They are well prepared for teaching positions in the schools that look like the suburban, middle class ones which most of the teacher candidates attended. They have not been as well prepared for the Title I schools that…

The scholarly learning environment that characterizes the Mildred Avenue K-8 School, today seemed impossible five years ago, when the school was among the lowest performing in the commonwealth of Massachusetts. Between 2004 and 2013, the average tenure for a principal at the school was just 18 months, with five new principals arriving during those…

One of Ohio's oldest public charter schools, Toledo School for the Arts (TSA) was forged from concerns about the state of arts education, especially performing arts and dance. For young people with a keen interest in the arts, any shortage of offerings limits opportunities and may lead to less engagement in school. The latest entry in the Pathway…

In this article, we introduce a special collection of research articles that consider the processes and consequences of school choice across different social and spatial contexts in order to better understand the relationship between school choice and stratification in educational opportunity. This special issue presents a wide range of studies…

At J. Sterling Morton High School District 201 in Cicero, Illinois, nearly 65 percent of the students are English learners. In 2014, the school started looking into how to create a culture where multilingual students were considered an asset. They created a dual-language program with an emphasis on pride and changing the status of bilingualism in…

The authors delineate issues in the teaching and learning of social studies in both the United States and Canada, providing examples of how implementing discussion pedagogy can foster democratic citizenship among diverse students.

This article discusses how the Kindness Initiative at the Dr. Michael Conti School in Jersey City, New Jersey, where the author is the school librarian and a literacy support teacher, promotes a climate where students feel accepted. As they progress from pre-K through middle school, students are exposed to social justice literature designed to get…

This teacher inquiry project describes how one first grade teacher learned to use coached language supports to improve children's self-control and cooperation. "Courtesy scripts" were created in the process. The development of courtesy scripts and their application in early elementary classrooms is presented. Courtesy scripts are…

Decades after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling banned mandatory race-based separation of students to different schools, school segregation, and inequality in the United States are rapidly increasing. In this research synthesis, I propose a model for explaining how segregation and inequality are formed in urban and suburban school systems and…

St. Louis Public Schools is an urban school district of 19,299 students. The district has a predominantly Black student population with 78% of students identifying as Black, while also being very diverse with 11% of students qualifying as English Language Learners (ELL). St. Louis has a high crime rate, including a high murder rate. This trickles…

The International Baccalaureate (IB) program is an advanced course of study that spans all four years of high school and research finds that participation can boost high school graduation rates for students from low-income families. This fact sheet examines IB's impact in Chicago Public Schools and guides state and district leaders through various…

Uprisings against police violence have placed the institution of policing front and center in conversations about societal change. In our work with activists, we have engaged in collecting and analyzing public records data to inform community organizing for change. In this editorial we discuss how to obtain, interpret, and analyze public records…