This critical case study analyzes Michigan's implementation of Public Act 4 (PA4), also known as the "emergency management" (EM) takeover law. PA4 grants the state control of school districts with dire budgetary problems. As most U.S. school districts are citywide, PA4 gives the state direct control over all the (previously locally…

Drawing insights primarily from Ethnic Studies, this essay is broken into the following components: outlining the elusive task of defining urban; delineating three decolonizing moves in relation to representation, structure, and affect; and ending with the ongoing struggles for Ethnic Studies in PK-12 schools and higher education. The goal is to…

Race dialogues have the potential to promote shared family-school-community partnerships and equity in urban educational practices. Participation in dialogues allows for diverse school community stakeholders to engage in courageous conversations and reflect on how racial power dynamics affect students and families within the school community. We…

Studies on student teaching continue to suggest that preservice teachers' feelings of dissonance are related to disparate views of teaching and learning between universities and schools. Drawing on interview, artifact, and observation data, the authors utilize Cognitive Dissonance and Critical Whiteness Studies to make different sense of the…

Over a decade ago, the first edition of "City Schools and the American Dream" debuted just as reformers were gearing up to make sweeping changes in urban education. Despite the rhetoric and many reform initiatives, urban schools continue to struggle under the weight of serious challenges. What went wrong and is there hope for future…

Black female educators played a vital role in segregated schools prior to the 1954 landmark Supreme Court case "Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas." Despite their notable and historic presence in the field of public education, presently they are disproportionately underrepresented in the U.S. teacher workforce. Acknowledging…

In the wake of racial violence in urban schools and society, we question, "Can the field of urban education love blackness and Black lives unconditionally and as preconditions to humanity? What does it look like to (re)imagine urban classrooms as sites of love? As educators, how might we utilize a pedagogy of love as an embodied practice that…

This study examined the intersections of race, class, gender, and exclusionary discipline in the lives of urban, middle school, Black girls. The lived experience of being Black, female, in an urban environment can not be understood from a lens of mutual exclusivity; Therefore, one must also include the interactions with institutions that…

In the field of education, critical theorists, critical pedagogues, and critical race theorists call for academics to engage in activist academic work to promote the social transformation of the material conditions created by racism and other forms of oppression. This article is a response to this call for academics, particularly those in the…

Because the dynamics of race are wrongly ignored in a current shroud of post-racialism (i.e. re-election of Barack Obama as president of the USA, shifting racial demographics in the USA, etc.), there are still communities in the USA and throughout the world that experience the damaging effects of racism entangled with the realities of class. Many…

Addressing the seemingly perpetual turbulent landscape of urban schools, the role that elementary educators and teacher educators can play in reversing negative trends and trajectories is considered. Three urban education journals were examined over a 5-year period (2005-2010) to determine the emphasis on elementary students or schools. Of the 429…

Through a case study of the Los Angeles city school district from the 1950s through the 1970s, Judith Kafka explores the intersection of race, politics, and the bureaucratic organization of schooling. Kafka argues that control over discipline became increasingly centralized in the second half of the twentieth century in response to pressures…

For a period of 85 years, the M Street/Dunbar High School was an academically elite, all-black public high school in Washington, D.C. As far back as 1899, its students came in first in citywide tests given in both black and white schools. Over this 85-year span, approximately 80 percent of M Street/Dunbar's graduates went on to college, even…

Many factors inhibit college completion by African-American high school graduates who come from low socio-economic backgrounds. Some factors are "cognitive," while others can be classified as "non-cognitive." Variables in the latter classification are examined in this study conducted at an urban high school in the Midwest with…

This article uses the metaphor of the achievement gap to make transparent, discuss, and critique the analytical frame/lens used in the articles to analyze urban education. Doing such an analysis is essential to producing an additional lens that has utility in theory and practice. It facilitates a historical analysis of urban education and leads to…