This study sought to gain insight into teacher perceptions of their ability to improve a high poverty urban school. The school selected for this study came from a purposive sampling of urban schools that had exited from improvement required status and had then demonstrated gains in student academic performance in subsequent years. Four teachers…

Black and Latinx adolescent boys from economically stratified communities face pervasive societal inequities and, therefore, deserve more responsive school supports to determine and actualize postsecondary pathways. For insights into how such students conceptualize their futures and their school's role in facilitating this process, this…

The author advocates rethinking present approaches to early literacy development and suggests changes in teacher preparation to better meet the needs of urban and other underserved students.

Although we often look to schools to solve complex social problems, many educators are not ready to address the structural racism behind many contemporary conflicts. Pedro Noguera and Julio Angel Alicia present a brief history of the socioeconomic forces that drove school closures and gentrification in Chicago, the remaking of New Orleans after…

By using equity theory through a social justice lens, the authors intend to highlight how data are currently being used to solve the "what" and not the "why" as it relates to achievement gaps for marginalized students in urban settings. School practitioners have been utilizing quantitative data, such as district and state…

This article draws on oral history testimonies to examine the experiences of participants in the inaugural 1990 cohort of Teach For America (TFA)--a group of young people dubbed the "best and brightest" of their generation and tasked with "saving" urban education. For 25 years, TFA has operated according to the principle of the…

In 2014, The Urban Education Collaborative at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte hosted its first biennial International Conference on Urban Education (ICUE) in Montego Bay, Jamaica. In 2016, the second hosting of the conference took place in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Additionally, in 2018, the third hosting of the conference took place in…

"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…

This article reports on a teacher inquiry project in a primary school that serves disadvantaged communities on the outskirts of a de-industrialised city in the north of England. Of particular concern is a small group of white British boys in receipt of free school meals, who are identified by the school as disaffected and as a consequence…

In this article, the author combines multicultural feminist critical theories with the voices of Black and Latina/Latino young spiritual children to extend culturally responsive teaching. The author illuminates how children use their hip-hop writing to construct themselves as people who communicate with God, choose spiritual content for their…

The Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) is an influential and rapidly growing nationwide network of charter schools serving primarily disadvantaged minority students. Prominent elements of KIPP's educational model include high expectations for student achievement and behavior, and a substantial increase in time in school. KIPP is being watched…

This case study was produced in conjunction with the Center for American Progress's accompanying report on these issues, "Increasing the Effectiveness and Efficiency of Existing Public Investments in Early Childhood Education." This report establishes a set of policies and administrative changes on the federal level that will begin to…

For-profit charter schools represent a controversial new market-based education reform (Garcia, Barber, & Molnar, 2009; Conn, 2002). This essay explores how schools operated by for-profit corporations differ from those operated by non-profit organizations. Specifically, do for-profit charter schools locate in demographically distinct areas and…

An enduring concern for educational policy in many affluent countries is the endemic nature of educational inequalities that are predominately located in poor urban contexts. Given the inabilities of school reform "per se" to deal with these inequalities, the paper focuses on issues of scarcity and spatial processes that are implicated…

The author discusses the boarding school model as a schooling alternative to improve life chances for disadvantaged youth, particularly African American youth, by positively meeting their social and educational needs. Bourdieu, Coleman, and other social scientists purported that these needs can be better met by exposing students to social and…