Principals' beliefs and actions have powerful outcomes in the lives of the students and families they serve. In this article, we offer the portrait of a long-standing principal of a diverse urban school where the student body is 90% Latinx, 65% English learners (ELs), and 87% eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. We explore many key practices…

This paper examines how two social studies teachers in New York and Arizona engage newcomer youth in active citizenship education. Using a framework of culturally responsive active citizenship education, this article sheds light on how two teachers, in two different social, political, and educational contexts, enact critical citizenship practices…

This report provides a new resource for understanding the state of urban public schools in the U.S. Geared specifically toward city leaders who want to evaluate how well traditional district and charter schools are serving all their city's children and how their schools compare to those in other cities, the report measures outcomes for all public…

This article explores the benefits of verbal conflicts--contested storied spaces--in a Native American literature classroom composed of a multi-tribal and multicultural urban student body. Students in this course engage in whole-class verbal discussions focusing on contemporary and historical issues concerning Native American tribes and…

When an inner-city Arizona music teacher found himself faced with too many orchestra students and not enough instruments, he took a risky but rewarding left turn--into rap music. In this article, the author describes how he teaches his hip-hop class, the challenges in creating and teaching the class, and the positive results. (Contains 21…

This study focuses on an urban school district in Southern California with a large Cambodian-American student population. Ten Cambodian-American former students of the district were interviewed to examine the nature of their educational experience in terms of federal, state and district policies for language minority students. All entered school…

The study described in this book was designed by the Southwest Regional Laboratory as part of a proposal to create a Metropolitan Center for the Far West Laboratory. The Center would focus on the challenges facing urban educators in its service area. Metropolitan school districts, characterized by high numbers of minority students, successfully…

Physical activity levels in girls decline dramatically during adolescence, most profoundly among minorities. To explore ethnic and racial variation in attitudes toward physical activity, semistructured interviews (n = 80) and physical activity checklists (n = 130) are conducted with African American, Hispanic, and Caucasian middle school girls in…

This paper presents an overview of a 3-year, federally funded comparative study of 11 public school districts and 40 schools in metropolitan areas of California, Arizona, and Nevada. The purpose was to identify school districts that are successfully meeting the challenge of educating relatively high numbers of newcomer students (ethnic and…