Chile offers high school dropouts a chance to graduate through enrollment in Second Opportunity Centers, located in cities ranging in population from 5 million inhabitants to less than 100,000. Participants in 18 centers were classified into four distinct classes based on their family situation, handicaps, employment, experience with…

Utilizing Yosso's community cultural wealth framework as a theoretical lens, we sought to examine how nontraditional, community-based family engagement programs impacted adult family members' thoughts and actions about engagement with their children's schools. The study drew primarily from the interviews, observations, and document analysis of two…

Most students released from detention never return to school. This study uses youth participatory action research and Social Justice Youth Development Theory to explore the experiences of those who do. Findings demonstrate that formerly incarcerated students want to return to school but face institutionalized resistance that amounts to racialized…

Latinos represent 20% of the more than 1 million gang-associated youth in the United States. This study explores how gang associated Latino males use their funds of gang knowledge to navigate their urban schools and communities. The findings highlight how Latino males build relationships and exchange information with each other, endure and…

This qualitative study investigated how educators in urban second-chance high school settings made sense of their work with formerly disconnected youth. Using Duncan-Andrade's framework of critical hope, we examined how adults' orientations toward hope shaped the educational context in ways that were necessary and sufficient for student success.…

This study explored the relation between classroom interactions and exclusionary school discipline practices within and across four classrooms in a disciplinary alternative school. Critical social practice theory and critical microethnographic methodology supported the examination, interpretation, and analysis of interactive power to illuminate…

This mixed-methods study examines educational experiences of Latino immigrant young adult dropouts in New York City, along with pre- and postmigration factors that impact school participation. Due to age, interrupted schooling, and limited English proficiency, high schools view this population as hard to serve. Increasing numbers of these youth…

The researchers examined the online social networking attitudes of underperforming Latino high school students in an alternative education program that uses technology as the prime venue for learning. A sequential explanatory mixed methods study was used to cross-check multiple sources of data explaining students' levels of comfort with utilizing…

Teaching writing to students of high need in an urban school is simultaneously pedagogical, curricular, and political. Students labeled "at-risk" for school failure often have lowered expectations placed upon them from without that impact how they feel within. Compounding this problem of perception is the real issue of heightened…

This year-long ethnographic study explores one alternative school's journey of creating a positive and collaborative learning community while negotiating through the disadvantages and marginalization within a school district and society at large. This study examined various aspects of school culture, including learning processes, discourses,…

This article interrogates the construction of ethnoracial categories in everyday classroom life and how ethnoracial classroom dynamics contribute to larger patterns of inequality in achievement and unequal college futures for minorities. The study compares one urban and two suburban schools. Drawing on observation data from six classes and 57…

Students who are expelled from school often demonstrate the need for alternative learning environments that respond to their academic disengagement as well as their behavioral challenges. Teachers in such environments contend with a variety of student needs while attempting to engage students in the learning process. This grounded theory study…

Roger Perry responds to Hamer and Ampadu's criticism of his article, Strategies for Working with Problem Students," by stating that the critics' framework was inappropriate, since his article was not about alternative schools. He further asserts that strict adherence to their methodological standard for research design is inappropriate for the…

This study examines the experiences of 37 students who were suspended or expelled from school and were attending an urban public alternative high school in the northeast. The analysis specifically focuses on the loss of classroom instruction time and its implications for academic achievement and on the socioemotional experiences of students…

This is a qualitative study in a school district in a large city in the Southwest in response to the research question, "What are staff and student expectations for, and assessment of, three "at-risk" programs in this large school district?" Four thematic findings from observations and interviews in four classes in two high school alternative…