The overarching purpose of this article is to introduce A Gardening Metaphor (AGM) as an evolving framework for accelerating the closure of racial achievement gaps in America. Toward this end, we provide: (a) an examination of the racial disparities in education that are disproportionately experienced by Black children; (b) a rationale for why…

By exploring how liberalism is at work through a federally driven effort to improve academic achievement in schools serving youth of color and those from low-income communities, this article attempts to advance an understanding of the mechanisms that reify structural inequity in urban schools. Based on both a critical analysis of School…

How do school district administrators make sense of educational equity as they undertake reform? This study examines tracking policymaking in two urban school districts. Using case studies and an interpretive approach, the study highlights school district leaders' shifting ways of making sense of tracking and (in)equity while facing achievement…

Although education reforms have been designed to improve academic achievement for all students, there may be intervening factors, such as teacher expectations, that interfere with the success of these initiatives. This ethnographic case study examined student and teacher perspectives on an urban high school reform, and how that reform was…

This article describes how African American students' success can be improved via the increased support of Black churches and their partnerships with public schools. Findings and implications from a comparative case study of two North Carolina churches that strive to educationally assist African American public school students are detailed. Both…

This study contributes to the emerging research literature on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) support and persistence activities among urban teenage African American and Latina girls. We present three case studies of girls who participated in an afterschool STEM curriculum. Our within- and cross-case analyses focused on…

To understand the context of urban Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and their role in educating Black males, we conducted a literature review examining the academic contributions of these institutions to Black males. To bolster the literature, we examined Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System data, determining a set of…

Using a learning design perspective on No Child Left Behind (NCLB), I examine how accountability policy shaped urban educators' instructional sensemaking. Focusing on the role of policy-rooted classifications, I examine conversations from a middle school mathematics teacher team as a "best case" because they worked diligently to comply…

This article presents a 2-year critical case study of an urban high school innovating to enhance the academic performance of low-income Latina/o students, highlighting high-leverage practices that promote boundary crossing between school and community. First, we highlight foundational elements of school logic, mission, and community ethos that…

This qualitative case study provides a counternarrative to the literature of White teachers who are unsuccessful in bridging the achievement gap and disrupts the assumed meaning of solidarity between successful White teachers and their African American students. As part of successful classroom practice, this teacher interrogated his own whiteness…

Students' academic experiences are often shaped by normalized conceptions of literacy that do not honor the interrelatedness of multiple identities, languages, and literacies. This qualitative case study in an urban middle school highlights students' critical meta-awareness of their identities-in-practice in the figured world of their classroom…

This case study examines the leadership practices and actions of an urban high school principal who faced many challenges, but worked diligently to improve student achievement and school climate over a 3-year period. Significant improvements were made by using elements of Distributed Leadership, Professional Learning Communities, and Social…

This instrumental case study reviews the 1994-2004 period of state financial oversight in East St. Louis, Illinois School District 189, with a secondary review of the initial years of NCLB implementation. Although the oversight panel's fiscal management did generate financial stability, case findings indicate that its accountability processes did…

Culturally responsive practices in schools and classrooms have been shown to be an effective means of addressing the achievement gap as well as the disproportionate representation of racially, culturally, ethnically, and linguistically diverse students in programs serving students with special needs. While there has been much research discussing…

Drawing from two separate case studies, one on lower track African American students and another on gay and gender nonconforming African American male students, this article explores how students with multiple stigmatized identities make sense of and respond to their marginalization, a process we term "making space." In particular, we consider how…