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…

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…

Student teaching is only a successful experience if it assists the prospective teacher in developing effective classroom control techniques and evolving a personal teaching style. In order to make student teaching useful, four factors should be considered. First, profiles should be developed on the student teacher and the cooperating teacher…

Fifth of five articles in a series, titled "The Elementary School: Focus on the Culturally Different.

The teacher program described here was designed to create a deeper understanding of a wide span of instructional problems unique to the inner-city school setting, putting participants in a position of forming teaching strategies of their own as solutions. Such school problems as overcrowded classes, frequent daily interruptions, playground…

This document describes a "Cognitive Style Mapping of Students" curriculum in use in the Del Paso Heights School District. In this curriculum, the "cognitive style of the individual" is thought to represent a conglomerate of three "educational sciences": "Symbols and their Meanings,""Cultural…