High-need urban districts face many challenges in their efforts to overcome the large gaps in achievement demonstrated by their students. This study focuses on a strategy to overcome these challenges by better preparing future teachers for service in urban schools through quality field experiences at these sites. Teacher educators and urban school…

In this article I argue that the current high-stakes testing accountability model is an assistencialist model, derived from deficit thinking paradigms. Such models, like the No Child Left Behind Act, sanction low performance with serious consequences for students and educators. Drawing from Freire, I propose an anti-assistencialist accountability…

This article provides an opportunity to extend the discussion about teacher communities as part of complex school reform models, specifically centered on those communities whose membership is drawn on a semi-voluntary basis. Through a sixteen-month long ethnography, I document the activities of an urban teacher professional community (TPC) at a…

This study takes a political-economic perspective to examine predictors of revenue variation in U.S. community colleges using the IPEDS 2000 Finance Survey data. Descriptive analyses of the IPEDS data indicate it is common for colleges at the 90th percentile of a state's revenue distribution to have twice the per student resources as colleges at…

This article investigates the social relations being produced through the incorporation of information technology (IT) into educational practices. Drawing upon field research with the Los Angeles public school system, the article analyzes social relations in three technology classrooms, discusses gender and ethnic inequalities with technology, and…

An education professor and a high school student tell the story of their mentoring relationship, focusing on the academic journey of the protege. The narrative attempts to give voice to both mentor and protege as it relates an authentic "win-win" situation for both participants and their families. The narrative is theoretically grounded in the…