Teacher attrition remains a significant challenge in high-poverty urban schools, contributing to educational inequities and disrupting student learning. This study explores how teacher empowerment, encompassing systemic flexibility, supportive leadership, autonomy, and peer collaboration, influences teacher retention in these settings. Utilizing a…

This paper reports findings of a study on young mothers living in Uganda's poor urban areas which have been politically labeled as informal settlements and therefore not eligible for social services delivery. Although 59% of all school dropouts in Uganda are due to young motherhood, the national education policy, and practice automatically exclude…

Two trends play an increasing role in shaping the long-term prospects of children across the United States: a growing STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics)-based economy and rising income segregation. Together, they suggest that the future well-being of U.S. children may be based increasingly on the contemporary interplay of…

The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected the academic progress and wellbeing of many students, resulting in a greater sense of hopelessness and despair. These consequences are particularly devastating for many children living in urban communities, where poverty and a lack of resources prevent them from accessing high-quality learning, health…

Promise Neighborhoods attempt to replicate the Harlem Children's Zone's "cradle to college pipeline" model of coordinated and continuous child and family services for a single neighborhood. We analyze the 46 planning and 18 implementation grants to determine which factors these neighborhoods plan to address and compare these efforts with…

Educational scholars have argued that poverty can hamper student achievement. In this critical discussion paper, we provide a historiography of how urban poverty increased in America over the last 30 years of the 20th century. We contend that educators and educational researchers working in P-12 urban schools should understand how federal urban…

The effects of poverty on important outcome measures are devastating and well documented, but the conceptualization and operationalization of socioeconomic status (SES) are underdeveloped. Various indicators of SES are useful for different purposes. Free or reduced-price lunch (FRL) status is commonly used because of its convenience and predictive…

Prior research has discussed high school counselors' role in students' experience, but counselors' understandings of their work and of students has received little commentary. We interviewed counselors in a high-poverty, low-performing urban school district in which two structural elements shape how counselors make sense of their work. First,…

While much has been written about preparing educational leaders to lead for social justice, much less has been written about how to do so. This study is one of the first to analyze the reflections and written assignments of aspiring administrators to determine what they are currently thinking about poverty, race/ethnicity, and social justice…

Prior research suggests that parents of Hispanics, English learners, and students living in poverty exercise school choice less frequently than other parents, which may be a factor in the resegregation of public schools. This quasi-experimental, causal-comparative design tests whether ethnicity, language dominance, or socioeconomic status of the…

Since "Meredith v. Jefferson County Board of Education" et al., school districts seeking to voluntarily integrate schools have designed a host of metrics to structure within-school diversity using characteristics of students' neighborhoods rather than the race of individual students. This study utilizes a correlational-multiple…

Charter schools in urban environments have been scrutinized for their effectiveness. This study attempted to determine whether students attending Midwestern urban charter schools outperformed students in traditional schools on the state's accountability system over a 5-year time period. Using a quasi-experimental research design, data were…

This conceptual article synthesizes the empirical research on punitive environmental norms of schools and the disproportionate effects on certain child and adolescent groups, particularly within urban schools. This involvement has come to be known as the school-to-prison pipeline. The young people affected by harsh school discipline protocols and…

Farmworkers comprise a marginalized population who experience various threats to their well-being. This study presents a community-based participatory research project that explored the educational attainment and well-being of Latino/a youth in farmworker families. Children of farmworkers (n = 18), farmworker parents (n = 12), and educational…

This study examines the impact of school closures on the sociospatial distribution of equitable access to schooling following the school closure policy pursued by the Chicago Public Schools in 2013. By examining access in terms of proximity between students and schools, the study estimates the changes in accessibility before and after school…