Hispanic and Latino students are regarded as one of the most uneducated and educationally at-risk and disadvantaged groups in the United States, yet few studies have focused on teaching and learning in classrooms where they are making significant academic gains due to high quality teachers. Current research in this area lacks strong theoretical…

The Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts (CCSS/ELA) focus on building student capacity to read complex texts. The Standards provide an explicit text complexity staircase that maps text levels to grade levels. Furthermore, the Standards articulate a rationale to accelerate text levels across grades to ensure students are able to…

(Purpose) This study contributes to the knowledge base about strategies for helping disconnected youth re-engage with schooling. The study presents findings of a rigorous impact evaluation of the Good Shepherd Services (GSS) Transfer School Model that is grounded in developmental theory positing that social and emotional factors are essential to…

The Office of Special Education Services (OSES) in the Houston Independent School District (HISD) supports students with disabilities in gaining college, career readiness, and independent living skills through active engagement in grade-level curriculum. The purpose of special education is to minimize the impact of the students' disability, while…

This article describes an urban teacher education program on a predominantly White campus, in which 71% of the students in the program were students of color. This article details a qualitative study and highlights the structures of support most influential in the retention of students within the program. Findings suggest that a multifaceted…

A four-year college degree increases a student's employment prospects and earning potential. Given this importance, it is not surprising that 75 percent of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) high school students aspire to obtain at least a four-year college degree. Yet, prior research showed that few achieved this goal: a 2006 University of Chicago…

In 2007, spurred by University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research (UChicago CCSR) research reports, leadership at the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) began a new targeted approach to reducing course failure in the ninth grade. The research suggested that the transition between eighth and ninth grade played a critical role in shaping…

This article argues that metal detectors bestow an organizational stigma to schools. One symptom of this is students' heightened level of fear at school. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and a matched-pair design, this study finds that metal detectors are negatively correlated with students' sense…

This conceptual paper explores racial microaggressions and their effects on African American and Hispanic students in urban schools. Microaggressions are pervasive in our society (Sue et al., 2007), and although often manifested in subtle ways, can be detrimental for their long-term effects on students' psychological, socialemotional, and…

Despite increases in postsecondary enrollment at American universities and colleges, there are still significant gaps in who matriculates to college and persists through graduation. Low-income students and students of color continue to be underrepresented in institutions of higher education; for many of these students, a lack of awareness of…

The research study examined a university GEAR UP program in order to gain a better understanding of HEA's progress in providing at-risk students from high poverty families with mentoring, counseling, outreach, and supportive services to both students and their parents. Case study was used to examine implementation of the government funded…

How do children develop identifications with mathematics over time, seeing themselves as agents in their math classrooms (or not)? This ethnographic and interview study followed nine Latino/a children with and without learning dis/abilities through two years of mathematics in a high-poverty urban school. The children participated in two distinct…

This dissertation analyzes differences found in Spanish-speaking middle school and high school students in algebra-based problem solving. It identifies the accuracy differences between word problems presented in English, Spanish and numerically based problems. The study also explores accuracy differences between each subgroup of Spanish-speaking…

NAEP Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) results in mathematics and reading are based on representative samples of 1,100 to 2,300 public school students at grade 4 and 900 to 2,100 public school students at grade 8 in each participating urban district in 2013. Twenty-one urban districts participated in the 2013 assessments. The assessments…

Dual-language education is often lauded for providing high-caliber bilingual instruction in an integrated classroom. This is complicated, however, when a dual-language program does not include all members of a school community. This article examines a "strand" dual-language program that attracts middle-class white students to a predominantly black…