Sample records for urban school district

  1. National Implications for Urban School Systems: Strategic Planning in the Human Resource Management Department in a Large Urban School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Johnson, Clarence; Kritsonis, William Allan

    2007-01-01

    This article addresses several key ongoing issues in a large urban school district. Literature focuses on what make a large urban school district effective in Human Resource Management. The effectiveness is addressed through recruitment and retention practices. A comparison of the school district with current research is the main approach to the…

  2. Governing Urban School Districts: Efforts in Los Angeles to Effect Change

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Augustine, Catherine H.; Epstein, Diana; Vuollo, Mirka

    2006-01-01

    Many urban school district students are dropping out and few of the remaining ones reach state or district achievement goals. These problems make governing urban schools both difficult and important. In 2005-06, the governance structure of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) was examined, debated, criticized, and praised by several…

  3. Rearranging Deck Chairs in Dallas: Contextual Constraints and Within-District Resource Allocation in Urban Texas School Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Baker, Bruce D.

    2012-01-01

    The goal of this study is to simultaneously explore resource allocation across schools within large urban school districts and across all schools within major metropolitan areas that include those urban districts in the state of Texas. This study uses a three-year panel, from 2005 to 2007, for Texas elementary schools in the Houston, Dallas,…

  4. Characteristics of Students in Traditional versus Alternative High Schools: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of Enrollment in One Urban District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Perzigian, Aaron B.; Afacan, Kemal; Justin, Whitney; Wilkerson, Kimber L.

    2017-01-01

    Urban school districts are comprised of many diverse high school environments including comprehensive neighborhood schools as well as a variety of smaller alternative models that focus on innovative practices, behavior remediation, or academic recovery. In terms of enrollment distribution, urban school districts are increasingly offering…

  5. The Nation's Report Card Reading 2013 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. San Diego Unified School District. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2013

    2013-01-01

    The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), in partnership with the National Assessment Governing Board and the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), created the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) in 2002 to support the improvement of student achievement in the nation's large urban districts. NAEP TUDA results in mathematics…

  6. The Nation's Report Card Mathematics 2013 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. San Diego Unified School District. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2013

    2013-01-01

    The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), in partnership with the National Assessment Governing Board and the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), created the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) in 2002 to support the improvement of student achievement in the nation's large urban districts. NAEP TUDA results in mathematics…

  7. The Nation's Report Card Reading 2013 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. San Diego Unified School District. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2013

    2013-01-01

    The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), in partnership with the National Assessment Governing Board and the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), created the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) in 2002 to support the improvement of student achievement in the nation's large urban districts. NAEP TUDA results in mathematics…

  8. The Nation's Report Card Mathematics 2013 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. San Diego Unified School District. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2013

    2013-01-01

    The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), in partnership with the National Assessment Governing Board and the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), created the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) in 2002 to support the improvement of student achievement in the nation's large urban districts. NAEP TUDA results in mathematics…

  9. The Nation's Report Card Mathematics 2013 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Austin Independent School District. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2013

    2013-01-01

    The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), in partnership with the National Assessment Governing Board and the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), created the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) in 2002 to support the improvement of student achievement in the nation's large urban districts. NAEP TUDA results in mathematics…

  10. The Nation's Report Card Reading 2013 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Austin Independent School District. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2013

    2013-01-01

    The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), in partnership with the National Assessment Governing Board and the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), created the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) in 2002 to support the improvement of student achievement in the nation's large urban districts. NAEP TUDA results in mathematics…

  11. The Nation's Report Card Mathematics 2013 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Austin Independent School District. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2013

    2013-01-01

    The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), in partnership with the National Assessment Governing Board and the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), created the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) in 2002 to support the improvement of student achievement in the nation's large urban districts. NAEP TUDA results in mathematics…

  12. The Nation's Report Card Reading 2013 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Austin Independent School District. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2013

    2013-01-01

    The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), in partnership with the National Assessment Governing Board and the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), created the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) in 2002 to support the improvement of student achievement in the nation's large urban districts. NAEP TUDA results in mathematics…

  13. Educational Progress: Cities Mobilize To Improve Their Schools.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hill, Paul T.; And Others

    This report identifies the strategies that multiproblem urban school districts have used to make major improvements in recent years. A panel of experts familiar with urban school systems nominated over 30 candidate urban districts for study. The following districts were chosen for analysis: (1) Atlanta (Georgia); (2) Cincinnati (Ohio); (3) Memphis…

  14. A Correlational Study of Teacher Efficacy and Culturally Responsive Teaching Techniques in a Southeastern Urban School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Callaway, Roberta F.

    2017-01-01

    This study was conducted in the fall of 2015 in a large, urban school district located in the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. There are 33 elementary schools, one kindergarten through eighth grade school, eight middle schools, and five high schools in the district; three of the five high schools in the district participated. The district…

  15. Human Resource Support for School Principals in Two, Urban School Districts: An Exploratory Study

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lochmiller, Chad R.

    2010-01-01

    School districts are increasingly focused on instructional practice in classrooms. Many urban school districts have shifted decision-making responsibility to school principals in order to improve instruction. This reform strategy has been referred to as decentralization or school-based management. Decentralization has a significant influence on…

  16. The Urban School Reform Opera: The Obstructions to Transforming School Counseling Practices

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Militello, Matthew; Janson, Christopher

    2014-01-01

    Over the past 20 years, there have been numerous calls to reform the practices of school counselors. Some have situated these calls for school counseling reform within the context of urban schooling. This study examined the practices of school counselors in one urban school district, and how those practices aligned with the school district's…

  17. Working in Urban Schools.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Corcoran, Thomas B.; And Others

    This document on the working conditions of urban teachers reports data from a survey of 31 elementary, middle, and secondary schools in five urban school districts. More than 400 interviews were conducted with teachers, school administrators, central office personnel, district officials, board members, and union officials. The observations,…

  18. The Nation's Report Card Reading 2009 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Austin Independent School District. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2010

    2010-01-01

    Each district that participated in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 2009 Trial Urban District Assessment in reading receives a one-page snapshot report that presents key findings and trends in a condensed format. This report presents the results for Austin Independent School District's student achievement in reading. In 2009,…

  19. The Nation's Report Card Reading 2009 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Austin Independent School District. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2010

    2010-01-01

    Each district that participated in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 2009 Trial Urban District Assessment in reading receives a one-page snapshot report that presents key findings and trends in a condensed format. This report presents the results for Austin Independent School District's student achievement in reading. In 2009,…

  20. "We Felt They Took the Heart out of the Community": Examining a Community-Based Response to Urban School Closure

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Green, Terrance L.

    2017-01-01

    Massive school closures are occurring in urban school districts across the United States. Research suggests that school closures are the outcome of racialized neoliberal policies and decades of disinvestment that have left many urban districts with fiscal deficits and declining student enrollments. However, some urban communities have successfully…

  1. The Nation's Report Card Mathematics 2013 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Dallas Public Schools. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2013

    2013-01-01

    The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), in partnership with the National Assessment Governing Board and the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), created the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) in 2002 to support the improvement of student achievement in the nation's large urban districts. NAEP TUDA results in mathematics…

  2. The Nation's Report Card Reading 2013 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Dallas Public Schools. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2013

    2013-01-01

    The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), in partnership with the National Assessment Governing Board and the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), created the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) in 2002 to support the improvement of student achievement in the nation's large urban districts. NAEP TUDA results in mathematics…

  3. The Nation's Report Card Mathematics 2013 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Dallas Public Schools. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2013

    2013-01-01

    The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), in partnership with the National Assessment Governing Board and the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), created the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) in 2002 to support the improvement of student achievement in the nation's large urban districts. NAEP TUDA results in mathematics…

  4. The Nation's Report Card Reading 2013 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Dallas Public Schools. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2013

    2013-01-01

    The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), in partnership with the National Assessment Governing Board and the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), created the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) in 2002 to support the improvement of student achievement in the nation's large urban districts. NAEP TUDA results in mathematics…

  5. The Nation's Report Card Mathematics 2013 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Albuquerque Public Schools. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2013

    2013-01-01

    The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), in partnership with the National Assessment Governing Board and the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), created the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) in 2002 to support the improvement of student achievement in the nation's large urban districts. NAEP TUDA results in mathematics…

  6. The Nation's Report Card Mathematics 2013 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Albuquerque Public Schools. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2013

    2013-01-01

    The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), in partnership with the National Assessment Governing Board and the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), created the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) in 2002 to support the improvement of student achievement in the nation's large urban districts. NAEP TUDA results in mathematics…

  7. The Nation's Report Card Reading 2013 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Albuquerque Public Schools. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2013

    2013-01-01

    The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), in partnership with the National Assessment Governing Board and the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), created the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) in 2002 to support the improvement of student achievement in the nation's large urban districts. NAEP TUDA results in mathematics…

  8. The Nation's Report Card Reading 2013 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Albuquerque Public Schools. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2013

    2013-01-01

    The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), in partnership with the National Assessment Governing Board and the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), created the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) in 2002 to support the improvement of student achievement in the nation's large urban districts. NAEP TUDA results in mathematics…

  9. Factors That Influence School Board Policy Making: The Political Context of Student Diversity in Urban-Suburban Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Diem, Sarah; Frankenberg, Erica; Cleary, Colleen

    2015-01-01

    Purpose: This article examines factors that affect school board policy making about student diversity within two southern urban-suburban school districts experiencing changing demographics: Jefferson County Public Schools and the Wake County Public School System. Both districts have a history of voluntary integration efforts, and research shows…

  10. The Motivators That Contribute to the Migration of African American Educators from Suburban School Districts to Urban School Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McGary, Ostrova Dewayne

    2012-01-01

    The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine the perceived motivators contributing African American educators' decision to migrate from a suburban school district to an urban school district. The case study approach was used in an effort to capture the participants' voices and the motivators contributing to their decision to migrate to an…

  11. The Nation's Report Card Reading 2009 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. San Diego Unified School District. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2010

    2010-01-01

    Each district that participated in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 2009 Trial Urban District Assessment in reading receives a one-page snapshot report that presents key findings and trends in a condensed format. This report presents the results for San Diego Unified School District's student achievement in reading. In 2009,…

  12. The Nation's Report Card Reading 2009 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. San Diego Unified School District. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2010

    2010-01-01

    Each district that participated in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) 2009 Trial Urban District Assessment in reading receives a one-page snapshot report that presents key findings and trends in a condensed format. This report presents the results for San Diego Unified School District's student achievement in reading. In 2009,…

  13. The Vulnerability of Urban Elementary School Arts Programs: A Case Study

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Shaw, Ryan D.

    2018-01-01

    With the intent of improving understanding of cuts to elementary arts programs, the purpose of this research was to investigate how one urban school district (Lansing School District in Lansing, Michigan) eliminated its elementary arts specialists. Research questions were (1) What policy conditions enabled the Lansing School District's decision to…

  14. An Analysis of Staff Development Programs and Their Costs in Three Urban School Districts.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Moore, Donald R.; Hyde, Arthur A.

    This report analyzes teacher staff development programs and their costs in three large urban school districts, and discusses research and policy implications of the research results. The districts were selected through a survey of school districts serving the 75 largest U.S. cities, and were chosen because of their respectively high, medium, and…

  15. Charter Accountability for District-Run Schools: Using ESSA to Create Contract-Based Accountability for Urban Public Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Smarick, Andy

    2016-01-01

    The new federal education law, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), gives states the opportunity to rethink their K-12 accountability systems. Gone are No Child Left Behind's (NCLB) tight rules for assessing and intervening in schools and districts. This could not come at a better time for urban schooling. Urban districts operate in a very…

  16. Using School Reform Models to Improve Reading Achievement: A Longitudinal Study of Direct Instruction and Success for All in an Urban District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ross, Steven M.; Nunnery, John A.; Goldfeder, Elizabeth; McDonald, Aaron; Rachor, Robert; Hornbeck, Matthew; Fleischman, Steve

    2004-01-01

    This research examined the effectiveness in an urban school district of 2 of the most widely used Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) programs-Direct Instruction (DI), implemented in 9 district elementary schools, and Success for All (SFA), implemented in 2 elementary schools. In examining impacts on student achievement and school change outcomes…

  17. An Investigation of the Relationship between the Components of School Climate and Leadership Behaviors on Student Achievement: Urban School Districts in the Mid-Atlantic Region

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Collins, Karmen J.

    2015-01-01

    The purpose of this research study was to investigate the relationship between the components of school climate and leadership behaviors on student achievement in an urban school district in the mid-atlantic region. School climate and leadership behaviors for the participating school districts was determined by the School Climate Survey (Corner…

  18. Home-Town Values and High Accountability: A Texas Recipe for Districtwide Success in an Urban School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Skrla, Linda; McKenzie, Kathryn Bell; Scheurich, James Joseph; Dickerson, Kimberly L.

    2011-01-01

    This article reports the findings from a case study of urban school district effectiveness taken from a larger, multistate study. The case study district, Galena Park Independent School District in Galena Park, Texas, was chosen for inclusion in the study based on quantitative analysis of student achievement data in Texas. An education production…

  19. Bringing School Reform to Scale: Five Award-Winning Urban Districts. Educational Innovations

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Zavadsky, Heather

    2009-01-01

    "Bringing School Reform to Scale" looks in detail at five school districts that have been honored in recent years by The Broad Foundation, whose annual award is granted "each year to the urban school districts that demonstrate the greatest overall performance and improvement in student achievement while reducing achievement gaps among poor and…

  20. The challenges of staffing urban schools with effective teachers.

    PubMed

    Jacob, Brian A

    2007-01-01

    Brian Jacob examines challenges faced by urban districts in staffing their schools with effective teachers. He emphasizes that the problem is far from uniform. Teacher shortages are more severe in certain subjects and grades than others, and differ dramatically from one school to another. The Chicago public schools, for example, regularly receive roughly ten applicants for each teaching position. But many applicants are interested in specific schools, and district officials struggle to find candidates for highly impoverished schools. Urban districts' difficulty in attracting and hiring teachers, says Jacob, means that urban teachers are less highly qualified than their suburban counterparts with respect to characteristics such as experience, educational background, and teaching certification. But they may not thus be less effective teachers. Jacob cites recent studies that have found that many teacher characteristics bear surprisingly little relationship to student outcomes. Policies to enhance teacher quality must thus be evaluated in terms of their effect on student achievement, not in terms of conventional teacher characteristics. Jacob then discusses how supply and demand contribute to urban teacher shortages. Supply factors involve wages, working conditions, and geographic proximity between teacher candidates and schools. Urban districts have tried various strategies to increase the supply of teacher candidates (including salary increases and targeted bonuses) and to improve retention rates (including mentoring programs). But there is little rigorous research evidence on the effectiveness of these strategies. Demand also has a role in urban teacher shortages. Administrators in urban schools may not recognize or value high-quality teachers. Human resource departments restrict district officials from making job offers until late in the hiring season, after many candidates have accepted positions elsewhere. Jacob argues that urban districts must improve hiring practices and also reevaluate policies for teacher tenure so that ineffective teachers can be dismissed.

  1. The Professional Development Needs of School-Based Leadership in Preparation for a District-Wide One-to-One Initiative in a Large Urban School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Simmons, Brandon Dean

    2015-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to determine the professional development needs of school-based leadership in preparation for a district-wide one-to-one initiative in a large urban school district. This study used an explanatory sequential mixed methods design to answer the three research questions that drove the study. Research for this study was…

  2. What Factors Impact Why Novice Middle School Teachers in a Large Midwestern Urban School District Leave after Their Initial Year of Teaching

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Albright, Joyce L.; Safer, L. Arthur; Sims, Paul A.; Tagaris, Angela; Glasgow, Denise; Sekulich, Kim M.; Zaharis, Mary C.

    2017-01-01

    This research investigated the experiences of new teachers employed in urban school districts and how these novice teachers' perceived school district and school administrators' support required to retain them as well as teacher's perceptions of their pre-service experiences and/or induction programs necessary to prepare them for an urban…

  3. The Redesign of Urban School Systems: Case Studies in District Governance

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McAdams, Donald R., Ed.; Katzir, Dan, Ed.

    2013-01-01

    "The Redesign of Urban School Systems" provides a uniquely valuable resource for anyone involved in preparing education leaders for the political and practical realities of district-based school reform. Edited by two leading experts in education reform, this absorbing volume brings together twelve teaching cases on urban school…

  4. Urban School District's Preparing New Principals Program 2008-2011: Perceptions of Program Completers, Supervising Principals, and Senior Level School District Administrators

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Taylor, Rosemarye T.; Pelletier, Kelly; Trimble, Todd; Ruiz, Eddie

    2014-01-01

    The purpose of these three parallel mixed method studies was to measure the effectiveness of an urban school district's 2011 Preparing New Principals Program (PNPP). Results supported the premise that preparing principals for school leadership in 2013 must develop them as instructional leaders who can improve teacher performance and student…

  5. Urban District Anchors Culture Shift in Standards-Based Leadership Strategy

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Anthony, Douglas W.; Shetley, Pamela R.

    2017-01-01

    With its 208 schools, 130,000 students, and 19,000 employees, Prince George's County Public Schools (PGCPS) in Maryland is one of the country's largest school districts. Serving a high-poverty student population from urban, suburban, and rural communities, the district requires leadership that can enable its learners to combat the conditions of…

  6. Services for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder in Three, Large Urban School Districts: Perspectives of Parents and Educators

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Iadarola, Suzannah; Hetherington, Susan; Clinton, Christopher; Dean, Michelle; Reisinger, Erica; Huynh, Linh; Locke, Jill; Conn, Kelly; Heinert, Sara; Kataoka, Sheryl; Harwood, Robin; Smith, Tristram; Mandell, David S.; Kasari, Connie

    2015-01-01

    This study used qualitative methods to evaluate the perceptions of parents, educators, and school administrators in three large, urban school districts (Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Rochester) regarding services for children with autism spectrum disorder within the context of limited district resources. Facilitators followed a standard…

  7. The Rise of American Urbanized Suburban High Schools: Teachers' Perceptions of Leadership

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Artiles, Dagoberto

    2013-01-01

    In the United States a high school diploma offers a pathway to the growing professional occupations creating the American middle class. The continuous influx of minority families into suburban school districts eventually urbanized districts. As a result, multiple districts struggle in the process of educating a shifted population. Studies have…

  8. Recruiting New Teachers to Urban School Districts: What Incentives Will Work?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Milanowski, Anthony Thomas; Longwell-Grice, Hope; Saffold, Felicia; Jones, Janice; Schomisch, Kristen; Odden, Allan

    2009-01-01

    Many urban districts in the United States have difficulty attracting and retaining quality teachers, yet they are often the most in need of them. In response, U.S. states and districts are experimenting with financial incentives to attract and retain high-quality teachers in high-need, low-achieving, or hard-to-staff urban schools. However,…

  9. Non Traditional Superintendent: A Case Study of the Transition from Military to Public School Superintendent

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hernandez, Luiza Miera

    2010-01-01

    In June of 2006, Urban School District appointed the individual who is the focus of this study, a retired Air Force Two Star Major General, as its new superintendent. Although the appointment represents the first nontraditional superintendent to lead Urban School District, it was one of several such appointments to large, urban school districts…

  10. Learning-Focused Leadership in Urban High Schools: Response to Demanding Environments

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Knapp, Michael S.; Feldman, Susan; Yeh, Theresa Ling

    2013-01-01

    This article traces how the work of instructional leadership in the urban high school embodies a response to particular pressures in the school's environment. Based on evidence from multiple-case study research in four urban districts, the article demonstrates how supervisory and nonsupervisory leaders fashioned responses to the district (and…

  11. Historical Review of Teacher and Student Diversity in an Urban Kentucky School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Francis, James L.

    2010-01-01

    Drawing on court records, state archival information, and local school district reports, this project examined student diversity and teacher diversity over more than five decades in an urban school district established in 1974 by court mandate. This study especially focused on the impact of a ratio set by the federal court regarding the high…

  12. Effects of a Theoretically Based Large-Scale Reading Intervention in a Multicultural Urban School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sadoski, Mark; Willson, Victor L.

    2006-01-01

    In 1997, Lindamood-Bell Learning Processes partnered with Pueblo School District 60 (PSD60), a heavily minority urban district with many Title I schools, to implement a theoretically based initiative designed to improve Colorado Student Assessment Program reading scores. In this study, the authors examined achievement in Grades 3-5 during the…

  13. Zero Benefit: Estimating the Effect of Zero Tolerance Discipline Polices on Racial Disparities in School Discipline

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hoffman, Stephen

    2014-01-01

    This study estimates the effect of zero tolerance disciplinary policies on racial disparities in school discipline in an urban district. Capitalizing on a natural experiment, the abrupt expansion of zero tolerance discipline policies in a mid-sized urban school district, the study demonstrates that Black students in the district were…

  14. The Impact of Collective Bargaining and Urbanicity on the Late Hiring of Teachers

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Loubert, Linda; Nelson, F. Howard

    2010-01-01

    It is commonly assumed that urban school districts hire teachers late due to issues related to district size and/or restrictions in collectively bargained teacher contracts affecting teacher hiring and transfers between schools. Our investigation of late teacher hiring and collective bargaining is based on a survey of 40 school districts that…

  15. Making the Grade in America's Cities: Assessing Student Achievement in Urban Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Blagg, Kristin

    2016-01-01

    Many US education reform efforts focus on student performance in large, urban school districts. The National Assessment of Educational Progress's Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) program provides data on student achievement in these districts, but differences in student characteristics complicate comparisons of district performance. I use…

  16. Duet or Duel? A Portrait of Two Logics of Reading Instruction in an Urban School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Woulfin, Sarah L.

    2016-01-01

    This article presents findings on the institutional logics of reading instruction in an urban school district, portraying how district leaders and coaches enacted two logics. Findings are grounded in observation, interview, and document data on district leaders and literacy coaches from a 13-month period. Using neoinstitutional theory, this…

  17. Teacher Perceptions Regarding the Instrumental Factors That Impact Their Decisions to Remain in an Urban District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Luckett, Tiffany Pointer

    2016-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to examine the factors that impact teachers' decisions to remain teaching in an urban school district. The researcher analyzed survey data provided by the Office of Planning and Accountability for an urban school district in Tennessee. The findings of the study are also discussed as well as any implication for…

  18. School District Crisis Preparedness, Response, and Recovery Plans - United States, 2012.

    PubMed

    Silverman, Brenda; Chen, Brenda; Brener, Nancy; Kruger, Judy; Krishna, Nevin; Renard, Paul; Romero-Steiner, Sandra; Avchen, Rachel Nonkin

    2016-09-16

    The unique characteristics of children dictate the need for school-based all-hazards response plans during natural disasters, emerging infectious diseases, and terrorism (1-3). Schools are a critical community institution serving a vulnerable population that must be accounted for in public health preparedness plans; prepared schools are adopting policies and plans for crisis preparedness, response, and recovery (2-4). The importance of having such plans in place is underscored by the development of a new Healthy People 2020 objective (PREP-5) to "increase the percentage of school districts that require schools to include specific topics in their crisis preparedness, response, and recovery plans" (5). Because decisions about such plans are usually made at the school district level, it is important to examine district-level policies and practices. Although previous reports have provided national estimates of the percentage of districts with policies and practices in place (6), these estimates have not been analyzed by U.S. Census region* and urbanicity.(†) Using data from the 2012 School Health Policies and Practices Study (SHPPS), this report examines policies and practices related to school district preparedness, response, and recovery. In general, districts in the Midwest were less likely to require schools to include specific topics in their crisis preparedness plans than districts in the Northeast and South. Urban districts tended to be more likely than nonurban districts to require specific topics in school preparedness plans. Southern districts tended to be more likely than districts in other regions to engage with partners when developing plans. No differences in district collaboration (with the exception of local fire department engagement) were observed by level of urbanicity. School-based preparedness planning needs to be coordinated with interdisciplinary community partners to achieve Healthy People 2020 PREP-5 objectives for this vulnerable population.

