In 1968, New York City's unionized teachers participated in three separate strikes that spanned two school years. Teachers clashed with Black parents and activists who called for community control as both groups sought authority and recognition in the schools. Racialized assumptions in place before and extending beyond the labor skirmish infused…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of societal and cultural factors on the practices and perceptions of school principals in Kazakhstan. Design/methodology/approach: The paper draws on empirical data collected in Kazakhstan over two years in the course of an international, collaborative, multi-stranded project. Findings:…

Enactment of federal educational policy has direct implications for states and local school districts across the nation, particularly in the areas of accountability and funding. This study utilized constructivist grounded theory to examine the impact of policy on science education reform in a large, urban school district over a 5-year period. The…

We explore the first four articles in this Special Issue of "Studying Teacher Education" to identify challenges to the self-study of teaching and teacher education practices (S-STEP) methodology, and how this methodology supports the work of teachers and teacher educators working in urban settings. We respond to these articles by…

Getting a large, urban school district to use standards-based education and standards-based grading is challenging. Doing so in one year is monumental. During the 2009-10 school year, Omaha (NE) Public Schools began to study the feasibility of making changes to its traditional grading system. The more closely district personnel investigated the…

This paper utilizes the theoretical framework of complexity theory to compare and contrast leadership and educational change in two urban schools. Drawing on the notion of a complex adaptive system--an interdependent network of interacting elements that learns and evolves in adapting to an ever-shifting context--our case studies seek to reveal the…

The purpose of this paper is to enhance our understanding of districts that are implementing sustainable professional learning in data-driven decision-making (DDDM) to improve student achievement. The data-informed leadership framework, comprised of leadership practices that acknowledge the complexities that play into data use, guided the inquiry.…

We use the framework of institutional pluralism to provide new insights into a controversial process of market-based reform-school closures. School closure is a shock that highlights the dynamics and definitions of failure and surfaces values and meanings that might otherwise be hidden from consideration. Using qualitative data from a closing…

School turnaround--a reform strategy that strives for quick and dramatic transformation of low-performing schools--has gained prominence in recent years. This study uses interviews and focus groups conducted with 86 teachers in 13 schools during the early stages of school turnaround in a large urban district to examine teachers' perceptions of the…

Dr. James Lytle's discussion of the "destruction" of the School District of Philadelphia was indeed a bitter pill for Indi Ekanayake to swallow. As an educator who is both an alumnus of Teach For America and a charter school employee, Ekanayake feels as if he might be a representative of the types of people whom Dr. Lytle is…

Current Canadian scholarly literature, education policy, and curricular documents encourage the participation of Indigenous community members as a key component of Indigenous Education reform. Guided by sharing circles conducted with Indigenous Elders, families, teachers, and support workers, we present community voices and experiences of…

Joellen Killion reports on the results of a five-year professional development intervention consisting of workshops and curriculum units conducted in six elementary schools in an urban district to gauge teacher knowledge and practices in science instruction for English language learners. The study looked at predictors of teacher change that…

Given recent budgetary gaps in public education, many civic and educational leaders have relied upon private sources of funding for US public schools, including funds raised by parents. Yet parents' role as economic actors in public education has been largely unexplored. Drawing from a qualitative study of parent engagement, fundraising, and…

Purpose: The guiding question of this study is: how is the Ontario Leadership Framework (OLF) translated into practices in elementary and secondary schools in the province of Ontario? The purpose of this paper is to provide a contextual account of the processes by which school leadership standards are incorporated into the practices of school…

Public schools failing to meet accountability standards have been shut down, taken over by charter organizations, or undergone reconstitution. This article challenges deficit views of students as passive and complacent in a schooling context dictated by accountability sanctions. Drawing from counterpublic theory, it describes a case study that…