Purpose: School district superintendents say politics is the number one factor limiting their performance, yet research provides limited guidance on navigating the political dynamics of district improvement. State takeovers and district-wide turnaround efforts tend to involve particularly heated and polarized debates. Massachusetts' 2012 takeover…

This policy study critically compares two different efforts to implement an accountability system in the New York City public schools. In 1971, the New York City Board of Education contracted with the Educational Testing Service (ETS), which created a lengthy accountability plan for the district. Fitful maneuvers to execute the ETS plan fizzled…

This article reflects a qualitative exploratory inquiry into the lived experiences of faculty members working within a system of urban schools of education as they supported diverse teacher candidates in completing the Educative Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA) during its first semesters of high-stakes implementation. Drawing upon…

For more than a century, urban public schools have provided economic opportunities through education to some of the nation's largest, most diverse, and neediest populations. By embracing these challenges, our nation's urban schools have provided the know-how and backbone upon which our cities have grown and thrived. In this report, the Council of…

Today's public school principals lead under conditions of significant pressures for change. At the local level, principals are the primary receivers and interpreters of the discourses and demands for change coming from central administration. Principals must make sense of these discourses and demands for change at the local school level, and they…

This dissertation examines how eight urban high schools responded to mandates to raise graduation requirements in mathematics. The change process was complicated by challenges such as the conditions of poverty, lack of adequate financial support for schools, and large numbers of students who come to high school with inadequate preparation in…

This report summarizes work conducted to date through the Senior Urban Education Research Fellowship (SUERF) awarded by the Council of the Great City Schools to the Value-Added Research Center (VARC) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for work in the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). VARC has utilized its Fellowship award, entitled…

In this report, the Council of the Great City Schools and its Strategic Support Teams propose that the Kansas City (Missouri) School District make a number of instructional, organizational, management, and operational changes to improve achievement, effectiveness, and efficiency. These proposals, in the areas of curriculum and instruction, human…

The Norfolk, Va., Public Schools began to close the gap with powerful learning, new instruction, and support.

The difficulties faced by Chicago's public school system have prompted two state-level investigative bodies to recommend the breaking up of the system into smaller, locally controlled units. Without exhaustively reviewing all of the factors involved in making the transition from a centralized to a decentralized school governance structure, this…

Findings of a case study that examined professional accountability in an elementary classroom are presented in this paper. Classroom observation, document analysis, and postobservation conferences were used to examine the practices and beliefs of one female teacher of second and third graders at a multicultural public elementary school in New York…

The National Advisory Council on Educational Research and Improvement sponsored a conference to take a close look at the practical ways in which education is being reformed, and perhaps transformed, with the assistance of private-sector advice and innovations and with certain business disciplines. Following are the titles and authors of the papers…

Urban schools are not, in and of themselves, the source of all the problems with respect to urban education. But 4.6 percent of public school districts enroll 46.3 percent of all the students in this country, and urban schools have a significant role to play in determining how well or how poorly America's youth are prepared to function in society.…

In 1997, America needs to launch a new Marshall Plan, equivalent to the original Marshall Plan that was established to help fund Europe's recovery from World War II. The new Marshall Plan must be directed at America's own urban public school systems. The Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS) is announcing a five-part framework for an Urban…

Selections in this book, which grew from a seminar at New York University between 1994 and 1996, discuss the recent educational innovations of charter schools, contracting arrangements, and choice that are designed to liberate educators and raise the levels of opportunity for all students. The essays, which focus on the urban experience, explore…