Education and Urban Society

Business Week and Fortune Magazine suggest that Teach for America (TFA) is a beneficial postgraduation option for corps members, who teach for a finite commitment in low—socioeconomic status urban school districts. This longitudinal qualitative study examines the complex issues that surround TFA through the voices of TFA corps members, mentors, and administrators. Insiders inform readers about the site-based realities, corporate-like model, affiliation with a high-profile national organization, and districts' hiring policies—all of which set TFA teachers apart from non-TFA teachers. Data integrate interviews and teacher researcher field notes, gathered during 8 years from more than 300 participants, who discuss their TFA teaching experiences candidly. Findings suggest that TFA corps members are learning the culture(s) of schools and the community on the job as well as other complexities of teaching. Questions persist with respect to TFA's current model, mission, and goals.

Recent reports have demonstrated that the United States has a dropout crisis of alarming proportions. In some large-city school systems, more than 50% of students leave high school without a diploma. A large proportion of these dropouts have not accumulated enough credits to be promoted beyond ninth grade. Using survey and student record data for a cohort of Philadelphia public school students, the authors find that ninth-grade academic outcomes are not simply proxies for student characteristics measured during the pre—high school years and that ninth-grade outcomes add substantially to the ability to predict dropout. An implication is that efforts to decrease the dropout rate would do well to focus on the critical high school transition year.

Using percentage of students at proficient and advanced levels for science on the Missouri Assessment Program in St. Louis area school districts, this study investigates the relationship of scientific attainment with school variables of enrollment, percentage of students receiving free/reduced lunch, instructional expenditures per student, teacher/pupil ratio, and teacher variables of percentage with master's degrees, salary, and years of experience. At the district level, the results suggest a significantly large negative correlation between science performance and percentage of students receiving free/ reduced lunch and moderate positive correlations for science attainment with instructional expenditures per student, teacher salary, education, and experience. Geographic information system (GIS) is used to produce spatial and geographic representations of relationships between school, teacher, and science attainment variables. This geospatial representation gives a unique perspective on how educational data are distributed across the region and shows district variation in student science attainment in relationship to where school and teacher resources are located.

This article focuses on how parental school choices affect the degree of racial and academic segregation in charter schools. The research design allows for a direct comparison of the racial and academic conditions of the district schools students exited to the charter schools they entered. Parents choose to leave more racially integrated district schools to attend more racially segregated charter schools. Simultaneously, parents enroll their students into charter schools with at least the same degree of academic integration as the district schools that students exited. The academic and racial segregation results are then used to test the extent to which students congregate into specialized charter schools according to hypothesized patterns. The findings call into question the assertion of charter school advocates that segregated conditions in charter schools are the result of students self-selecting into specialized charter schools.

An urban school district developed strategies for recruiting and retaining minority teachers. Examination of data on teachers hired over a 3-year period found the retention rate for African American teachers was slightly higher than that of European American teachers. Teachers with at least 3 years' experience in the district were surveyed as to their satisfaction with various aspects of teaching. There was a significant difference by race on class size: African American teachers were more likely to be satisfied with it. African American men were least likely to be satisfied with salaries, benefits, and opportunities for advancement. High school and middle school teachers were less likely to be satisfied on several aspects of teaching than elementary teachers.

School choice programs have proliferated around the world since the 1980s. Following this international trend, the Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) was launched in 1991 to revitalize Hong Kong's private school sector. DSS schools receive a similar subsidy per student to that received by aided schools, but they may charge fees and have greater control over curricula, entrance requirements, and management than their public school counterparts. Drawing on a number of documents and reports over the period 1987-2006, this article centers on the notion of choice and its related arguments. By revealing the discrepancies between rhetoric and reality, it shows how a policy purporting to appeal to choice, diversity, and competition undermines equality, community, and democracy. Under the provision of DSS, the benefits some parents and schools enjoy by being afforded more choices are often achieved at the expense of fewer choices for others.