  19. It's No Secret: Progress Prized in Brownsville

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Zehr, Mary Ann

    2008-01-01

    This article features Brownsville Independent School District which was awarded the prestigious 2008 Broad Prize for Urban Education for being the nation's most improved urban school district. The Texas border district sees teacher training and data-based instruction as paths to learning gains--and the $1 million Broad award adds validation. In…

  20. The Roots of Opting Out: Family, School, and Neighborhood Characteristics Associated with Non-Local School Choices

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Johnston, William R.

    2015-01-01

    Intra-district open enrollment policies are increasingly implemented as a means of expanding children's educational opportunities and promoting greater racial integration in urban schools. However, racial segregation continues to endure in many choice-oriented urban school districts, to the extent that schools are often more segregated than their…

  1. Mayoral School Leadership and Integrated Governance

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Center for the Study of Education Policy, 2009

    2009-01-01

    The past two decades have seen an emerging trend in urban school governance: mayors taking the reins of school district leadership. The impetus for putting the mayor in charge of a city's schools usually stems from at least one of the following being documented or generally perceived about an urban school district: (1) Lack of accountability; (2)…

  2. An Analysis of Human Resource Management: Involving Administrative Leadership as a Means to Practical Applications--National Focus

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Anthony, Taiwanna D.; Kritsonis, William Allan; Herrington, David E.

    2007-01-01

    Attracting the most highly qualified employees and matching them to a particular job in which they are best suited for is important for the success of any organization or urban school district, However, under the No Child Left Behind act, school districts are obligated to do just that. Urban school districts are enormously large and cannot permit…

  3. Instructional Materials for English Language Learners in Urban Public Schools, 2012-2013

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Council of the Great City Schools, 2013

    2013-01-01

    The purpose of this report, "Instructional Materials for English Language Learners in Urban Public Schools," is to examine how district- and school-level staff members acquire and use instructional materials for English Language Learners (ELLs). The report also answers questions regarding the preparedness of district and school staff members to…

  4. Teacher Transfer Policy and the Implications for Equity in Urban School Districts.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Krei, Melinda Scott

    Policies and practices associated with intra-district teacher transfers in urban school districts were examined, exploring the implications for educational equity of this aspect of teacher mobility. Human capital theory and the theory of internal labor markets and their institutional rules provided the primary theoretical focus of the research.…

  5. The Sustained Reduction of Youth Suicidal Behavior in an Urban, Multicultural School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Zenere, Frank J.; Lazarus, Philip J.

    2009-01-01

    An 18-year longitudinal case study of the suicide rates of students attending a large, urban, multicultural school district between 1989 and 2006 is described. The high rate of suicide (5.5 per 100,000 students ages 5-19) in the district during the period 1980-1988 led to the development and implementation of a district-wide Youth Suicide…

  6. A Political Analysis of Community Influence over School Closure

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Finnigan, Kara S.; Lavner, Mark

    2012-01-01

    This study seeks to understand community member participation in and influence over an urban school district's school closure process. Data from interviews with School Board members, district administrators, and community members, as well as district documents and newspaper articles suggest that district administrators limited participation…

  7. Does Small High School Reform Lift Urban Districts? Evidence from New York City

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Stiefel, Leanna; Schwartz, Amy Ellen; Wiswall, Matthew

    2015-01-01

    Research finds that small high schools deliver better outcomes than large high schools for urban students. An important outstanding question is whether this better performance is gained at the expense of losses elsewhere: Does small school reform lift the whole district? We explore New York City's small high school reform in which hundreds of new…

  8. A Study of African American Male Students' Academic Achievement and School Attitude in an Urban Elementary School

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mohamed, Roslyn J. F. Billy

    2013-01-01

    With the signing of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, much emphasis has been placed on the accountability of schools and school districts to ensure higher academic achievement of all students. The achievement gap remains among African American male students in urban school districts. This purposed quantitative study explored the relationship…

  9. No One Way: Differentiating School District Leadership and Support for School Improvement

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Anderson, Stephen E.; Mascall, Blair; Stiegelbauer, Suzanne; Park, Jaddon

    2012-01-01

    This article examines findings from a qualitative investigation of how school district administrators in four mid to large sized urban school districts (10,000-50,000) identify and address differences in school performance. The analysis explores the interaction between district policies and actions that centralize and standardize expectations for…

  10. Abbott Students Attending Charter Schools: Funding Disparities and Legal Implications

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bulkley, Katrina

    2007-01-01

    Most of New Jersey's charter schools are located in the state's poorer, urban school districts, or "Abbott" districts, and exclusively serve students from those communities. A number of other schools are located outside of the Abbott districts but enroll students from these districts. Specifically, of the 50 charter schools operating in…

  11. A Continuum Approach for Developing School Leaders in an Urban District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Normore, Anthony

    2007-01-01

    This study examined a four-staged leadership development continuum for school leaders in a large urban school district in the southeastern United States. The program under examination included: LEAD Program; Interim Assistant Principal Program; Intern Principal Program, and; First Year Principal Support/Interim Principal Program. Qualitative…

  12. Factors Affecting Teacher Satisfaction in an Urban School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Halpert, Michael A.

    2011-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to distinguish factors that influence the satisfaction levels of teachers in urban school districts. This work also distinguished factors that directly impacted teachers' level of satisfaction towards their work and their attitude towards the administration of their schools. Forty-one teachers from two kindergarten…

  13. Estimating the Efficiency of Michigan's Rural and Urban Public School Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Maranowski, Rita

    2012-01-01

    This study examined student achievement in Michigan public school districts to determine if rural school districts are demonstrating greater financial efficiency by producing higher levels of student achievement than school districts in other geographic locations with similar socioeconomics. Three models were developed using multiple regression…

  14. The Implementation of CHARACTERplus in the Elementary Schools of a Midwestern Urban School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Shaw, Kimberly A.

    2016-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to describe the relationship of the implementation of CHARACTERplus and student discipline in twelve elementary schools of a large Midwestern urban school district. The goal of this study was to identify if there was relationship between the implementation of CHARACTERplus and the number of office discipline referrals…

  15. Preparing Non-Educators for the Superintendency

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Quinn, Tim

    2007-01-01

    It takes strong leadership skills to successfully run an entity as large and complex as an urban school district, much less turn around one that is low-performing. Most people don't realize that many urban school systems are as large as the biggest companies in America. Yet, most school district leaders and school board members have no specific…

  16. Correlates of Successful Dropout Prevention Strategies for At-Risk Children in Urban Schools.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Baecher, Richard E.; And Others

    This report examines the correlates of successful social and educational strategies of a dropout prevention program for minority children in an urban school district. In 1986, Fordham University's Graduate School of Education and Social Services became partners with a heavily-populated minority public school district in New York City. This paper…

  17. "Districts Matter": Cultivating the Principals Urban Schools Need. Perspective

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mitgang, Lee

    2013-01-01

    An effective school requires an effective leader, but great principals rarely just happen. They are cultivated. This Wallace Perspective draws on a decade of foundation research and work in school leadership to show how urban school districts can play a major role in ensuring they have principals who can boost teaching and learning in troubled…

  18. Equity for Rural School Districts: The Final Report of the Countryside Council's School Finance Task Force.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wiener, Steve

    Soaring values of agricultural land have created inequities in funding between urban and rural school districts in Minnesota. The state's Foundation Aid to school districts is formulated so that districts of high property valuation receive less Foundation Aid than those districts with low property valuation. In recent years inflation has had…

  19. System Learning in an Urban School District: A Case Study of Intra-District Learning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Redding, Christopher; Cannata, Marisa; Miller, Jason

    2017-01-01

    This paper presents evidence from a unique reform model that allowed teachers and other educators in a large urban district to collaborate with one another in the development of an innovation meant to improve student ownership and responsibility. In this longitudinal case study, we describe school stakeholders' learning about the design, the…

  20. System Learning in an Urban School District: A Case Study of Intra-District Learning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Redding, Christopher; Cannata, Marisa; Miller, Jason M.

    2018-01-01

    This paper presents evidence from a unique reform model that allowed teachers and other educators in a large urban district to collaborate with one another in the development of an innovation meant to improve student ownership and responsibility. In this longitudinal case study, we describe school stakeholders' learning about the design, the…

  1. Charter Schools and Urban Education Improvement: A Comparison of Newark's District and Charter Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Barr, Jason M.; Sadovnik, Alan R.; Visconti, Louisa

    2006-01-01

    This article compares student achievement of fourth graders in charter schools and district public schools in Newark, New Jersey. We find that Newark and New Jersey's charter schools mirror the educational inequalities of the state as a whole, as well as its Abbott Districts. The data indicate that charter schools are similar to district urban…

  2. The Nation's Report Card: Mathematics 2011. Trial Urban District Assessment Results at Grades 4 and 8. NCES 2012-452

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    Representative samples of fourth- and eighth-grade public school students from 21 urban districts participated in the 2011 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in mathematics. Eighteen of the districts participating in the 2011 NAEP Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) participated in earlier assessment years, while three districts…

  3. Project Proficiency: Assessing the Independent Effects of High School Reform in an Urban District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Baete, Glenn S.; Hochbein, Craig

    2014-01-01

    The authors sought to determine if an urban school district's effort to fundamentally change teaching, assessment, and intervention practices increased student achievement and decreased achievement variation among classrooms in 11 high schools. They examined Grade 11 mathematics achievement data from the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 Kentucky Core…

  4. The Challenge of Teacher Retention in Urban Schools: Evidence of Variation from a Cross-Site Analysis

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Papay, John P.; Bacher-Hicks, Andrew; Page, Lindsay C.; Marinell, William H.

    2017-01-01

    Substantial teacher turnover poses a challenge to staffing public schools with effective teachers. The scope of the teacher retention challenge across school districts, however, remains poorly defined. Applying consistent data practices and analytical techniques to administrative data sets from 16 urban districts, we document substantial…

  5. Between Public and Private: Politics, Governance, and the New Portfolio Models for Urban School Reform

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bulkley, Katrina E., Ed.; Henig, Jeffrey R., Ed.; Levin, Henry M., Ed.

    2010-01-01

    "Between Public and Private" examines an innovative approach to school district management that has been adopted by a number of urban districts in recent years: a portfolio management model, in which "a central office oversees a portfolio of schools offering diverse organizational and curricular themes, including traditional public…

  6. Communities and School Ratings: Examining Geography of Opportunity in an Urban School District Located in a Resource-Rich City

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Green, Terrance L.; Sánchez, Joanna; Germain, Emily

    2017-01-01

    Research on geography of opportunity documents how residential patterns influence students' access to equitable educational opportunities and resources. This scholarship often highlights how geography reinforces educational inequity in urban school districts located in resource-constrained cities. Yet, less research has explored how the geography…

  7. Cultural Adjustment of White Teachers to a Diverse Urban School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Roat, Benjamin C.

    2010-01-01

    The purpose of this research study was to understand the cultural adjustment of White female teachers to a diverse urban school environment. This research focused on what factors contributed to White teachers' successful, or unsuccessful, cultural adjustment to a school district that was predominantly of a differing cultural background. The…

  8. Addressing the Inclusion Imperative: An Urban School District's Responses

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    DeMatthews, David Edward; Mawhinney, Hanne

    2013-01-01

    Over the past forty years, schools across the United States have become more inclusive for students with disabilities. However, in many high-poverty urban school districts, a disproportionate number of minority children with disabilities are segregated from their non-disabled peers. This article presents findings from a qualitative case study of…

  9. Transforming an Urban Public School District: Tracking the Progress of New Haven Public Schools' Educational Reforms and the New Haven Promise Scholarship Program. Brief

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gonzalez, Gabriella C.; Bozick, Robert; Daugherty, Lindsay; Scherer, Ethan; Singh, Reema; Suarez, Monica; Ryan, Sarah; Schweig, Jonathan

    2014-01-01

    New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) is an urban school district in Connecticut serving approximately 21,000 students in 46 schools, with nine high schools. Concerned that only about one-half of its students were meeting state proficiency standards in reading and math tests or graduating within four years of starting high school, NHPS and the City of…

  10. The Effects of School Facility Quality on Teacher Retention in Urban School Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Buckley, Jack; Schneider, Mark; Shang, Yi

    2004-01-01

    The attrition of both new and experienced teachers is a great challenge for schools and school administrators throughout the United States, particularly in large urban districts. Because of the importance of this issue, there is a large empirical literature that investigates why teachers quit and how they might be better induced to stay. Here we…

  11. Dips in Enrollment Posing Challenges for Urban Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gehring, John

    2005-01-01

    Across the U.S., urban school districts are losing students and shuttering schools. In Detroit, some 35,000 students have left the city schools in less than a decade, and the city will close 34 schools and reassign more than 10,000 students in 2006. However, the trend is not limited to Rust Belt cities like Detroit, although their problems tend to…

  12. Voices of Reform: Infusion of Standards-Based Mathematics and Science Teaching in an Urban District.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Huinker, DeAnn; Coan, Cheryl; Posnanski, Tracy

    This study examined the impact of a systemic reform initiative to implement standards-based mathematics and science teaching and learning in one urban school district, noting its effect on teachers, principals, students, and classroom practice. Participants were a sample of elementary and secondary schools involved in the Milwaukee Urban Systemic…

  13. School District Personnel Describe One Example of Effective Change Implementation.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Jones, Toni Griego

    Three large urban school districts located in the Midwest, Southwest, and West Coast regions were involved in a study designed to reveal district personnel's perceptions of change within their school district. After describing the study, this document analyzes perceptions of change related to one district's new bilingual program that was…

  14. Perceptions of Elementary Teachers from an Urban School District in Southern California Regarding Their Inquiry-Based Science Instructional Practices, Assessment Methods, and Professional Development

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ugwu, Romanus Iroabuchi

    2012-01-01

    The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to describe the perceptions of elementary teachers from an urban school district in Southern California regarding their inquiry-based science instructional practices, assessment methods and professional development. The district's inquiry professional development called the California Mathematics and…

  15. Improving Literacy for Diverse, Low Socioeconomic Status, Middle School Students in an Urban District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Means, Vivian Fowler

    2017-01-01

    In an urban district, Surfside School personnel were concerned that student literacy proficiency levels were low during 2011-2014 and teachers had not been able to close the achievement gap despite a focus on literacy practices and literacy professional development (PD) provided by the district. The purpose of this case study was to explore the…

  16. Rural School Busing. ERIC Digest.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Howley, Aimee; Howley, Craig

    This digest summarizes information suggesting that long bus rides are part of the hidden costs of school and district consolidation. Rural school districts spend more than twice per pupil what urban districts spend on transportation. A review of studies shows that rural school children were more likely than suburban school children to have bus…

  17. De-adoption of an evidence-based trauma intervention in schools: A retrospective report from an urban school district

    PubMed Central

    Nadeem, Erum; Ringle, Vanesa

    2017-01-01

    The de-adoption of evidence-based practices (EBPs) is a largely understudied topic. The present study examined factors related to the de-adoption of an EBP for students exposed to traumatic events in a large urban school district. Qualitative interviews conducted with school clinicians and district administrators two years after the district embarked on a large-scale roll-out of the EBP distinguished between factors that impacted partial de-adoption after one year (phase 1) and complete de-adoption by the district after two years (phase 2). Phase 1 factors included organizational consistency, workforce stability, prior success, positive student outcomes, school- and district- level supports, innovation-setting fit, and innovation-related issues. Phase 2 factors included district-level leadership changes, financial and workforce instability, and shifting priorities. Study results suggest that sustainment-enhancing strategies should be included in the early stages of program implementation to most effectively adapt to school- and system- level changes. PMID:28775793

  18. Enhancing Teacher Leadership in Urban Education: The Oak Park Experience. Educating Students Placed at Risk

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Muchmore, James A.; Cooley, Van E.; Marx, Gary E.; Crowell, Ronald A.

    2004-01-01

    This article describes a long-term effort to improve student achievement in an urban school district through a unique school-university partnership. The Oak Park School District in Oak Park, Michigan, collaborated with Western Michigan University (WMU) to design and administer special master's and doctoral degree programs for nearly half the…

  19. Social Justice Leadership and Inclusion: Exploring Challenges in an Urban District Struggling to Address Inequities

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    DeMatthews, David; Mawhinney, Hanne

    2014-01-01

    Research Approach: This cross case study describes the challenges that two principals working in one urban school district addressed while attempting to transform their school cultures to embrace an inclusion model. Analysis of interviews and observations in each school revealed the actions, values, and orientations of the individual leaders and…

  20. Substance Use in Urban and Rural Texas School Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Maxwell, Jane Carlisle; Tackett-Gibson, Melissa; Dyer, James

    2006-01-01

    The aim of this study is to compare substance use between urban and rural secondary school districts in Texas between 1998 and 2003. The differences were analyzed using chi-square and analysis of variance. The analysis found that rural schools had students who reported higher rates of use of tobacco, frequent binge drinking, and driving while…

  1. Assessing School Council Contribution to the Enabling Conditions for Instructional Capacity Building: "An Urban District in Kentucky"

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Talley, Wade Kenneth; Keedy, John L.

    2006-01-01

    This study identified the enabling conditions related to building instructional capacity created by the councils in three high-performance schools in an urban district. The authors collected the data through observation, interview, and document mining. School-level data were sorted inductively into themes through constant comparative analysis.…

  2. Middle School Mathematics Instruction in Instructionally Focused Urban Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Boston, Melissa D.; Wilhelm, Anne Garrison

    2017-01-01

    Direct assessments of instructional practice (e.g., classroom observations) are necessary to identify and eliminate opportunity gaps in students' learning of mathematics. This study examined 114 middle school mathematics classrooms in four instructionally focused urban districts. Results from the Instructional Quality Assessment identified high…

  3. Charting a Path to Graduation. The Effect of Project GRAD on Elementary School Student Outcomes in Four Urban School Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Snipes, Jason C.; Holton, Glee Ivory; Doolittle, Fred

    2006-01-01

    In the past decade, school districts around the country have sought to improve struggling urban high schools, where high dropout rates, poor student achievement, and low rates of graduation and college-going remain all too prevalent. In a field crowded with reform initiatives, Project Graduation Really Achieves Dreams (GRAD) stands out as…

  4. Expert Recommended Strategies for Classroom Management for Beginning Teachers Placed in Hard-to-Staff Schools in Urban School Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Alexis, Chelly C.

    2014-01-01

    Purpose: The purpose of this study was to get the opinion of a panel of experts as to which classroom management strategies should be implemented in urban school district mentoring programs to help beginning teachers who are placed in hard-to-staff schools in Los Angeles County, California. Methodology: This Delphi study included 20 expert mentors…

  5. To Be Alone or in a Group: An Exploration into How the School-Based Experiences Differ for Black Male Teachers across One Urban School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bristol, Travis J.

    2018-01-01

    One urban district administered the Black Male Teacher Environment Survey (BMTES) to each of its Black male teachers to measure their school-based experiences. This article highlights descriptive statistics from the 86 Black male teacher respondents. Findings suggest that participants' background characteristics and school-based experiences varied…

  6. Promoting Student Achievement: A Case Study of Change Actions Employed by an Urban School Superintendent

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bealer, David E.

    2010-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to examine the change strategies and actions taken by an urban district superintendent to improve student achievement. In a qualitative case study of a large urban school district, one research question and three subquestions focused on: 10 specific reform strategies to improve student achievement, how the quality and…

  7. A Survey of the Capacity of Selected Urban School Districts to Utilize and Disseminate Innovations in Educational Technology.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Adams, Isaac, Jr.

    This report presents the results of an informal survey which focused upon the manner in which urban school systems are organized to perform the functions of utilization and dissemination of educational innovations. The systems of each of twenty-eight urban districts surveyed are briefly described. Results presented indicate that (1) all…

  8. Fiscal Policy in Urban Education. A Volume in Research in Education Fiscal Policy and Practice.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Roellke, Christopher, Ed.; Rice, Jennifer King, Ed.

    This volume focuses on school finance challenges in large urban school districts, fiscal accountability in these schools, and the fiscal dimensions of urban school reform. The 12 papers are (1) "School Finance and Urban Education Reform" (Christopher Roellke and Jennifer King Rice); (2) "Can Whole-School Reform Improve the…

  9. Review of the Organizational Structure and Operations of the Los Angeles Unified School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Council of the Great City Schools, 2006

    2006-01-01

    The Los Angeles Unified School District is the second largest public school system in the United States, and one of the largest organizations of any kind in the country. As with urban school systems across the country, the Los Angeles school district is under enormous pressure to improve. The district is under public scrutiny and is the subject of…

  10. A Study of an Inter-Institutional Partnership between an Urban Community College and an Urban Public School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gaines, Michael L.

    2012-01-01

    This study examined the unique partnership between Midwest Community College and Urban Public Schools' Urban Career Technical High School. The Urban Technical High School (UTHS) is designed to provide students interested in Tech Prep education a clear pathway from high school to college. Through collaboration, services were provided to assist high…

  11. Discipline for Democracy? School Districts' Management of Conflict and Social Exclusion

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bickmore, Kathy

    2004-01-01

    An examination of six urban Canadian school districts' policies and co-curricular programs for safe and inclusive schools shows contrasting implicit patterns of citizenship education. Peacekeeping-oriented districts relied heavily on standardized control and exclusion to achieve school safety and allocated few resources to affirming diversity.…

  12. A Cooperative Program Between a City School District and a Suburban School District. Interim Report.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rochester City School District, NY.

    An urban-suburban interdistrict program is described in which efforts were made to correct racial imbalance in both districts. In 1965 free transportation was provided for 25 first grade children who were sent voluntarily from a Rochester, N.Y. public school to six schools in the West Irondequoit district. This longitudinal metropolitan approach…

  13. The Politics of School-Based Management: Understanding the Process of Devolving Authority in Urban School Districts.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Walker, Elaine M.

    2002-01-01

    Studied the implementation of school-based management in 30 of the poorest school districts in New Jersey (the Abbott districts). Findings show that genuine autonomy has been usurped by increased state power and authority, and that state elites allow little opportunity for capacity building at the district level. The level of democratization has…

  14. Consumption of Fruits and Vegetables in Middle School Students Following the Implementation of a School District Wellness Policy

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Young, Kathleen D.; Snelling, Anastasia; Maroto, Maya; Young, Katherine A.

