Study surveyed students in an alternative, multicultural teacher certification program to determine how well the Urban Teacher Selection Interview could predict the success of future urban teachers. Comparisons between their interview rankings and their rankings as classroom teachers indicated that degree of future teaching success can be…

Identifies qualitative differences in how four teachers in an urban multicultural high school think about classroom events based on their differing conceptions of multicultural education. Results indicate that the teachers' thinking about multicultural education is a factor that contributes to differences in their attributions and principles of…

The urban teacher recruitment challenge documented in this report is the harbinger of potentially more serious nationwide shortages to come. The need for teachers of color in America's schools has already reached critical proportions. Data in this report were collected as part of a broad-based commitment to improved teacher recruitment and…

Some of the current thinking on planning and effecting improvements in education in the big cities is together under four major chapters in this publication. A section on major developments, problems, and needs addresses such issues as accelerated rate of change, crisis confrontations ano brush fire techniques, and unanticipated consequences of…

The focus of a two-week summer institute for 77 Adult Basic Education (ABE) teachers, administrators, and counselors from the western United States, Hawaii, and Alaska was on the problems of the urban poor, with emphasis on the urban poor white. Major emphasis was placed on nonlearning problems of the urban poor. Problems examined were: (1) the…

Compared the problem-solving and computational skills of first-grade students whose teachers had participated in staff development to learn to teach using a Cognitively Guided Instruction framework to first-grade students whose teachers had not. Students in experimental classes performed significantly better in solving word problems and completing…

Study examined the intended planning and teaching decisions of 11 secondary physical education teachers to determine their rationale and goals for a socially focused curriculum. Results suggested teachers' goals for student learning were consistent with an emphasis on social responsibility within the categories of understanding, respect, and…

This qualitative study was designed to strengthen the voice of urban practitioners in the scholarly debate regarding issues in urban teaching. Interviews were conducted with urban special education teachers, general education teachers, and principals from 23 urban school districts across the country. These three groups of educators identified…

During the past decade there have been considerable efforts to reform the American public school system. This survey, based on 15-minute telephone interviews with a nationally representative sample of 1,011 public school teachers in the United States, duplicates the sampling and interviewing process used in a similar study in 1984 and 1985. In…

A study explored the effectiveness of "rap music" as a method of instruction for urban preschool children. It was hypothesized that urban preschool children would learn more new content (10 unfamiliar names of body parts) in a classroom environment through the use of rap music for instruction, than would children who received instruction…

The Philadelphia Urban Education Network Project is a staff development project that deals with the problems of the urban teacher and the needs of the urban students. Project activities include workshops, conferences, open houses, and teacher exchanges, all of which involve project participants. Staff development workshops are held to aid teachers…

Maryland, the first state to mandate performance assessments for its elementary school students, administers the Maryland School Performance Assessment Program as a week-long series of activities measuring reading, writing, language in use, science, and social studies for students in grades 3, 5, and 8. Open-ended questions are built around…

This study focuses on three new teachers, Arnie, Andrea, and Frank, who are New York City Teaching Fellows (NYCTF), a program of alternative teacher recruitment and certification that is in its third year at an urban public college in New York City. This study focuses on just three of the Fellows in order to have a more intense look into the…

To examine the hypothesis that alternative routes to teacher certification are more likely than traditional routes to recruit successful urban school teachers, beliefs and practices of 45 secondary English and mathematics novice teachers from both routes were studied. Findings confirm the importance of teacher sensitivity to urban multicultural…

This document on the working conditions of urban teachers reports data from a survey of 31 elementary, middle, and secondary schools in five urban school districts. More than 400 interviews were conducted with teachers, school administrators, central office personnel, district officials, board members, and union officials. The observations,…