Background: Youth violence is a significant problem affecting community health. Community-academic partnerships can advance youth nonviolence education by synergizing the strengths of collaborators while working toward a common goal. We describe a collaboration between an urban public middle school, community nonprofit, and university-based…

Adopting an asset-based and resilience-building framework, the present study examines the effects of out-of-school activities on advancing the academic achievement, leadership skills, and service orientation of youth of color placed at risk who attended one of over 60 independent urban middle schools that follow the NativityMiguel model of…

Inquiry-based science interventions aim to improve students' science proficiency by helping them understand scientific processes. In these interventions, students conduct hands-on investigations of science concepts and everyday phenomena, construct explanations for what they observe, consider alternative explanations, and communicate and justify…

Inquiry-based science interventions aim to improve students' science proficiency by helping them understand scientific processes. In these interventions, students conduct hands-on investigations of science concepts and everyday phenomena, construct explanations for what they observe, consider alternative explanations, and communicate and justify…

Inquiry-based science interventions aim to improve students' science proficiency by helping them understand scientific processes. In these interventions, students conduct hands-on investigations of science concepts and everyday phenomena, construct explanations for what they observe, consider alternative explanations, and communicate and justify…

Preparing teachers to be civic educators is especially critical in urban schools serving marginalized populations. This paper proposal describes the use of a highly interactive, student-centered, and social justice-oriented teaching strategy -- youth participatory action research (YPAR) -- to support new urban teachers working at all grades level…

Based on a qualitative study of an urban middle school, this article examines student perceptions of shifting tracking structures following the dismantling of a school's bilingual education program. The article demonstrates that students understood the school changes based on supposed language needs through an explicitly racialized lens, thereby…

What does it take to change a school's mathematics achievement profile from low to one that is proficient and advanced? Is this transformed achievement profile sustainable? Such is the story presented here, in this three-phase case study of a K-8 urban charter school's mathematics program. The first phase discusses the school's…

The gap in achievement in mathematics between at-risk students and their more advantaged counterparts is a persistent problem of the U.S. education system. Although some research-based curricula and pedagogy have demonstrated promise in supporting students from diverse backgrounds to develop conceptual understanding and procedural fluency in…

Communicative self-efficacy serves as an important link between discussing controversial issues and civic engagement because confidence in one's discourse skills is important to managing conflicting perspectives and developing solutions to community-based problems. Freely available to schools, "Word Generation" is a cross-content…

Informal science education institutions have been identified as critical participants in helping students succeed in science by working in collaboration with school systems across the country. The results of one such collaboration, the Urban Advantage (UA) program found that participation in UA improved student achievement, on average, by 0.6…

In 1982, the UC Berkeley Gifted Program took in its first cohort. The initial group consisted of 282 middle and high school students. As was the case with many programs for gifted youths, admission to the program was based on students' SAT scores, and urban students were underrepresented. In this article, the author discusses how the program has…

Just a few years ago, Boston's Clarence Edwards Middle School was on the verge of being shut down. By 2009, a renaissance at the Edwards made it one of the highest performing and most desired middle schools in Boston, dramatically narrowing and even eliminating academic achievement gaps while delivering a far more well-rounded education to its…

Six urban school districts (Chattanooga, Tennessee, Corpus Christi, Texas, Long Beach, California, Louisville, Kentucky, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and San Diego, California) have been pursuing standard-based reform at the middle school level accepting systemic reform as the norm. This report provides descriptions of their approaches, and commentary…

REL Appalachia conducted a systematic review of the research evidence on the effects of increased learning time. After screening more than 7,000 studies, REL Appalachia identified 30 that met the most rigorous standards for research. A review of those 30 studies found that increased learning time does not always produce positive results. However,…