This narrative is an attempt to examine the conflicting expectations and mission confusion of one children's choir director. It details the challenges music educators may encounter at the nexus between educational and institutional goals or between ethical and professional challenges. The author has chosen to use narrative not only to tell her own…

This study explores 16 novice, urban-trained teachers' evaluations of their current schools. Findings suggest that teachers used the perceived behaviors, values, and beliefs of students to measure how urban a student was and, therefore, to guide their expectations and satisfaction of their placements. The less urban the students were perceived to…

Youth living in impoverished urban neighborhoods are at risk for becoming hopeless about their future and engaging in violent behaviors. The current study seeks to examine the longitudinal relationship between social connections, hopelessness trajectories, and subsequent violent behavior across adolescence. Our sample included 723 (49% female)…

The study employed a developmental, ecological, and resiliency framework to examine whether interactive peer play competencies mediated associations between teacher reported problem behavior and learning outcomes for a representative sample of urban low-income children (N = 507 across 46 Head Start classrooms). Structural equation models provided…

This study examines civic identity exploration among African-American and Asian-American urban youth who participated in a grassroots organizing campaign to improve their local high schools. Drawing on 9 months of ethnographic fieldwork and interviews with participants, the study found that the campaign provided a venue for participants to wrestle…

The critiques of rap artists and other participants in hip-hop culture provide data for teachers and researchers to investigate the attitudes of US urban youth towards schooling. This study explores the complex relationships between hip-hop and science education by examining how rap lyrics project beliefs about schooling, the relevance of existing…

Objective: The purpose of this study was to describe the nature of neglect in child welfare clients, to describe these experiences, to examine its typologies, and to understand how different types of neglect co-occurred with each other and with other types of maltreatment. Methods: Case record abstraction was conducted on the child welfare case…

Racism may be a factor contributing to poor health and health care disparities in minority children through multiple mechanisms, including effects on psychological and physical well-being. Little is known about the experiences of racism that children encounter in their lives. This study describes the occurrences of perceived racism in children,…

"Empowerment Starts Here" covers an experimental approach to social change within urban communities by way of seven distinct principles for student empowerment. Turning classroom methods into a school model, Preparatory School for Global Leadership was the first to experience student empowerment at a school-wide level. This book provides insight…

Reading underachievement among adolescent students, particularly in urban areas, has been well documented in the literature. This reality points to two problems: Schools possess neither the capacity needed to prepare students for higher education and the workforce, nor the ability to help students view literacy as a tool for critical thinking,…

The purpose of this study was to examine individual, family, peer, and community risk and protective factors associated with past-30-days alcohol and marijuana use among African-American adolescents living in rural and urban communities. This study used data collected from 907 tenth- and twelfth-grade African-American students who completed the…

This report describes a follow-up qualitative study, conducted in 2006 by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, of a small group of New York City high schools that were "beating the odds" in preparing low-performing 9th-grade students for timely high school graduation and college going. The 13 schools included two long-established…

In her new book, Valerie Kinloch, award-winning author of "Harlem on Our Minds", sheds light on the ways urban youth engage in "meaning-making" experiences as a way to assert critical, creative, and highly sophisticated perspectives on teaching, learning, and survival. Kinloch rejects deficit models that have traditionally…

Young people in the U.S. are falling behind their peers in the rest of the developed world in science, technology, engineering, and math. The Program for International Student Assessment study, conducted every three years, ranked the U.S. 24th in math and science out of 29 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development…

Alcoholic beverage consumption among high school students has shifted from beer to liquor. The current longitudinal study examined the effects of beverage-specific alcohol use on drinking behaviors among urban youth. Data included 731 adolescents who participated in Project Northland Chicago and reported consuming alcohol in 7th grade. Logistic…