    2013-01-01

    Purpose/Objectives: In 2010, a large urban school district implemented a district-wide school wellness policy that addressed childhood obesity by requiring schools to increase health and physical education contact hours for students and to improve the nutritional standards of school meals. Schools were required to serve a different fruit and…

  15. Mandatory Community-Based Learning in U.S. Urban High Schools: Fair Equality of Opportunity?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bennett, Jeffrey V.; Alsbury, Thomas L.; Fan, Jingjing

    2016-01-01

    This study explores participant experiences at two contrasting high schools in a large, urban school district in crisis who implemented mandatory community-based learning (CBL) (e.g. community service, work-based internships) as a policy of reform. Rawls' theory of justice as fairness is used to examine capacity of the district formal policy to…

  16. High School Physical Educators' Beliefs about Teaching Differently Abled Students in an Urban Public School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hersman, Bethany L.; Hodge, Samuel R.

    2010-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to examine general physical education (GPE) teachers' beliefs about teaching differently abled students in inclusive classes.The participants were 5 GPE teachers from a large urban school district. The research method was explanatory multiple-case study situated in planned behavior theory. Data were gathered using a…

  17. Urban, Suburban, and Rural Contexts of School Districts and Neighborhood Revitalization Strategies: Rediscovering Equity in Education Policy and Urban Planning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Silverman, Robert Mark

    2014-01-01

    This article revisits the debate about school reform and homeownership-based strategies for neighborhood revitalization. It is based on an analysis of school districts in New York State using data from the American Community Survey (ACS) and the New York State Education Department (NYSED). Findings indicate that the relationship between schools…

  18. Do Teacher Financial Awards Improve Teacher Retention and Student Achievement in an Urban Disadvantaged School District?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Shifrer, Dara; Turley, Ruth López; Heard, Holly

    2017-01-01

    Teacher performance pay programs are theorized to improve student achievement by incentivizing teachers, but opponents counter that teachers are not motivated by money. We used regression discontinuity techniques and data on a census of the students, teachers, and schools in a large urban minority-majority school district to show receipt of a…

  19. Reframing Due Process and Institutional Inertia: A Case Study of an Urban School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Olivos, Edward M.; Ochoa, Alberto M.

    2008-01-01

    This article recounts a community's struggle for access to biliteracy in one of the largest urban school districts in the country. The authors examine the roles school personnel assume, the symbols they employ, and the scripts they follow in their efforts to deny English Learners (ELs) access to quality programs and due process of rights. At a…

  20. Human Capital Problems in Zimbabwean Rural Schools: A Case Study of Mazowe District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Zvavahera, Promise

    2014-01-01

    This study focused on the management of human capital in Zimbabwean rural schools. It was observed that teachers in rural schools preferred urban postings which turned out to have better facilities and incentives. Rural to urban migration of teachers is a cause for concern in Mazowe District. This study was motivated by the high teacher-turnover…

  1. Dynamic Leadership Succession: Strengthening Urban Principal Succession Planning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Peters-Hawkins, April L.; Reed, Latish C.; Kingsberry, Francemise

    2018-01-01

    The Dynamic Leadership Succession model is used to analyze a leadership succession case in an urban school district. The qualitative findings show that the district did not forecast school leadership needs well; however, the principal sought to develop and mentor teacher leaders as her assistant principals. Second, sustaining efforts within the…

  2. Student-Led, Teacher-Supported Conferences: Improving Communication across an Urban School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Goodman, Amy

    2008-01-01

    This article describes how parent communication across an urban school district was improved through student-led, teacher-supported conferences. According to "This We Believe," student-led, teacher-supported conferences empower young adolescents to accept responsibility for their own learning. Such conferences invite parents into the…

  3. No More Profiling in the Classroom: A Midsize Urban School District's Efforts to Close the Achievement Gap

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Smith-Evans, Leticia Victoria

    2010-01-01

    For approximately a third of this decade, a mid-size urban school district took a bold step in its continuing efforts to battle what has been a persistent problem plaguing this Nation's education system for decades or possibly for as long as it has existed--the achievement gap between students of color and their White peers. The district has…

  4. The Relationship of Rurality and Education Accountability Outcomes.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Peevely, Gary; Ray, John R.

    This paper examines accountability outcomes of Tennessee school districts, comparing rural versus urban districts and litigant versus nonlitigant districts from a 1993 fiscal equity lawsuit. School districts were assigned a measure of rurality using the Cleland Rurality Index, and comparisons were made among the 29 low-rurality districts, 66…

  5. Promising Strategies for Attracting and Retaining Successful Urban Teachers

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Stotko, Elaine M.; Ingram, Rochelle; Beaty-O'Ferrall, Mary Ellen

    2007-01-01

    In the debate about urban school effectiveness and teacher quality, one proposition has emerged as indisputable: The success of urban schools depends heavily on the quality of the teachers who serve the schools and the administrators who support the teachers. Unfortunately, urban school district recruitment policies are often not aligned with…

  6. Staffing Levels in the Dallas Independent School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Council of the Great City Schools, 2009

    2009-01-01

    The Board of Trustees of the Dallas Independent School District (DISD) asked the Council of the Great City Schools, the nation's primary coalition of large urban school systems, to examine the staffing levels of the school system and determine whether the numbers of staff members employed were appropriate for a district serving as many students as…

  7. Knowing the Odds: Parameters that Predict Passing or Failing School District Bonds

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bowers, Alex J.; Metzger, Scott Alan; Militello, Matthew

    2010-01-01

    This study investigates parameters affecting the likelihood of passing school facility construction bonds by local district election. Using statewide data from Michigan, this study analyzes school bond data for urban (n = 30), suburban (n = 164), small town (n = 70), and rural (n = 241) school districts that held capital improvement bond elections…

  8. Review of "The Louisiana Recovery School District: Lessons for the Buckeye State"

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Buras, Kristen L.

    2012-01-01

    In "The Louisiana Recovery School District: Lessons for the Buckeye State," the Thomas B. Fordham Institute criticizes local urban governance structures and presents the decentralized, charter-school-driven Recovery School District (RSD) in New Orleans as a successful model for fiscal and academic performance. Absent from the review is…

  9. Taking a Strengths-Based Focus Improves School Climate

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Tschannen-Moran, Megan; Tschannen-Moran, Bob

    2011-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to learn whether focusing on strengths through appreciative inquiry would be related to measurable changes in school climate and trust within a small urban school district. The district studied was a beleaguered, underperforming school district in the Midwest Rust Belt. Through an appreciative inquiry initiative, the…

  10. A Systems Theory Approach to the District Central Office's Role in School-Level Improvement

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mania-Singer, Jackie

    2017-01-01

    This qualitative case study used General Systems Theory and social network analysis to explore the relationships between the members of a district central office and principals of elementary schools within an urban school district in the Midwest. Findings revealed sparse relationships between members of the district central office and principals,…

  11. Voices from the Field: The Perceptions of Teachers and Principals on the Class Size Reduction Program in a Large Urban School District.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Munoz, Marco A.; Portes, Pedro R.

    A class size reduction (CSR) program was implemented in a large low-performing urban elementary school district. The CSR program helps schools improve student learning by hiring additional teachers so that children in the early elementary grades can attend smaller classes. This study used a participant-oriented evaluation model to examine the…

  12. Today's Promise, Tomorrow's Future: The Social and Educational Factors Contributing to the Outcomes of Hispanics in Urban Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Simon, Candace; Lewis, Sharon; Uro, Gabriela; Uzzell, Renata; Palacios, Moses; Casserly, Michael

    2011-01-01

    In 2010, approximately 14 percent of all students in the nation were enrolled in the organization's 65 urban school districts out of approximately 15,000 school districts nationwide. In addition, 21 percent of the nation's students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, 26 percent of English language learner (ELL) students and 24 percent of the…

  13. Improving of Reading in High Schools: Outcomes of Ramp Up to Advanced Literacy in a Large Urban District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Munoz, Marco A.

    2007-01-01

    The purpose of the present study was to examine the effectiveness of Ramp Up to Advanced Literacy, an unbundled Comprehensive School Reform (CSR) model, on the reading achievement of ninth grade students in a large urban school district in Kentucky. Using a pre- and posttest impact evaluation design, data from participating and non-participating…

  14. A Study of At-Risk Students' Perceptions of an Online Academic Credit Recovery Program in an Urban North Texas Independent School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Buckley, Mychl K.

    2012-01-01

    The purpose of this research study was to describe and analyze at-risk high school students' perceptions of their experiences with online academic credit recovery classes offered to them through an urban school district's dropout prevention department. The review of literature concerning curricula for online programs revealed that the variety of…

  15. The Impact of Standards-Based Reform on Special Education and the Creation of the 'Dividual

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bacon, Jessica

    2015-01-01

    An urban Pre-K through 5th grade school referred to as Westvale Elementary School was the focal point for this research study. Westvale was located within an urban district in New York State that was host to approximately 20,000 students. Both the school and the district were labeled as failing under the No Child Left Behind Act. Foucauldian…

  16. Building, Maintaining, and Ending Relationships: An Urban School District and a Technical Assistance Team. Documentation and Technical Assistance in Urban Schools.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Holmes, Manford L.

    This paper describes the nature of the relationships developed between the technical assistance team of the Documentation and Technical Assistance (DTA) Project and members of a Chicago (Illinois) school district staff with whom the DTA worked. First, the methodology with which the technical assistance work was studied is described, as is the…

  17. Pieces of the Puzzle: Factors in the Improvement of Urban School Districts on the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Abstract

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Casserly, Michael; Price-Baugh, Ricki; Corcoran, Amanda; Lewis, Sharon; Uzzell, Renata; Simon, Candace; Heppen, Jessica; Leinwand, Steve; Salinger, Terry; de Mello, Victor Bandeira; Dogan, Enis; Novotny, Laura

    2011-01-01

    This is an abridged, summary report of selected findings from "Pieces of the Puzzle: Factors in the Improvement of Urban School Districts on the National Assessment of Educational Progress"--a comprehensive study prepared by the Council of the Great City Schools in collaboration with the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and with…

  18. Urban School Facilities: An A-Z Primer. IssueTrak: A CEFPI Brief on Educational Facility Issues

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    DeJong, William S.

    2004-01-01

    This "IssueTrak" addresses the condition of urban school facilities as a matter of great urgency. Facility planners, are committed to working with urban school districts to develop and implement a systematic approach for modernizing aging urban school facilities. The next generation of school children is far too important and valuable to be forced…

  19. The Success of Urban Schools in Oxnard, California: An In-Depth Look at Developmental and Relational Assets

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Akhavan, Nancy; Emery, Ryan; Shea, Ginger; Taha-Resnick, Adria

    2017-01-01

    The study is a mixed-methods investigation of how urban schools are succeeding. The study surveyed 28 former students from urban schools in Oxnard, California. The qualitative responses represent themes that align to a high level of school connectedness and social-emotional learning (SEL) as key indicators of a successful urban school district.…

  20. Foundations for Success: Case Studies of How Urban School Systems Improve Student Achievement [and] Abstract.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Snipes, Jason; Doolittle, Fred; Herlihy, Corinne

    This report examines the experiences of three large urban school districts (and part of a fourth) that raised academic performance for their districts as a whole, while also reducing racial differences in achievement. Educational challenges included low achievement, political conflict, inexperienced teachers, low expectations, and lack of…

  1. Laying the Groundwork: The Journey of an Urban High School District Implementing a College Readiness Initiative

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Franco, Antonia O.

    2012-01-01

    National and state education reforms are centered on developing higher academic expectations and standards to ensure students transitions into postsecondary options, college and career ready. What does this national emphasis signify for urban school districts that are educating a significant proportion of first-generation students and that…

  2. African American Male Superintendents in Urban School Districts: National Stories of Success

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Carrier, Isaac Charles

    2017-01-01

    The purpose of this study is to examine and interpret the life experiences and leadership practices of four African American male superintendents leading urban school districts across the nation. The research approach adopted in this dissertation used semi-structured interviews with four African American male superintendents that consisted of…

  3. The Organization and Functions of Research and Evaluation in a Large Urban School District.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Webster, William J.

    The purpose, organization, and functions of research and evaluation in a large urban school district are discussed in light of several major issues in educational evaluation. Major issues include methods of assuring the credibility of evaluation information, the establishment and maintenance of meaningful reporting cycles, the recruitment and…

  4. Where Will Urban High School Teachers for the 21st Century Come From?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Follo, Eric; Hoerr, Bill; Vorheis-Sargent, Ann

    2002-01-01

    Describes urban teacher supply problem in Oakland County, Michigan. Reviews literature on urban teacher supply problem nationally. Describes Michigan's alternative teacher-certification program and Oakland University's partnership with the Pontiac School District to prepare teachers for teaching in urban schools. (Contains 50 references.) (PKP)

  5. Mass-casualty events at schools: a national preparedness survey.

    PubMed

    Graham, James; Shirm, Steve; Liggin, Rebecca; Aitken, Mary E; Dick, Rhonda

    2006-01-01

    Recent school shootings and terrorist events have demonstrated the need for well-coordinated planning for school-based mass-casualty events. The objective of this study was to document the preparedness of public schools in the United States for the prevention of and the response to a mass-casualty event. A survey was mailed to 3670 school superintendents of public school districts that were chosen at random from a list of school districts from the National Center for Education Statistics of the US Department of Education in January 2004. A second mailing was sent to nonresponders in May 2004. Descriptive statistics were used for survey variables, and the chi2 test was used to compare urban versus rural preparedness. The response rate was 58.2% (2137 usable surveys returned). Most (86.3%) school superintendents reported having a response plan, but fewer (57.2%) have a plan for prevention. Most (95.6%) have an evacuation plan, but almost one third (30%) had never conducted a drill. Almost one quarter (22.1%) have no disaster plan provisions for children with special health care needs, and one quarter reported having no plans for postdisaster counseling. Almost half (42.8%) had never met with local ambulance officials to discuss emergency planning. Urban school districts were better prepared than rural districts on almost all measures in the survey. There are important deficiencies in school emergency/disaster planning. Rural districts are less well prepared than urban districts. Disaster/mass-casualty preparedness of schools should be improved through coordination of school officials and local medical and emergency officials.

  6. No More 1s: High Expectations Can Lead to High Achievement

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cervone, Laureen; DiMartino, Lisa; Kerr, Kris

    2010-01-01

    The school district in Middletown, New York, in the state's Orange County, today serves close to 7,000 students in four elementary schools, two middle schools, and one high school. The district is classified by the state in the highest of three Need-to-Resource-Capacity groups, an urban or suburban school district with high student needs in…

  7. Neighborhoods and Schools: Using Charter School Policy to Foster District Change

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Allen, Ann

    2010-01-01

    This article presents the case of community leaders who used the charter school policy as a way to effect district change for the benefit of a neighborhood in need. The case represents the potential of charter school policy to reshape the political and institutional arrangements of urban school districts, and it reengages the idea of what makes…

  8. Development and Implementation of an Administrative Internship Program

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wermuth, Esther; Quezada, Edwin M.

    2017-01-01

    This article describes the development and implementation of a pilot program to prepare teachers seeking New York state certification as school district administrators, by assigning them as administrative interns to a school district. The superintendent of a large urban school district and the director of a college program to prepare school…

  9. Gifted and at Risk: A Cross-District Comparison of Gifted Student Growth and Solutions for Urban Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kurt, Layla J.; Chenault, Krystel H.

    2017-01-01

    In this study, the researchers highlight differences in district level value-added growth data of gifted students in urban and suburban districts, as categorized by the Ohio Department of Education. In addition to analyzing the difference between the academic growth of urban and suburban gifted students, the researchers sought to synthesize…

  10. The Nation's Report Card: A First Look--2013 Mathematics and Reading Trial Urban District Assessment. NCES 2014-466

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2013

    2013-01-01

    The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), in partnership with the National Assessment Governing Board and the Council of the Great City Schools (CGCS), created the Trial Urban District Assessment (TUDA) in 2002 to support the improvement of student achievement in the nation's large urban districts. The TUDA focuses attention on urban…

  11. School District of Philadelphia Student Achievement as Related to 2008-2009 K-8 Teachers' Perceptions of Major Academic Indicators

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mason-Dorman, Cheryl

    2013-01-01

    The School District of Philadelphia (SDP), established in 1818, is the eighth largest school district in the United States, with a student enrollment of 184,560 K-12 students. Like most of the other large urban school districts in the United States, its student population consists of more minority students than non-minority students. As the white…

  12. Rich Schools--Poor Schools: Challenges for Rural and Urban Pennsylvania. Technical Paper No. 8.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Center for Rural Pennsylvania, Harrisburg.

    This report examines the wealth of Pennsylvania school districts, the effort districts exert to support education, school expenditures, and the effects of district wealth on students. Important findings related to disparities in wealth and spending on education include: (1) the polarization of wealth distribution during the 1980s made over 90% of…

  13. School Dropouts in Rural Colorado School Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Tombari, Martin; Andrews, Alex; Gallinati, Tina

    2009-01-01

    Dropouts from rural school districts have not received the same scrutiny as given to those from urban ones. The reasons behind this lack of knowledge about the experience of rural school districts with dropouts are unclear. The purpose of the present study was to begin to close this knowledge gap. A first major study of rural dropouts in the…

  14. Are Ohio's Urban Youth at Risk? Urban and Suburban Schools in the Buckeye State.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Boyd, Richard; Anderson, Donald; Crosby, Emeral; Cunningham, Luvern; Frymier, Jack; Gansneder, Bruce; Roaden, Arliss

    A study was conducted on the factors that affect learning in urban and suburban schools in Ohio, focusing on the 8 urban and 132 suburban school districts in the 8 largest counties in the state. The urban and suburban schools are compared in terms of educational, social, economic, and other factors. The chapters of this report are: (1) "How…

  15. Exploring the Space between: Social Networks, Trust, and Urban School District Leaders

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Daly, Alan J.; Finnigan, Kara S.

    2012-01-01

    A number of scholars are exploring the district context in which schools are embedded. These studies suggest the importance of the district office as a support or constraint to the work of schools and offer strategies for building relations between district and site leaders. While this is an important task, what is frequently overlooked is that…

  16. An ecological study of food desert prevalence and 4th grade academic achievement in new york state school districts.

    PubMed

    Frndak, Seth E

    2014-12-02

    This ecological study examines the relationship between food desert prevalence and academic achievement at the school district level. Sample included 232 suburban and urban school districts in New York State. Multiple open-source databases were merged to obtain: 4(th) grade science, English and math scores, school district demographic composition (NYS Report Card), regional socioeconomic indicators (American Community Survey), school district quality (US Common Core of Data), and food desert data (USDA Food Desert Atlas). Multiple regression models assessed the percentage of variation in achievement scores explained by food desert variables, after controlling for additional predictors. The proportion of individuals living in food deserts significantly explained 4th grade achievement scores, after accounting for additional predictors. School districts with higher proportions of individuals living in food desert regions demonstrated lower 4th grade achievement across science, English and math. Food deserts appear to be related to academic achievement at the school district level among urban and suburban regions. Further research is needed to better understand how food access is associated with academic achievement at the individual level. Significance for public healthThe prevalence of food deserts in the United States is of national concern. As poor nutrition in United States children continues to spark debate, food deserts are being evaluated as potential sources of low fruit and vegetable intake and high obesity rates. Cognitive development and IQ have been linked to nutrition patterns, suggesting that children in food desert regions may have a disadvantage academically. This research evaluates if an ecological relationship between food desert prevalence and academic achievement at the school district level can be demonstrated. Results suggest that food desert prevalence may relate to poor academic performance at the school district level. Significant variation in academic achievement among urban and suburban school districts is explained by food desert prevalence, above additional predictors. This research lays the groundwork for future studies at the individual level, with possible implications for community interventions in school districts containing food desert regions.

  17. Evaluation of State Urban Education (CEC) Programs District 19, New York City Board of Education.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Schweitzer, Paul; And Others

    The five State Urban Education C.E.C. programs in District 19 include Project Excellence, a recycled clinical program which provides diagnostic, referral, and educational service to elementary and junior school students who demonstrate some difficulty in their scholastic and/or emotional adjustment to school. In Operation Reading Success for Sixth…

  18. Student Attendance, Mobility, and Mathematics Achievement in an Urban School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Parke, Carol S.; Kanyongo, Gibbs Y.

    2012-01-01

    The authors aim to describe student attendance-mobility within a large urban district in ways that are meaningful and useful to schools and the community. First, the prevalence of mobility and nonattendance in Grades 1-12 across all students and by gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic subgroups is presented. Second, the impact on student…

  19. The Racial Discipline Gap: Critically Examining Policy, Culture, and Leadership in a Struggling Urban District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    DeMatthews, David E.

    2016-01-01

    Exclusionary discipline and the implementation of zero-tolerance policies are disproportionately used against African American students and other marginalized groups. This case involves an urban school district with historically high rates of suspension, a low-performing middle school, and a new principal seeking to create a more socially just…

  20. Associations between Grades and Physical Activity and Food Choices: Results from YRBS from a Large Urban School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Snelling, Anastasia; Belson, Sarah Irvine; Beard, Jonathan; Young, Kathleen

    2015-01-01

    Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between television viewing time, physical activity level, food consumption patterns, and academic performance of adolescents in a large urban school district in the USA where health disparities are prevalent, particularly among minority residents. Design/Methodology/Approach: The…

  1. Who Gets Care? Mental Health Service Use Following a School-Based Suicide Prevention Program

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kataoka, Sheryl; Stein, Bradley D.; Nadeem, Erum; Wong, Marleen

    2007-01-01

    Objective: To examine symptomatology and mental health service use following students' contact with a large urban school district's suicide prevention program. Method: In 2001 school district staff conducted telephone interviews with 95 randomly selected parents approximately 5 months following their child's contact with the district's suicide…

  2. Parental and Professional Participation in the IEP Process: A Comparison of Discourses

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Harris, Apollos Ramon

    2010-01-01

    This study examined the participation styles of nine parents while attending Individual Educational Program (IEP) meetings for their children. The nine parents consisted of three parents from a suburban school district, three parents from a rural school district, and three parents from an urban school district. Data collection through videotaping…

  3. Community Schools as Urban District Reform: Analyzing Oakland's Policy Landscape through Oral Histories

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Trujillo, Tina M.; Hernández, Laura E.; Jarrell, Tonja; Kissell, René

    2014-01-01

    The purpose of this article is to investigate the multiple political histories that have coalesced to produce support for or resistance to the Oakland Unified School District's full-service community schools policy. It analyzes oral history interview data from eight stakeholders who represent the district's major constituencies to explore the…

  4. Community Violence, School-Related Protective Factors, and Psychosocial Outcomes in Urban Youth

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ludwig, Kristy A.; Warren, Jared S.

