Urban Education

Using portraiture methodology, this study features caring classroom experiences between Latina teen mothers and their teachers at an alternative school along the U.S./Mexico border. Classroom observations and in-depth interviews were conducted to piece together three classroom portraits which reveal the following: (a) authentically caring pedagogical interactions in the classrooms enabled Latina teen mothers to develop a pro-school ethos, and (b) these pedagogical interactions of care and support in the classroom were made possible within a caring schooling structure. This article contributes to the field of urban education by showcasing successes and effective practices in an urban setting.

Schools are increasingly using technology to connect with families. Yet, we still know little about how technology shapes parent engagement—particularly for low-income Latinx families. Garnering insights from the Ecologies of Parental Engagement framework and wide-ranging qualitative data, we explore Latinx engagement at an urban, high-tech elementary school. Findings suggest that technology and language independently and concurrently shaped engagement. Within school-based spaces (e.g., cafeteria, classroom), engagement also manifested differently depending on parents’ resources and the particular space’s rules and norms. In each space, parents overcame barriers to interact and invest—virtually or physically—in their children’s schooling. Implications are discussed.

Although there is much research detailing the pedagogical constraints of high-stakes testing (HST), there is less that examines teachers’ practices within and beyond its control. This multiple case study analyzes ethnographic data to explore two teachers’ practices in an urban context where HST was relevant. Drawing on Foucault’s conceptualization of a plague-stricken town, we explore the mobilization of disciplinary power associated with HST. We then examine teachers’ agency as they taught beyond the administrative gaze. We found that teachers sometimes complied with administrative mandates while also articulating tensions of providing access and actively resisting/critiquing the test.

This article uses the frame of school choice theory to understand the externality of school sector switching resulting from choice-based urban education reforms. The results indicate that sector switching is a function of race, poverty, and prior-year test scores. Low-income Black pupils in particular are more likely to leave Milwaukee’s voucher system for a public school. Sector switching has an immediate negative impact on student test scores. The results highlight the commonality and impact of sector switching in a mature urban school choice system and are of interest to scholars studying urban education reform policies.

Research findings on school diversity and its impact on children’s educational outcomes is mixed. This study examined school racial diversity and educational outcomes for ethnically diverse students. Data came from third graders, N = 33,857 (51.8% male; 57.2% Latinx), in 278 schools. Using multilevel models, we examined the association between school racial composition and academic outcomes. Results showed that increased school diversity was negatively related to academic achievement, but this association was moderated by race. For White students, more equal representation was positively related to academic achievement, but this association was negative for Black and Latinx students.

Culturally relevant discipline (CRD) has the potential to mitigate the disproportionate disciplining of Black students in American schools. Utilizing interaction ritual theory, this research uses ethnographic microanalysis to investigate nonverbal, paraverbal, and verbal communication in three student–teacher disciplinary interactions from one predominately Black high school. The analysis (a) provides the first microlevel empirical evidence of the success of culturally relevant discipline. Then it uses microinteractional evidence to resolve theoretical neglect and strengthen theoretical assertions of past CRD scholarship. It argues that (b) CRD can reinforce learning processes and (c) critical consciousness is a teacher prerequisite for CRD.

This article narrates one African American female teacher’s asset-, equity-, and justice-oriented pedagogy with foci on culturally responsive pedagogy and authentic caring in teaching in an urban school from the joint perspectives of community cultural wealth, funds of knowledge, and funds of identity. Drawing upon humanizing counter-narrative research methodologies, this article foregrounds traditionally oppressed groups’ repressed voices concerning culturally responsive pedagogy and authentic caring for improving culturally and linguistically diverse students’ academic achievements. These findings show how culturally responsive pedagogy can facilitate students’ learning cognitively, culturally, and politically. Furthermore, this research illustrates how authentic caring—the supportive reciprocal rapport between teachers and students—helps to increases the students’ academic achievement but also fosters teachers’ implementation of the asset-, equity-, and justice-oriented pedagogy. Finally, the implications for facilitating urban school teachers’ asset-, equity-, and justice-oriented pedagogies and the praxis for critical transformative pedagogy are discussed.

This article highlights the organizing role of Blackness and anti-Blackness in the social worlds of nine Black adolescents at an urban high school. Outside and within urban schooling, Black youth understand that anti-Blackness prompts the negotiation of two distinct social worlds—Black and non-Black—however, urban schooling invisibilizes this distinction. Based on a yearlong BlackCrit ethnography, I analyze three scripts of participants’ dialogic storying, which informs a re/imagining of urban schooling social education that explicitly addresses anti-Blackness. Through my findings, I outline sources of anti-Blackness in the lives of participants, explaining its operation at three levels: individual, institutional, and societal.

