This teaching case study illustrates the increasing need for school leaders to offer and foster adult social emotional learning (SEL) in schools, particularly in the context of crises. This scenario takes place in an urban high school that is representative of many other American schools. In particular, I examine the challenges educational leaders…

Washington Hunt is an urban community school attempting to balance the implementation of equity initiatives that meet the needs of minoritized students and families while preventing the adoption of deficit perspectives among school staff. The purpose of this case is to describe how "deficit-creep"--the subtle infusion of deficit-based…

Online platforms are increasingly the main point of contact between schools and students, families, and the community. In this article, we present a framework, called "Flipping the Script," that we developed while researching how students, teachers, and families were portrayed on school websites. Based on a systematic analysis of nearly…

Despite multiple creative approaches to integrating Minnesota's segregated urban public schools, students of color in these schools remain the majority. The state's progressive, anti-racist sentiment toward education has not evolved into action on the part of White families, which leaves under-resourced urban districts struggling beneath a mere…

This chapter highlights mindfulness and meditation practices at two metropolitan universities and includes a discussion of programming challenges, classroom teaching practices, and suggestions for expanding offerings for non-traditional learners.

This practice brief addresses the financial insecurity faced by many community college students and provides recommendations for community college practitioners on how to use incentivized savings accounts to teach financial literacy and prepare students for financial challenges that may impact their educational future. Despite reactive attempts at…

An urban school principal contends that the best way to recruit, support, and retain effective teachers right now is to set up conditions that restore and reinforce interpersonal connections for teachers. She details ways leaders can restore connections between teachers and students, between teachers and colleagues, and even between teachers and…

Students with disabilities from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds often experience barriers and inequities in transition supports and services due to the cultural mismatch of beliefs, values, and expectations between their families and their schools. Though transition planning was designed for students and families to provide…

When the pandemic closed schools in Denver, an enterprising parent with community connections stepped in to meet immediate needs--and paved a new path to supporting students and families in the future. Joanna Rosa-Saenz determined to "turn negatives into positives" by using whatever means she had to ensure her children and others in the…

The pandemic put both a microscope and a wide-angle lens on America's education systems. Under the microscope, parents had a window into individual classrooms as never before, as their children struggled to learn through laptops. Many didn't like what they observed. Through the wide angled lens, the country was jolted by evidence that school…

Des Moines (Iowa) Public Schools is one of six urban districts participating in an effort to redesign the role of principal supervisors. The Wallace Foundation's Principal Supervisor Initiative provides four years of support for these districts to transform the role, which has traditionally focused on operations and compliance, into one that…

In urban areas like New York City, school choice systems intend to break the connection between residential segregation and schooling by allowing students to attend schools outside their neighborhoods. If successful, school choice could benefit historically underserved students. However, recent research suggests that achievement gaps and…

In "The Enduring Promise of America's Great City Schools," Michael Casserly presents a forthright assessment of the past performance and future potential of large urban PreK-12 school districts in the United States. From a vantage of nearly five decades of work within the Council of the Great City Schools, which now represents…

No Child Left Behind and the Every Student Succeeds Act have made accountability central to conversations about education policy. But neither statute articulates a clear vision of what constitutes "quality" or "equity" in education, nor do they include a mechanism to ensure that schools have sufficient resources to pursue that…

This case focuses on the Board of Trustees of a large urban school district in Texas, as they worked to decide when learners would have the option to return to in-person learning even as the COVID-19 pandemic continued to affect the community, particularly communities of color. This decision-making process included two back-to-back school board…