With the proliferation of information on how to use data to inform instruction for more than two decades, district leaders, principals, and other stakeholders assume teachers know how to use the cycle of inquiry process to improve student achievement. This case study is an examination of the practice of data use in seven schools in one urban…

New York City public schools, serving nearly one million students, are some of the most segregated in the nation. The Bronx, one of the poorest school districts in New York City, serving students who are 83% Black or Hispanic, has been plagued by persistent racial disproportionalities. Top-down change efforts have consistently failed. Improvement…

Student engagement in under-resourced public schools remains an ongoing challenge in the United States. Moreover, there is no panacea for student disengagement in high poverty urban schools. However, experts have suggested that appropriate interventions for early and middle grade students can increase motivation and interest and promote a growth…

Purpose: The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine, understand, and describe the elements of restorative justice programs (relationships, community building, accountability, empathy) that high school principals and teachers in public school districts located in San Bernardino County, California perceive as most beneficial for changing…

Principals are isolated in their work and suffer from low morale. The role of the principal has become increasingly complex and demanding especially within the current accountability model with the public nature of school report cards. This is a problem in Rocky Top Public Schools and in school districts across the country. The purpose of this…

Recent research on the relationship between standards and teachers' practice suggests that teachers are unlikely to make changes to practice without extensive opportunities for learning about standards with colleagues. This article extends this line of research, using a comparative case study of three high-poverty urban schools to examine the…

Assuming the responsibility of ensuring that hundreds or thousands of students obtain the instruction and knowledge that they will need to be successful in life is a serious undertaking. Courageous school principals who accept this challenge are held responsible for providing the organization and leadership that provides the foundation for an…

Confirmation of the current enthusiasm for re-visioning progressive education arrived in inboxes this fall when the Bank Street College of Education received more submissions for this issue than for any other in the journal's 17-year history. From these the editors have selected a range of essays that reflect pre-kindergarten through high-school…

This narrative inquiry traces a beginning teacher's unfolding career over a six-year period in a diverse middle school in the fourth largest city in the USA. The work revolves around two conceptualizations: "stories to live by" and "stories to leave by." How these identity-related phenomena surface and play out in an…

Commitment to one another, determination to prove stereotypes wrong, and a strong belief in the power of education are the core values at San Ysidro High School in San Diego, California. The school serves 2,364 students in one of the poorest communities in the country. The community celebrates its predominately Mexican-American heritage and…

This article reports further findings from the "Carpe Vitam: Leadership for Learning" project, based on a close examination of some of the interview narratives with an Australian principal. Positioning analysis is used as an empirically-grounded means of making sense of who this Australian principal is and what she does as a leader to…

A federal policy in the United States has required sweeping changes in K-12 education. With No Child Left Behind legislation, schools are challenged to create conditions that bring each student to federally-set academic proficiency levels. Many schools have become more attentive to data about student performance and how it can inform their…

This book describes a professional development model for new and experienced principals -- a collaborative leadership inquiry seminar. The authors combine existing models of structured professional conversations about education into an on-going leadership development experience that will work in large, urban school districts. They examine how to…

A two-year ethnographic observation of an inner-city high school in Los Angeles, USA, indicated that the principal, who was extremely dedicated to at-risk students and possessed a unique style of mentoring, played a major role in students academic achievement. We--the principal and the researcher who observed the school--inquired about the…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the ecology of collaboration between school and university partners using an appreciative inquiry theoretical perspective and to demonstrate how it enhances the social capital in school and university partnerships. Design/methodology/approach: A case study of a partnership of an inner-city high…