    2009-01-01

    This study examined the relationship of two putative school-based protective factors--student identification with school and perceived teacher support--to psychosocial outcomes in a sample of urban youth exposed to community violence. Participants were 175 high school students ages 14-19 in grades 9-12 from a large urban school district. Results…

  5. Making Sense of an Urban District's Adolescent Literacy Reform

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Patterson, Jean A.; Eubank, Heather; Rathbun, Shelia E.; Noble, Steve

    2010-01-01

    Weick's theory of sensemaking is used to analyze findings from a qualitative study of the implementation of a district-initiated adolescent intervention literacy course in two urban secondary schools. The authors concluded that implementation of the literacy course was hampered because district administrators, building leaders, teachers, and…

  6. The Sustainability of Comprehensive School Reform Models in Changing District and State Contexts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Datnow, Amanda

    2005-01-01

    This article addresses the sustainability of comprehensive school reform (CSR) models in the face of turbulent district and state contexts. It draws on qualitative data gathered in a longitudinal case study of six CSR models implemented in 13 schools in one urban district. Why do reforms sustain in some schools and not in others? How do changing…

  7. The Nation's Report Card Mathematics 2011 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. School District of Philadelphia. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    This one-page report presents overall results, achievement level percentages and average score results, scores at selected percentiles, average scores for district and large cities, results for student groups (school race, gender, and eligibility for National School Lunch Program) in 2011, and score gaps for student groups. In 2011, the average…

  8. The High School "Space Race": Implications of a School-Choice Market Environment for a Michigan Metropolitan Region

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Militello, Matthew; Metzger, Scott Alan; Bowers, Alex J.

    2008-01-01

    This article examines the implications of competition between school districts in a mid-Michigan metropolitan area. Over the 10-year period after Michigan's major school-funding reform in 1994, many urban and suburban districts found themselves competing for per-pupil state funding. Suburban districts need extra students to make up budgetary…

  9. The Nation's Report Card Mathematics 2011 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Cleveland Metropolitan School District. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    This one-page report presents overall results, achievement level percentages and average score results, scores at selected percentiles, average scores for district and large cities, results for student groups (school race, gender, and eligibility for National School Lunch Program) in 2011, and score gaps for student groups. In 2011, the average…

  10. The Nation's Report Card Reading 2011 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. San Diego Unified School District. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    This one-page report presents overall results, achievement level percentages and average score results, scores at selected percentiles, average scores for district and large cities, results for student groups (school race, gender, and eligibility for National School Lunch Program) in 2011, and score gaps for student groups. In 2011, the average…

  11. The Nation's Report Card Mathematics 2011 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. San Diego Unified School District. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    This one-page report presents overall results, achievement level percentages and average score results, scores at selected percentiles, average scores for district and large cities, results for student groups (school race, gender, and eligibility for National School Lunch Program) in 2011, and score gaps for student groups. In 2011, the average…

  12. The Nation's Report Card Mathematics 2011 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. San Diego Unified School District. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    This one-page report presents overall results, achievement level percentages and average score results, scores at selected percentiles, average scores for district and large cities, results for student groups (school race, gender, and eligibility for National School Lunch Program) in 2011, and score gaps for student groups. In 2011, the average…

  13. The Nation's Report Card Reading 2011 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. San Diego Unified School District. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    This one-page report presents overall results, achievement level percentages and average score results, scores at selected percentiles, average scores for district and large cities, results for student groups (school race, gender, and eligibility for National School Lunch Program) in 2011, and score gaps for student groups. In 2011, the average…

  14. The Nation's Report Card Reading 2011 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Austin Independent School District. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    This one-page report presents overall results, achievement level percentages and average score results, scores at selected percentiles, average scores for district and large cities, results for student groups (school race, gender, and eligibility for National School Lunch Program) in 2011, and score gaps for student groups. In 2011, the average…

  15. The Nation's Report Card Reading 2011 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Austin Independent School District. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    This one-page report presents overall results, achievement level percentages and average score results, scores at selected percentiles, average scores for district and large cities, results for student groups (school race, gender, and eligibility for National School Lunch Program) in 2011, and score gaps for student groups. In 2011, the average…

  16. The Nation's Report Card Mathematics 2011 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Austin Independent School District. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    This one-page report presents overall results, achievement level percentages and average score results, scores at selected percentiles, average scores for district and large cities, results for student groups (school race, gender, and eligibility for National School Lunch Program) in 2011, and score gaps for student groups. In 2011, the average…

  17. The Nation's Report Card Mathematics 2011 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Austin Independent School District. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    This one-page report presents overall results, achievement level percentages and average score results, scores at selected percentiles, average scores for district and large cities, results for student groups (school race, gender, and eligibility for National School Lunch Program) in 2011, and score gaps for student groups. In 2011, the average…

  18. Attitudes toward Diversity and the School Choice Process: Middle-Class Parents in a Segregated Urban Public School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kimelberg, Shelley McDonough; Billingham, Chase M.

    2013-01-01

    White flight from urban public schools has been well documented, but little attention has been paid to middle-class reinvestment in urban schools. This article combines findings from interviews with middle-class parents of Boston Public School students with demographic data from the city's public elementary schools to examine the motivations of…

  19. Solidifying Segregation or Promoting Diversity? School Closure and Rezoning in an Urban District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Siegel-Hawley, Genevieve; Bridges, Kimberly; Shields, Thomas J.

    2017-01-01

    Purpose: Layered with myriad considerations, school closure and rezoning processes in urban school systems are politically fraught with the potential for damaging consequences. This article explores the politics and impacts of a closure and rezoning process in Richmond, Virginia, through the lens of themes applicable to urban school systems and…

  20. Meeting the Preteen Vaccine Law: A Pilot Program in Urban Middle Schools.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Boyer-Chuanroong, Lynda; Deaver, Paul

    2000-01-01

    Describes the efforts, outcomes, and recommendations from an urban California school district's pilot program for vaccinating preteens in two diverse urban middle schools. Barriers and strategies included staff inexperience, educating students, informing parents, tracking vaccinations, coping with language diversity, and creating individualized…

  1. Creative Thinking Abilities of Rural and Urban Elementary School Students.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Irons, Jerry Lee

    The 1967 study was designed to determine if there were significant differences in the creative thinking abilities of students attending certain urban and rural elementary schools in North Texas. The target population was selected from 7 rural and 2 urban school districts. The subjects, 100 urban and 100 rural, were matched in terms of 6 selection…

  2. The Economics and Financing of Urban Schools: Toward a Productive, Solution-Oriented Discourse

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Crampton, Faith E.

    2010-01-01

    Across the nation, a surprising number of both critics and advocates of urban schools demonstrate a naivete about the limits and possibilities of funding in relationship to the academic success of urban students. On one hand, critics often argue, without solid evidence or informed analysis, that urban school districts have sufficient funds to…

  3. Braking and Entering: A New CFO's Transition into A K-12 Urban School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Trautenberg, David Herbert

    2016-01-01

    In this autoethnography, I examine the challenges I faced as a private-to-public-sector novice CFO entering a resource-constrained 41-thousand-student K-12 urban school district in Colorado. This study chronicles how I deliberately slowed down my interactions within a complex adaptive system (CAS) through ethnographic interviewing to identify the…

  4. The Charter School Allure: Can Traditional Schools Measure up?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    May, Judy Jackson

    2006-01-01

    The school choice debate evokes compelling arguments by advocates and opponents alike. As the controversy continues, urban school districts are losing significant resources to charter schools. Districts seeking to compete in the race to reclaim dollars lost to the school choice battle should emulate the factors that have propelled parents to seek…

  5. ResourceCheck: Assess Your District's Resource Use

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Education Resource Strategies, 2013

    2013-01-01

    For over a decade, Education Resource Strategies, Inc. (ERS) has helped leaders of urban school districts strategically reallocate their resources to improve student performance. This work identifies seven Core Transformational Strategies that support high-performing schools; in high-functioning districts, resources (people, time, and money) are…

  6. District, Know Thyself

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Tupa, Megan; McFadden, Ledyard

    2009-01-01

    Finalists for the Broad Prize for Urban Education demonstrate that identifying strategies that fit the local context is essential in creating success for students. Long Beach Unified School District in California and Broward County Public Schools in Florida demonstrate how districts can use different strategies to achieve the same goals.

  7. Prioritizing Urban Children, Teachers, and Schools through Professional Development Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wong, Pia Lindquist, Ed.; Glass, Ronald David, Ed.

    2009-01-01

    How can we better educate disadvantaged urban students? Drawing on over five years' experience in a broad partnership involving twelve urban professional development schools in five districts, a teachers' union, a comprehensive public university, and several community-based organizations, the contributors to this volume describe how they worked…

  8. Perceptions of Relationships between District and School Level Administrators on Student Achievement

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Brookins, Tyrone

    2010-01-01

    The purpose of this qualitative study was to assess the extent to which perceived Using a case study of an urban school district, serving 40,000 students in the Midwest region of the United States, this study investigated district and school administrative leaders' perceptions of how their interactions influenced the achievement of black students.…

  9. The Role of Place: Labor Market Dynamics in Rural and Non-Rural School Districts. WCER Working Paper No. 2017-4

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Goff, Peter T.; Bruecker, Ellie M.

    2017-01-01

    A considerable body of work has addressed teacher labor markets and the sorting of teachers within and among school districts. Many studies have focused on urban schools within teacher labor markets, but far less research has examined teacher supply and demand among rural school districts. This study examines the pool of applicants vying for…

  10. Poor Schools, Poor Students, Successful Teachers

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gehrke, Rebecca Swanson

    2005-01-01

    Today, one out of four American children attends school in an urban district; one out of every six American children lives in poverty; and, in urban schools where most of the students are poor, two-thirds or more of the children fail to reach even the "basic" level of achievement on national tests. Urban schools are where most states face the…

  11. Teacher Retention: An Appreciative Approach

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Pesavento-Conway, Jennifer Jean

    2010-01-01

    Nationally, the problem of teacher retention compounds the unstable nature of the educational situation, especially in urban, high-needs schools. Much of the instability of urban schools is due to teacher movement, the migration of teachers from school to another school within or between school districts, particularly from high-needs schools.…

  12. The Effects of Charter Schools, Race, Socioeconomics, and Teacher Characteristics in Wisconsin's Urban School Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Vick, Matthew E.

    2009-01-01

    The charter school movement focuses on the creation of public schools governed by a legally-binding agreement known as a charter. Charter schools are touted as allowing for innovation and creativity in exchange for increased accountability. The state of Wisconsin allows its school districts to authorize the formation charter schools. School…

  13. How Small School Districts Can Organize to Afford Their Small Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Burton, Christine

    2010-01-01

    While the research continues to mount on the benefits of school downsizing and decentralizing efforts in urban areas, there exists a paradox for small school Administrators who continue to struggle against forces of consolidation. Small schools in rural and suburban districts have fought for their existence against the pressures of consolidation…

  14. Blended Learning and Student Engagement in an Urban High School

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Johnson, Courtney

    2017-01-01

    A metropolitan school district wanted to understand blended learning as it existed in one of their high schools. Blended learning had been school-wide for four years, and district administrators wanted to know how students, teachers, and school administrators perceived blended learning and its impact on student engagement. This was a…

  15. Seeking: Special Education Director

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Collins, Jeanne

    2007-01-01

    The author recently left her position as special services director in an urban school district in Vermont, a state that embraces inclusion for students with disabilities, to accept the position of superintendent of schools in the same district. The new job requires overseeing the educational mission of six elementary schools, two middle schools, a…

  16. A Validation of the Student Risk Screening Scale for Internalizing and Externalizing Behaviors: Patterns in Rural and Urban Elementary Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lane, Kathleen Lynne; Menzies, Holly M.; Oakes, Wendy P.; Lambert, Warren; Cox, Meredith; Hankins, Katy

    2012-01-01

    We report findings of two studies, one conducted in a rural school district (N = 982) and a second conducted in an urban district (N = 1,079), offering additional evidence of the reliability and validity of a revised instrument, the Student Risk Screening Scale-Internalizing and Externalizing (SRSS-IE), to accurately detect internalizing and…

  17. "No One Cares about This Community More Than Us": The Role of Listening, Participation, and Trust in a Small Urban District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Schultz, Katherine; McGinn, Kathryn C.

    2013-01-01

    In this research, situated in a small urban district with a state-imposed school board, we analyze participation of community members during a three-year effort to improve schools. Through a qualitative analysis of forms of community engagement, this article offers a framework for understanding participation. We present two overlapping continua of…

  18. 'Basic' Level Tough Going for Urban Pupils: Still, Progress under Way in Some School Districts, Especially on Math NAEP

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Manzo, Kathleen Kennedy

    2005-01-01

    This paper reports the results of a special urban study of the 2005 National Assessment of Education Progress which indicates that city school districts may be seeing some payoff from years of work to improve mathematics instruction. However, similar initiatives to raise reading achievement have not led to significant gains. While, most of the 11…

  19. Lessons Learned from the Development and Implementation of a Parent Nutrition Education Program with Low-Income Latina Mothers in an Urban School District Setting

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Thai, Chan Le; Prelip, Michael; Erausquin, Jennifer Toller; Slusser, Wendelin

    2012-01-01

    This article describes the steps involved in the development and implementation of a parent nutrition education workshop series for a low-income, primarily Spanish-speaking population in an urban school district setting. Overall, those parents who participated in the nutrition education workshops showed positive changes in their knowledge,…

  20. Inserting Child-Initiated Play into an American Urban School District after a Decade of Scripted Curricula: Complexities and Progress

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Nicholson, ?Julie; Bauer, Anne; Woolley, Ristyn

    2016-01-01

    The authors discuss an urban public school district's efforts to reinsert play after its mandated disappearance for fourteen years under a scripted curriculum imposed to meet the goals of the No Child Left Behind law. The authors analyze field notes, teacher and administrator interviews, coaching records, and surveys to chart the impact on…

  1. Comprehensive Solutions for Urban Reform

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kilgore, Sally

    2005-01-01

    The comprehensive school reform (CSR) models build consistency throughout a district while addressing the needs of individual schools. The high-quality CSR programs offer a most effective option for urban education reform.

  2. Building Principal Pipelines: A Job That Urban Districts Can Do. Perspective

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mendels, Pamela

    2016-01-01

    School district officials have faced the urgent task in recent years of ensuring that all schools, not just a lucky few, benefit from sure-footed leadership by professionals who know how to focus on instruction and improve it. The question boils down to this: How can districts develop a pipeline of great school principals? Research about a Wallace…

  3. Building Principal Pipelines: A Job That Urban Districts Can Do. Perspective. Updated Edition

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mendels, Pamela

    2017-01-01

    School district officials have faced the urgent task in recent years of ensuring that all schools, not just a lucky few, benefit from sure-footed leadership by professionals who know how to focus on instruction and improve it. The question boils down to this: How can districts develop a pipeline of great school principals? Research about a Wallace…

  4. Motivators of Classroom Technology Use and Types of Technology Being Used in Public Elementary Schools in an Urban School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Heffernan, Ruth M.

    2012-01-01

    Although the public school district under study values technology, the district did not have a measurement tool specifically designed to determine motivators of teacher usage of technology and what technology is being used. Such a tool could be used to make informed decisions about technology purchases and professional development opportunities.…

  5. Collective Student Trust: A Social Resource for Urban Elementary Students

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Adams, Curt M.

    2014-01-01

    Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine if collective student trust functions as a resource for urban elementary students. Methods: Data from 1,646 students nested in 56 elementary schools in an urban school district were used to test the hypothesized effect of collective student trust on school identification, self-regulated…

  6. Preparing Secondary Stem Teachers for High-Need Schools: Challenges of an Urban Residency Program

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Garza, Rubén; Duchaine, Ellen L.; Reynosa, Raymond

    2013-01-01

    Teaching residency programs that blend coursework with clinical experiences have emerged nationwide to prepare aspiring teachers for the demanding reality of teaching in high-need urban schools. The Teaching Residency Program for Critical Shortage Areas was created to help urban school districts with the challenge of recruiting and retaining…

  7. Central Office Transformation for District-Wide Teaching and Learning Improvement

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Honig, Meredith I.; Copland, Michael A.; Rainey, Lydia; Lorton, Juli Anna; Newton, Morena

    2010-01-01

    This report summarizes main results from a national study of how leaders in urban school district central offices fundamentally transformed their work and relationships with schools to support districtwide teaching and learning improvement. All three study districts had been posting gains in student achievement and credited their progress, in…

  8. Educating Homeless Children in the United States.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Yon, Maria

    1995-01-01

    A survey of 102 urban school districts in large cities indicates that school districts have responded to the requirements of the Stewart B. McKinney Act for the education of homeless children to varying degrees. However, 69 percent of districts described the problem of homeless students as nonexistent or small. (SLD)

  9. Partnerships for Career-Centered High School Reform in an Urban School System.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    MacIver, Martha Abele; Legters, Nettie

    2001-01-01

    A case study of a large urban school district analyzed partnerships that brought together career-centered high school reforms. The initiative regularly convened partners and generated important conversations about educational options. Environmental conditions limited change efforts, including tensions between the school system and employment…

  10. Public School Revitalisation in Detroit

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cave, Christin

    2010-01-01

    Too many children and not enough schools was once the issue facing urban school districts across the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. The rise of industrialisation and the subsequent influx of workers and immigrants overwhelmed urban areas and school planners alike, with everyone demanding access to public schools. However, a…

  11. From Negative Expectations to Positive School Improvement in Urban Schools: Bridging the Gap

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Callon, Uretka

    2009-01-01

    When people hear the term "urban", they immediately associate it with negative attributes such as poverty stricken students and families, ill-prepared students, run down facilities, and an inconsistency in teachers. When compared to any kind of school whether its' private or public, urban school districts have the worst label of all. Why is there…

  12. Urban District Central Office Transformation for Teaching and Learning Improvement: Beyond a Zero-Sum Game

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Honig, Meredith I.; Lorton, Juli Swinnerton; Copland, Michael A.

    2009-01-01

    Over the past 15 years, a growing number of mid-sized to large school district central offices have engaged in radical reforms to strengthen teaching and learning for all students districtwide. Such efforts mark a significant change in urban educational governance. The authors call these efforts "district central office transformation for teaching…

  13. Denver Expands Choice and Charters

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Osborne, David

    2016-01-01

    Some of the most dramatic gains in urban education have come from school districts using what is known as a "portfolio strategy." Under this approach, districts negotiate performance agreements with public schools--traditional, charter, and hybrid models. The arrangement affords school leaders substantial autonomy to handcraft their…

  14. Building Research-Practice Partnerships as a District-Led Initiative: A High-Leverage Strategy for System Improvement

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Muñoz, Marco A.

    2016-01-01

    Research-Practice Partnerships (RPP) can enable and support an evidence-based school culture for decision-making in districts across the nation. Based on our experiences in a large urban district, a key element for a successful RPP is to understand that school districts have their own research needs/agenda typically articulated in strategic plans.…

  15. The Evolution of School Social Work Services in an Urban School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ayasse, Robert Henry; Stone, Susan I.

    2015-01-01

    The authors present a case history of the growth and development of school social work services between 2000 and 2012 in the San Francisco Unified School District. Responding to a gap in the literature describing growth of school social work services in local educational contexts, this case history reveals, consistent with prior research, that…

  16. Principals' Hiring of Teachers in Philadelphia Schools: A Research Report on Improving Teacher Quality

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ramirez, Heidi A.; Schofield, Lynne Steuerle; Black, Melissa

    2009-01-01

    The School District of Philadelphia (SDP), like many other urban school districts, struggles to increase its hiring and retention of experienced and highly qualified teachers in its low-performing/high-need schools. Toward the goal of improving teacher quality and the experience balance, particularly in hard-to-staff schools, the Philadelphia…

  17. Factors Leading to Retention of School Librarian Positions: A School District Case Study

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ewbank, Ann Dutton

    2010-01-01

    In the past five years, the number of school librarians has greatly diminished despite valiant advocacy efforts by librarians, parents, and state and national library associations. This descriptive case study investigated the factors that led governing board members in a mid-sized urban high school district to retain certified school librarian…

  18. An Evaluation of the Accelerated Reader Program in Grades 3-5 on Reading Vocabulary, Comprehension, and Attitude in an Urban Southeastern School District in Virginia.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Howard, Carol Ann

    The purpose of this study was to study recreational reading in third, fourth, and fifth grade urban students in a school district in Southeastern Virginia. The widely-used Accelerated Reader (AR) was the tool examined in the promotion of recreational reading. The major research questions determined if recreational reading, using Accelerated…

  19. School Budget Hold'em Facilitator's Guide

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Education Resource Strategies, 2012

    2012-01-01

    "School Budget Hold'em" is a game designed to help school districts rethink their budgeting process. It evolved out of Education Resource Strategies' (ERS) experience working with large urban districts around the country. "School Budget Hold'em" offers a completely new approach--one that can turn the budgeting process into a long-term visioning…

  20. A Research Brief: "Principals' Hiring of Teachers in Philadelphia"

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ramirez, Heidi A.; Schofield, Lynne Steuerle; Black, Melissa

    2008-01-01

    The School District of Philadelphia (SDP), like many other urban school districts, struggles to increase its hiring and retention of experienced and highly qualified teachers in its low-performing/high-need schools. Excluding its charter schools, SDP serves approximately 165,000 students, largely from high-poverty (76%) and minority (85%)…

  1. Comal County, Texas: Preparing for Life after High School

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Walter, Frank

    2018-01-01

    Comal County, Texas, may be rural but its students face many of the same challenges as students in urban districts. Communities In Schools of South Central Texas works with the local school district to identify student needs and provide critical supports to help young people prepare for life after high school.

  2. Are Schools Prepared for Emergencies?: A Baseline Assessment of Emergency Preparedness at School Sites in Three Los Angeles County School Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kano, Megumi; Ramirez, Marizen; Ybarra, William J.; Frias, Gus; Bourque, Linda B.

    2007-01-01

    A survey of emergency preparedness was conducted in three public school districts in urban areas of Los Angeles County. Eighty-three school sites were surveyed using self-administered questionnaires. Although designated respondents generally felt that their schools were well prepared, the survey also revealed the need for improvements in written…

  3. Do Small Schools Improve Performance in Large, Urban Districts? Causal Evidence from New York City. Working Paper #01-12

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Schwartz, Amy Ellen; Stiefel, Leanna; Wiswall, Matthew

    2012-01-01

    We evaluate the effectiveness of small high school reform in the country's largest school district, New York City. Using a rich administrative dataset for multiple cohorts of students and distance between student residence and school to instrument for endogenous school selection, we find substantial heterogeneity in school effects: newly created…

  4. A Study of Guided Urban Field Experiences for Pre-Service Teachers

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    White, Meg

    2017-01-01

    This research examined pre-service teachers' perceptions of urban schools and urban students before and after an 80-hour field experience in an urban K-12 district. The fieldwork placements were structured through a school-university partnership, and supported by university coursework. Quantitative data collected from 150 students over three…

  5. Physics teachers' perspectives on factors that affect urban physics participation and accessibility

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Kelly, Angela M.

