Phoenix Union High School District (PUHSD) has its roots in Territorial Arizona and has served generations of residents as Phoenix evolved from a dusty agricultural town into the fifth-largest city in the nation. For decades, Phoenix Union High School was the lone high school in Phoenix. Desegregation funding makes up approximately 24 percent of…

Public participation in local decision-making processes has numerous purported benefits. Yet, realizing these benefits requires a citizenry that is able and willing to participate in meaningful ways. High schools are ideal venues for civic education but rarely teach local collective action, citizen engagement, and self-governance, focusing instead…

School safety is a wicked problem due to shifting needs and available information, the diverse actors affected and involved, fluctuating budgetary demands and ramifications, and relations to broader social and political issues. School safety challenges encompass a range of factors, including threats of violence and fears related to school…

Two schools in Michigan received ARRA SIG (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act School Improvement Grants) funds to enable them to implement their improvement efforts. This paper describes the outcomes of these two ARRA SIG recipient schools: (1) Phoenix Elementary-Middle School; and (2) Arthur Hill High School. The experiences of these…

Arizona State University's (ASU) Global Institute of Sustainability (GIOS) was awarded a five-year National Science Foundation (NSF) GK-12 grant in 2009 entitled "Sustainability Science for Sustainable Schools." The general focus of the grant is on science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education in K-12 schools. The…

This study looks deeply inside 17 schools that stand at the vanguard of the current revolution in teaching. This new National Center on Time & Learning (NCTL) report reveals the substantive ways in which these schools are providing their teachers with more time to reflect on, develop, and hone their craft, by very explicitly leveraging an…

It may be hard to imagine teams of high school educators--teachers, counselors, principals, central office leaders, curriculum specialists--working together to overcome the student achievement barriers of poverty, ethnicity, apathy, and inconsistencies in rigor and access to the curriculum in order to pursue the "ought-ness" of a better…

At Desert Vista High School, near Phoenix, Arizona, Perkins Innovation Grant funding is being used to fund a program that is helping to prepare students for careers in engineering by giving them hands-on experience in areas like hydrogen generation and fuel cell utilization. As one enters Dan Zavaleta's automotive and engineering classroom and lab…

For the school chief information officer (CIO), safeguarding students and facilities is as much a part of the job description as keeping the data networks running and the servers protected from hackers. This article describes how two districts, Miami-Dade County Public Schools and Taos Municipal Schools, secured their surveillance systems. The…

Abandoning its disjointed strategic plan, the Phoenix (Arizona) Union High School District concentrated on improving student achievement and utilization of fiscal and human resources. These goals were achieved by replacing adversarial collective bargaining with interest-based negotiation and working toward higher graduation rates and lower dropout…

Since 1891, Phoenix Indian High School has served as a boarding school for Indian students. In February 1987, the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) recommended that the school be closed, and that students be transferred to Sherman Indian School in Riverside, California. Congressional hearings in February and July 1987 received testimony on this…

Municipal leadership can make an enormous difference in expanding the range of high school options and ensuring that more students graduate prepared for work and life. This report draws upon lessons learned from a 2005-07 project on "Helping Municipal Leaders Expand Options and Alternatives for High School," managed by the National…

The Phoenix Union High School District, Phoenix, Arizona, offers students four types of counseling support groups as part of its chemical awareness program. (DCS)

Part I of this report presents background information on the problem of increasing dropout rates in the Phoenix Union High School District. Factors affecting the dropout rate are discussed, and dropout figures are given for the Phoenix Union High School District as well as for neighboring districts. Part II provides a summary of the education and…

This book provides an overview of the history of the Phoenix Indian School from 1891 through 1935. The Phoenix Indian Industrial Boarding School was founded for the specific purpose of preparing Native American children for assimilation. During its first 40 years, the school's main objectives were to remove Indian youngsters from their traditional…