Parent participation continues to decline among African American communities in urban schools. Parental involvement is essential to closing the achievement gap in urban schools. This grounded theory study explored the principals' perceptions and experiences of elementary school principals, parents, and district office staff as it relates to…

Purpose: Given the recent push to increase children's physical activity levels through whole-of-school approaches, the relationship between physical activity and academic achievement has received much attention. Therefore, this study sought to understand the relationship between academic achievement and healthy school transformations in urban…

Purpose: Educational leadership is key to addressing the persistent inequities in low-income urban schools, but most principals struggle to work with parents and communities around those schools to create socially just learning environments. This article describes the conditions and experiences that enabled principals to share leadership with…

In partnership with the Mayor of Baltimore City and Baltimore City Public Schools (City Schools), Family League of Baltimore (Family League) launched the Community & School Engagement Strategy in school year 2012-13. As part of that process, it intentionally aligned its existing Out of School Time (OST) activities with community schools…

African American males consistently perform at significantly lower academic levels, than their peers, at every age level and on almost every national assessment (Lewis, Simon, Uzzell, Horwitz, & Casserly, 2010; Harvey, 2010; Tsoi-A-Fatt, 2010; Fergus & Noguera, 2010), and of all racial/ethnic and gender groups, African American males…

This report presents selected findings from the Public School Principal and Private School Principal Data Files of the 2011-12 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). SASS is a nationally representative sample survey of public and private K-12 schools, principals, and teachers in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. School districts associated…

The rationale for taking bold action on the nation's persistently failing schools can be summed up in one dramatic and disturbing statistic: half of the young Americans who drop out of high school attend just 12 percent of the nation's schools. Ending the cycle of failure at schools is a daunting challenge and a surprisingly controversial one.…

When asked to explain why so many urban schools show unsatisfactory results on academic or social measures, principals routinely and quickly turn to descriptions of parents. In other words, when seeking to explain why work within a school is so difficult or why reform initiatives have been unsuccessful, many principals point outside the school.…

The current study replicates work of Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Northeast and Islands. It describes dropout prevention programs in nine Mid-Atlantic Region (Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) school districts serving communities with populations of 24,742-107,250 (as of July 2008). All nine…

Critical action research is contextualized in a low socioeconomic, multicultural urban school in Auckland, New Zealand. The writers are a university lecturer (mentor) and a school principal (critical action researcher). The research was part of a meta project which aimed to raise the achievement of Maori (indigenous) students. Research processes…

This paper reports on research into how schools, parents and local communities work together to support students' learning during the transition from primary to secondary schools in what is referred to as the middle years of schooling. The research was conducted in four Australian schools within one urban school district. These schools were…

High school students continue to struggle in algebra, especially in large inner-city schools with underprivileged students. Students are not the only ones skirmishing with algebra. Teachers and school leaders are just as frustrated as they search for answers to complex teaching and learning problems. Two high school principals report the results…

The Salvatori Prize for American Citizenship is given annually by The Heritage Foundation to recognize extraordinary efforts by American citizens who are helping their communities solve problems the government has been unable to solve. The 1999 Salvatori Prize has been awarded to seven principals who prove that there is no excuse for the failure…

There is no excuse for the failure of most public schools to teach poor children. All children can learn, as the principals and schools profiled in this book have demonstrated. These schools and administrators have overcome the bureaucratic and cultural obstacles that keep low-income children behind in most public schools. The 21 high-performing,…

Reviews and describes five core beliefs and seven organizational cultural characteristics of urban schools that are highly successful in educating low-socioeconomic status (low-SES) children of color. These factors are operationalized in a model called High Performance All Student Success (HiPass), which was developed by urban principals rather…