    2013-06-01

    The accessibility of secondary physics in U.S. urban school districts is a complex issue. Many schools do not offer a physics option, and for those that do, access is often restricted by various school policies and priorities that do not promote physics participation for all. To analyze this problem in greater depth, I adopted a qualitative phenomenological methodology to explore urban physics teachers’ views on school- and district-based conditions that may marginalize traditionally underrepresented students. Teachers from three large urban districts shared concerns and suggestions regarding administrative commitment, student preparedness for physics, reform initiatives and testing mandates, promoting physics enrollments, and implementing high quality instruction. Data from interviews and focus groups provided contextual insights into ways in which physics study may be improved and encouraged for urban youth. Teachers believed expanding access could be facilitated with differentiated levels of physics, incorporating mathematical applications with multiple representations, educating students and counselors on the ramifications of choosing or not choosing elective sciences, well-designed grant-funded initiatives, and flexibility with prerequisites and science course sequencing. Teachers experienced frustration with standardized testing, lack of curricular autonomy, shifting administrative directives, and top-down reforms that did not incorporate their feedback in the decision-making processes. Data from this study revealed that physics teacher networks, often housed at local universities, have been a key resource for establishing supportive professional communities to share best practices that may influence school-based reforms that promote physics participation in urban schools.

  6. Urban versus Suburban Public Schools: Resolving the Issue of Racial Inequality in Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Batts, Pamela L.

    2012-01-01

    The purpose of this study is to address a possible solution to the racial inequality in urban versus suburban public schools. It also addresses the stereotyping and racial bias associated with this issue. Students enrolled in the urban school districts are predominantly African American and are found to be at an educational disadvantage compared…

  7. Measuring Success in Harrisburg

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Johns, Stephanie

    2009-01-01

    With more than four decades of experience in both urban and suburban districts, Superintendent Gerald Kohn knows how difficult it can be to change the culture of a school district beset by poverty, social issues and politics. Yet he accepted the challenge of bringing change to the Harrisburg School District in central Pennsylvania eight years ago.…

  8. School Choice as a Civil Right: District Responses to Competition and Equal Educational Opportunity

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lubienski, Christopher

    2005-01-01

    Using geographic representations to examine choice policies and patterns in a major urban area, this analysis considers how districts in a metropolitan area are responding to competitive incentives in arranging options for African American students. The findings demonstrate that the distribution of districts' school choice policies exclude poorer…

  9. Teachers' Perspectives of Children's Mental Health Service Needs in Urban Elementary Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Williams, James Herbert; Horvath, Violet E.; Wei, Hsi-Sheng; Van Dorn, Richard A.; Jonson-Reid, Melissa

    2007-01-01

    This study uses a phenomenological approach to investigate elementary school teachers' perspectives on children's mental health service needs. Focus groups were conducted at two elementary schools with differing levels of available social services in a moderate-sized urban midwestern school district. Data collection centered on six prominent…

  10. "Eligiendo Escuelas": English Learners and Access to School Choice

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mavrogordato, Madeline; Harris, Julie

    2017-01-01

    School choice has emerged as the linchpin of President Trump's urban education reform plan, but it remains unclear how school choice policies will shape the educational experiences of the most underserved student groups, particularly English learners (ELs). Using quantitative data from one large urban school district, we examine EL participation…

  11. Urban School Systems and Education Reform: Key Lessons From a Case Study of Large Urban School Systems

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Snipes, Jason C.; Casserly, Michael D.

    2004-01-01

    Foundations for Success, a study conducted by MDRC for the Council of the Great City Schools, examined the reform efforts of 3 large urban school districts and a portion of a 4th that had been successful in improving student achievement and reducing racial achievement gaps. This article summarizes the key findings of the study and discusses the…

  12. A University--School Partnership to Examine the Adoption and Implementation of the Ohio Community Collaboration Model in One Urban School District: A Mixed-Method Case Study

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Anderson-Butcher, Dawn; Iachini, Aidyn L.; Ball, Annahita; Barke, Susan; Martin, Lloyd D.

    2016-01-01

    School improvement models are expanding to incorporate priorities around positive youth development, safe and supportive school climates, school mental health, and school-family community partnerships. A partnership was formed between researchers and district/school leaders to examine the 3-year adoption and implementation of 1 such exemplary…

  13. The Role of Districts in Fostering Instructional Improvement Lessons from Three Urban Districts Partnered with the Institute for Learning

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Marsh, Julie A.; Kerr, Kerri A.; Ikemoto, Gina S.; Darilek, Hilary; Suttorp, Marika; Zimmer, Ron W.; Barney, Heather

    2005-01-01

    The current high-stakes accountability environment brought on by the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) places great pressure on school districts to demonstrate success by meeting yearly progress goals for student achievement and eventually demonstrating that all students achieve at high standards. In particular, many urban school…

  14. School services pattern in urban and rural areas: A comparatives study (Case study: Elementary school in Malang City and Malang Regency)

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Setyono, D. A.; Cahyo, D. D.

    2017-06-01

    Availability of public facilities are important to support community needs and activities, such as educational facilities (school). Those facilities was needed to endorse the development program implementation which are conducted both of local and national government especially to boost the human resources qualities. This study aims to measures service rates of elementary school in the Malang City and Malang Regency based on supply aspect especially on availability of school unit and also configures the spatial pattern of the school services. Theses study conducted based on the disparity of facility services hypotheses especially on school service provision between urban and rural areas, which are Malang City considered as urban areas and Malang Regency as rural areas. According to the analysis results, rate of elementary school services in the Malang City defined by CGC method about 272% while in Malang the Regency are slightly higher at 319%. The pattern of school services in Malang City relatively similar between its districts, except Klojen District as the growth center of Malang City has the highest rate of services. Meanwhile in the Malang Regency has unique pattern which are high service rates located in the Kepanjen District areas as the growth center of Malang Regency and also several districts that located surrounding the Malang City areas which has impact of city developments. Another district has the lowest service rates due to physical limitations, such as those districts/villages located in the forest areas, coastal areas, or mountainous areas. It is means that students in Malang Regency can access elementary school freely as students in Malang City, they are not only can choose the school in their residential areas but also they can access school everywhere especially from their neighboring areas. It also noticed that there are significant differences of elementary school services between urban center areas and suburban or peripheral areas so that appropriate policy measures are needed to provide equal and balance of educational facilities development throughout each areas. The policy should be arranged appropriately especially in Malang Regency in accordance to the special characteristics of each areas in aims to promote adequate school services and reach all areas equally.

  15. Second Chances Academy: Alternative School or Pathway to Prison?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Horsford, Sonya Douglass; Powell, Keyona L.

    2016-01-01

    This case considers the leadership challenge facing district officials in a mid-sized urban-suburban school district receiving negative media coverage for the overrepresentation of poor, Black, and Latino males in its alternative high school, Second Chances Academy. Many of its students also qualify for special education and English learner…

  16. Striving for Student Success. The Effect of Project GRAD on High School Student Outcomes in Three Urban School Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Snipes, Jason C.; Holton, Glee Ivory; Doolittle, Fred; Sztejnberg, Laura

    2006-01-01

    This report describes the effects of Project Graduation Really Achieves Dreams (GRAD) on student progress at three high schools in Houston (the initiative's original site) and at high schools in two other school districts (Columbus, Ohio, and Atlanta, Georgia). MDRC--a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization--conducted a third-party…

  17. Pendulum Swings in Educational Policymaking: The Effects of Organizational, School, Financial and Social Characteristics on Student Performance Outcomes in Michigan School Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Dyson, Dana D.

    2009-01-01

    Reforms in American public education have not resolved the wide academic performance gap between students attending schools in poor, large, urban centers versus schools in wealthier areas. Aggregate performance outcomes on state achievement tests reveal that some school districts consistently outperform others, a few fluctuate over time but are…

  18. A Proposal to Assess the Needs of Students in Ten School Districts. Final Report.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Navara, James L.

    State Fair Community College, Sedalia, Missouri, surveyed the needs of students in grades 9-12 in 10 non-urban Missouri school districts. The project was designed to gather data for use by area schools, the area vocational-technical school, and the career education staff that has been working with these schools. The report reproduces the survey…

  19. What Do We Know About Teaching and Learning in Urban Schools? Volume 9: New Perspectives on School District Research and Evaluation.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lyon, Catherine

    The Center for the Study of Evaluation's project, Evaluation and School Districts, used questionnaires to survey the heads of evaluation offices in metropolitan public school systems. This paper presents the preliminary findings of the survey. Most school systems have established a centralized program evaluation unit organized around three…

  20. Values-Oriented Factors Leading to Retention of School Librarian Positions: A School District Case Study

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ewbank, Ann Dutton

    2011-01-01

    The number of U.S. school librarians has greatly diminished despite advocacy efforts on the local and national level. This case study investigated the factors that led governing board members in a mid-size urban high school district to retain certified school librarian positions despite a major economic crisis. Data were collected through school…

  1. Updating a Searchable Database of Dropout Prevention Programs and Policies in Nine Low-Income Urban School Districts in the Northeast and Islands Region. REL Technical Brief. REL 2012-No. 020

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Myint-U, Athi; O'Donnell, Lydia; Phillips, Dawna

    2012-01-01

    This technical brief describes updates to a database of dropout prevention programs and policies in 2006/07 created by the Regional Education Laboratory (REL) Northeast and Islands and described in the Issues & Answers report, "Piloting a searchable database of dropout prevention programs in nine low-income urban school districts in the…

  2. Teachers' and School Administrators' Attitudes and Beliefs of Teacher Evaluation: A Preliminary Investigation of High Poverty School Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Reddy, Linda A.; Dudek, Christopher M.; Peters, Stephanie; Alperin, Alexander; Kettler, Ryan J.; Kurz, Alexander

    2018-01-01

    This study examined attitudes and beliefs regarding teacher evaluation of teachers and their school administrators in the state of New Jersey, USA. The sample included 33 school administrators and 583 Pre-K through 12th grade teachers from four high-poverty urban school districts (22 schools). Participant attitudes and beliefs were assessed using…

  3. Successful Researcher-Practitioner RCT Partnership: Increasing Attendance by 15,000 Days

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Rogers, Todd; Wolford, Tonya; Reitano, Adrienne; Feller, Avi; Subramanyam, Shruthi; Ternovski, John

    2016-01-01

    While the adjusted cohort graduation rate of students in the United States has reached 80 percent during the 2011-12 school year (Stetser & Stillwell, 2014), in the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) only 57% of its students graduate from high school in four years, which is typical of large urban school districts (Swanson, 2009). Moreover,…

  4. School Closings No Fiscal Savior, Study Cautions

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Samuels, Christina A.

    2011-01-01

    If big-city districts are looking to close budget gaps, shuttering schools may not be the best strategy. Closing schools does not save very much money in the context of an urban district's budget, and selling or leasing surplus school buildings tends to be difficult because they're often old and in struggling neighborhoods, a recent report from a…

  5. No Child Left Behind and Its Effect on Recruiting and Retaining Special Education Teachers in Rural South Carolina School Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Martin, Deborah S.

    2010-01-01

    The study examined the No Child Left Behind Act as it relates to the recruiting and retention of special education teachers in rural school districts. The focus of the research was to examine those factors that have influenced teachers to leave the profession or to seek employment in more urban school districts. Data for the study were collected…

  6. Big-City Rules

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gordon, Dan

    2011-01-01

    When it comes to implementing innovative classroom technology programs, urban school districts face significant challenges stemming from their big-city status. These range from large bureaucracies, to scalability, to how to meet the needs of a more diverse group of students. Because of their size, urban districts tend to have greater distance…

  7. Urban Secondary School Teachers' Understanding of Themselves as Adult Learners and Their Perceptions of Their Professional Development Experiences

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fitzgerald, Jessica M.

    2014-01-01

    This action research study was designed to elicit urban, secondary school teachers' understandings of themselves as adult learners and their perceptions of job-embedded professional development in a single, urban school district in Connecticut. The conceptual framework that guided this study was derived from Knowles, Holton, and Swanson's (2011)…

  8. At-Risk Student Mobility in an Urban Elementary School: Effects on Academic Achievement

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Shoho, Alan R.; Oleszewski, Ashley

    2010-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of at-risk student mobility on academic achievement in an urban elementary school. Math and reading scores from the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) of 172 third, fourth, and fifth grade students from an urban school district in South Central Texas were examined to determine whether…

  9. Teachers' Perspectives on the Challenges of Teaching Physical Education in Urban Schools: The Student Emotional Filter

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McCaughtry, Nate; Barnard, Sara; Martin, Jeffrey; Shen, Bo; Kulinna, Pamela Hodges

    2006-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to analyze how the challenges of urban schools influence physical education teachers' emotional understanding and connections with their students and the implications on their teaching. Sixty-one elementary physical educators from an urban school district in the midwestern U.S. were interviewed multiple times (N =…

  10. Food Allergy Knowledge and Attitudes among School Nurses in an Urban Public School District.

    PubMed

    Twichell, Sarah; Wang, Kathleen; Robinson, Humaira; Acebal, Maria; Sharma, Hemant

    2015-07-21

    Since food allergy knowledge and perceptions may influence prevention and management of school-based reactions, we evaluated them among nurses in an urban school district. All District of Columbia public school nurses were asked to anonymously complete a food allergy knowledge and attitude questionnaire. Knowledge scores were calculated as percentage of correct responses. Attitude responses were tabulated across five-point Likert scales, ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The knowledge questionnaire was completed by 87% of eligible nurses and the attitude questionnaire by 83%. The mean total knowledge score was 76 ± 13 with domain score highest for symptom recognition and lowest for treatment. Regarding attitudes, most (94%) felt food allergy is a serious health problem, for which schools should have guidelines (94%). Fewer believed that nut-free schools (82%) and allergen-free tables (44%) should be implemented. Negative perceptions of parents were identified as: parents of food-allergic children are overprotective (55%) and make unreasonable requests of schools (15%). Food allergy knowledge deficits and mixed attitudes exist among this sample of urban school nurses, particularly related to management of reactions and perceptions of parents. Food allergy education of school nurses should be targeted to improve their knowledge and attitudes.

  11. Food Allergy Knowledge and Attitudes among School Nurses in an Urban Public School District

    PubMed Central

    Twichell, Sarah; Wang, Kathleen; Robinson, Humaira; Acebal, Maria; Sharma, Hemant

    2015-01-01

    Since food allergy knowledge and perceptions may influence prevention and management of school-based reactions, we evaluated them among nurses in an urban school district. All District of Columbia public school nurses were asked to anonymously complete a food allergy knowledge and attitude questionnaire. Knowledge scores were calculated as percentage of correct responses. Attitude responses were tabulated across five-point Likert scales, ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The knowledge questionnaire was completed by 87% of eligible nurses and the attitude questionnaire by 83%. The mean total knowledge score was 76 ± 13 with domain score highest for symptom recognition and lowest for treatment. Regarding attitudes, most (94%) felt food allergy is a serious health problem, for which schools should have guidelines (94%). Fewer believed that nut-free schools (82%) and allergen-free tables (44%) should be implemented. Negative perceptions of parents were identified as: parents of food-allergic children are overprotective (55%) and make unreasonable requests of schools (15%). Food allergy knowledge deficits and mixed attitudes exist among this sample of urban school nurses, particularly related to management of reactions and perceptions of parents. Food allergy education of school nurses should be targeted to improve their knowledge and attitudes. PMID:27417367

  12. Urban African American High School Female Adolescents' Perceptions, Attitudes, and Experiences with Professional School Counselors: A Pilot Study

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Owens, Delila; Stewart, Tiffany A.; Bryant, Rhonda M.

    2011-01-01

    The authors interviewed African American female students in an urban school district about their perceptions, attitudes, and experiences with their professional school counselors. Data analysis indicated seven primary themes perceived by the participants, some of which included their understanding and purpose of professional school counselors and…

  13. Using Synthetic Controls to Evaluate the Effect of Unique Interventions: The Case of Say Yes to Education.

    PubMed

    Bifulco, Robert; Rubenstein, Ross; Sohn, Hosung

    2017-12-01

    "Place-based" scholarships seek to improve student outcomes in urban school districts and promote urban revitalization in economically challenged cities. Say Yes to Education is a unique district-wide school reform effort adopted in Syracuse, NY, in 2008. It includes full-tuition scholarships for public and private universities, coupled with extensive wraparound support services in schools. This study uses synthetic control methods to evaluate the effect of Say Yes on district enrollment and graduation rates. It also introduces the synthetic control method and provides guidance for its use in evaluating single-site interventions. Combining school district-level data from the National Center for Education Statistics' Common Core of Data and New York State School Report Cards, this article uses synthetic control methods to construct a synthetic comparison district to estimate counterfactual enrollment and graduation trends for Syracuse. We find that Say Yes to Education was associated with enrollment increases in the Syracuse City School District, a district that had previously experienced decades of sustained enrollment declines. We do not find consistent evidence of changes in graduation rates following adoption of the program. Graduation rate analyses demonstrate that estimates of treatment effects can be sensitive to choices that the researcher has to make in applying synthetic control methods, particularly when pretreatment outcome measures appear to have considerable amounts of noise.

  14. Achieving Coherence in District Improvement: Managing the Relationship between the Central Office and Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Johnson, Susan Moore; Marietta, Geoff; Higgins, Monica C.; Mapp, Karen L.; Grossman, Allen

    2015-01-01

    "Achieving Coherence in District Improvement" focuses on a problem of practice faced by educational leaders across the nation: how to effectively manage the relationship between the central office and schools. The book is based on a study of five large urban districts that have demonstrated improvement in student achievement. The…

  15. Professional Development Urban Schools: What Do Teachers Say?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Green, Tanya R.; Allen, Mishaleen

    2015-01-01

    This quantitative causal-comparative study compared perceptions of professional development opportunities between high-achieving and low-achieving elementary-middle school teachers in an urban school district using the Standards Assessment Inventory (SAI). A total of 271 teachers participated including 134 (n = 134) teachers from high-achieving…

  16. Moving to Standards-Based Grading: Lessons from Omaha

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Proulx, Chris; Spencer-May, Karen; Westerberg, Tim

    2012-01-01

    Getting a large, urban school district to use standards-based education and standards-based grading is challenging. Doing so in one year is monumental. During the 2009-10 school year, Omaha (NE) Public Schools began to study the feasibility of making changes to its traditional grading system. The more closely district personnel investigated the…

  17. Local Politics and Portfolio Management Models: National Reform Ideas and Local Control

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bulkley, Katrina E.; Henig, Jeffrey R.

    2015-01-01

    Amid the growth of charter schools, autonomous schools, and private management organizations, an increasing number of urban districts are moving toward a portfolio management model (PMM). In a PMM, the district central office oversees schools that operate under a variety of governance models. The expansion of PMMs raises questions about local…

  18. Habits of Mind: Forging University-School Partnerships to Bring a High-Quality Enrichment Curriculum to English Learners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gooden, Amy Cournoyer; Chase, Kelly

    2015-01-01

    Educational partnerships between urban school districts and institutions of higher education provide a powerful means for enhancing student achievement and cultivating college-going cultures. This article describes how Boston University and the Malden, Massachusetts, school district worked with the community to support English learners and develop…

  19. The Abbott Districts in 2005-06: Progress and Challenges, Spring 2006

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hirsch, Lesley

    2006-01-01

    New Jersey's urban--or "Abbott"--schools have improved at the preschool and elementary school level, but lag when it comes to middle and high school performance. These are the key findings of an Abbott Indicators Project report entitled, "The Abbott Districts in 2005-06: Progress and Challenges." The report was prepared by…

  20. Antecedents and Consequences of Residential Choice and School Transfer

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Falbo, Toni; Glover, Robert W.; Holcombe, W. Lee; Stokes, S. Lynne

    2005-01-01

    This article examines the antecedents and consequences of residential choice and school transfers within one of the eight largest urban school districts in Texas. This study is based on survey data from a representative sample of parents of K-12 students enrolled in this district. In addition to demographic characteristics of the family, the…

  1. School District and University Leadership Development Collaborations: How Do Three Partnerships Line up with Best Practices?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Stevenson, Zollie, Jr.; Shetley, Pamela R.

    2015-01-01

    This article explores the application of Whitaker, King, and Vogel's (2004) best practices for the implementation of partnerships regarding school leadership preparation programs in 3 school district-university collaboratives located in urban settings with large minority student populations. The 3 partnerships studied include the Nashville…

  2. Urban schools' teachers enacting project-based science

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tal, Tali; Krajcik, Joseph S.; Blumenfeld, Phyllis C.

    2006-09-01

    What teaching practices foster inquiry and promote students to learn challenging subject matter in urban schools? Inquiry-based instruction and successful inquiry learning and teaching in project-based science (PBS) were described in previous studies (Brown & Campione, [1990]; Crawford, [1999]; Krajcik, Blumenfeld, Marx, Bass, & Fredricks, [1998]; Krajcik, Blumenfeld, Marx, & Solloway, [1994]; Minstrell & van Zee, [2000]). In this article, we describe the characteristics of inquiry teaching practices that promote student learning in urban schools. Teaching is a major factor that affects both achievement of and attitude of students toward science (Tamir, [1998]). Our involvement in reform in a large urban district includes the development of suitable learning materials and providing continuous and practiced-based professional development (Fishman & Davis, in press; van Es, Reiser, Matese, & Gomez, [2002]). Urban schools face particular challenges when enacting inquiry-based teaching practices like those espoused in PBS. In this article, we describe two case studies of urban teachers whose students achieved high gains on pre- and posttests and who demonstrated a great deal of preparedness and commitment to their students. Teachers' attempts to help their students to perform well are described and analyzed. The teachers we discuss work in a school district that strives to bring about reform in mathematics and science through systemic reform. The Center for Learning Technologies in Urban Schools (LeTUS) collaborates with the Detroit Public Schools to bring about reform in middle-school science. Through this collaboration, diverse populations of urban-school students learn science through inquiry-oriented projects and the use of various educational learning technologies. For inquiry-based science to succeed in urban schools, teachers must play an important role in enacting the curriculum while addressing the unique needs of students. The aim of this article is to describe patterns of good science teaching in urban school.

  3. Districts Neglecting Programs for ELLs

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Zehr, Mary Ann

    2010-01-01

    The author reports on state and independent reviews that cite shortcomings in four urban systems. According to the reviews of those school systems over the past two years, four urban districts--in Boston, Massachusetts; Buffalo, New York; Portland, Oregon; and Seattle, Washington--did not provide special help to learn English to all students…

  4. APPLYING OPERATIONAL ANALYSIS TO URBAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEMS, A WORKING PAPER.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    SISSON, ROGER L.

    OPERATIONS RESEARCH CONCEPTS ARE POTENTIALLY USEFUL FOR STUDY OF SUCH LARGE URBAN SCHOOL DISTRICT PROBLEMS AS INFORMATION FLOW, PHYSICAL STRUCTURE OF THE DISTRICT, ADMINISTRATIVE DECISION MAKING BOARD POLICY FUNCTIONS, AND THE BUDGET STRUCTURE. OPERATIONAL ANALYSIS REQUIRES (1) IDENTIFICATION OF THE SYSTEM UNDER STUDY, (2) IDENTIFICATION OF…

  5. Looks Like 10 Miles of Bad Road: Cheating, Gaming, Mistrust, and an Interim Principal in an Urban Texas High School

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    DeMatthews, David E.

