The purpose of our study was to examine mathematics and science pre-service teachers' perceptions of their mentoring experiences during their 1st year in the Teaching Residency Program for Critical Shortage Areas, an initiative designed to recruit, prepare, and retain teachers for high-need urban schools. Results from this mixed-methods study…

This study's purpose was to examine the self-efficacy of preservice teachers throughout an immersive learning semester and compare it with a control group. The study suggests that a community-based immersive program supports preservice teacher efficacy development within the dynamic cultural context of families and schools. The immersive learning…

This study examined middle-class mothers' engagement in urban school selection as residents of two gentrifying neighborhoods in Atlanta, Georgia. Gentrifiers levy social capital when activating or exercising agency and create social networks that valorize child-rearing concerns through exchange of information. Thirty mothers with children under…

The state of North Carolina is one of few states in the South in which two large districts committed to desegregating schools in the early 1970s. However, the state's two largest districts, Charlotte-Mecklenberg Schools (CMS) and Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) have experienced ups and downs in their policy commitment to desegregated…

Race and class often marginalize students in impoverished urban neighborhoods, and this reality is evident in consistently low student achievement in many of the schools in these neighborhoods. This study examines how a teacher's sense of agency can help mediate the detrimental impact of poverty on student achievement. Teachers in a large…

In this article, the author combines multicultural feminist critical theories with the voices of Black and Latina/Latino young spiritual children to extend culturally responsive teaching. The author illuminates how children use their hip-hop writing to construct themselves as people who communicate with God, choose spiritual content for their…

Research commonly finds that urban teachers bring deficit views about students of color with them into classrooms, and professional development efforts focused on this critical problem have been met with limited success. Therefore, scholars have called for work that integrates content and equity as a way to challenge teachers' deficit views at the…

The purpose of this study is to inform public policies aimed at improving parental school-choice processes. The study estimates both the utility obtained by parents from different school attributes and the effective utility obtained with the actual school choice made by parents. The difference between both types of utilities provides a panorama on…

This narrative study is based on stories told by African American adolescents experiencing homelessness. It offers insights into their lived experiences and describes the challenges faced in negotiating the urban education system. African American youth are disproportionately represented in the adolescent homeless demographic. "Unheard and…

This review explores the conceptualization and measurement of neighborhood and institutional relationships related to children's educational outcomes in neighborhood effects research. The review's analysis first summarizes early statements about neighborhood and school relationships within the field. The analysis next situates neighborhood and…

The continued presence of educational management organizations (EMO) is explained as an inevitable and continued component of the public school landscape. This article discusses both why EMOs are here to stay and the benefits of EMOs in public education. Statistics are shared showing a 420% increase in the number of EMOs over the past 11 years as…

Growing up in an inner city environment can inhibit healthy development and have detrimental consequences for children and adolescents such as increased risks for many social and psychological problems. This article explores the role of community arts centers in fostering resilience among youth living in the inner city. A review of the literature…

Literacy is a socially constructed ideology (Barton & Hamilton, 1998; Street, 1995). Current representations reduce literacy to standards, skill testing, and the five components of reading (NICHD, 2000). This view of literacy discounts the knowledge and skills of many students. This article examines the oral story of Aisha, an African American…

The lack of achievement of students from high-risk and high-poverty environments necessitates changes in today's middle school environments to create a caring, supportive environment where all middle school students can succeed. This study investigated the classroom learning environments of resilient, average, and nonresilient minority students in…

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…