In the United States, researchers have documented persistent racial disparities in school funding for decades. Drawing on evidence from a recent policy change in Pennsylvania, this article contributes to research on the role of state governments in limiting or expanding racial disparities in K-12 education funding by examining differences in the…

This qualitative study focuses on school administrators' understandings and actions as leaders of the Common Core reform. In interviews with eight school and district leaders from five diverse districts in Pennsylvania, several aspects of Common Core, or PA Core, implementation were consistent across regardless of student population demographics…

Identifying sources of variation has been used extensively in educational research as a tool to identify potential drives of variances in student achievement. However, prior research predominantly relied on findings from national- or international-level data, and thus their conclusions remain very broad-based. This study contributes new insight by…

How can teachers enact a curriculum that is responsive to students and emergent from them when teachers are under enormous constraints to cover specific course content and to prepare students for standardized tests? Rather than an either/or perspective, this article embraces a both/and approach based on the belief that teachers can do both.…

In a comprehensive study of two-hundred fifty homeschooling families in urban, rural and suburban areas of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the researcher examined all aspects of the instruction, materials and curricula employed by the families in a ten-year longitudinal study from 1998 through 2008. The researcher conducted interviews and…

Urban life comes with diverse social, environmental, health care, and education problems. However, for many of the people seeking better economic, social, and education opportunities, the big city still holds a special allure. Jazz singer Frank Sinatra sings in "New York, New York" that he wants to "wake up in a city that never…