After a state take-over of most local schools, the fate of public education in New Orleans has been clouded by uncertainty. However, many problems are already clear. The community has expressed outrage on numerous occasions about the management, conditions, policies, and practices of the RSD schools. One fundamental concern has been about the lack…

The author, who lived and worked as a charter school consultant in post-Katrina New Orleans for 6 months, describes the evolution of charter schools as the predominant means of education and the challenges that chartering faces as a reform, raising issues of access and equity as central concerns. The article concludes by offering some solutions to…

Discourse about high poverty schooling generally revolves around three points of view. In the first, equity of school resources is considered to be the key ingredient in school improvement. In the second, no matter the school resources, there are successful high poverty schools, so therefore policy should focus on their example and not use poverty…

Youth advocates employed in a school-to-work program in an inner-city public high school promoted the college attainments of low-income Black students through the production of cultural and social capital. Analysis framed by cultural reproduction and production theories explicate how they inverted the ideological aims of the program; redefined…

The past 20 to 30 years has seen an increase in the time children and adolescents spend in structured activities outside of the regular school day. This has resulted in a significant reduction in the amount of free time children and youth have for leisure time activities. While much discussion has been given to this topic in the popular press,…

This study critiqued the notion that a binary "digital divide" between high and low resource schools describes accurately the technology disparity in U.S society. In this study, we surveyed teachers from six southern California schools. Five of the schools were low resource schools and one school, chosen for comparative purposes, was characterized…

This paper focuses on the influence of high school science class size on students' achievement in introductory college science courses and on the variation of teacher practice across class size. Surveys collected information about high school science class experiences from 2754 biology, 3521 chemistry, and 1903 physics students across 36 public…

Grounded within constructivist theory, the purpose of this investigation was to investigate knowledge acquisition and developing conceptions of high school-aged students during a unit of instruction in badminton. Six different qualitative methods were utilized: (a) observations, (b) formal interviews, (c) informal interviews, (d) think aloud…

In this analysis of North Carolina high schools the author examines school tracking policies using an amended version of Sorensen's (1970) conceptualization of the organizational dimensions of tracking. Data from curriculum guides in a stratified sample of 92 high schools reveal both consistency and variation in how tracking is implemented at the…

State assessments are taking over our classrooms. This study provides a descriptive account of how the testing culture affected students and instruction during one school year in two small, rural Mississippi secondary mathematics classrooms. Throughout this school year, engaging instructional activities were sacrificed for more traditional drill…

A case study approach was used to examine the perspectives of three high school department chairs and their work at providing instructional supervision to the teachers in their departments: math, science, and social studies. We sought to discover the beliefs and practices of three department chairs in one high school, located in a southeastern…

The so-called achievement gap in mathematics is reframed as a problem of unequal opportunities to learn experienced by many low-income students and many Latino and African American students. First, data are presented showing striking and persistent differences on standardized tests among students of different ethnic groups, and socioeconomic…

Guided by a general critique that asks, Highly qualified for whom?, I problematize recent characterizations of highly qualified mathematics teachers by focusing on the question, Who should teach mathematics to African American children? I discuss how responses to this question in mainstream mathematics education research and policy contexts have…

Despite efforts to bridge the racial achievement gap, far too many school children continue to fare poorly in our nation's public schools. Oftentimes urban and low income students are negatively labeled as low-achieving, disadvantaged, and struggling. Because of this, such students frequently receive inferior or deficient information from school…

This conceptual article describes a model of a school-based, student-led initiative that uses peer tutoring to address underachievement in mathematics. The model is three pronged: a) it suggests a site-based approach to building on existing student excellence in mathematics to drive improved student mathematics achievement; b) it seeks to address…