Improving low-achieving schools is a critical challenge facing urban education. Recent national policy shifts have pressed states to take an expanded role in school improvement efforts. In 2009, a federal grant competition called Race to the Top (RttT) compelled states to improve their capacity to implement ambitious education reform agendas.…

In every state in the South, the percentage of residents with bachelor's degrees or higher who were born outside the state exceed the percentage born in-state, reflecting their dependence on imported talent over building their own talent-development systems. In Virginia, the Southern state with the highest percentage of residents with a B.A. or…

This study evaluates how welcoming thirty American cities--the twenty-five largest and five smaller "hotspots"--are to "nontraditional" problem-solvers and solutions. It assumes that the balky bureaucracies meant to improve K-12 education and hold leaders accountable are so calcified by policies, programs, contracts, and…

In order to systemically improve student achievement in elementary literacy, a large urban school district partnered with a local university to develop a model for high-quality professional development that hopefully would result in long-term changes in teachers' literacy instructional/practices. Schools were selected based on their Adequate…

This report examines comparative data on fiscal need factors critical in equitably financing public education and on factors with varying or unique implications for urban, suburban, and rural school systems in Tennessee. In analyzing the current operating expenditures for 1976-77, expenditures were divided into two components--instructional…

The Cooperative Leadership for Urban Education (CLUE) program, funded under Title III of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, tries to find a way of working with students in grades 5-9 that will get them vitally interested and involved in learning, that will develop in them genuine specific skills for continued learning, and that will…

Project Cooperative Leadership for Urban Education (CLUE), launched in December 1969, funded under Title III of the Elementary Secondary Education Act, uses such cooperative strategies as the Jobs-Alike Work Conference, The Design for Materials Sharing, and The Inter-City Program Transplant. The program goals of the Memphis component were to…

A study was conducted to secure baseline data on Tennessee public high school students working during the school year, to ascertain and compare the students' and parents' opinions on a 31-item questionnaire, and to project the earnings and sales tax contributions of the students. A predetermined sample size was established in order to infer the…

This study analyzes the effects on 14- and 15-year-old black teenage girls of entering and participating in a specially designed work program. The girls were provided with supports in their work settings, well-defined tasks, supervisors as well as regularly scheduled peer interaction groups led by a young black woman considered to be an…