The overwhelming majority of published scholarship on urban high schools in the United States focuses on problems of inadequacy, instability, underperformance, and violence. Similarly, across all schooling contexts, most of what has been written about young men of color continually reinforces deficit narratives about their educational possibility.…

This case study describes tensions that became apparent between community members and school administrators after a proposal to close a historically African American public high school in a large urban Southwestern city. When members of the city's longstanding African American community responded with outrage, the school district's…

A mainstay in NCLB and the Obama administration education plan is turning around low-performing schools. This study utilized surveys and interviews with school leaders from four turnaround urban high schools in Texas to understand student outcomes before and after school restructuring and reconstitution. Although some organizational changes were…

This mixed-methods study examined urban adolescents' perceptions of gender and racial/ethnic barriers to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) success, and their meaning-making and coping regarding these experiences. The sample includes surveys from 1024 high school-aged students and interviews from 53 students. Logistic…

This study explored the relation between classroom interactions and exclusionary school discipline practices within and across four classrooms in a disciplinary alternative school. Critical social practice theory and critical microethnographic methodology supported the examination, interpretation, and analysis of interactive power to illuminate…

As part of a larger investigation into the educational experiences of Haitians in South Florida, this study explores factors that influence the identity development and academic success of Haitian students. Individual and focus group interviews with Haitian students, parents, and teachers provide the context for studying how pressures from both…

The purpose of this article is to investigate the multiple political histories that have coalesced to produce support for or resistance to the Oakland Unified School District's full-service community schools policy. It analyzes oral history interview data from eight stakeholders who represent the district's major constituencies to…

Reviews of research evaluating the impact of beginning teacher induction suggest that the mixed results may be due to the fact that the programs do not fully address school context. We examine how one induction program for urban teachers explicitly addresses teachers' specific schools and students to illustrate how context becomes the…

Responding to recent reports that Latina students often lack feelings of belonging at school and are dropping out in increasing numbers, this study explores how classroom environments influence engagement or disengagement among Latina students. Through case studies with five Latina 10th-grade students, this research examines how variations in the…

Students who struggle in pursuit of postsecondary education tend to be Latino, Black, low-income, or first-generation college students. This article presents the case of a small public school serving students grades 6-12 from these traditionally underrepresented backgrounds in a large urban school district. Observations revealed that the school…

The academic performance and engagement of youth from under-represented ethnic groups (African American, Latino, and Indigenous) in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) show statistically large gaps in comparison with their White and Asian peers. Some of these differences can be attributed to the direct impact of economic…

This article investigates the motivations of African American and Latino girls ("N" = 41) who navigate urban Southwest school districts during the day, but voluntarily attend a 2-year, culturally responsive multimedia program after school and into the summer. Understanding that girls from economically disadvantaged settings are indeed…

This article explores the results of a study of Latino youth in New York City public high schools. We propose that the common element among the schools is what we call here "transcaring," an overarching culture of care that allows for the creation of third spaces within school, transcending traditional dichotomies around language,…

This study sought to examine the association of the various forms of capital on the developed achievement of Black males. As one of the richest longitudinal family economic data sets, the Child Development Supplement to the Panel Study of Income Dynamics is used to estimate multilevel growth models of the math and reading achievement of Black…

White flight from urban public schools has been well documented, but little attention has been paid to middle-class reinvestment in urban schools. This article combines findings from interviews with middle-class parents of Boston Public School students with demographic data from the city's public elementary schools to examine the motivations of…