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…

What constitutes an urban school? This question has confounded social researchers and educators who often limit definitions to population data. H. Richard Milner suggested a framework for defining urban schools that includes population data as well as the racial and social context of schools. This article applied Milner's model to school districts…

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…

This qualitative study investigated the schooling experiences of 20 young Black men who graduated from Douglass Academy, an all-boys public charter secondary school in a large urban city. Specifically, I explore how these students construct meaning from their school experiences and their efforts for academic success. The students articulated two…

Urban public school districts in the U.S. vary in quality. Educational policies, distribution of resources, and the challenges that students bring to the classroom differ substantially across localities. Little surprise, then, that academic outcomes--such as high school graduation rates and average school performance on standardized…

When looking at the historical past, questions of diversity and school reform seem to go hand in hand. The presence of diverse communities in American urban schools has helped foster a change in traditional educational practices and policies. At times, the goal for these communities was to be given their just share of receiving a fair, equitable,…

Despite growing concern over teachers' ability to live comfortably where they work, we know little about the systematic relationship between affordability and teachers' well-being, particularly in high-cost urban areas. We use novel survey data from San Francisco Unified School District to identify the patterns and prevalence of economic anxiety…

Despite growing concern over teachers' ability to live comfortably where they work, we know little about the systematic relationship between affordability and teachers' well-being, particularly in high-cost urban areas. We use novel survey data from San Francisco Unified School District to identify the patterns and prevalence of economic anxiety…

This research addresses the problem of teacher shortages in urban, high-needs schools. A grounded theory methodology was used to expand insights related to teacher recruitment and retention by collecting and analyzing qualitative (interview and observational) data from nine successful urban teachers. A two-part model of recruitment and retention…

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 England, globalisation and neoliberal political agendas have created an environment in which teachers are constantly measured and ranked and subjected to a discourse of marketisation, managerialism, and performativity. This measuring, ranking, and subjection is particularly strongly felt in urban schools, where a discourse that recognised the…

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…

Urban schools in the United States are generally viewed as having greater challenges than their suburban and rural counterparts. Most notably, they often have lower academic achievement and much of the educational reform movement has been aimed at urban schools in an attempt to close the achievement gap. Although much of the focus in recent years…

The purpose of this article is to report on the findings of a mixed-mode study that examined the effect of mentoring on 20 doctoral students and 21 mentors in the National Urban Special Education Leadership Initiative (NUSELI), a federally funded urban special education leadership doctoral program. Each doctoral student was provided a school-based…