Teachers who attended urban schools as students are uniquely positioned to understand both the structural context that urban schools operate within and the many funds of knowledge that urban students bring to school. The purpose of this study is to examine the funds of knowledge that individuals who have been students in urban schools and now wish…

One urban district administered the Black Male Teacher Environment Survey (BMTES) to each of its Black male teachers to measure their school-based experiences. This article highlights descriptive statistics from the 86 Black male teacher respondents. Findings suggest that participants' background characteristics and school-based experiences varied…

Annually, thousands of U.S. students fail high school introductory biology. The language demands of biology are large, and science teachers are often unprepared to support students' language needs. Here, we describe a 4-week summer high school introductory biology course executed in a large West Coast city. Our aim was to help 33 students recover…

This article examines how 18 teachers, counselors, administrators, and support staff from seven New York City public high schools collaborated during the Black and Latino Male Professional Development Initiative (a pseudonym) to develop a "culturally relevant, schoolwide, college-going culture" supportive of Black and Latino males'…

This article examines the 2015 Atlanta cheating scandal trials and sentencing. Using critical race theory, the authors argue that cheating is a natural outgrowth of market-based school reform and that racial realism will always lead to scrutiny of Black performance. The sentences of these Black educators is overkill, rooted in anti-Blackness, and…

If school choice programs are to provide any degree of equitable access to educational opportunities, then useful information about academic quality needs to be available to all participants, not just those who hob knob with the school board members or chat with the superintendent over the backyard fence. This study draws upon a unique data set to…

In this article, I critique the labels and terms used to frame practices aimed at closing the achievement gap. I examine how an unacknowledged "achievement gap Discourse" has emerged from the language that informs practices and policies of contemporary school reform. I use Gee's uppercase "Discourse" and a cultural analytic…

Uses data from interviews with mothers from diverse ethnocultural and socioeconomic groups to explore issues of parent roles, access to power, and practices of inclusion and exclusion at an urban elementary school. Results suggest that such efforts become confrontational as competing interests of parents and educators regarding children's…

To determine the effects of busing, this study compared 1971/72 enrollments in the public schools in Kalamazoo and Pontiac, Michigan with enrollment size and trends between 1966 and 1970. (Author/SF)

Analyzes Girls' High School, one of the two original secondary schools in the Atlanta public system, in order show that, contrary to the claims of nineteenth century educational boosters, social class and race were important factors which determined how far a scholar advanced up the educational stairway. (Author/JM)

Describes the Lowell Leadership Academy, a 12-year-old partnership between the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and the Lowell (Massachusetts) public schools. Through the Academy, the university organizes professional development for the school district's administrators. The Academy's role as a resource for other urban districts is explored.…

This article emphasizes the following points concerning policies of the Detroit Board of Education: (1) conflicts over religion and education have been part of politics since 1842; (2) these conflicts were political rather than consitutional; and (3) until 1948 decisions regarding religion were based on "institutional" considerations…

Used data provided by Boston's election department to examine the high level of racial polarization around the issue of an elected versus appointed school board. Although the appointed board voted more favorably on issues concerning African Americans, blacks were disturbed by the loss of four elected positions and opposed to the appointed board's…

Analyzes two paths to creating a broad community support network to enhance urban education reform. The first is a mayoral path, exemplified by Boston, in which the mayor assumes political and fiscal responsibility for school reform. The second is a corporate path, exemplified by Pittsburgh in the 1980s, in which the private sector establishes a…

First reviews four representative theoretical studies in the history of urban education, calling for detailed case studies of particular schools and school systems to supplement theoretical analyses; and then, as an example of such a case study, discusses the school system of Gary, Indiana, focusing on the Gary Plan. (JM)