In 2003, William Boyd spoke of the nation's "double crisis" of educational performance and legitimacy. Indeed, he said, these twin components "interact and reinforce one another" (Boyd, 2003, p. 11). The more attention that is paid to the underperformance of the schools, the more the nation seems to suffer a loss of faith…

The achievement gap in many developing countries is defined in terms of rich/poor and public/private. The prevailing explanation for the "developing" achievement gap is an underfunded, inefficient, and/or inadequately supplied public school sector. Via an analysis of a Colombian voucher experiment, this article examines the extent to…

Attracting significant attention from the media and policymakers, international student assessments are serving as pressures on and challenges for individual countries. Even so, paying attention only to publicly released rankings in international student assessments may lead to superficial interpretations of the assessment results. Simply equating…

Accurate evaluation and documentation of the efficacy of recovery schools can be vital to the continuation and expansion of these beneficial resources. A very limited data set currently exists that examines the value of specific schools established to support adolescents and young adults in recovery; additional research is necessary. The following…

This article reviews findings from the authors' studies of recovery high schools (RHS), including a 1995 program evaluation of a school in New Mexico (Moberg & Thaler, 1995), a 2006-09 descriptive study of 17 recovery high schools (Moberg & Finch, 2008), and presents early findings from a current study of the effectiveness of recovery…

Two pivotal and interconnected claims are addressed in this article. First, strategy precedes program effectiveness. Second, graduation rates and rankings are insufficient in any account of academic progress for African American students. In this article, graduation is regarded as the floor and not the ceiling, as it were. The ideal situation in…

This study examines an innovative model program for the mentorship of diverse graduate students entitled the "Inter-Ethnic/Interdisciplinary Mentoring Institute for Graduate Education" (i.e., "Mentoring Institute"), which was established by the Graduate Student Diversity Programs in the Office of the Vice President for Research…

The quality of doctoral students' academic and social experiences is a key element of their success in graduate school programs. These experiences support the completion of doctoral programs, especially for first-generation college students from low-income backgrounds. Framed by Weidman's (1989) undergraduate socialization model, the…

In spite of the widening racial achievement gap among U.S. college students (U.S. Census Bureau, 2011), some universities are achieving success in supporting the graduation and postcollege goals of Black undergraduates (Apprey, Bassett, Preston-Grimes, Lewis, & Wood 2014/this issue; Baker, 2006; Hrabowski, 2003; Hrabowski & Maton, 2009).…

In this article we describe a graduate program for practicing teachers at the University of Florida. Offered in a blended format (mostly online but supported by a local faculty member), the program embeds graduate work within school reform efforts in hard to staff schools in partner school districts up to 350 miles away from campus in order to…

The civil rights movement of the late 1950s and 1960s had a transformational effect on American society and on grassroots movements for social justice at home and abroad during that era and beyond. But much of the history of the push for racial equality in America is often told as if it is on a constant repetitive loop, when other accounts are…

This article presents the results of the 2nd-year evaluation of an after-school program designed for an extended school day program serving African American middle school students in the city of Baltimore, Maryland (ACCESS-West). This study describes the effects of schoolwide reform especially as it relates to single-gender schools, educating…

Over the past several decades, there has been an increased focus on health promotion as opposed to individual health determinants and disease prevention. Given the association between health and academic success, health promotion is a vastly overlooked lever for establishing effective K-12 schools. Student, organizational, and community well-being…

Given the mounting call for academic achievement gains in America's public schools--particularly urban schools labeled "failing"--the need for community engagement to tackle a host of underlying social challenges warrants the resources of the nation's colleges and universities (Harkavy & Hartley, 2009). Because colleges and…

This study reports teacher candidate beliefs about the purposes of schooling and their reasons for choosing a career in teaching. The beliefs are analyzed in relation to the moral work of teaching, and the findings suggest that teacher candidates choose teaching as a career, in part, to engage in moral work, and that they believe that schooling…