Urban Education

This year-long ethnographic study explored the occupational aspirations and informal educational experiences of 25 diverse homeless adolescents who found social welfare assistance through Empower, a nonprofit organization. Using organizational habitus and intersectionality as theoretical frameworks and constant comparative analysis, I found that Empower staff tailored educational programming and economic opportunities based on raced and gendered stereotyped notions of young people. Because of their precarious social positioning and the intersection of multiple marginalized identities, the Black adolescents were most positioned to obtain occupations that reproduce their ascribed social status, while the White youth were poised to improve their socioeconomic conditions.

This study examines the voices of parents that emerged during a citywide movement to influence a school district’s decisions on school closings. The work explores the experiences of parent leaders who reside in a working-class Black community in Chicago where four schools were impacted by the closures. In the context of Chicago, I characterize parents’ organizing efforts as a form of transformational resistance. By examining the activist efforts of parent leaders, the work documents how parents of color can shape key reforms and highlights both the potential and limitations of parent voice and community knowledge in local education reforms.

Latina/o/x students aspire to earn a college degree but given that they likely attend urban high schools with inadequate educational opportunities and high-discipline environments, more research is needed to examine the influence of institutional racism on aspirations. This case study was guided by the frameworks of New Juan Crow in Education and racial microaggressions. Using ethnographic data from observations, semi-structured interviews with educators, and oral history interviews with Latina/o/x students, this study examined the experiences of student participants with institutional microaggressions and the influence on college-going aspirations. Implications address the cumulative effects of microaggressions and inform asset-based research, policies, and practices.

The issue of school food and its role in the learning environment has been overlooked by educators, education researchers, and policy makers. This study uses observations and interviews in three high-poverty, urban schools to investigate how participants experience school food policy in their daily lives. Participants at all three schools believed that addressing hunger and malnutrition by offering fresh and healthy foods helped to improve student engagement in class. This research contributes an ethnographic understanding of student experiences with food in schools and builds on various literatures regarding whole child reforms, childhood food insecurity, student engagement, and school food environments.

Increased political and research interest in extracurricular activities stems, in part, from the claim that these programs especially benefit disadvantaged youth. However, little literature has synthesized studies across types of disadvantage to assess this claim. This article reviews research on disadvantaged youth in extracurricular programs, including differences by gender, socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, and immigrant status. Our review reveals a promising, if complicated, picture. Although disadvantaged youth are less likely to participate in extracurricular activities, they often experience greater benefits, depending on the risk status and activity type. Evidence clearly supports expanding access to extracurricular programs for disadvantaged youth.

This phenomenological case study examined the emergence of critical scholar identities among five urban youth who participated in a 2-year critical research fellows program. The program was grounded on the theoretical framework of Social Justice Youth Development, which included the development of self, social/community, and global awareness leading to critical consciousness and social action. Findings depict the personal and programmatic components of nurturing urban youth’s critical scholar identities and contribute to the growing body of literature in critical youth studies and scholar identity development with marginalized urban youth.