This article reports on a program of research that examined the background, planning, implementation, and evaluation of an after-school preventive intervention program within an ongoing urban alternative education program targeting African American students referred to the school because of their problematic behavior in regular schools. The…

Similar to Dickens's "Tale of Two Cities", this research study is about a tale of two schools. The first type of school is a dysfunctional school. Dysfunctional schools are schools in a state of chaos (Shipengrower & Conway, 1998). The second school is that of order. The researchers refer to this school as a functional school.…

Although national trends of urban adolescent reading underachievement suggest that schools are unable to adequately support this population's reading development, some studies have demonstrated that urban schools can operate to raise student achievement, thereby disrupting national trends. In this study, the author investigates one such…

The purpose of the study was to compare and contrast influences principals have on staffing, curriculum issues, and discipline policies in high- and low-performing urban high schools. The data for the present study were drawn from the first year follow up of the Educational Longitudinal Survey of 2002-2004 (ELS: 02), administered by the National…

The educational community is divided over which is the best approach for improving urban schools: focus on teaching and learning or underlying social inequity? This article argues that the students who attend urban schools can inform the debate. The study draws on interviews with fourteen urban youth about their participation in a community-based…

This qualitative study of teachers in three low-performing elementary schools in Chicago reveals that transformational leadership behaviors were important to teacher motivation, affecting whether they believed that they could improve student performance as the accountability policy required. The findings suggest that principal leadership is…

There are few instances in the literature on urban school reform that have closely studied specific school buildings to describe the grant resource appropriation process. This study attempts to fill that gap by developing case studies of two middle schools with divergent profiles in resource utilization through micro-ethnographies. One school…

In this case study, a district-wide focus on the development of civic responsibility is seen as an important component in the success of higher performing middle schools. Salient features of best practice were gathered from teacher and administrator interviews and documentary evidence in 10 higher performing, yet "beating the odds" schools, and…

In the current climate of high-stakes accountability created under the No Child Left Behind legislation, public schools, including charter schools, are under tremendous pressure to show consistent improvement in student achievement for all students. Students with disabilities present unique challenges to schools attempting to meet Adequate Yearly…

This study tested how well Fishbein and Ajzen's Theory of Reasoned Action predicted the attitudes and morale of urban teachers in high poverty schools under the pressures of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). NCLB forced local administrators to target schools that had not made adequately yearly progress (AYP) for two or more consecutive years.…

Urban schools have historically struggled to create engaging learning environments for students. One of the emerging answers to this educational conundrum is the development of more personalized learning environments. Such environments draw on the natural interests of students but contextualize those interests within demanding academic structures.…

A college-based program that combines training, direct support, and technical assistance was found to produce significant gains in bonding and bridging social capital and key political attributes among low-income, minority, and immigrant groups organizing to enhance their power to influence public school politics and policies in New York City.…

The 20-year partnership between Boston University and the school district of Chelsea, Massachusetts, came to an official end in June 2008. Although the partnership is by many measures successful, the continued success of the district will depend on how well Boston University is able to share with stakeholders management techniques and the…

Few researchers support the belief that a school superintendent can drive improvements in student achievement. The Science and Mathematics Achievement Required for Tomorrow (SMART) Consortium was formed in northeast Ohio in 1998 with the belief that superintendents can have a measurable effect on student learning. The goal of this collaboration…

Our least-served students are taught by our least-experienced teachers. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, teachers in high-poverty public schools are twice as likely to transfer to another school as their colleagues in low-poverty public schools. Consequently, many students in high-poverty, urban public schools spend…