Teachers and other education professionals find themselves in schools and districts bombarded by reforms--each one purporting to improve student achievement, particularly in reading and mathematics. This article lays the political economic groundwork of student achievement in urban areas in an attempt to contextualize the studies of literacy in…

Framed by sociocultural learning perspectives, this study examines whether embedded learning opportunities for teachers are more supportive of reflective practice than traditional professional development. All schools in this study implemented a comprehensive school reform program. The designs of the programs introduced embedded learning…

Following international trends during the last decades of the 20th century mechanisms of marketization, freedom of choice, and competition were introduced into the Swedish compulsory school system, thereby transforming it into one of the most de-regularized in the world. The overall aim of the pilot study presented here is to shed light on a…

The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) has had a monumental impact over the past decade on how educational reform is viewed in the United States. As a result of how the law is structured, schools for students who are deaf or hard of hearing have been the focus of attention for educational reform under NCLB. While there have been some shifts…

Purpose: This article attempts to build a better understanding of the leadership necessary to create socially just schools for English language learners (ELLs) by addressing these questions: In what ways do principals create asset-based, collaborative, and inclusive learning opportunities and services for ELLs? What do varying approaches of these…

U.S. schools have long struggled with what has been identified as the "achievement gap." While the debate ensues in regard to an explicit definition for this phenomenon, research overwhelmingly demonstrates that students of marginalized populations remain on the lower end of most measures of school success. Accordingly, advocates of social justice…

When change is deemed necessary, principals' attitudes towards changes are significant for successful restructuring of schools. This study aimed to ascertain the extent to which principals in Malatya, Turkey, are open to change. A questionnaire was administered to 156 elementary and secondary school principals in Malatya, Turkey. This…

While school choice may be one of the most polarizing issues in education today, a new volume of research papers makes the case that innovations aimed at giving families more say in where their children go to school can be whatever their architects make of them. Programs such as magnet schools, charters, tuition tax credits, or open-enrollment…

The goal of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) is for all students to become proficient in reading and mathematics by 2014. According to current research, no states are on track to achieve this goal set forth by NCLB (Rebel & Wolff, 2008). As a result of schools failing to meet their academic targets on standardized tests, the United…

"What Next?" offers a detailed study of the School of the Future's first three years (2006-2009) revealing what the School of the Future can teach us about high school redesign, public-private partnerships, and the use of technology in school reform. When the school district of Philadelphia teamed up with the Microsoft Corporation in…

California's public higher education system has for a long time been lauded as one of the finest in the world. But for the last several decades, budget cuts and privatization have resulted in the steady erosion of this system, as well as K-12 education in the state and other public sector services. It was told that privatization and choice--in the…

The Supreme Court declared in 1954 that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." Into the 1970s, urban education reform focused predominantly on making sure that African American students had the opportunity to attend school with their white peers. Now, however, most reformers take as a given that the typical low-income minority…

The purpose of this article is to examine the authors' experiences while trying to enter and engage local communities in bottom-up literacies through participatory action research (PAR) toward the community's own collective self-development. In trying to enter five different communities, I have found several challenges and roadblocks such as…

America's education system faces enormous challenges that need to be addressed urgently and systemically. Greater emphasis is now being placed on ensuring that every student, including low-income students and students of color, achieve their potential, but major challenges remain. Far too many public schools have not changed quickly enough to meet…

The authors conducted a third-party study of the student achievement effects of Struggling Schools, a user-generated approach to Comprehensive School Reform (CSR). The design was a quasiexperimental, pre-post matched sample (N = 180) with school as unit of analysis, drawing on 3 years of achievement data from standardized external assessments.…