This study investigates the legal literacy of urban public school administrators in Malaysia. Data were collected from 109 school administrators. The instrument that was administered to the respondents comprised two parts: Part 1, the background information of the respondents; and Part 2, items on the law related to schools, such as teachers' duty…

Although national trends of urban adolescent reading underachievement suggest that schools are unable to adequately support this population's reading development, some studies have demonstrated that urban schools can operate to raise student achievement, thereby disrupting national trends. In this study, the author investigates one such school…

The articles included in this volume of "Education and Urban Society" inform the special issue theme that poses the question "Are We There Yet?" An examination of educational equity in the era of school reform and accountability. Despite two decades of dramatic shifts in educational reform and policy among states and local…

Is the U.S. Supreme Court inviting litigants to take aim at unraveling injunctions in institutional reform litigation--especially consent decrees in the schools? In "Horne v. Flores" (2009), the court remanded a 17-year-old school reform case to a federal judge with orders to look beyond consent decrees on financing, reducing class…

Urban school districts are comprised of many diverse high school environments including comprehensive neighborhood schools as well as a variety of smaller alternative models that focus on innovative practices, behavior remediation, or academic recovery. In terms of enrollment distribution, urban school districts are increasingly offering…

Similar to Dickens's "Tale of Two Cities", this research study is about a tale of two schools. The first type of school is a dysfunctional school. Dysfunctional schools are schools in a state of chaos (Shipengrower & Conway, 1998). The second school is that of order. The researchers refer to this school as a functional school. In…

This study addresses the segregation of English language learner (ELL) students in schools across Texas. We descriptively analyze levels of racial, economic, and linguistic isolation experienced by ELL students across the state of Texas. We also examine the association between segregation by race/ethnicity, economic disadvantage, and language…

As the postscript for this special issue of Education and Urban Society, this article considers the struggles urban schools report confronting as they implement standards-based reform and high stakes testing and discusses the implications these challenge have for future accountability policy aimed at promoting educational equity. Among the issues…

Value-added approaches for attributing student growth to teachers often use weighted estimates of building-level factors based on "typical" schools to represent a range of community, school, and other variables related to teacher and student work that are not easily measured directly. This study examines whether such estimates are likely…

For-profit educational management organizations (EMOs) are a growing phenomenon in public education, and they are an integral part of charter school reform in many states. Research suggests that charter schools operated by for-profit entities may take a more entrepreneurial approach when expanding their operations and thus may be more inclined to…

In this article, the author examines the links between high stakes testing policies, school organization processes, and instructional practice using data from a study of K-5 and K-8 schools in Chicago. He argues that although the policy environment penetrates the classroom, this penetration is partial--stronger on some aspects of instruction than…

This article challenges the view that citywide referenda alone are an effective means of ensuring accountability for mayoral control. Through new empirical analysis of the referenda results in Boston and Cleveland, the article shows that rather than establish genuine democratic legitimacy, the referenda in fact mask strong class-based, and in…

This qualitative study of teachers in three low-performing elementary schools in Chicago reveals that transformational leadership behaviors were important to teacher motivation, affecting whether they believed that they could improve student performance as the accountability policy required. The findings suggest that principal leadership is…

In the current climate of high-stakes accountability created under the No Child Left Behind legislation, public schools, including charter schools, are under tremendous pressure to show consistent improvement in student achievement for all students. Students with disabilities present unique challenges to schools attempting to meet Adequate Yearly…

Urban schools have historically struggled to create engaging learning environments for students. One of the emerging answers to this educational conundrum is the development of more personalized learning environments. Such environments draw on the natural interests of students but contextualize those interests within demanding academic structures.…