This 5-year mathematics professional development project involves 27 elementary teachers prepared and supported as Elementary Mathematics Specialists (EMSs) in high-need urban schools. They complete a university's K-5 Mathematics and Teacher Supporting & Coaching Endorsement programs and participate in Professional Learning Communities and…

School district-university research collaborations represent one strategy to increase educators' ability to use current, research-based information in program decision-making and efforts to improve student achievement. However, differences in organizational structures, goals, values, and prior collaborative experiences, have made successful…

The tendency in urban schools is that teachers hold incomplete understandings about their students (by virtue of difference in cultural, race, language, and social class) is a lingering challenge since "Brown v. Board of Education" desegregated students in schools while also casting out large numbers of Black educators (Walker, 2013).…

Recent educational programs and initiatives hinge on effective collaboration between education professionals, such as school social workers, school psychologists, teachers, and principals. Our inquiry seeks to build on prior conceptual work to unpack the collaborative stance of school social workers by examining how they conceptualize their role…

This study examines 40 teachers' perspectives on the use of video-recordings of their own mathematics lessons over two years of mathematics professional development. Data sources included an end of program survey and focus groups transcripts. Findings from this study support the use of personal video-recorded lessons in professional development.…

The authors present a culturally responsive college access group to increase educational opportunity for historically targeted high school students. The program was designed for first generation high school students who self-report as having no plans for after high school. The program highlights the need for inter-disciplinary collaboration with…

Educational reform is not easy. As school leaders search for a format that leads to improvement on many fronts concurrently, data teams is one such promising practice. The data team design not only involves sensemaking of data as evidence of effective teaching and learning, but also builds a professional learning community, distributes leadership,…

A school-university partnership between Memphis State University and seven innercity schools, designed to enhance informed decision making by the schools through provision of university data, is described in this report. Data about the partnership process were collected from observations, document analyses, and interviews with all constituents.…

Articulation between educational institutions should ideally specify exit-level competencies for student passage from one educational level to another, and thus avoid course repetition and facilitate credit acceptance. Unfortunately, this has been successfully effected in only a few instances involving a limited number of programs. Greater…

The Urban Curriculum Partnership is a collaborative among a rural university and an urban school district and the community it serves. The goal is to help at-risk students reach their academic potential, stay in school, and eventually enter into a postsecondary education program. A district-wide tutoring program was developed and implemented in…

In response to growing public concern over declining educational quality and discipline problems in today's schools, this paper reviews research on the causes of school disruption and student misbehavior, identifies promising ameliorative strategies, and examines specific research-practitioner collaborations that have successfully reduced school…

In 1996, a major overhaul in the delivery of professional development for administrators was undertaken in the urban school district under study. A Principal Leadership Institute was created and the 182 principals and vice-principals of the district were randomly assigned to 8 cohorts, each of which was affiliated with 1 of the 8 universities and…

This article describes an alternative master's degree program for inservice teachers which involves a collaboration between a large university and an urban school district. The program provides teachers with a rigorous and ongoing professional development experience that recognizes the context of their daily work and focuses on their specific…

Collaborative, participatory, and empowerment research (D. Fetterman and others, 1996) presents particular challenges and special rewards for evaluators working with children. This paper describes some of what one evaluator learned from the process of designing and using in data collection and analysis a structured interview for children (ages…

This paper chronicles the collaboration of Boston's English High School with the University of Massachusetts. It begins with a history of the school from its start in 1820 up to the late sixties when the school achieved more of a minority population. After a problematical beginning plagued by lack of coordination and direction, the collaborative…