    2014-01-01

    High-stakes accountability policies have brought about significant change in schools, but have also triggered instances of cheating and gaming at school and district levels. This undisguised case study involves the El Paso Independent School District, one of its high schools, and a popular principal accused of cheating. This context provides the…

  6. High School 2.0: Can Philadephia's School of the Future Live up to Its Name?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mezzacappa, Dale

    2010-01-01

    In 2003, leaders at the School District of Philadelphia, district CEO Paul Vallas and chairman of the School Reform Commission James Nevels, enlisted the help of the Microsoft Corporation in a bold effort: reshape the archaic 19th-century high school model to better prepare students, especially urban students, to live and work in the 21st century.…

  7. Building a Grad Nation: Progress and Challenge in Ending the High School Dropout Epidemic

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Balfanz, Robert; Bridgeland, John M.; Moore, Laura A.; Fox, Joanna Hornig

    2010-01-01

    The central message of this report is that some states and school districts are raising their high school graduation rates with scalable solutions in the public schools, showing the nation they can end the high school dropout crisis. America made progress not only in suburbs and towns, but also in urban districts and in states across the South.…

  8. Implementing the Common Core State Standards: Year Three Progress Report from the Great City Schools. Results from 2013-14 School Year

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Palacios, Moses; Casserly, Michael; Corcoran, Amanda; Hart, Ray; Simon, Candace; Uzzell, Renata

    2014-01-01

    Three years ago, the "Council of the Great City Schools" embarked on a multi-year initiative to help its member school districts implement the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Part of this initiative involves annual surveys of progress urban public school districts were making in implementing the CCSS. With the support of the Bill…

  9. Investigating the Impact of the Cisco 21st Century Schools Initiative on Hattiesburg Public School District. Summative Report

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ba, Harouna; Meade, Terri; Pierson, Elizabeth; Ferguson, Camille; Roy, Amanda; Williams, Hakim

    2009-01-01

    The Hattiesburg Public School District (HPSD) is a small urban school system located in southern Mississippi. Of the almost 4,500 students enrolled in its nine schools, 92 percent are African American and 90 percent receive free or reduced lunch. Currently, HPSD employs 34 administrators, 375 teachers, and 11 technology specialists. When the 21st…

  10. Agricultural Education in an Urban Charter School: Perspectives and Challenges

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Henry, Kesha A.; Talbert, Brian Allen; Morris, Pamala V.

    2014-01-01

    Urban school districts are viable recruitment sources for higher education in agriculture and have the ability to play a significant role in efforts to increase agricultural education program numbers at the secondary level. Secondary school increases should lead to growth in agricultural college enrollments across the country. Increasing…

  11. Charter School Expansion and within District Equity: Confluence or Conflict?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Baker, Bruce D.; Libby, Ken; Wiley, Kathryn

    2015-01-01

    This article explores whether two popular policy initiatives are compatible or conflicting strategies for enhancing educational equality in diverse large urban centers. These two initiatives are (1) charter school expansion and (2) improvement of resource equity across urban public school systems through policies often referred to as weighted…

  12. Developing Educational Leadership in Urban Diverse School Systems.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Parra, M. Alicia; Daresh, John C.

    How educational leaders can be prepared to carry out their responsibilities in an effective and sensitive fashion is explored in the context of an urban, diverse school environment by describing the Assistant Principal Leadership Academy of the Ysleta Independent School District, El Paso (Texas). The Academy is a unique professional development…

  13. Continuums of Precarity: Refugee Youth Transitions in American High Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McWilliams, Julia Ann; Bonet, Sally Wesley

    2016-01-01

    This article examines how the pre-migratory experiences of 90 Bhutanese, Burmese, and Iraqi refugee youth shape their aspirations, needs and capabilities as they transition to postsecondary education and work in the American urban context. It further explores how their schooling experiences in precarious urban school districts influence their…

  14. Superintendent Leadership in Urban Schools.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ortiz, Flora Ida

    The ways in which a Hispanic female superintendent led her school district toward stability and excellence are described in this report, with a focus on four elements that differentiate the work of urban school superintendents from that of others. Four years of data were collected through interviews with the superintendent, observations of group…

  15. Linked Learning as a High School Transformation Strategy: Organizational Structures and Leadership Behaviors That Support Lasting Change

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Weiss, Elizabeth Rocio

    2016-01-01

    Linked Learning is an approach that has proven effective in transforming the learning experiences for high school students. An instrumental case study was conducted in a large urban district in Southern California where district and school leaders implemented Linked Learning as a systemic high school reform initiative. Analysis of the data…

  16. Dressed for Success? The Effect of School Uniforms on Student Achievement and Behavior. NBER Working Paper No. 17337

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gentile, Elisabetta; Imberman, Scott A.

    2011-01-01

    Uniform use in public schools is rising, but we know little about how they affect students. Using a unique dataset from a large urban school district in the southwest United States, we assess how uniforms affect behavior, achievement and other outcomes. Each school in the district determines adoption independently, providing variation over schools…

  17. The Nation's Report Card Mathematics 2011 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Dallas Public Schools. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    This one-page report presents overall results, achievement level percentages and average score results, scores at selected percentiles, average scores for district and large cities, results for student groups (school race, gender, and eligibility for National School Lunch Program) in 2011, and score gaps for student groups. In 2011, the average…

  18. The Nation's Report Card Mathematics 2011 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Dallas Public Schools. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    This one-page report presents overall results, achievement level percentages and average score results, scores at selected percentiles, average scores for district and large cities, results for student groups (school race, gender, and eligibility for National School Lunch Program) in 2011, and score gaps for student groups. In 2011, the average…

  19. The Nation's Report Card Reading 2011 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Dallas Public Schools. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    This one-page report presents overall results, achievement level percentages and average score results, scores at selected percentiles, average scores for district and large cities, results for student groups (school race, gender, and eligibility for National School Lunch Program) in 2011, and score gaps for student groups. In 2011, the average…

  20. The Nation's Report Card Reading 2011 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Dallas Public Schools. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    This one-page report presents overall results, achievement level percentages and average score results, scores at selected percentiles, average scores for district and large cities, results for student groups (school race, gender, and eligibility for National School Lunch Program) in 2011, and score gaps for student groups. In 2011, the average…

  1. Dissemination of School Finance Services in Urban School Districts. Final Report.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Goertz, Margaret E.

    The project described in this paper was designed to test specific ways of improving the dissemination of school finance information in two big city school districts (St. Louis and Kansas City, Missouri), in order to enable them to compete more effectively for State aid. Part I presents the political and fiscal environment in which Kansas City and…

  2. The Nation's Report Card Reading 2011 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Albuquerque Public Schools. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    This one-page report presents overall results, achievement level percentages and average score results, scores at selected percentiles, average scores for district and large cities, results for student groups (school race, gender, and eligibility for National School Lunch Program) in 2011, and score gaps for student groups. In 2011, the average…

  3. The Nation's Report Card Reading 2011 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Albuquerque Public Schools. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    This one-page report presents overall results, achievement level percentages and average score results, scores at selected percentiles, average scores for district and large cities, results for student groups (school race, gender, and eligibility for National School Lunch Program) in 2011, and score gaps for student groups. In 2011, the average…

  4. The Nation's Report Card Mathematics 2011 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Albuquerque Public Schools. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    This one-page report presents overall results, achievement level percentages and average score results, scores at selected percentiles, average scores for district and large cities, results for student groups (school race, gender, and eligibility for National School Lunch Program) in 2011, and score gaps for student groups. In 2011, the average…

  5. The Nation's Report Card Mathematics 2011 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Albuquerque Public Schools. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    This one-page report presents overall results, achievement level percentages and average score results, scores at selected percentiles, average scores for district and large cities, results for student groups (school race, gender, and eligibility for National School Lunch Program) in 2011, and score gaps for student groups. In 2011, the average…

  6. Mixed-ability secondary science in one urban school district: A multiple case study

    NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

    Tworek, Francis A.

    The standards and accountability movements demand that all students be given the opportunity to learn more science than ever before. However, there is much uncertainty about how educators should proceed with this task. Issues of concern include achievement gaps, tracking, and graduation requirements. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore the challenges identified by four secondary science teachers in one urban public school district as they taught classes that included students representing a wide range of abilities and prior academic success. These mixed-ability science classes were generally defined as science classes which are required for high school graduation but which have no academic prerequisites. The central research questions in this qualitative study were: (1) How do secondary science teachers describe the challenges they face while teaching a mixed-ability science course required for graduation when the course has no prerequisites; and (2) What strategies do they use to deal with these challenges? Data collection was confined to four cases within one Midwest urban school district during the 2004-2005 school year. Each case involved one class taught by an individual teacher. One case was an 8th grade science class at a middle school. The other three cases represented three district-required courses in three different high schools: 9th grade biology, 10th grade chemistry, and 11th grade physics. Data sources included interviews with the teachers, observations in their classrooms, district achievement and demographic data, and school documents. Three themes emerged from the cross-case analysis: (1) a sense of belonging; (2) the teacher's focus; and (3) successful learning. The final chapter discusses the implications of these themes and makes recommendations for further study.

  7. Revenues and Spending of Michigan's Urban, Suburban, Town and Rural School Districts, 2004-2010

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Van Beek, Michael

    2011-01-01

    In the passionate debates over providing equal educational opportunity for all children, it's frequently argued that large financial inequities create challenges for many public schools, particularly those in lower-income urban areas. This study compares the revenues and operating expenditures of Michigan's urban, suburban, town and rural school…

  8. Districts on the Edge: The Impact of Urban Sprawl on a Rural Community.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Theobald, Paul

    1988-01-01

    Portrays the controversy surrounding schools and education in a rural community experiencing both an influx of urban and suburban newcomers and the effects of urban sprawl. Reports on surveys of student educational attitudes, household information, and outside activities, and on interviews with teachers, school administrators, and residents.…

  9. Wisconsin District Case Study. A Report and Estimating Tool for K-12 School Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Consortium for School Networking, 2004

    2004-01-01

    The Wisconsin case study school district is primarily urban and growing with 21,500 students on 40 campuses. This document contains case studies that are presented in the same format at the 2003 studies, but also have a focus on additional technologies beyond the base distributed computing model. These new technologies are voice/data integration,…

  10. Time and Attention in Urban High Schools: Lessons for School Systems

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Frank, Stephen

    2010-01-01

    There is no disputing that for high school students to be college and career ready, they need adequate time to learn, and individualized attention to meet each student's academic goals, learning styles, and social needs. Over the past decade, Education Resource Strategies (ERS) has partnered with urban schools and districts to improve their use of…

  11. An Urban Schools-University Partnership that Prepares and Retains Quality Teachers for "High Need" Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Helfeldt, John P.; Capraro, Robert M.; Capraro, Mary Margaret; Foster, Elizabeth; Carter, Norvella

    2009-01-01

    This article describes a full-time teaching internship program, where, in lieu of student teaching, interns serve as classroom teachers in urban area schools. Through a partnership between a university and participating school districts, all interns received intensive mentoring and induction during their first year. Among the program results, were…

  12. Understanding and Managing Staff Development in an Urban School System. Final Report.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Schlechty, Phillip; And Others

    A study is reported that examined the way staff development functions in schools, the effects of staff development, and the interaction between staff development and other activities and conditions in school systems. The study took place in a large urban school district (in the Southeast) that is heavily committed to and involved in staff…

  13. Teachers in Continuation High Schools--Attributes of New Teachers and Veteran Teachers in Urban Continuation High Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Obiamalu, Reginald

    2013-01-01

    The purpose of study was to examine the attributes of teachers of urban continuation high schools in Los Angeles Unified School District. The research questions were: 1. What are the attributes of veteran teachers and new teachers as prepared to teach at-risk students in alternative high schools? and 2. How do alternative high school teachers…

  14. Whose Choice? Student Experiences and Outcomes in the New Orleans School Marketplace. Research Brief

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Adamson, Frank; Cook-Harvey, Channa; Darling-Hammond, Linda

    2015-01-01

    As charters and other public and private schools of choice have created a new landscape in many urban areas across the country, some districts have adopted the idea of creating "portfolios" of options. Central to the philosophy of a portfolio district is continuous improvement, as lowest-performing schools are transformed or replaced. In…

  15. Testing the Limits: The Purposes and Effects of Additional, External Elementary Mathematics Assessment

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lombardi, Karen Ann

    2011-01-01

    This mixed-methods case study focuses on the third through fifth grade classrooms at a public elementary school in a Midwestern urban school district where the Northwest Evaluation Association's (NWEA) Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessment is being implemented. According to the school district, the goals of these tests are: to show…

  16. Teacher Migration: Extension and Application of the Population Ecology Model to Explore Teacher Transfers in a Reform Environment

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hochbein, Craig; Carpenter, Bradley

    2017-01-01

    This article assesses the association between the Title I School Improvement Grant (SIG) program's personnel replacement policy and teacher employment patterns within an urban school district. Hannan and Freeman's population ecology model allowed the authors to consider schools within districts as individual organizations nested within a larger…

  17. Early Reading Programs in High-Poverty Schools: Emerald Elementary Beats the Odds.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fisher, Charles; Adler, Martha A.

    This report describes the early reading program in Emerald Elementary School, located in a Midwest urban fringe district. From 1996 through 1998, Emerald's students performed well above the district average or near the state average on reading achievement. During this period, the school had at least half of its students eligible for free or…

  18. Whose Choice?: Student Experiences and Outcomes in the New Orleans School Marketplace

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Adamson, Frank; Cook-Harvey, Channa; Darling-Hammond, Linda

    2015-01-01

    As charters and other public and private schools of choice have created a new landscape in many urban areas across the country, some districts have adopted the idea of creating "portfolios" of options. Central to the philosophy of a portfolio district is continuous improvement, as lowest-performing schools are transformed or replaced.…

  19. Changing Course in Jefferson City: Reevaluating a District Initiative to Convert Under-Enrolled Elementary Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lochmiller, Chad R.

    2018-01-01

    This case positions the reader as the superintendent of Jefferson City Public Schools (pseudonym). Like many urban school districts in the United States, Jefferson City faces a complex milieu of fiscal challenges attributed to inadequate state funding and declining student enrollment. Within this case, the superintendent must address the failing…

  20. The Logistics of Implementing a Field-Based Comprehensive School Reform Initiative

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Reeves, Dawn E.

    2014-01-01

    This research is a qualitative, reflective case study regarding a cohort in the form of a district-university partnership between the Oak Park Schools in Oak Park, Michigan and the College of Education at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The initiators of the program envisioned a more successful urban school district by offering…

  1. Revisiting the Agenda on Reforming American Urban Schools: A Distant Odd Reality of Lake Wobegon School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Takona, James P.

    2012-01-01

    An ever growing thirst for a framework that supports a flexible environment in which the schools and school districts are protected within a zone that recognizes school reform is everyone's business. Moreover, the teacher's role as a leader in her classroom and among her peers must become a part of the search for a culture of success. This article…

  2. Charters in Our Midst: The Impact of Charter Schools on School Districts. A National Discussion with Views from Rural and Urban School Districts. [Booklets with Audiotapes].

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    North Central Regional Educational Lab., Oak Brook, IL.

    Along with national standards, charter schools are one of the most significant forces in education reform today. To their proponents, charter schools are revolutionary forces that help bring public education to world-class standards of quality. To skeptics, however, these forces threaten to undermine, or even destroy, this country's 150-year old…

  3. Building Public Confidence in Urban Schools: It Begins inside the District. A Guide for Administrators and Board Members. A Public Relations Executives Network Project of the Council of the Great City Schools, 2009-2010

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Council of the Great City Schools, 2010

    2010-01-01

    Effective organizational communication begins with employees, who should be communications ambassadors for a district. From administrators to teachers to school bus drivers to custodians, employees set the tone for a district. The informal conversations they have at church, the bowling alley, the barbershop and other venues can make or break the…

  4. Urban Districts Compare Notes on Operation

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Aarons, Dakarai I.

    2009-01-01

    Urban school systems are large businesses, charged with running a wide range of noninstructional functions that typically do not garner them much national notice. Now, thanks to the work of a coalition of big-city districts, their leaders are gathering data on how those operations are run, in the hope of improving their business practices. The…

  5. Conflict Management in Declining School Districts.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Boyd, William Lowe; Wheaton, Dennis R.

    1983-01-01

    Professional literature about managing conflicts associated with declining enrollments indicates the existing tension in this area. A research study shows that, while upper-middle class districts may succeed using a rational approach to decision making, lower class districts, for various reasons, may not. Special problems of urban districts are…

  6. Personnel Resource Allocation Strategies in a Time of Fiscal Crisis: Case Study of Elementary Schools in a California District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sais, Melissa Marie

    2013-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to analyze human resource allocation data for all elementary schools in large urban school district to determine whether resources were allocated in ways in that research suggests can lead to improved student achievement. Data from all 46 elementary schools that participated in the study were compared to the…

  7. Navigating Public-Private Partnerships: Introducing the Continuum of Control

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    DiMartino, Catherine

    2014-01-01

    In many urban districts, the public education landscape is being transformed as private-sector providers such as educational management organizations, charter management organizations, and partner support organizations partner with or run district schools. While some private-sector providers' visions for school reform have remained static…

  8. Accountability and Educational Equity in the Transformation of an Urban District.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Koschoreck, James W.

    2001-01-01

    Highlights how one Texas school district moved from being a district in which token representations of minority achievement were considered evidence of districtwide success to being a district where success for all children is the operating paradigm. Guided by vision, culture, and district support, teachers have raised student achievement levels…

  9. Rules of Engagement: Building a College-Going Culture in an Urban School

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McKillip, Mary E. M.; Godfrey, Kelly E.; Rawls, Anita

    2013-01-01

    Students who struggle in pursuit of postsecondary education tend to be Latino, Black, low-income, or first-generation college students. This article presents the case of a small public school serving students grades 6-12 from these traditionally underrepresented backgrounds in a large urban school district. Observations revealed that the school…

  10. Organizational Commitment of Teachers in Urban Schools: Examining the Effects of Team Structures

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Dee, Jay R.; Henkin, Alan B.; Singleton, Carole A.

    2006-01-01

    This study examines the effects of four team-based structures on the organizational commitment of elementary teachers in an urban school district. The study model focuses on organizational commitment and includes three intervening, endogenous variables: teacher empowerment, school communication, and work autonomy. Team teaching had both direct and…

  11. An Investigation of the Teacher Advancement Program and Student Performance in Urban Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Grant, Ginger Madonna

    2010-01-01

    In 2005, the achievement gap between African-American and Caucasian students doubled in the state of Louisiana. Sixty-three percent of the public schools in an urban school district in southeastern Louisiana received an Academically Unacceptable Status (AUS) rating according to Louisiana accountability standards. In 2006, the Louisiana Board of…

  12. Services for children with autism spectrum disorder in three, large urban school districts: Perspectives of parents and educators

    PubMed Central

    Iadarola, Suzannah; Hetherington, Susan; Clinton, Christopher; Dean, Michelle; Reisinger, Erica; Huynh, Linh; Locke, Jill; Conn, Kelly; Heinert, Sara; Kataoka, Sheryl; Harwood, Robin; Smith, Tristram; Mandell, David S; Kasari, Connie

    2015-01-01

    This study used qualitative methods to evaluate the perceptions of parents, educators, and school administrators in three large, urban school districts (Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and Rochester) regarding services for children with autism spectrum disorder within the context of limited district resources. Facilitators followed a standard discussion guide that contained open-ended questions regarding participants’ views on strengths and limitations of existing services and contextual factors that would facilitate or inhibit the process of introducing new interventions. Three primary themes were identified: (1) tension between participant groups (teachers and paraprofessionals, staff and administration, teachers and parents, special education and general education teachers), (2) necessity of autism spectrum disorder–specific and behavioral training for school personnel, and (3) desire for a school culture of accepting difference. These themes highlight the importance of developing trainings that are feasible to deliver on a large scale, that focus on practical interventions, and that enhance communication and relationships of school personnel with one another and with families. PMID:25192859

  13. Turnover at the Top: Superintendent Vacancies and the Urban School

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Buchanan, Bruce

    2006-01-01

    The leadership turnover in America's largest school districts has increased so rapidly that the average urban superintendent tenure is only about two years. In fact, many urban superintendents are hired knowing that they will either be terminated or forced to resign in a short period of time. This cycle has created a class of superintendents who…

  14. The Urban Teaching Cohort: Pre-Service Training to Support Mental Health in Urban Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Schwartz, Tammy; Dinnen, Hannah; Smith-Millman, Marissa K.; Dixon, Maressa; Flaspohler, Paul D.

    2017-01-01

    Supporting students' mental health needs is critical in high-poverty urban school districts where many students are at risk for mental health problems. Although teacher-student relationships are at the core of student mental health promotion in the classroom, many teacher preparation programmes do not adequately prepare pre-service teachers…

  15. Recruiting and Retaining Effective Teachers for Urban Schools: Developing a Strategic Plan for Action.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Claycomb, Carla; Hawley, Willis D.

    This analysis discusses ways to address the persistent challenge of ensuring that students who attend urban schools are taught by highly effective teachers. It presents a four-point strategic plan that includes: (1) increase the quantity and quality of people entering and returning to teaching in urban districts (precollegiate recruitment, higher…

  16. The Power of a Good Idea: How the San Francisco School District Is Building a PreK-3rd Grade Bridge

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Nyhan, Paul

    2015-01-01

    In 2008 the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) confronted a problem that has been growing for decades. It boasted the highest academic performance of any large urban district in California, yet its achievement gap was widening, as too many African American, Latino, and low-income students fell far behind their classmates. The…

  17. Environmental Threats to College Counseling Strategies in Urban High Schools: Implications for Student Preparation for College Transitions

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hill, Lori Diane

    2012-01-01

    Preparing high school students to skillfully and successfully navigate the pathway to college is a growing concern among researchers and policymakers. This issue has raised important questions about what urban school districts can do to build capacity among their high schools to guide students and families toward successful college transitions.…

  18. A Case Study of the Perceptions of School Principals Regarding the Micropolitics of Consolidating Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Slade, Darrin Andre

    2012-01-01

    The continued decline of many of America's urban centers has created a myriad of challenges for struggling inner city school systems. As the ills of society drive magnitudes of inner city residents into the suburbs many urban school districts must deal with the challenges of decreasing student enrollment and underused facilities. Many states…

  19. A 21st Century School System in the Mile-High City

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Osborne, David

    2016-01-01

    Some of the most dramatic gains in urban education have come from school districts using what many call a "portfolio strategy." Others call it "reinvention," a "21st century approach," or "relinquishment." By whatever name, it generally means that districts negotiate performance agreements with some mix of…

  20. Pay, working conditions, and teacher quality.

    PubMed

    Hanushek, Eric A; Rivkin, Steven G

    2007-01-01

    Eric Hanushek and Steven Rivkin examine how salary and working conditions affect the quality of instruction in the classroom. The wages of teachers relative to those of other college graduates have fallen steadily since 1940. Today, average wages differ little, however, between urban and suburban districts. In some metropolitan areas urban districts pay more, while in others, suburban districts pay more. But working conditions in urban and suburban districts differ substantially, with urban teachers reporting far less administrator and parental support, worse materials, and greater student problems. Difficult working conditions may drive much of the difference in turnover of teachers and the transfer of teachers across schools. Using rich data from Texas public schools, the authors describe in detail what happens when teachers move from school to school. They examine how salaries and student characteristics change when teachers move and also whether turnover affects teacher quality and student achievement. They note that both wages and student characteristics affect teachers' choices and result in a sorting of teachers across schools, but they find little evidence that teacher transitions are detrimental to student learning. The extent to which variations in salaries and working conditions translate into differences in the quality of instruction depends importantly on the effectiveness of school personnel policies in hiring and retaining the most effective teachers and on constraints on both entry into the profession and the firing of low performers. The authors conclude that overall salary increases for teachers would be both expensive and ineffective. The best way to improve the quality of instruction would be to lower barriers to becoming a teacher, such as certification, and to link compensation and career advancement more closely with teachers' ability to raise student performance.

