This paper uses the Organized Universe as a framework for describing a successful four-year program to improve the school climate at a junior high school in Houston. The program began in the Summer of 1978 and was part of a larger Teacher Corps project that included four urban inner city schools. The organizers of the project used a management…

Several of the major difficulties that faced urban school systems during the decade from 1965 to 1975 are considered briefly in this short document. One of these problems is the changing nature of the urban population and the resultant stresses on urban districts. Other issues include declining enrollment; insufficient financial support at local,…

There is evidence that the fortunes of our cities and their public schools are intertwined. However, in Rochester and in many other cities, there usually is little significant cooperation or support by public groups for urban education. The growth of professionalism and expertise among teachers, separation from municipal government, and domination…

An ethnographic study described a successful educational environment for students from low-income families and examined what it is about those environments that makes them successful. The subject class was a combined fourth and fifth grade class at Taft Elementary School in a predominantly African American working class community two miles from…

Based on a participant-observer's 14-month experience in the day care setting, this paper describes the curriculum implementation in an inner-city day care center--called "Banza" for purposes of this paper--in which both students and teachers come from working class or poor, African American, Caribbean, or Latino families. Through its…

This paper provides a district perspective on efforts by a college of education and a public school system to increase student achievement in an urban environment using a field-based master's degree program as the vehicle for teacher professional development. The partnership resulted in a unique delivery system for graduate instruction that was…

This study examined the relation between teacher suspicion of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and teacher ratings on common behavior measures used to identify and diagnose ADHD. The children, urban, Midwestern, African-American first graders, (N=372) completed the Conners' Continuous Performance Test (CPT), an objective measure of…

A study focused on a comparison of phonemic awareness skills between kindergarten students from English-speaking and non-English-speaking homes. The subjects, 267 kindergarten students in a major urban school system south of Boston, Massachusetts, participated in a phonemic awareness development program over a four-month period. The participants…

Miami-Dade Community College began in 1960 and now has 5 campuses and about 20 outreach centers. For the 1993-94 school year (the latest on which there are complete figures), 76,787 students were enrolled at Miami-Dade; another 43,391 took non-credit courses. Over the past 25 years, as the community has changed, obviously the college has reflected…

This study sought to measure what factors contribute to the learning and personal development of traditional and new majority students at six metropolitan institutions: University of Alabama, Birmingham; University of Louisville (Kentucky); Wichita State University (Kansas); University of Lowell (Massachusetts); Cleveland State University (Ohio);…

This paper documents the study of three schools participating in a school-improvement initiative carried out by the Board of Education of the City of New York, the Fund for New York City Public Education (the Fund), and the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) during the 1990-91 school year. The project, the IBM/Fund Project for…

A study compared the writing development and ideas about writing of students in a whole language program with students in a skills-oriented program from the time they entered kindergarten to the end of the second grade. Subjects were 22 inner city students who completed second grade out of an original kindergarten cohort of 50 minority students…

This paper contributes to the knowledge about the effects that magnet schools have on improving educational quality. The history of magnet schools in American education is examined, linking it with several recent movements to reform and reorganize schooling. A synthesis of research findings from 12 district studies of magnet schools and various…

This paper examines the historical supply and demand trends of secondary public school administrators serving students in urban, rural, and mixed school attendance areas in South Carolina from 1978 to 1987. This report projects supply and demand trends for secondary school administrators for the next 15 years from 1988 to 2002. The study is…

The Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ) was developed to evaluate the study and learning behavior of urban Black and Hispanic students in ways not measured by existing study skills instruments. The instrument attempts to deal effectively with "non-intellectual" factors identified previously as having an impact on study and learning…