Hip-hop culture has been an influential force on a large segment of this generation’s teachers and a tool for building relationships with students. The contemporary hip-hop of today’s generation differs from that of many hip-hop educators/pedagogues. This case study explored how one hip-hop generation teacher attempted to cross this generational divide rather than discount youth culture in the classroom. The findings of this study focus on how the teacher’s personal identification with hip-hop culture informed his relationships with students and how he drew from key narratives and ideas in hip-hop to communicate his views of his classroom community.

Throughout the country, urban teacher education programs ubiquitously employ the terms “diversity” and “social justice” on their websites. But—what do these terms mean and how do they influence (if at all) the programs represented by these terms according to the lived experiences of students of color in these programs? Through historical trauma theory, this study seeks to understand the experiences of teachers of color who graduated from urban teacher education programs that employed “diversity” and “social justice” on their websites. Through the analysis of interviews conducted with eight teachers of color, it unveils how teacher education programs dehumanize and exclude pre-service teachers of color, fostering psychological violence, promoting segregation and displacement, and cultivating economic deprivation. Findings show that the rhetorical and visual portraits of “diversity” and “social justice” on these programs’ websites are experienced by teachers of color as incongruent to their lived experiences within them. In particular, the outward facing diverse racial images do not reflect the populations these teacher education programs serve (mostly white) and the classroom and field experiences are dissonant from the commitments the programs espouse. Implications call for transforming teacher education from spaces where historical trauma is reproduced to spaces where racial healing and reconciliation can occur.

Children and youth learn across settings; however, U.S. educational practice and policy frequently equates learning with formal schooling. This perspective overlooks the growth in structured out-of-school learning programs and the opportunities they provide for addressing educational inequities for marginalized students. In this article, we link the literatures on out-of-school time and educator expertise with historical and contemporary understandings of disparities in urban educational contexts to argue for a learning ecosystem approach that addresses racial and economic inequities embedded across settings. Drawing from these literatures, we propose ways to disentangle learning and education from formal schooling to center and promote equity.

Using Yosso’s community cultural wealth as a theoretical lens, we sought to understand how science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) summer programs cultivated the interest and participation of Black women and girls in these disciplines. The study drew primarily from the interviews of 14 Black women and girls from two case studies investigating the experiences of students of color in summer STEM programs. Findings revealed the programs were influential in enhancing participants’ existing aspirational, social, and familial capital garnered through inter- and intrapersonal attributes. We also advance the term program families to describe a distinctive fictive kinship fostered through participation in these programs.

As demonstrated through the disregard for Black humanity and respondent Black social movements throughout Latin America, anti-Black systemic racism is a transnational phenomenon birthed from global White supremacy. Across the Americas, the hemispheric parallels undergirding collective resistance to anti-Black racism and state-sanctioned violence lend themselves to multifaceted interdisciplinary scholarly examinations. Using transnational anti-Black racism in Latin America as a point of departure, we advance a theorization of critical race theory in education capable of interrogating racist structures of coloniality, modernity, and White supremacy that operate globally to suppress Black humanity and humanness in general. To that extent, we draw from and reposition critical race theory (CRT) from its sociohistoric heritage in the United States and instead conceptualize transnational anti-Black racism vis-à-vis a Black Diaspora reading of CRT. Finally, we return to education as a key site of contestation for transnational anti-Black racism and draw implications for the meaning of this global theorization of CRT in urban education, praxis, and educational research. We end by charting new and old directions for CRT in educational research.

This qualitative study explored how Black LGBQ students at three urban private HBCUs experienced and navigated spaces that affirmed their racial identity but posed challenges to their sexual and gender identities. Drawing on Black respectability politics and environmental press as power as theoretical framing, we utilized a critical constructivist epistemology to unearth the complexities and contradictions that Black LGBQ students face in HBCU settings. Our analysis yielded three themes: (a) affirming/othering, (b) institutional pride/institutional change, and (c) safe space needed/wasted institutional efforts. Implications for higher education administrators and policymakers are offered within.

As a Black former superintendent of a U.S. urban school district, I understand the crucial need for Black superintendents to systematically document their experiences. Given the low number of Black school superintendents and the lack of research literature about them, Black superintendents need to describe and build knowledge about their experiences. In this article, I argue, autoethnographies allow Black superintendents to document their experiences, particularly focusing on how race and racism impact their work. On a broader scale, documenting and sharing experiences through autoethnography may lead to changes in the superintendent pipeline and social change. Future Black superintendents may use insights for strategic guidance and empowerment, increasing recruitment and retention in the superintendency. The article describes how Black superintendents can create an autoethnography and provides a brief personal example.