The author’s New York City high school offers after-school support to its high school students, and this study sought to understand better why students attended after-school sessions and what kept them coming.

Inquiring about students’ perceptions of classroom discussions led one teacher to scaffold the teaching of discussion skills themselves. A more “democratic” and student-led discussion environment emerged over the course of 1 year in a high school social studies classroom.

This article reports findings from a case study of district leadership for school, family, and community partnerships in an urban system in the northeast United States. Analyses suggest that collaboration between the district’s office of parent involvement and a community-based organization (CPIO) has helped to support and sustain school, family, and community partnerships as a reform initiative in the district for nearly a decade.

This article reports an interview study examining the perceptions of school-to-home literacy practices held by African American and immigrant ESL parents in two urban communities in the northeastern United States.

The authors review research concerning the effects of activity structure on the engagement of low-achieving students, with an emphasis on forms of whole-class instruction that promote student engagement.

David Berliner's 2005 Presidential Invited Speech to the American Educational Research Association meeting in Montreal, Canada, May, 2005.

This article draws on the author’s experience both as a teacher in inner city schools and as a researcher to explain the cause of student's blank stare when asked open-ended questions, and the keys to eliminating the problem.

This paper challenges the traditional interpretation of the origins of the North American summer calendar by suggesting that the roots of the presently defined school year were more influenced by multiple pressures arising from increasing urbanization, than by the demands of farm life. Examining why there has been such resistance to changing the school calendar, the paper investigates the calendar’s ties with changes over time in the construction of other “clocks” of society. Finally, we consider the school calendar as part of a larger ongoing discussion on what constitutes effectiveness of schools.

This article explores the crisis of respect needed to establish authority in two urban public high schools.

This article looks at the literacy learning experience of an auto worker turned union representative; a blind computer programming; two bilingual autodidacts; and a former Southern sharecropper raising children in a high-tech university town.

This issue of the Record includes five articles that had their beginnings in presentations made at the OERI sponsored conference at the National Academy of Sciences in November, 2001.

This paper argues that educators should be most concerned about how the concentration of people, resources, and sources of stimulation found in urban society leads to interactions that have great potential for affecting human development.

This article provides an overview of America's urban population based on the 2000 Census and the implications of increasing cultural diversity for urban public schools.

This article focuses on the challenges confronted by early childhood educators as they seek to offer developmentally effective programs and services for all children, especially those who live in urban settings characterized by cultural diversity.

The article is based on research in a New York City public school on the curious gender gap in education -- women, particularly those in Black and Latino communities, attain higher levels of schooling than their male counterparts.

This article contrasts the discourses of teen pregnancy articulated by low-income women in an urban high school with those of the media to suggest that educators and policy-makers rethink the “problem” of teen pregnancy.

In examining the balance struck between civility and incivilty in schools, the authors present data on cursing and politeness in one high school. They show that students have both politeness and cursing in their repertoires, and the authors discuss circumstances that trigger use of one or the other.

The author advances an expanded notion of “decent” schools, considering a perspective which balances science with the art of designing, constructing, and renovating schools.

A commentary on the education of incarcerated African American adolescents.

The authors explore three assumptions in educational finance litigation: that dollars make a difference in outcomes, that courts and policymakers can develop standards for an "adequate" education, and that litigation will lead to equity in finance.

An introduction to the case of two urban middle schools engaged in reform with quite different results

A look at a middle school succeeding at school reform

A middle school presenting conflicting messages to immigrant students

Discussion Questions On the Reforms at Kousanar and Granite

Drawing on the enthographic and autobiographical accounts of segregated schools, the author develops the concept of politically relevant teaching rooted in utilizing knowledge of social inequalities to empower marginalized students.

This ethnographic study calls attention to the social construction of white racial identity among adolescent girls at a largely white single-sex high school.

The author argues that the commonly held definition of racism is both too broad (white privilege is an important race-related injustice yet is not racism) and too narrow (not all racist actions contribute to a system of advantage or power). A broadened conception of antiracist education goes hand in hand with a more complex understanding of racism itself.

This article follows the rise of the visiting teacher movement and considers the lessons for current efforts to develop school-linked social services.

A report on five years of observations of Chicago school reform.

An illustration of the effects of racial and social class status as barriers to school reform