This article uses elements of narrative and portraiture to acknowledge the voices of four teachers who participated in a 3-year effort to turn around an urban elementary school. Turnaround is a sanctioned reform effort intended to produce rapid, dramatic improvement in student academic achievement in a low-performing school. We present the teacher…

East St. Louis educators provide critical counter-narratives to Jonathan Kozol's depiction of teaching and learning in East St. Louis, Illinois in "Savage Inequalities." Teachers, educators, and administrators provide a complex view of urban schooling beyond deficiency, inadequacy, and despair. Findings highlight educators' voices as…

In this article, I employ sociocultural theory to analyze the learning to teach process of two novice teachers enrolled in one Urban Teacher Residency (UTR). Findings show that Genesis and Jackie were differentially drawing on programmatic, disciplinary, relational, experiential, and dispositional resources as they learned to teach in an urban…

This paper explores the ways in which success in school is constructed by a majority White teaching staff during day-to-day classroom practices and schoolwide policies, such as the disciplinary systems at a "no-excuses" charter school in one of the largest urban districts in the U.S. Stakeholders were assessed by interviews and…

This empirical study analyzed data from 638 teachers and 11,800 students in low-socioeconomic status (SES) urban schools (and schools with urban characteristics) exploring associations of school, teacher, teaching, and professional development characteristics toward student performance on the revised Advanced Placement (AP) Biology and AP…

Despite recruitment efforts, teachers of Color are underrepresented and leaving the teaching force at faster rates than their White counterparts. Using Critical Race Theory to analyze and present representative qualitative narratives from 218 racial justice-oriented, urban teachers of color, this article affirms that urban schools--despite serving…

Correlation analysis was used to analyze what experiences before and during teacher preparation for 72 graduates of an urban teacher education program were associated with urban commitment, first job location, and retention in urban schools for 3 or more years. Binary logistic regression was then used to analyze whether urban K-12 schooling,…

This article presents 7 years of qualitative research into the emerging understandings of a population of 456 beginning 7 to 12 urban teachers who supplied 130 participants who were enrolled in a total of 26 MSEd English Language Arts courses over 7 years. These were interviewed while teaching in urban schools focused primarily on testing and…

Broadly speaking, this reflection approaches the on-going concern of capacitating an overwhelmingly White teaching profession for effectively teaching inner-city students attending "de facto" segregated schools. Using professional identifications, this reflection presents narrativized understanding of respondents' "becoming"…

This article addresses teacher retention in urban schools, focusing on high-need secondary science classrooms. As a longitudinal study, this research investigated how eight case study teachers conceived of their careers and career moves. The experiences and perspectives of three case study teachers indicated that they were situated along a…

This study explores teachers' beliefs about urban students and urban teaching. The author discusses some cultural aspects of these teachers' definitions of urban and points out their highlighting of race as an essential component of urban teaching. Even though race is rarely named, it is often at play in the teachers' descriptions of urban…

This article argues that economic exclusion, standardized testing, and racially biased definitions of teacher quality continue the exclusion of teachers of color from the urban teaching force. The authors highlight two urban programs designed to address such barriers and situate such efforts within a critical race theory framework that identifies…

This qualitative multisite case study examined how three high schools within one large urban district supported ninth-grade students' needs through interdisciplinary teaming. Data collected during the 2006-2007 school year included observations, interviews, and archival evidence of 67 participants. Findings suggest teacher communication as a…

Culturally responsive educational practices have arisen as effective means of increasing culturally diverse students' academic achievement and psychological well-being; however, the relational processes involved are not well understood. Using grounded theory, this study examines the relational processes of one culturally responsive teacher and her…

Data on the impact of student, teacher, and principal racial and gender composition in urban schools on teacher work outcomes are limited. This study, a secondary data analysis of White and Black urban public school teachers using data taken from the restricted use 2003-04 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), examines the effects of relational…