Research concerning family preferences for schooling indicates that they value proximity to home as much as academic quality when choosing schools. However, preferences for proximity likely represent inability to access schools farther away from home, especially for disadvantaged students. I test whether distance and district boundaries constrain…

Although Response to Intervention (RTI) has been generally studied in relation to student outcomes, the system itself requires further study, particularly for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students. CLD students have consistently suffered inequities in the educational system, including over representation in high incidence disability…

Parent engagement plays an essential role in student achievement and well-being, but not all families are able to participate in their children's education. This article focuses on strategies for reaching and supporting parents who face challenges to engagement such as poverty and cultural diversity. Five district-level parent engagement projects…

The School District of Philadelphia (SDP), like many other urban school districts, struggles to increase its hiring and retention of experienced and highly qualified teachers in its low-performing/high-need schools. Excluding its charter schools, SDP serves approximately 165,000 students, largely from high-poverty (76%) and minority (85%)…

This paper analyzes some of the causes of urban educational problems. The major focus is on poverty, racial isolation, and the educational bureaucracy. These factors are discussed in some detail. In a section devoted to attempts to change the educational situation several avenues and approaches are presented. Most crucial is the broadening of…

This document is one of a series of reports based on the Special Education Expenditure Project, a study of the nation's spending on special education and related services based on analysis of data for the 1999-2000 school year. This report focuses on general patterns of variation in total spending on special education students across districts…

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.…

Aimed at eliminating the barriers to learning wrought about by poverty, Minneapolis and other urban school districts educate a substantial portion of poor and disadvantaged children and go nearly anywhere to hold parenting classes, homeless shelters, neonatal care units, high schools, and even jails. This article details the early childhood…