The current case demonstrates the complexities of utilizing Youth Court as a restorative practice in an urban high school, by focusing on the complexities it presents for one student in particular. In this case, there are reasons why Youth Court clearly is not working at this particular school site as intended. However, more importantly for…

Persistent educational inequity for immigrant and refugee students and their families calls for instructional practices centering on access, quality, and social justice. Drawing on two qualitative case studies, this article examines how three U.S. urban school teachers attended to the systemic inequalities and unique challenges confronting…

In this article, we recount our experiences learning from and with Latinx children of immigrants in urban schools. Highlighting how insights gleaned from our respective ethnographic projects have led us to embrace more explicit commitments to participatory engagement, we consider how young people's perspectives can and should fundamentally shift…

The purpose of this research was to examine the disconnect between urban school expectations and actual lived realities of marginalized students. Taking into consideration the conversation surrounding the definitions of urban education, and the importance of school connectedness with youth, we chose to focus on the lives of five former high…

This article relies on nonrepresentational narrative research to consider improvisational urban literacy. The author uses narrative to theorize the choice to teach "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" in urban high school English classrooms. The author positions this decision as the surprising result of an improvisational, urban literacy…

Family involvement has emerged as an essential component of education with the expectation that school leaders strive to engage families in their children's learning effectively. Yet traditional models of "involvement" often fail families in minority, lower socio-economic status (SES) communities. This qualitative case study documents…

Critical civic engagement is a pedagogical framework that suggests a return of civic education to American schooling is not simply about providing civics for all students, but that civic education, particularly among marginalized urban high school students, must engage lived experiences, develop critical thought, and facilitate informed civic…

In the United States, how to provide a high-quality education to all students has been a focal discussion, especially in urban settings. One potential solution that has emerged to confront this issue involves urban teacher residency (UTR) programs that provide innovations concerning the recruitment, preparation, and retention of teachers in…

This article explores how one urban high school under threat of state closure developed a multifaceted literacy program to transform the teaching and learning of literacy in a novel university/school partnership. Analyses of ethnographic and quantitative school data illustrate how the evolution of the literacy program could be understood as a…

This article provides an account of the ways in which students and adult supporters of an urban turnaround high school mobilized to defy the rhetoric of neoliberal reforms and the subsequent deficit narrative imposed on them and on their school. Their counternarratives refute the master narratives advanced by federal and state educational reforms.…

Students from urban high schools are usually faced with adverse environmental factors in their pursuit of academic success. These factors make learning more challenging and may confound the measurement of academic performance itself. This study explores how one such factor, ambient noise, affects the measurement of mathematics achievement.…

In this article, I analyze the formation of Shearwater High School in St. Louis, Missouri and I explore the identity work involved in building the school. Diverging from standardization trends in urban education, the school came to fruition through a creative process, which was in-flux and supported by diverse communities in St. Louis. This…

Many urban Catholic high schools pride themselves as developing our students in a holistic way. In these schools, educators are able to develop and support their students in both a moral and an academic sense. This belief in educating the whole child is appealing to many families, especially those in our most underserved urban contexts. Families…

Three teacher-researchers engage in self-study of a college writing program delivered on an urban high school campus. Through examination of their practices, from their particular standpoints bridging secondary and post-secondary education, the teachers find that the writing program repairs opportunity gaps related to the accountability regime,…

School district-university research collaborations represent one strategy to increase educators' ability to use current, research-based information in program decision-making and efforts to improve student achievement. However, differences in organizational structures, goals, values, and prior collaborative experiences, have made successful…