Two years ago, only 150 students attended Holabird Elementary, then a K-5 school in the southeastern corner of this city. Competition from charters and from regular public schools in nearby Baltimore County had drained families from Holabird, a chronic underperformer. So when Andres A. Alonso, the chief executive officer of the Baltimore city…

Teach First is an educational charity that places graduates to teach in "challenging" schools for two years. It is marketed as an opportunity to develop employability while "making a difference". In this paper, I examine the process of class reproduction occurring in this graduate employment scheme through examining the…

This paper examines the role of poverty ideology in determining whether a teacher comes to teach at a poor school (presence) and whether s/he remains at this type of school over time (persistence). A sample of 400 teachers in San Diego California was administered a questionnaire that evaluated respondents' attitudes toward poverty. Teachers who…

In the context of education, "white flight" refers to decreasing white enrollment in poor-performing, inner-city public schools. This article investigates white flight and the concomitant movement to better performing public schools and racially homogenous private schools using elementary school enrollment data from South Carolina,…

This article reports the achievement of a nine-year program in which students from Xinzhou Normal College participate in semester-long substitute teaching in disadvantaged schools in a poverty-stricken area of Shanxi province. The substitute teaching, which constitutes an important part of the 411 Project by Xinzhou Normal College, takes place in…

Learning to teach in urban schools is difficult, particularly when prospective teachers come from different racial, ethnic and/or class backgrounds than their students. The task of urban-focused teacher education programs is to prepare prospective teachers to learn and enact practices that enable them to teach successfully in under-resourced…

Each year, Austin Independent School District Department of Research and Evaluation (DRE) staff develop a plan of work to describe the scope of work for the coming year. The plans that make up this document identify programs to be evaluated and services to be provided by DRE staff and provide the blueprints for evaluation that staff will follow…

This mixed-method study explores the variables that teachers consider when deciding to remain at or leave their schools, with a specific focus on how teachers consider an incentive program. Research has repeatedly demonstrated that schools serving high concentrations of low-performing, non-White, and low socioeconomically situated students have…

The purpose of this research was to determine the relationship between distribution of teacher resources and student need. The effort was to determine if the "best" teachers are teaching the "neediest" students in the elementary schools in the "Big 8" urban school districts in Ohio as equity principles would mandate.…

This technical brief examines the 2008/09 reading and math proficiency levels among subgroups of Arizona public school students defined by students' race/ethnicity (American Indian, Asian, Black, Hispanic, and White), English language learner status (English language learner students and non-English language learner students), disability status…

The decision to leave a successful career and great earning potential to start over as a novice with new surroundings and expectations is not made without consideration of a wide array of variables. Making the transition to higher education was not an easy one and the transition itself has presented various other challenges and joys that I have…

This article describes Nilaja Sun's groundbreaking one-woman show about a TA, her students, and her school, and includes interviews with the author/performer, an excerpt of the work, and a discussion of the organization behind it.

When in 2006 California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger asked a panel of education experts to recommend an overhaul of the state's troubled public schools, observers hoped the celebrity chief executive was about to bring his unique brand of postpartisan politics to an issue that sorely needed it. However, that optimism faded when Schwarzenegger,…

The achievement of students in urban schools across the United States lags behind that of their counterparts in rural and suburban schools, a disparity that is at the core of current public school reform. Although socioeconomic factors, such as poverty and its attendant variables, often hinder academic achievement, there is one critical…

This qualitative study explores the experiences of women administrators in high-poverty community schools, investigating four women's perspectives on work demands and the impact on their families. Their work demands are related to the characteristics of impoverished communities, whereas their work resources are based on intrinsic rewards and…