  1. Case Study of the Voluntary Student Transfer Program: The Perspectives of African American Students and Parent Participants in One Midwestern School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Goodwin, Rosalyn Harper

    2013-01-01

    This study investigated the perspectives of four students and 6 parent participants of the Voluntary Student Transfer program, an inter-district desegregation program that involves transporting African American students from urban area schools to surrounding county schools. Due to limited and dated research related to the Voluntary Student…

  2. Teacher Self-Efficacy and the Civic Knowledge of Secondary Social Studies Teachers in a Large Urban School District: A Policy Study

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Holt, Dennis

    2009-01-01

    This policy study contributed to an understanding of the types of professional growth activities that improve teacher self-confidence to teach challenging subjects and helped determine the future allocation of resources relative to teaching secondary social studies in Hillsborough County Public Schools (HCPS), the eighth largest school district in…

  3. Perceived Implementation Barriers of a One-to-One Computing Initiative in a Large Urban School District: A Qualitative Approach

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Simmons, Brandon; Martin, Florence

    2016-01-01

    One-to-One Computing initiatives are K-12 Educational environments where student and teacher have Internet-connected, wireless computing devices in the classroom and optimally at home as well (Penuel, 2006). One-to-one computing has gained popularity in several schools and school districts across the world. However, there is limited research…

  4. Child Sexual Abuse in America--A Call for School & Community Action. A Report of a National Study.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Helge, Doris

    The rate of sexual abuse of children and adults in our society is appalling, and growing rapidly. This study was designed to determine trends in child sexual abuse prevention and treatment services offered by school districts across America. The questionnaire was designed to allow comparisons of urban, rural, and suburban school district programs…

  5. Teacher Shortages in Rural America and Suggestions for Solution. Rural Research Report. Volume 13, Issue 8, Spring 2002

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McCaw, Donna S.; Freeman, Robert; Philhower, Susan

    2002-01-01

    In a climate of increasing enrollment, reduced funding, and unfunded mandated state and federal programs, urban and rural school districts find it increasingly difficult to attract and retain qualified teachers. This paper offers suggestions to local school boards and district administrators in states with significant numbers of rural schools: (1)…

  6. Rates of Beginning Teachers: Examining One Indicator of School Quality in an Equity Context

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gagnon, Douglas J.; Mattingly, Marybeth J.

    2015-01-01

    The authors use national data to examine variation in the proportion of beginning teachers in school districts across the United States by poverty, race, and urbanicity. In addition to being a proxy for teacher quality, the proportion of beginning teachers in a district also speaks to teacher turnover and therefore broader school quality issues.…

  7. A Logic Model for Coaching Experienced Rural Leaders: Lessons from Year One of a Pilot Program

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lindle, Jane Clark; Della Sala, Matthew R.; Reese, Kenyae L.; Klar, Hans W.; Knoeppel, Robert Charles; Buskey, Frederick C.

    2017-01-01

    Rural schools dominate the United States, yet scant research exists on rural school leaders' development. Urban districts can transfer leaders to different locations, but rural districts, with few school sites, need leaders who stay and adapt to changing conditions. Mid-career rural leaders require a refreshed set of skills to carry school…

  8. Redesigning Urban Districts in the USA: Mayoral Accountability and the Diverse Provider Model

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wong, Kenneth K.

    2011-01-01

    In response to public pressure, urban districts in the USA have initiated reforms that aim at redrawing the boundaries between the school system and other major local institutions. More specifically, this article focuses on two emerging reform strategies. We will examine an emerging model of governance that enables big-city mayors to establish…

  9. Narrowing the Achievement Gap in a (Re) Segregated Urban School District: Research, Policy and Practice. The Achievement Gap, Research, Practice, and Policy

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ikpa, Vivian W.; McGuire, C. Kent

    2009-01-01

    The interplay between sociopolitical forces and economic agendas becomes apparent when one examines the June 28, 2007 United States Supreme Court Decision, Parents Involved In Community Schools v. Seattle School District . In a reversal of the 1954 Brown Decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled that public schools could not use race as a…

  10. Identifying Principal and Teacher Descriptions of the Continuation High School Teacher's "Special Fitness to Perform"

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Vargas, Nestor Albert

    2013-01-01

    The objective of this study was to generate principal and teacher descriptions of what constitutes a teacher's "special fitness to perform" in a public urban continuation high school with a concentration of at-risk students. The sample included 6 continuation principals and 15 continuation teachers from a large urban school district in…

  11. What We See: A Department of Education's View of a State-Sponsored Urban School Improvement Initiative.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Reece, Gary T.; Alvarez, Frank R.

    This paper presents the State of New Jersey Board of Education's evaluation of the Operation School Renewal (OSR) Program, a multi-year assistance program involving the urban school districts of Trenton, East Orange, and Neptune Township (New Jersey). Goals included the following: (1) attendance improvement; (2) reduction of disruptive pupil…

  12. The Impact of Collective Bargaining on Teacher Transfer Rates in Urban High-Poverty Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Nelson, F. Howard

    2006-01-01

    Data in this report reveals that collectively bargaining agreements are not the source of the teacher quality problem in urban school districts. The data shows that collective bargaining agreements are associated with reduced teacher transfer activity, especially in high-poverty schools, and less reliance on first-year teachers to staff…

  13. Small Schools in the Big City: Neoliberalism, Bureaucracy and the Sustainability of Small by Design Schools in Chicago

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Pitluck, Corrin

    2010-01-01

    Assuming the strength of small by design schools for poor urban students of color to be a settled question, this project attempts to analyze the sustainability of small by design schools in a large, complex urban district. Asking what causes small schools to converge toward or diverge from the small by design model, I analyze three sets of design…

  14. Cultivating the Cream of the Crop: A Case Study of Urban Teachers from an Alternative Teacher Education Program

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ng, Jennifer; Thomas, Kelli

    2007-01-01

    Hard-to-staff urban school districts increasingly rely on teachers who are certified through alternative routes to staff their classrooms. Given the accelerated design of alternative certification as well as the unique nature of schools in urban contexts, the process by which these individuals become effective teachers is essential to understand.…

  15. The Effects of Utilizing Thinking Maps® to Influence Attitudes and Comprehension of Elementary School Males

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Edwards, Patricia A.

    2010-01-01

    The purpose of this mixed research design study was to examine how teachers in a large urban Midwestern district used Thinking Maps® with students in elementary school general education and special education classrooms. In addition, this study examined the use of Thinking Maps® with 30 urban elementary school males in two schools: one second…

  16. School Choice: Factors That Influenced Parents to Select an Urban City Charter School Setting

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bayhan, Nihat

    2014-01-01

    This study was designed to explore the factors that influenced parents to select a charter school. The study was conducted at an urban city charter school system which has eight K-5 campuses operating in two districts within a city in the southern United States. Using online survey methods, data were collected from 2,875 parents who had more than…

  17. Promoting Effective Parenting Practices and Preventing Child Behavior Problems in School among Ethnically Diverse Families from Underserved, Urban Communities

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Brotman, Laurie Miller; Calzada, Esther; Huang, Keng-Yen; Kingston, Sharon; Dawson-McClure, Spring; Kamboukos, Dimitra; Rosenfelt, Amanda; Schwab, Amihai; Petkova, Eva

    2011-01-01

    This study examines the efficacy of "ParentCorps" among 4-year-old children (N = 171) enrolled in prekindergarten in schools in a large urban school district. "ParentCorps" includes a series of 13 group sessions for parents and children held at the school during early evening hours and facilitated by teachers and mental health…

  18. The Healthy Class of 2010: Utilization of the School Health Index to Build Collaboration Between a University and an Urban School District

    PubMed Central

    Fryer, Craig S.; Reed, Ernestine A.; Thomas, Stephen B.

    2014-01-01

    BACKGROUND Insufficient attention has been paid to the process of conducting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s School Health Index (SHI) to promote collaboration between universities and urban school districts when developing adolescent health promotion initiatives. This article provides an overview of the real world contextual challenges and opportunities this type of collaboration can pose. METHODS The SHI and selected collaboration principles were used to facilitate partnership and increase stakeholder buy-in, which led to developing and implementing an eight year health promotion campaign, The Healthy Class of 2010 (HC 2010). RESULTS The focus on planning brought together key stakeholders and allowed for HC 2010 programming to take place despite the competing demands on the schools. The SHI allowed for input from stakeholders to develop campaign activities and inform school- and district-wide policy. Universities and school districts desiring to develop and implement school-based, adolescent health promotion programs should: 1) identify the hierarchical structure of the school district; 2) establish credibility for the program and the university staff; 3) emphasize the benefits to all partners; 4) maintain a cooperative partnership with teachers and administrators; 5) appreciate the need for planning; and, 6) provide as many resources as possible to on an already overburdened school system. CONCLUSIONS Promoting healthy behaviors among students is an important part of the fundamental mission of schools. HC 2010 underscored the significance of collaboration using the SHI in the development and implementation of this health promotion campaign with input from students, teachers, administrators and university partners. PMID:22070509

  19. Application of the National Assessment of Educational Progress Philosophy in San Bernardino City Unified School District.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bonney, Lewis A.

    the steps taken by a large urban school district to develop and implement an objectives-based curriculum with criterion-referenced assessment of student progress are described. These steps include: goal setting, development of curriculum objectives, construction of assessment exercises, matrix sampling in test administration, and reporting of…

  20. California Bus Aid Still in Budget Cross Hairs

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Fleming, Nora

    2012-01-01

    California legislators swiftly passed a budget bill last week aimed at sheltering school busing dollars from a midyear budget cut many districts and advocates said particularly hurt rural school systems, along with urban districts with desegregation plans. While the measure, which Gov. Jerry Brown was expected to sign into law, would restore $248…

  1. Understanding Metropolitan Living: Description and Evaluation of a Cooperative City--Suburban Program for Urban Students in the 1970s. Summer Progress Report.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hall, Betty; Levine, Daniel U.

    Understanding Metropolitan Living (UML) was a cooperative summer school sponsored and conducted by a suburban school district in Johnson County, Kansas, and the central city school districts in Kansas City, Kansas, and Kansas City, Missouri. A six-week instructional program was conducted between June 8 and July 17, 1970, for 40 suburban students…

  2. The Effects of the Great Recession on Educational Attainment: Evidence from a Large Urban High School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mordechay, Kfir

    2017-01-01

    Economic crises are a recurrent phenomenon in American society, yet there is little knowledge of the impacts on educational opportunity. Using data from a large high school district as a case study, this research explores the impact of the Great Recession (2007-2009) on high school senior graduation rates in an area at the epicenter of the…

  3. Figuring It Out: Standard-Based Reforms in Urban Middle Grades.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lewis, Anne C.

    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…

  4. K-12 Urban Career Education Infusion Project. Final Evaluation

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Denton, William T.; Kleck, Wil

    The K-12 Urban Career Education Infusion Project of the Dallas (Texas) Independent School District focused on fourteen schools located in the East Oak Cliff Subdistrict, a predominantly (98%) black community. Conducted in two phases, the project attempted to demonstrate that through infusing career education into the existing curriculum, trained…

  5. Leadership for Literacy: Teachers Raising Expectations and Opportunities

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chilla, Nicole A.; Waff, Diane; Cook, Heleny

    2007-01-01

    The public is deeply concerned that students in urban settings are not achieving at high levels. Over the past twenty years, large urban districts have attempted to restructure massive school systems using educational policymaking processes that have focused on school structures, standards-driven curriculum, and test-based accountability measures.…

  6. An Effective Way to Improve Mathematics Achievement in Urban Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kim, Taik

    2010-01-01

    The local Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEARUP) partnership serves 11 K-8 schools with the lowest achievement scores and the highest poverty rates in a large Midwestern urban district. Recently, GEARUP launched a specially designed teaching program, Mathematics Enhancement Group (MEG), for underachievers in…

  7. The Disproportionate Erosion of Local Control: Urban School Boards, High-Stakes Accountability, and Democracy

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Trujillo, Tina M.

    2013-01-01

    This case study of an urban school board's experiences under high-stakes accountability demonstrates how the district leaders eschewed democratic governance processes in favor of autocratic behaviors. They possessed narrowly defined goals for teaching and learning that emphasized competitive, individualized means of achievement. Their decision…

  8. School Desegregation and Urban Change: Evidence from City Boundaries†

    PubMed Central

    Boustan, Leah Platt

    2014-01-01

    I examine changes in the city-suburban housing price gap in metropolitan areas with and without court-ordered desegregation plans over the 1970s, narrowing my comparison to housing units on opposite sides of district boundaries. Desegregation of public schools in central cities reduced the demand for urban residence, leading urban housing prices and rents to decline by 6 percent relative to neighboring suburbs. Aversion to integration was due both to changes in peer composition and to student reassignment to nonneighborhood schools. The associated reduction in the urban tax base imposed a fiscal externality on remaining urban residents. PMID:24511363

  9. Excerpts from inside the Black Box School District Spending on Professional Development in Education: Lessons from Five Urban Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Miles, Karen Hawley; Odden, Allan; Fermanich, Mark; Archibald, Sarah

    2005-01-01

    As districts struggle to meet the demands of standards-based reform and requirements for "highly qualified" teachers in the face of increasing fiscal constraints, professional development has the potential to be a significant part of a district's improvement strategy. To use dollars effectively, districts need to think about how to best integrate…

  10. Reform Stall: An Ecological Analysis of the Efficacy of an Urban School Reform Initiative to Improve Students' Reading and Mathematics Achievement

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    James, Marlon C.; Rupley, William H.; Hall, Kristin Kistner; Nichols, Janet Alys; Rasinski, Timothy V.; Harmon, Willie C.

    2016-01-01

    This article examines the efficacy of the implementation of a program titled Consensus Initiative [pseudonym] in an urban school district that served 20,000 linguistically, economically, and racially diverse students situated in the northeast region of the United States. Using a research derived ecological framework from the school reform…

  11. The Benjamin Franklin High School Urban League Street Academies Program. Evaluation of ESEA Title I Projects in New York City, 1967-68.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Guerriero, Michael A.

    This New York City school district educational project sought to locate actual dropouts and identify potential dropouts from Benjamin Franklin High School, and to involve them in the Urban Street Academy Program as a means of resolving their school problems and helping them continue their education. The objectives of the Academy were (1)…

  12. Homegrown Rural School Leaders

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Olsen, Dorian Dawn

    2017-01-01

    Background: Research on rural educational leadership is often overlooked in educational research, specifically within the context of homegrown leaders, or leaders who have been lifelong residents in the districts where they were students, teachers, and now lead as principal. Rural districts face many challenges that differ from urban districts.…

  13. Differences in Food and Beverage Marketing Policies and Practices in US School Districts, by Demographic Characteristics of School Districts, 2012

    PubMed Central

    Michael, Shannon; Brener, Nancy D.; Coffield, Edward; Kingsley, Beverly S.; Zytnick, Deena; Blanck, Heidi

    2016-01-01

    Introduction Foods and beverages marketed in schools are typically of poor nutritional value. School districts may adopt policies and practices to restrict marketing of unhealthful foods and to promote healthful choices. Students’ exposure to marketing practices differ by school demographics, but these differences have not yet been examined by district characteristics. Methods We analyzed data from the 2012 School Health Policies and Practices Study to examine how food and beverage marketing and promotion policies and practices varied by district characteristics such as metropolitan status, size, and percentage of non-Hispanic white students. Results Most practices varied significantly by district size: a higher percentage of large districts than small or medium-sized districts restricted marketing of unhealthful foods and promoted healthful options. Compared with districts whose student populations were majority (>50%) non-Hispanic white, a higher percentage of districts whose student populations were minority non-Hispanic white (≤50% non-Hispanic white) prohibited advertising of soft drinks in school buildings and on school grounds, made school meal menus available to students, and provided families with information on school nutrition programs. Compared with suburban and rural districts, a higher percentage of urban districts prohibited the sale of soft drinks on school grounds and used several practices to promote healthful options. Conclusion Preliminary findings showing significant associations between district demographics and marketing policies and practices can be used to help states direct resources, training, and technical assistance to address food and beverage marketing and promotion to districts most in need of improvement. PMID:27978408

  14. Differences in Food and Beverage Marketing Policies and Practices in US School Districts, by Demographic Characteristics of School Districts, 2012.

    PubMed

    Merlo, Caitlin L; Michael, Shannon; Brener, Nancy D; Coffield, Edward; Kingsley, Beverly S; Zytnick, Deena; Blanck, Heidi

    2016-12-15

    Foods and beverages marketed in schools are typically of poor nutritional value. School districts may adopt policies and practices to restrict marketing of unhealthful foods and to promote healthful choices. Students' exposure to marketing practices differ by school demographics, but these differences have not yet been examined by district characteristics. We analyzed data from the 2012 School Health Policies and Practices Study to examine how food and beverage marketing and promotion policies and practices varied by district characteristics such as metropolitan status, size, and percentage of non-Hispanic white students. Most practices varied significantly by district size: a higher percentage of large districts than small or medium-sized districts restricted marketing of unhealthful foods and promoted healthful options. Compared with districts whose student populations were majority (>50%) non-Hispanic white, a higher percentage of districts whose student populations were minority non-Hispanic white (≤50% non-Hispanic white) prohibited advertising of soft drinks in school buildings and on school grounds, made school meal menus available to students, and provided families with information on school nutrition programs. Compared with suburban and rural districts, a higher percentage of urban districts prohibited the sale of soft drinks on school grounds and used several practices to promote healthful options. Preliminary findings showing significant associations between district demographics and marketing policies and practices can be used to help states direct resources, training, and technical assistance to address food and beverage marketing and promotion to districts most in need of improvement.

  15. Teacher Absenteeism: What Administrators Can Do.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Pitkiff, Evan

    1993-01-01

    Teacher absenteeism appears highest in elementary schools, schools with lower student achievement, schools composed of economically disadvantaged and minority students, and urban school districts. Survey of Brooklyn high schools found high teacher absenteeism; in addition, attendance patterns were habitual, teachers holding temporary teaching…

  16. Tracking Progress, Engaging Communities: Abbott Indicators Summary Report--Trenton, New Jersey

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hirsch, Lesley; Applewhite-Coney, Erain

    2005-01-01

    Trenton is one of 31 urban school districts in New Jersey known as Abbott districts. As an Abbott district, Trenton receives funding to equalize its per student general education budget with the most successful suburban districts in the state. Through a series of indicators, the Trenton Abbott Indicators Report presents the status of educational…

  17. Tracking Progress, Engaging Communities: Abbott Indicators Summary Report-- Newark, New Jersey

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hirsch, Lesley; Applewhite-Coney, Erain

    2005-01-01

    Newark is one of 31 urban school districts in New Jersey known as Abbott districts. As an Abbott district, Newark receives funding to equalize its per student general education budget with the most successful suburban districts in the state. Through a series of indicators, the Newark Abbott Indicators Report presents the status of educational…

  18. Tracking Progress, Engaging Communities: Abbott Indicators Summary Report--Camden, New Jersey

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hirsch, Lesley; Applewhite-Coney, Erain

    2005-01-01

    Camden is one of 31 urban school districts in New Jersey known as Abbott districts. As an Abbott district, Camden receives funding to equalize its per student general education budget with the most successful suburban districts in the state. Through a series of indicators, the Camden Abbott Indicators Report presents the status of educational…

  19. Tracking Progress, Engaging Communities: Abbott Indicators Technical Report--Camden, New Jersey

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hirsch, Lesley; Applewhite-Coney, Erain

    2005-01-01

    Camden is one of 31 urban school districts in New Jersey known as Abbott districts. As an Abbott district, Camden receives funding to equalize its per student general education budget with the most successful suburban districts in the state. Through a series of indicators, the Camden Abbott Indicators Report presents the status of educational…

  20. Tracking Progress, Engaging Communities: Abbott Indicators Technical Report--Trenton, New Jersey

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hirsch, Lesley; Applewhite-Coney, Erain

    2005-01-01

    Trenton is one of 31 urban school districts in New Jersey known as Abbott districts. As an Abbott district, Trenton receives funding to equalize its per student general education budget with the most successful suburban districts in the state. Through a series of indicators, the Trenton Abbott Indicators Report presents the status of educational…

  1. Tracking Progress, Engaging Communities: Abbott Indicators Technical Report-- Newark, New Jersey

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hirsch, Lesley; Applewhite-Coney, Erain

    2005-01-01

    Newark is one of 31 urban school districts in New Jersey known as Abbott districts. As an Abbott district, Newark receives funding to equalize its per student general education budget with the most successful suburban districts in the state. Through a series of indicators, the Newark Abbott Indicators Report presents the status of educational…

  2. Keeping Urban Teachers: A National Necessity

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Shields, Darla J.

    2009-01-01

    Urban teachers are fleeing urban schools in large numbers for positions that offer safety, support, security, autonomy, respect, higher pay, and freedom from managing disruptive student behaviors and attitudes that are products of the community's social problems. Efforts to retain experienced teachers in urban districts are crucial to the success…

  3. Key Elements of a Successful Multi-System Collaboration for School-Based Mental Health: In-Depth Interviews with District and Agency Administrators

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Powers, Joelle D.; Edwards, Jeffrey D.; Blackman, Kate F.; Wegmann, Kate M.

    2013-01-01

    The alarming number of youth with unmet mental health needs in the US is a significant social problem. The pilot school-based mental health project described here established an innovative multi-system partnership between an urban school district, a public mental health agency, and a local university to better meet the mental health needs of youth…

  4. Impact of Alternative Programs on an Urban School District.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Vincenzi, Harry; Fishman, Roger J.

    The number of secondary alternative programs in the school district of Philadelphia has grown to 75 giving it one of the largest networks of alternative programs in the country. The object of this paper is to report on the impact of those programs. The programs are divided into four categories: (1) disruptive/ truant programs, (2) career programs,…

  5. How Labor Management Relations and Human Resource Policies Affect the Process of Teacher Assignment in Urban School Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Youngs, Peter; Pogodzinski, Ben; Galey, Sarah

    2015-01-01

    Purpose: This study examined how labor-management relations between school districts and teacher associations seem to affect teacher contract provisions regarding the role of seniority in teacher assignment and how contract provisions and teacher assignment policies seem to affect beginning teachers' perceptions about their work environments.…

  6. Early Literacy, Family Engagement, and Cultural Competence: District Priorities in Clark County, Nevada

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Keaton, Lucy

    2013-01-01

    This Summer 2013 issue of "Voices in Urban Education" presents an interview with Lucy Keaton, appointed in February 2013 as the first assistant superintendent for the English Language Learner program at the Clark County (Nevada) School District (CCSD), which includes Las Vegas and contains more than half of Nevada's public schools. The…

  7. Superintendent Leadership: A Phenomenological Study of Texas Superintendents from Broad Prize Eligible School Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Moreno, Jose H.

