Students of color comprise a majority in public Montessori school enrollments around the United States, and practitioners are often asked for evidence of the Montessori Method's benefits for these students. This article examines the relevant literature related to the experiences of students of color in public Montessori schools. Research finds…

In response to numerous calls for more rigorous STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education to improve US competitiveness and the job prospects of next-generation workers, especially those from low-income and minority groups, a growing number of schools emphasizing STEM have been established in the US over the past decade.…

The full-service community school (FSCS) model is one of the most popular and growing types of community school models, which is widely implemented in under-resourced urban schools. FSCSs offer an alternative to traditional public schools in the U.S. and are designed to coordinate community assets within a school. Given increased attention to this…

Chicago Public Schools and school districts throughout the country are seeking new ways to foster racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic equity as desegregation consent decrees are being lifted. One of Chicago's selective enrollment high schools drafted parents, educators, administrators, and community representatives to address its own diversity…

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…

The Office of Black Male Student Achievement (OBMSA) of Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS), established in 2014, is one of the first in the country. The innovative work of the OBMSA is centered on student voice and student thought. After getting input from parents and families, community members, educators, and young Black males themselves, the…

This article analyzes teaching that begins with the realities, ideologies, and articulations of dispossessed youth of color to shift perceptions of cultural deficits into potential academic strengths that are also critical. Drawing on culturally relevant, critical pedagogical, and critical literacy theories to understand the educational needs of…

The widespread assumption in the United States today is that traditional urban public schools are failing. Market-based solutions, particularly charter schools, are seen as the way to improve urban education. How then can we understand a large urban district where educational actors have furthered a locally popular alternative vision? This article…

"Critical Pedagogy, Physical Education and Urban Schooling" is a critical ethnography of health, physical education and the schooling experiences of urban youth. The subjects of health and physical education are compulsory in most schools internationally, but many contemporary practices in these subjects reinforce rather than challenge the…

Magnet schools were originally created to attract a diverse student population. Using data from the 23 magnet schools in St. Louis, this longitudinal study is twofold: first, to review the performance outcomes of the magnet schools across a 5-year period, between 2005-2006 and 2009-2010, and second, to examine whether the magnet schools are…

In every state in the South, the percentage of residents with bachelor's degrees or higher who were born outside the state exceed the percentage born in-state, reflecting their dependence on imported talent over building their own talent-development systems. In Virginia, the Southern state with the highest percentage of residents with a B.A. or…

This executive summary highlights research findings on outcomes in education, employment, and income in the southern United States region. Findings include: (1) As a whole, Southern schools, colleges, and universities perform better than ever, though they are in constant need of improvement to meet the demands of both democracy and a changing…

The National Summer Learning Project, launched by the Wallace Foundation in 2011, includes an assessment of the effectiveness of voluntary, district-led summer learning programs offered at no cost to low-income, urban elementary students. The study, conducted by RAND, uses a randomized controlled trial and other analytic methods to assess the…

The National Summer Learning Project, launched by the Wallace Foundation in 2011, includes an assessment of the effectiveness of voluntary, district-led summer learning programs offered at no cost to low-income, urban elementary students. The study, conducted by RAND, uses a randomized controlled trial and other analytic methods to assess the…

For years, points out David L. Kirp, critics have lambasted public schools as fossilized bureaucracies run by paper-pushers and filled with time-serving teachers preoccupied with their job security, not the lives of their students. Yet, as this article describes, running an exemplary school system does not demand heroes or heroics, just hard and…