"How to Walk to School" is the story--from the highs to the lows--of motivated neighborhood parents galvanizing and then organizing an entire community to take a leap of faith, transforming a challenged urban school into one of Chicago's best, virtually overnight. The fate of public education is not beyond our control. In "How to…

Professional family child care providers' work with children from birth through age five can be exemplary, particularly with regard to building stable and substantive relational ties. Such long-term engagements with client children and their families offer potential for strong partnership with families and local contexts over time. This paper…

White flight from urban public schools has been well documented, but little attention has been paid to middle-class reinvestment in urban schools. This article combines findings from interviews with middle-class parents of Boston Public School students with demographic data from the city's public elementary schools to examine the motivations of…

School districts close schools for many appropriate reasons. School closure has now evolved into a school improvement strategy. Sometimes the strategy is to close the lowest-performing schools rather than low-enrollment schools and move the students into higher-achieving neighborhood schools. School closure also has become a common strategy to…

Increasing parental choice has been a leading theme of recent education policy intended to enhance the academic achievement of low-performing students in the United States. These policies aim to "level the playing field" in access to high-quality education for disadvantaged students who cannot otherwise afford higher-quality schooling…

The goal of parenthood is to raise children to be productive community members who are self-determined. Adults who have freedom over how they want to live their life, spend their money and live in a way that enhances and confirms their importance are self-determined. Overall affection in the family will enhance self-esteem and help children grow…

Elementary classroom teachers in eight school districts across Colorado, United States, share the knowledge of their students' home and community life, define culturally responsive mathematics based on the children they instruct, and give examples of how students learn math through culture in their classrooms. Findings from two interviews,…

The idea that one of the Catholic Church's most respected religious orders might run a public school sounded odd, maybe even, as Francis Cardinal George, head of the Archdiocese of Chicago, conjectured, illegal. But a decade ago several trends in American education, and in the Catholic Church, made a Catholic-operated public school seem…

This study examines public school characteristics, and public and private school market characteristics, associated with participation among elementary-aged students in a means-tested school voucher program in Florida. Participants are more likely than eligible nonparticipants to come from disadvantaged public schools on multiple dimensions. On…

In this study, the author investigates whether the opportunity to attend a school other than a student's assigned neighborhood school reduces criminal activity, especially among disadvantaged youth. Many of the schools chosen by the students were "better" on traditional indicators, such as student test scores and teacher characteristics.…

School closure is a journey of uncertainty and loss that inspires strong emotions and opposition. Many factors contribute to school closure. Demographics of neighborhoods change; young families might settle in the suburbs to buy newer, bigger homes, causing enrollment in city-center schools to decline. In addition, some school districts have…

School leaders are charged with responding to the challenges presented by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act and the education of students with disabilities in the least restrictive environment. The idea of least restrictive environment moves schools from educating students with disabilities in special education to regular education…

Over the past 15 years, federal, state, and local officials have pursued a broad range of reforms aimed at ensuring that the nation's public school system is more accountable--that it delivers a rich, full education for children in communities across the country. New research from the Kettering Foundation and Public Agenda suggests that there are…

The challenge of ensuring educational equity, closing the achievement gap between African American students and White students attending public schools has gone on for half a century. As we enter the twenty-first century, neither educational reforms enacted by the public school system nor legislative actions, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of…

Students with emotional and behavioral disorders (E/BD) and those with challenging behaviors are often served in alternative education (AE) settings due to behavior that interferes with their learning and the learning of others to a degree that warrants placement outside of the traditional, neighborhood school environment. Placement in AE…