What will it take for urban schools to achieve the kind of academic performance required by new state and national educational standards? How can classroom teachers in city schools help to close the achievement gap? What can restore public confidence in public schools? Pedro Noguera argues that higher standards and more tests, by themselves, will…

Discusses the physical and psychological environment in which urban education takes place and the circumstances under which teachers are assigned to urban schools of high or low quality, using data from several national surveys. (JM)

Examines the problems of introducing a new science curriculum to three inner-city elementary schools in Atlanta which are characterized by continual educational failure. (JM)

Tests predictions that peripheral as compared with inner city and traditional schools will have the largest percentage of teachers who are not only younger, teaching in elementary grades, females, white, and less experienced but also positive toward students and teaching. (JM)

Addresses some of the problems confronting curriculum writers who seek to interface Science-Technology-Society (STS) units into science. Describes an urban school program which has STS as a component and has been successful in keeping at-risk students motivated and achieving in attendance. (RT)

Offers suggestions for using modeling and mentoring in urban teacher education in the belief that the power of models and mentors resides more in their being and behaving than in the finished products. Good role models live their ethics and beliefs personally and professionally. (SLD)

This article summarizes a formative evaluation of a two-year project to provide professional development in technology for urban early childhood teachers. The researcher collected and analyzed data from interviews of 18 teachers. Using the constant comparative method the researcher identified common barriers that inhibited the effective…

In our current climate of standards-based reform, efforts abound to have all students reach the same goals. At the same time, other educational reforms, such as inclusion, are creating increasingly diverse populations of students in general education classrooms. Consequently, teachers often view inclusion and standards-based reform as incompatible…

The purpose of this study was to analyze how the challenges of urban schools influence physical education teachers' emotional understanding and connections with their students and the implications on their teaching. Sixty-one elementary physical educators from an urban school district in the midwestern U.S. were interviewed multiple times (N =…

Teachers' attitudes toward the use of technology vary greatly. Studies show that many teachers have negative attitudes toward the use of technology and that gender differences exist, with females using technology less than their male counterparts. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of a technology-focused professional development…

Seven higher education institutions in Massachusetts collaborated to develop and implement Project QUEST (Quality Urban Education and Support for Teachers), a support program for beginning urban teachers. Motivated by both the need to retain beginning teachers beyond the first few years of teaching and the desire to increase urban school…

This paper describes early efforts underway at City College, New York, to introduce a disability studies content into an otherwise traditional special education programme. The paper draws on previously funded research projects that merged humanities-based disability studies in education, prior teaching experiences and excerpts from the writing of…

In this paper I examine how and to what extent various elements of my biography--race, ethnicity, gender, age, social class background, and prior personal and professional experiences--influenced my relationships with students in a graduate course examining the impact of race, gender, and social class on education. My lived experiences as an…

In this article, the author presents five valuable lessons on how an overseas educational consultant relates to concerns about preparing teachers to work in inner-city ghetto schools. The first lesson is learning to communicate and commune with another culture. Second, is seeing educational problems in a broadened social context. Third, is…

Problems of urban high schools, including poor attendance, high dropout rates, low achievement, and poor social relationships, are linked together by a strong sense of alienation among students and teachers. Yet much of the educational research and policy treat these issues separately. In this study a conceptual framework for understanding student…