We examine the views of low-income urban parents toward their neighborhood school. Policymakers must understand the attitudes of these individuals, particularly because they represent some of the most vulnerable groups in our education system. As national education policies have made it easier for parents to choose schools, attention has…

This qualitative study investigated the schooling experiences of 20 young Black men who graduated from Douglass Academy, an all-boys public charter secondary school in a large urban city. Specifically, I explore how these students construct meaning from their school experiences and their efforts for academic success. The students articulated two…

A growing body of research investigates how intermediary organizations (IOs) and their networks navigate, promote, and produce evidence on social media. To date, scholars have underexplored blogs, an important milieu in which IOs produce and disseminate information. In this analysis, we broaden the emerging scholarship on evidence brokering by…

Educational disparities are deeply entrenched in U.S. society. Our research focused on a move toward equity and investment in one Midwestern charter school via the implementation of the African American Student Network. Participants were 15 male and 15 female students in Grades 9 to 12 who participated in the network for one semester. Qualitative…

An unsustainable workload is considered the primary cause of teacher turnover at Charter Management Organizations (CMOs), yet most reports provide anecdotal evidence to support this claim. This study uses 2010-2011 survey data from one large CMO and finds that teachers' perceptions of workload are significantly associated with decisions to leave…

The purpose of this study is to reflect on the evolution of a partnership between a university and urban charter high school serving a predominately African American population. Because of the author's embeddedness both as the researcher and participant member, this research assumes the paradigm of autoethnography. Reflections on key components of…

School choice has become a cornerstone of education reform plans across the nation especially in urban settings where immigrant populations often settle. Latino enrollment in charter schools has increased accordingly. Yet, little is known about how Latino parents, who arguably face significant linguistic, cultural, and economic barriers, engage in…

This study examines the process of parent engagement at three community and school-based parent participation projects involving Latino immigrant families in California. Through the participants' "testimonios," the study investigates the motivations and interactions contextualizing their leadership development, participation, and…

This article compares charter schools and other public schools in New York State. School Report Card (SRC) data measuring student, teacher, and school characteristics from the state's 16 urban school districts with charter schools were examined. Descriptive and multivariate analysis was used. The findings suggest that there are more similarities…

In this article, we report on an ethnographic study of figured worlds of resettlement and identities that Muslim refugee youth from the Russian Federation coconstructed in an urban school at the Southwestern U.S. border. In the school, multiple cultural-historical discourses came together within a global context: refugee families, a global Islamic…

This article describes the influence of process drama on fourth grade students' written language productivity and specificity. Participants included 16 students with learning and/or behavioral challenges at an urban public charter school. The influence of process drama on students' written language was compared across contextualized and…

This study analyzes the increase in school segregation in Delaware from a quantitative perspective. The article tests the hypothesis that the declaration of unitary status that released the Wilmington area school districts from their desegregation order caused the increase in segregation. The research reveals that the declaration of unitary status…

Public charter schools across the country are struggling to better serve a range of students with disabilities. Using the approach of a participatory evaluation, a K-8 college preparatory school community of teachers, administrators, parents, and students were better able to define those practices that impeded or supported a high-quality proactive…

Within urban elementary schools are Black students who continue to challenge the normative deficit characterization of the educational opportunities of students like them. This study attempts to provide a more holistic picture of the scholarly trajectories of 13 African American males who are particularly talented in mathematics and who attended…

This article interrogates the construction of ethnoracial categories in everyday classroom life and how ethnoracial classroom dynamics contribute to larger patterns of inequality in achievement and unequal college futures for minorities. The study compares one urban and two suburban schools. Drawing on observation data from six classes and 57…