Urban Education

Focusing specifically on adolescents forced to relocate after Hurricane Katrina, the study looks closely at the role of schools in helping adolescents adapt after a natural disaster. Data collected from 46 middle and high school students across a 6-month period demonstrate that those who showed the greatest improvements in their well-being were those who sought help from their teachers, whose new school created a milieu of cooperation, and who were placed in a school that neither went overboard trying to help nor ignored their special needs. The article concludes with recommendations for schools seeking to maximize the welfare of their students.

This qualitative multisite case study examined how three high schools within one large urban district supported ninth-grade students’ needs through interdisciplinary teaming. Data collected during the 2006-2007 school year included observations, interviews, and archival evidence of 67 participants. Findings suggest teacher communication as a result of teaming may provide the teacher support and individualized student attention necessary to foster a family-like ninth-grade environment that meets student and teacher needs. School personnel reported more benefits of teaming for teachers and students than students did. Issues with implementation limited how well teaming was able to meet student needs.

This study examines the process of parent engagement at three community and school-based parent participation projects involving Latino immigrant families in California. Through the participants’ testimonios, the study investigates the motivations and interactions contextualizing their leadership development, participation, and organizing activities as well as the significance of their emerging school activism on other aspects of their lives. Specifically, the study explores the notions of tequío and women-led activism, seen as critical to understanding the participants’ engagement process and to increase the level and quality of Latino parent participation in schools, maximizing its positive impact on their children’s education and life prospects.

This article examines the ways in which transnational Latino immigrants in urban communities use computer technology. Drawing from a 3-year ethnographic study, it focuses on three second-generation transnational female youth, their families, and members of their respective immigrant networks. Data were collected in both the United States and Mexico. Findings point to the ways in which urban Latino immigrants acquire technology and use this practice in binational, bilingual contexts. In addition, this research informs what we know about the digital divide, especially regarding bilingual Latino immigrants—a group sorely underrepresented in the literature on technology, communities, and schools. Implications for teaching are also addressed.

This instrumental case study reviews the 1994-2004 period of state financial oversight in East St. Louis, Illinois School District 189, with a secondary review of the initial years of NCLB implementation. Although the oversight panel’s fiscal management did generate financial stability, case findings indicate that its accountability processes did not result in sustained improvements in student achievement indicators despite anticipated links between the two in the panel’s reporting. Furthermore, the oversight process operated as a hierarchical structure without identification of cultural implications. Attention to culture and subsidiarity are indicated for future state–district partnerships oriented toward urban educational reform.

To assess whether a 5-month program involving attendance monitoring, sports participation, and a moral character class would reduce absenteeism, 40 students in a small transitional high school were randomly assigned to intervention and control groups and assessed pre- and postintervention on educational expectations, attitude toward education, and emotional, cognitive, behavioral engagement, and attendance. Findings indicated significant differences between intervention and control groups on all predictor variables. Absenteeism was significantly and negatively related to all predictor variables. The program successfully reduced absenteeism, increased educational expectations, attitude toward education and engagement.

Data on the impact of student, teacher, and principal racial and gender composition in urban schools on teacher work outcomes are limited. This study, a secondary data analysis of White and Black urban public school teachers using data taken from the restricted use 2003-04 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS), examines the effects of relational demography on teacher job satisfaction adjusting for other known determinants of job satisfaction. Relational demography is conceptualized as a set of racial and gender congruency items between teachers and principals, teachers and teachers, and teachers and students. The results of the study show that some components of relational demography directly affect teacher job satisfaction, over and above the effects of work-related attitudes.

How African American girls cope and excel amidst the discriminations and inequities they experience within U.S. educational systems has not been widely discussed in the body of research about African Americans’ schooling experiences. In this study, the researchers examined the applicability of Ogbu’s cultural–ecological theory to the self-described school experiences of eight high-achieving African American high school girls. Using an inductive analysis of interviews, focus groups, journal, and field notes, this article draws attention to the role that school policies and practices, caring adults play, and how the participants’ negotiated academic and racial identities contributed to their academic success.

The George Washington University’s Urban Initiative Professional Development School (UI-PDS) partnership used interviews, surveys, focus groups, and observations to research its effectiveness in preparing urban educators. The research conducted with UI-PDS preservice teachers and first year graduates, indicates they were well equipped to meet the challenges of urban teaching. They plan and implement lessons relative to students’ diverse backgrounds, interests, and skills while engage in student advocacy and collaboration. This research also attempted to unravel the components of the UI-PDS program that contributed to these outcomes. Identified components included daily teaching responsibilities, on-site support, collaborative practice, and participant’s personal attributes.

Culturally responsive educational practices have arisen as effective means of increasing culturally diverse students’ academic achievement and psychological well-being; however, the relational processes involved are not well understood. Using grounded theory, this study examines the relational processes of one culturally responsive teacher and her fifth grade African American students. A dimension that emerged from the data was emotional connectedness. It includes the connective interactions between the teacher and student, the connective interactions between the teacher and the whole class, and teacher transparency and joining. Rich descriptions of each theme are provided as well as implications for teacher practice and preparation.

Broadly speaking, this reflection approaches the on-going concern of capacitating an overwhelmingly White teaching profession for effectively teaching inner-city students attending de facto segregated schools. Using professional identifications, this reflection presents narrativized understanding of respondents’ becoming committed teachers of inner-city students through identification creativity driven by alternative masculinity. Respondents’ professional identifications, articulating identification creativity, provide an understanding of curriculum wisdom for teaching in inner-city schools that includes race visibility, difference within difference, and relational-experiential pedagogy. Last, this reflection urges researchers toward a second wave of White teacher identity studies based on directions emerging in this research.

The aim of this study was to investigate multiprofessional collaboration as well as collaboration between professionals and challenging students and their parents in which the focus for these collaborations was on handling the challenging students’ academic and social behavior. A grounded theory study of collaboration between a prereferral resource team and teachers, principals, challenging students, and their parents was conducted. Qualitative interview and focus group methods were used. The findings presented a grounded theory of collaborative synchronizing in relation to challenging students around two ideal types, human resource synchronizing and human resource desynchronizing.