The ways in which a Hispanic female superintendent led her school district toward stability and excellence are described in this report, with a focus on four elements that differentiate the work of urban school superintendents from that of others. Four years of data were collected through interviews with the superintendent, observations of group…

A year-long teacher induction program was implemented in four inner-city parochial schools in the archdiocese of Chicago (Illinois). The program had three objectives: to provide new, first-year, and returning teachers with classroom organization and management techniques; to encourage the teachers to develop a support system for themselves; and to…

Since 1974, the Center for the Study of Community Colleges has investigated the curricula, students, faculty, and institutional practices related to the collegiate function in community colleges. Recent activities have focused on advancing the liberal arts and facilitating student transfer to four-year colleges and chosen occupations. For example,…

A study was conducted to examine the achievement levels of entering freshmen at a two-year college over a 5-year period to determine if scores were significantly different over the years. Analyses were made of the English, reading, and math scores on the Stanford Task Test of Academic Skills for Junior/Community Colleges of a random sample of 100…

In this study, parents' reasons for school choice were explored at four inner-city school sites by means of a questionnaire distributed to parents by their children. The sample for this study consisted of the parents of over 2,300 students who attend the four schools studied. All are inner-city Catholic high schools located in four different…

This is a descriptive study of the activities, statistics, and decisions made regarding the re-testing of six inner-city elementary schools, based on results of a norm-referenced achievement test given in the Cincinnati Public School district in April, 1985. Three statistical operations were performed on test data from the Design for School…

Summer Tech '84 was the product of a joint venture of the College of Education of Ohio State University and the Columbus Ohio Public Schools to provide instruction on the use of microcomputers to citizens of the Columbus metropolitan area. For four weeks, 80 different 10-hour classes were offered in eight areas: introductory computer literacy,…

Elementary teachers' free response self reports of how they would respond to students' hostile aggressive behavior (as depicted in two written vignettes) were transcribed, coded, and analyzed for relationships to the teachers' grade level (K-3 vs. 4-6), school location (Lansing vs. inner-city Detroit), and rating by their principals and by…

One of a series on critical issues in vocational-technical education, this paper applies the National Advisory Council on Vocational Education recommendations concerning urban vocational education to a specific inner city school system, the Durham, North Carolina, Public School System, which is seen as a microcosm of our large urban systems. Issue…

This paper describes the data sources and method used in conducting a 3-year evaluation of the Urban Systemic Initiative (USI) of the National Science Foundation in four cities. The paper also provides a discussion of two approaches to analyzing the evaluation results: structural equation modeling (SEM) and a complementary analysis of the…

Although much has been written about the effectiveness of book clubs (also known as literature circles) as one approach to reading and discussing literature in the classroom, M.A. George (1998) found that adolescent literature as a genre and book clubs as an instructional approach were being underutilized in a group of New York City middle…

This study compares average SAT 9 reading scores of second through fifth grade English-only children in schools using "Open Court" (a program for teaching young children to read) with the scores of comparable schools using non-scripted programs in one very large urban school district in California. Findings show that schools using…

A collaborative study examined early childhood teachers' philosophies and practices as they pertained to developmentally appropriate practices and their influence on inner-city early childhood settings. Data were collected by recording conversations among five teachers. Excerpts indicate agreement over interrelated developmental areas, curriculum,…

Four teachers, two from a rural high school and two from an urban one, spent a year trying to get students to examine similarities and differences between the two schools. The exchange program involved students from Malcolm X Shabazz High School of Newark, New Jersey and a group from rural New Jersey's Hunterdon Central High. Small groups of…

This paper describes preliminary results from a study at the Crisis Control Ministry, a poverty relief organization in Winston-Salem (North Carolina). The intent of the study was to explore the nature of and influences on contemporary urban poverty by having the investigator serve as a volunteer interviewer at the Crisis Control Ministry. Another…