This study investigates school choice in a gentrified urban context and examines the ways in which school choice as rhetoric creates false perceptions, how school-choice policies can betray the very principle they espouse, and how choice (while sought after by many) can undermine community. As school choice continues to expand and gain traction…

Colleges and universities have always had interesting relationships with their external communities, whether they are cities, towns, or something in between. In many cases, they are the main economic driver for their regions--State College, Pennsylvania, or Raleigh, North Carolina, for example--and in others, they exist side by side with thriving…

This critical reflection addresses the role of the Christian Church in tackling educational underachievement and poverty in the inner city. The Church has traditionally expressed a commitment to meeting the needs of the poor, and has exerted a significant influence on education over many years. However, there is a notable lack of guidance and…

Across the nation, large urban school districts are experiencing premature and rapidly accelerating deterioration of school buildings. The conditions of buildings and equipment, most importantly in classrooms and school support spaces, are deteriorating to the point of hindering the core mission of schools: educating children. This report is the…

William Lowe Boyd's extraordinarily wide scope of intellectual interests is well represented in a rich mix of publications and presentations during his career. His work ranges from analyses of choice in education to matters of productivity, children's services, comparative school reform, educational leadership, school-community relations,…

In this article we critically examine how teachers and administrators in an urban high school identify and consider the challenges to parent involvement without either engaging in or disrupting normative constructions of the term parent involvement. It is in this unintentional misconstruction of the notion of parent involvement that school leaders…

This mixed method research study is situated in the school effectiveness research paradigm to examine the correlation between the effectiveness of urban, primary school principals and their students' performance in mathematics. Nine, urban, primary schools from Negombo, a coastal fishing area in Sri Lanka, were selected; their student achievements…

Purpose: This article examines the impact that a principal's community-leadership has on school-community relations and student outcomes. Comparisons are drawn between leadership behaviors that emphasize school-centered approaches and community-centered approaches. Research Methodology: Ethnographic research methodology was conducted over a 2-year…

Examining work and community relations in one Texas school district, this study explores intensifying managerialism under performance accountability (PA) pressures. Reports, press releases, and media accounts are combined with ethnographic study from one elementary school to explore the enactment of school district reforms. Locating PA within a…

Background/Context: Parent involvement in education is widely recognized as important, yet it remains weak in many communities. One important reason for this weakness is that urban schools have grown increasingly isolated from the families and communities they serve. Many of the same neighborhoods with families who are disconnected from public…

This case study contributes to a small but growing literature on African American educational leadership. Previous studies have shown that, building on a history of segregated schools for Black students staffed by Black teachers in which strong school-family-community relations were essential for the survival of their schools, Black principals…

This report is the twenty-fifth in a series of surveys sponsored annually by MetLife since 1984 as a public service. This 25th anniversary edition includes the views of teachers, principals and students and looks back to the earliest MetLife Surveys to examine how perspectives on teachers, teaching and public education have changed. It documents…

Research has shown that family and community involvement in education is linked to healthy child development and to children's academic and social success in school. Family participation can also enhance adult personal development and empowerment, aid community problem-solving through collaboration, and advance the prospects for a more democratic…

After all the money spent, jobs allocated, new machinery and programs introduced, after all the publicity and conflict, and after all the bold rhetoric about the Ocean Hill-Brownsville Demonstration School District, New York City, the children of the district cannot read as well today as they did five years ago. (Author)

By examining data from interviews with students in the Upward Bound program (a federally sponsored program that provides academic support to students at risk who are preparing for college entrance), this study seeks to strengthen an understanding of the role of trust among urban youth at risk in the educational organizations that serve them. This…