The goal of this article is to examine the racially hostile environment of U.S. public schooling towards Black males. Drawing on the work of Foucault ("Discipline and punish. The birth of the prison," Penguin Books, London, 1977; "Michel Foucault: beyond structuralism and hermeneutics," The Harvester Press, Brighton, 1982)…

Drawing from a larger ethnographic study, in this research I examine how a group of newcomer Mexican immigrant high school students counteracted a hostile school climate, educational practices and adverse relationships with mainstream peers and adults. The purpose of this study is to help educators and policy makers understand how engaging in…

Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) this study compares if and how neighborhood effects on the likelihood to drop out and be "disconnected" from school and work in young adulthood change when schools are taken into account. As widely documented, I find that neighborhood socioeconomic status…

Reform efforts like the urban, arts-based initiative Project ARTS are designed to provide intentional, equitable methods of improving students' learning, yet few urban educators have been sufficiently trained to recognize differences in habitus between themselves and their students. For equitable reform to occur teachers must understand their…

This article, co-authored by two research-active teachers with the support of their academic partner, reports on the resistance of an urban primary school in a northern city of England to the label "disadvantaged school" and various judgements that refuse to take into account its holistic work with students and families from different…

Access to high-quality educational opportunities is central to growing postsecondary degree attainment. This study employs secondary data analysis of the public-use National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS:88/00) to examine how school context and precollege educational opportunities influence college degree attainment among high-achieving Black…

Careful examination of the discipline gap reveals growing disproportionality in the use of exclusionary discipline measures with female students of color, particularly African American females. Most often, adolescent girls of color are disciplined for subjectively defined behaviors, or behaviors considered inappropriate by educators. This study…

This article theoretically examines the meaning and function of hate speech in a high-security juvenile male prison school. Specifically, the article draws on data from an ethnographic study of this prison school site in order to map the institutional mechanisms of hate speech. Additionally, the article suggests these mechanisms are not anomalous…

In this paper, I explore the perspectives of three adolescent Mexican English language Learners regarding their high school English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom experiences within an urban city in the southwestern part of the U.S. An additional purpose is to demonstrate how the three student participants did or did not invest their…

The author uses geospatial analysis to examine the "educational opportunity spaces" of two adjacent urban neighborhoods in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Organizing insights are gathered from Bronfenbrenner's (1979) ecological perspectives on human development, which posit that students are significantly impacted by multiple environmental…

In their own words, 50 students in two Los Angeles area schools reveal their feelings about litter, graffiti, and the appearance of their schools. The analysis includes a discussion of the research in environmental psychology as it pertains to overcrowding, noise and pollution, design and appearance, and their effects on productivity. Excerpts of…

We offer a theoretical and ecological argument for the preparation of citizens in U.S. public schools. This democratic education draws legitimacy from the concern of the nations founders for a populace educated to govern itself. We also emphasize the need for new democratic skills and knowledge in the face of today's challenges, and our…

This article examines a recent reform effort that has opened hundreds of small high schools in poor urban communities in New York City, The New Century Schools Initiative (NCSI). Founders hoped that the small schools strategy would create personalized environments where relationships could develop between teachers and students, leading to improved…

This article looks closely at the ways in which administrators and teachers at an urban middle school worked to create a relational web; that is, a system that supported multiple connection points across the school community. As such, it illustrates and analyzes four strands of this web including codes of practice, grouping strategies,…

In June 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review two related cases originating from school districts in Louisville, Kentucky and Seattle, Washington that involved voluntarily adopted racial integration plans. Concerned about the outcome of these cases, 553 social scientists submitted a social science statement to the Supreme Court summarizing…