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,…

The problem this study addressed was whether an intervention, grounded in Reading Recovery strategies, was as effective when used with struggling readers in small groups as it is in 1:1 instruction. The purpose of this causal-comparative study was to investigate the differences in student performance between students who received small group…

This paper presents an analysis of how education reform in Denver Public Schools (DPS) fails to reach its targeted goal of closing achievement gaps between white students and Students of Colour based on its investment in Whiteness. Using a theoretical framework grounded in critical whiteness studies, we trace a history in DPS that includes legal…

Released on the 25th anniversary of the opening of the first charter schools, David Osborne's "Reinventing America's Schools" explores the new paradigm of public education that is emerging to fit the realities of the 21st century. Osborne's new book offers a bracing survey of the most dramatic improvements taking place in urban education…

Chicago's magnet schools were one of the nation's earliest experiments in choice-driven school desegregation, originating among civil rights advocates and academic education experts in the 1960s and appearing at specific sites in Chicago's urban landscape during the 1970s. The specific concerns that motivated the creation of magnet schools during…

Ghettos are a social evil. They are social atrocities maintained by inexcusable racist laws and practices, structures of class domination, and institutionalized political marginalization. After "Brown v. The Board of Education," educational reformers have increasingly (mis)framed the problem of "ghetto schools" as a failure to…

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…

In an urban teacher residency program, preservice science teachers experience what it's like to teach for social justice through the use of a democratic inquiry stance, thus moving toward an understanding of teaching for social justice as larger than one individual teacher in a classroom.

The Philadelphia Education Research Consortium (PERC) was launched in July 2014 as an innovative place-based consortium of educational research partners from multiple sectors. Its primary objective is to provide research and analyses on some of the city's most pressing education issues. As such, PERC's research agenda is driven by both traditional…

In the era of Black Lives Matter (#BLM), urban teacher education does not exist in isolation. The White supremacist, neoliberal context that impacts all aspects of Black lives also serves to support antiblackness within the structures of teacher education. In this article, the authors, who are grounded in a race radical analytical and political…

The authors set out to organize a small convening of educator-researcher teams from across seven districts engaged in My Brother's Keeper (MBK) efforts. Their goals were to gather a small enough number of participants to ensure deep conversation in a convening long enough to foster authentic connections among us, and to include mechanisms to…

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…

This paper presents the voices of thirteen pre- and in-service teachers to showcase their perspectives of culturally relevant pedagogy as a teaching framework. Positionality, critical consciousness, and cultural assets are used as foundations to explore social justice pedagogy. These new teachers discuss the challenges they face in making the…

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…