    2014-01-01

    The identification of leadership qualities and reform strategies implemented to increase student achievement in urban school districts is vital to closing the achievement gap. The purpose of this phenomenological study was to identify a leadership profile of the Broad Prize superintendent and reform strategies used to leverage systemic change that…

  8. A Comparison of Retention Rates of Alternatively Certified and Traditional Certified Teachers.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Dial, Micah

    1992-01-01

    A survey of 2,500 teachers entering a large urban school district over the last 7 years showed that alternatively certified teachers were as likely as traditional, university-certified teachers to remain in the profession and pay back the school district's initial investment in teacher training. Many become committed to teaching as a meaningful…

  9. Collaboration to Achieve Whole School SEL across a Large, Urban District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Porche, Michelle; Grossman, Jenny; Biro, Nova; MacKay, Nancy; Rivers, Sojourner

    2014-01-01

    Research on social and emotional learning (SEL) has largely focused on classroom interventions and student-­ and classroom­-level outcomes. Few studies have examined whole­-school and district-­level SEL implementations, or how to ensure that SEL programs are implemented effectively and sustained over time. This study examines both process…

  10. The Nation's Report Card Science 2009 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Fresno Unified School District. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    Guided by a new framework, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science assessment was updated in 2009 to keep the content current with key developments in science, curriculum standards, assessments, and research. The 2009 framework organizes science content into three broad content areas. Physical science includes concepts…

  11. The Nation's Report Card Science 2009 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Cleveland Metropolitan School District. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    Guided by a new framework, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science assessment was updated in 2009 to keep the content current with key developments in science, curriculum standards, assessments, and research. The 2009 framework organizes science content into three broad content areas. Physical science includes concepts…

  12. Pearls and Pitfalls in Evaluating a Student Assistance Program: A Five-Year Case Study

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Wilburn, Sharon T.; Wilburn, Kenneth T.; Weaver, Dax M.; Bowles, Kathy

    2007-01-01

    This article presents data from a five-year evaluation-research case study of a large urban schools district's internal Student Assistance Program (SAP). The district employed specially trained and licensed school-based counselors to implement an internal SAP expanded to include tertiary prevention, and modeled after an employee assistance program…

  13. Educational Turbulence: The Influence of Macro and Micro-Policy on Science Education Reform

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Johnson, Carla C.

    2013-01-01

    Enactment of federal educational policy has direct implications for states and local school districts across the nation, particularly in the areas of accountability and funding. This study utilized constructivist grounded theory to examine the impact of policy on science education reform in a large, urban school district over a 5-year period. The…

  14. A Study of District Leadership Practices in the Principal Professional Learning Community

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Miller, Danielle G.

    2012-01-01

    This qualitative study was implemented in an urban, Title I school district in the southern portion of the United States. The problem the study addressed was that the various phenomena pertaining to the implementation of the principal professional learning community (PPLC), as perceived by the 14 participating elementary school principals, had not…

  15. The Nation's Report Card Science 2009 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Austin Independent School District. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    Guided by a new framework, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science assessment was updated in 2009 to keep the content current with key developments in science, curriculum standards, assessments, and research. The 2009 framework organizes science content into three broad content areas. Physical science includes concepts…

  16. The Nation's Report Card Science 2009 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Austin Independent School District. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    Guided by a new framework, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science assessment was updated in 2009 to keep the content current with key developments in science, curriculum standards, assessments, and research. The 2009 framework organizes science content into three broad content areas. Physical science includes concepts…

  17. The Nation's Report Card Science 2009 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. School District of Philadelphia. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    Guided by a new framework, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science assessment was updated in 2009 to keep the content current with key developments in science, curriculum standards, assessments, and research. The 2009 framework organizes science content into three broad content areas. Physical science includes concepts…

  18. The Nation's Report Card Science 2009 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Houston Independent School District. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    Guided by a new framework, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science assessment was updated in 2009 to keep the content current with key developments in science, curriculum standards, assessments, and research. The 2009 framework organizes science content into three broad content areas. Physical science includes concepts…

  19. The Nation's Report Card Science 2009 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Cleveland Metropolitan School District. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    Guided by a new framework, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science assessment was updated in 2009 to keep the content current with key developments in science, curriculum standards, assessments, and research. The 2009 framework organizes science content into three broad content areas. Physical science includes concepts…

  20. The Nation's Report Card Science 2009 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. School District of Philadelphia. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    Guided by a new framework, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science assessment was updated in 2009 to keep the content current with key developments in science, curriculum standards, assessments, and research. The 2009 framework organizes science content into three broad content areas. Physical science includes concepts…

  1. The Nation's Report Card Science 2009 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Fresno Unified School District. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    Guided by a new framework, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science assessment was updated in 2009 to keep the content current with key developments in science, curriculum standards, assessments, and research. The 2009 framework organizes science content into three broad content areas. Physical science includes concepts…

  2. Everybody Leads: A Model for Collaborative Leadership

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Maxfield, C. Robert; Klocko, Barbara A.

    2010-01-01

    This mixed-methods case study analyzes the perceptions of participants in a year-long collaborative leadership initiative conducted at a small school district situated between larger urban districts and multiple suburban districts in a midwestern state. The initiative was facilitated by the Galileo Institute for Teacher Leadership in cooperation…

  3. Why Public Schools Lose Teachers

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hanushek, Eric A.; Kain, John F.; Rivkin, Steven G.

    2004-01-01

    Many school districts experience difficulties attracting and retaining teachers, and the impending retirement of a substantial fraction of public school teachers raises the specter of sever shortages in some public schools. Schools in urban areas serving economically disadvantaged and minority students appear particularly vulnerable. This paper…

  4. Placement and Achievement of Urban Hispanic Middle Schoolers with Specific Learning Disabilities

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Barrocas, Lisa; Cramer, Elizabeth D.

    2014-01-01

    This study examined achievement gains in reading and math for Hispanic middle school students with specific learning disabilities in inclusive versus segregated settings in a large urban school district. The authors report learning gains for students with and without disabilities in inclusive versus segregated settings. Results indicate no…

  5. Self/Inner Development of Educational Administrators: A National Study of Urban School District Superintendents and College Deans.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Metzger, Christa

    2003-01-01

    Surveyed urban school superintendents and college of education deans regarding strategies for coping with stress through self/inner development. Participants defined self/inner development as balance, self-actualization, values, personal improvement, inner focus, and relationships. Self/inner development terms used most frequently at work were…

  6. Perceptions of Collaborative Process in a Professional Learning Focused University-Community-School Collaboration

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Psimas, Lynnae L.

    2012-01-01

    The current study explored the collaborative processes present in a collaboration between an urban university in the Southeast United States, a state-funded educational support agency, and several urban and suburban school districts served by the state agency. To obtain a comprehensive understanding of the collaboration and relevant practices,…

  7. An Examination of the Supervision of Special Education Instruction in Urban Public School Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Payne, Suzette Guy

    2017-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to examine the supervision of special education instruction in urban public elementary schools by interviewing three principals regarding their roles in the supervisory process. Through these interviews the researcher attempted to identify concepts or themes that might guide principals in identifying effective…

  8. Evaluation of the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program in Nine Urban Schools: Effective Practices and next Steps

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Black, Sally; Washington, Ericka

    2008-01-01

    The Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (BPP) is an internationally recognized school-based bullying prevention program. This project sought to evaluate pilot implementation of the program in one urban district using fidelity of implementation, bullying incident density (BID), student surveys, and serious incident reports as process and outcome…

  9. Why (Urban) Mathematics Teachers Need Political Knowledge

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gutiérrez, Rochelle

    2013-01-01

    Rochelle Gutiérrez has spent 15 years researching effective, urban high school mathematics departments that served Black, Latin@ and low-income adolescents (see, e.g., Gutiérrez, 1996, 1999a, 1999b, 2000, 2002). These were schools where students took more mathematics than was required by their district; where English learners, recent immigrants,…

  10. An Examination of the Impact of the IEP Team Composition and Transition Planning upon the Success of Students with Disabilities in Urban Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hill, Petrina D.

    2010-01-01

    The primary purpose of this correlational study was to examine the impact of IEP team composition (team member attendance) and transition planning (types of transition outcomes) upon the success (graduation) of students with disabilities in urban districts. Other factors also included gender, academic status of school, socioeconomic status of the…

  11. The Impact of Adapting a General Professional Development Framework to the Constraints of In-Service Professional Development on the Next Generation Science Standards in Urban Settings

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McGee, Steven; Nutakki, Nivedita

    2017-01-01

    Urban school districts face a dilemma in providing professional development support for teachers in transition to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Districts need to maximize the quality and amount of professional development within practical funding constraints. In this paper, we discuss preliminary results from a…

  12. The Effect of Poverty on the Achievement of Urban African American Male Students Successfully Completing High School

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Welch, Amy L.

    2013-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of poverty on the achievement of African American male high school students attending the same large Midwest urban school district. Cumulative grade point average (GPA) at the tenth grade level were compared to the level of poverty provided through census data of African American male tenth…

  13. Lessons Learned: A Strategic Alliance to Improve Elementary Physical Education in an Urban School District.

    PubMed

    Thompson, Hannah R; Haguewood, Robin; Tantoco, Nicole; Madsen, Kristine A

    2015-01-01

    Physical education (PE) can help to achieve important public health goals, but is often under-prioritized and lacking in schools. To detail the actions, impact, and successes of a strategic alliance formed by three collaborating organizations to improve PE in a large California school district. Semistructured interviews with alliance members, principals, and teachers in 20 elementary schools, 3 years after the alliance formation. Interviewees reported district-level increases in priority and funding for PE and attributed improvements to the alliance's collection and dissemination of local data on the status of PE. Common goals, trust, and open communication within the alliance were seen as critical to the alliance's success. However, changes in district- or school-level accountability measures for PE were not reported. This strategic alliance succeeded in promoting district-level priority and funding for PE. Ongoing alliance work will focus on increasing accountability measures for PE, which may take longer to implement.

  14. Concussion evaluation methods among Washington State high school football coaches and athletic trainers.

    PubMed

    Murphy, Ashley; Kaufman, Marla S; Molton, Ivan; Coppel, David B; Benson, John; Herring, Stanley A

    2012-06-01

    To evaluate awareness of concussion assessment methods and to determine whether there are differences among Washington State high school football coaches and athletic trainers in urban versus rural school districts. A Catalyst WebQ survey link was randomly sent by e-mail to varsity head football coaches, athletic trainers, and athletic directors in Washington State school districts. Survey participants were high school varsity head football coaches and athletic trainers from a total of 106 Washington State high schools. A 12-item questionnaire on Catalyst WebQ was distributed via e-mail. The survey inquired about use of the methods of concussion assessment, both on the field and for follow-up; participants' concussion education training; and familiarity with Washington State's Zackery Lystedt Law. The survey examined differences in concussion management practices between rural and urban school districts and also between coaches and athletic trainers in Washington State, specifically regarding the use of the Standardized Concussion Assessment Tool 2 (SCAT2) and neurocognitive testing (NCT). Twenty-seven of 48 respondents (56%) used the SCAT2 for on-the-field assessment; urban respondents were significantly more likely to use SCAT2 (P < .05). The difference between coaches and athletic trainers with respect to SCAT2 use was not significant (P = .08). NCT was used by 18 of 58 respondents (31%). This was more commonly used by those in urban districts (P < .01) and by athletic trainers (P < .01). Eleven of these 18 individuals (61%) reported that a neuropsychologist interpreted the results; the rest used other providers not specifically trained in neuropsychology. There was no statistically significant correlation between years of experience and use of the SCAT2, but those with more than 10 years of experience were less likely to use NCT (P < .01). All respondents reported being familiar with Washington State's Zackery Lystedt Law, but only 44.1% reported that the law changed their concussion management. There were statistically significant differences between SCAT2 and NCT use for respondents from urban and rural districts, and also between coaches and athletic trainers, as well as NCT use among respondents with varying years of experience. Further understanding and identification of barriers that limit identification and management of concussions in high school athletes are crucial to prevent serious permanent injury. Additional education is necessary to ensure that athletic trainers and coaches are aware of current recommendations within the medical literature for the evaluation and management of concussions. Copyright © 2012 American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  15. The New Fiscal Politics in Urban Education.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cibulka, James G.

    1982-01-01

    Fiscal and political forces that will shape the political economies of urban school districts are examined. Topics discussed include local tax bases, federal revenue, state revenue, declining public support, and policy choices. (CJ)

  16. Do School Uniforms Fit?

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    White, Kerry A.

    2000-01-01

    In 1994, Long Beach (California) Unified School District began requiring uniforms in all elementary and middle schools. Now, half of all urban school systems and many suburban schools have uniform policies. Research on uniforms' effectiveness is mixed. Tightened dress codes may be just as effective and less litigious. (MLH)

  17. State and district policy influences on district-wide elementary and middle school physical education practices.

    PubMed

    Chriqui, Jamie F; Eyler, Amy; Carnoske, Cheryl; Slater, Sandy

    2013-01-01

    To examine the influence of state laws and district policies on district-wide elementary school and middle school practices related to physical education (PE) time and the percentage of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) time during PE. Multivariate, cross-sectional analysis of state laws, district wellness and PE policies, and district PE practices for school year 2010-2011 controlling for district-level urbanicity, region, size, race/ethnicity of students, and socioeconomic status and clustered on state. One hundred ninety-five public school districts located in 42 states. District-level PE coordinators for the included districts who responded to an online survey. Minutes and days of PE per week and percent time spent in MVPA during PE time. District PE coordinators reported significantly less PE time than national standards-82.9 and 189.6 minutes at the elementary school and middle school levels, respectively. Physical education was provided an average of 2.5 and 3.7 days per week, respectively; and the percentage of MVPA time in PE was 64.4% and 65.7%, respectively. At the elementary school level, districts in either states with laws governing PE time or in a state and district with a law/policy reported significantly more days of PE (0.63 and 0.67 additional days, respectively), and districts in states with PE time laws reported 18 more minutes of PE per week. At the middle school level, state laws were associated with 0.73 more days of PE per week. Neither state laws nor district policies were positively associated with percent MVPA time in PE. State laws and district policies can influence district-level PE practices-particularly those governing the frequency and duration of PE-although opportunities exist to strengthen PE-related laws, policies, and practices.

  18. Tracking Progress, Engaging Communities: Abbott Indicators Summary Report--Union City, New Jersey

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hirsch, Lesley; Applewhite-Coney, Erain

    2005-01-01

    Union City is one of 31 urban school districts in New Jersey known as Abbott districts. As an Abbott district, Union City receives funding to equalize its per student general education budget with the most successful suburban districts in the state. Through a series of indicators, the Union City Abbott Indicators Report presents the status of…

  19. Tracking Progress, Engaging Communities: Abbott Indicators Technical Report: Union City, New Jersey

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Applewhite-Coney, Erain; Hirsch, Lesley

    2005-01-01

    Union City is one of 31 urban school districts in New Jersey known as Abbott districts. As an Abbott district, Union City receives funding to equalize its per student general education budget with the most successful suburban districts in the state. Through a series of indicators, the Union City Abbott Indicators Report presents the status of…

  20. Demographic and Financial Characteristics of School Districts with Low and High À La Carte Sales in Rural Kansas Public Schools

    PubMed Central

    Nollen, Nicole L.; Kimminau, Kim; Nazir, Niaman

    2013-01-01

    Reducing à la carte (ALC) items in schools – i.e., foods and beverages sold outside the reimbursable meals program -- may have important implications for childhood obesity. However, schools are reluctant to reduce ALC offerings because of the impact these changes could have on revenue. Some food service programs operate with limited ALC sales, but little is known about these programs. This secondary data analysis compared rural and urban/suburban school districts with low and high ALC sales. Food service financial records (2007–2008) were obtained from the Kansas State Department of Education (KSDE) for all public K-12 school districts (n=302). Chi-square and t-tests were used to examine the independent association of variables to ALC sales. A multivariate model was then constructed of the factors most strongly associated with low ALC sales. In rural districts with low ALC sales, lunch prices and participation were higher; lunch costs and ALC quality were lower; and fewer free/reduced price lunches were served compared to rural districts with high ALC sales. Lunch price (OR=1.2, 95% CI = 1.1–1.4) and free/reduced price lunch participation (OR=3.0, 95% CI=1.0–9.8) remained in the multivariate model predicting low ALC sales. No differences were found between urban/suburban districts with low and high ALC sales. Findings highlight important factors to maintaining low ALC sales. Schools should consider raising lunch prices and increasing meal participation rates as two potential strategies for reducing the sale of ALC items without compromising food service revenue. PMID:21616201

  1. Capitalizing on Crisis: Venture Philanthropy's Colonial Project to Remake Urban Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lipman, Pauline

    2015-01-01

    This article focuses on the increased power of venture philanthropy to shape education in urban communities of color in the USA. The author situates venture philanthropy's expanded influence in urban school districts in the nexus of urban disinvestment, neoliberal governance, wealth concentration, and economic crisis. The author argues that…

  2. Moonlighting among Teachers in Urban Tanzania: A Survey of Public Primary Schools in Ilala District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Timothy, Vedastus L.; Nkwama, Skeeter

    2017-01-01

    Despite the widespread prevalence, teacher moonlighting is one of the under-researched areas. Using data from 313 public primary school teachers in Ilala District, this study examined the determinants of teacher moonlighting. The findings show that 39.4% of teachers had a secondary income generating activity. Sex and age of the teacher were…

  3. Timing Is Everything: Getting Students Back on Track to College Readiness in High School

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Royster, Pamela; Gross, Jacob; Hochbein, Craig

    2015-01-01

    National trends and goals have pushed beyond the dropout crisis and are now focused on raising the percentage of graduates prepared for college and career. This study examined a longitudinal cohort (n = 6443) of students in an urban, public school district in order to explore how districts and communities can redirect off-track high school…

  4. Regional Educational Equity Policies: Learning from Inter-District Integration Programs. Research Brief No. 9

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Finnigan, Kara S.; Holme, Jennifer Jellison

    2015-01-01

    Across the U.S., urban school districts are in a deepening state of crisis. Problems of academic failure, financial debt, and enrollment loss have been reported in many of the nation's largest cities. In local and national policy debates, there are two distinct explanations about the reasons for these crises. One explanation for school failure…

  5. Time-Out on Timing: The Relationship between the Timing of Teacher Hires and Teacher Quality. Working Paper 2009-04

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Engel, Mimi

    2009-01-01

    Interest in understanding how principals and school districts hire teachers has increased as empirical evidence on teacher effectiveness has grown. Case studies suggest late hiring timelines are pervasive in large urban school districts and result in the loss of more qualified teachers to surrounding suburbs. This paper uses labor market fixed…

  6. Supporting Excellence: A Framework for Developing, Implementing, and Sustaining a High-Quality District Curriculum. First Edition

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Council of the Great City Schools, 2017

    2017-01-01

    In the ongoing effort to improve instructional standards in our nation's urban public schools, the Council of the Great City Schools has released resources to help districts determine the quality and alignment of instructional materials at each grade level; to ensure that materials for English language learners are rigorous and aligned to district…

  7. The Nation's Report Card Science 2009 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. San Diego Unified School District. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    Guided by a new framework, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science assessment was updated in 2009 to keep the content current with key developments in science, curriculum standards, assessments, and research. The 2009 framework organizes science content into three broad content areas. Physical science includes concepts…

  8. The Nation's Report Card Science 2009 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. San Diego Unified School District. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    Guided by a new framework, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science assessment was updated in 2009 to keep the content current with key developments in science, curriculum standards, assessments, and research. The 2009 framework organizes science content into three broad content areas. Physical science includes concepts…

  9. From Forty-to-One to One-to-One: Eliminating the Digital Divide and Making Equity Actionable

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Mucetti, Rosanna

    2017-01-01

    This article shows how the adoption of technology may serve as a catalyst for deeper, systemic reforms. This article shares a local case of organizational learning in which a midsize California urban school district faithfully acted on a technology goal nested in its strategic plan. Through this experience, the school district demonstrated various…

  10. An Analysis of Governance Policies and Practices in One School District Regarding English Learners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Lysko, V. Lynn

    2012-01-01

    In a large, urban, high school district, secondary English-learning students are not achieving at the same rates as other identified subgroups on state and local standardized tests. This gap compounds economic and social inequities in the region. A solution to the problem is important to educators and policy makers in providing an equitable…

  11. The Nation's Report Card Science 2009 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Los Angeles Unified School District. Grade 4, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    Guided by a new framework, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science assessment was updated in 2009 to keep the content current with key developments in science, curriculum standards, assessments, and research. The 2009 framework organizes science content into three broad content areas. Physical science includes concepts…

  12. The Nation's Report Card Science 2009 Trial Urban District Snapshot Report. Los Angeles Unified School District. Grade 8, Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    National Center for Education Statistics, 2011

    2011-01-01

    Guided by a new framework, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science assessment was updated in 2009 to keep the content current with key developments in science, curriculum standards, assessments, and research. The 2009 framework organizes science content into three broad content areas. Physical science includes concepts…

  13. Strength and Comprehensiveness of District School Wellness Policies Predict Policy Implementation at the School Level

    PubMed Central

    Henderson, Kathryn E; Falbe, Jennifer; Novak, Sarah A.; Wharton, Christopher; Long, Michael; O'Connell, Meghan L.; Fiore, Susan S.

    2013-01-01

    Background In 2006, all local education agencies in the United States participating in federal school meal programs were required to establish school wellness policies. The aim of this study was to document the strength and comprehensiveness of one state's written district policies using a quantitative coding tool, and test whether the strength and comprehensiveness of the written policy predicted school level implementation and practices. Methods School wellness policies from 151 Connecticut districts were evaluated using a quantitative coding system. In each district, school principal surveys were collected before and after the writing and expected implementation of wellness policies. Socio-demographic variables were assessed for each district, including enrollment, population density, political climate, racial composition and socio-economic status. Changes in school-level policy implementation before and after the federal wellness policy requirement were compared across districts by wellness policy strength, and policies were compared based on district-level demographic factors. Results Statewide, fuller implementation of nutrition and physical activity policies at the school level was reported after adoption of written policies in 2006. Districts with stronger, more comprehensive policies were more successful in implementing those policies at the school level. Some socio-demographic characteristics predicted the strength of wellness policies; larger, urban districts and districts with a greater ratio of registered Democrats to Republicans wrote stronger policies. Conclusions Written school wellness policies have the potential to promote significant improvements in the school environment. Future regulation of school wellness policies should focus on the importance of writing strong and comprehensive policies. PMID:22568461

  14. Who Moved My Curriculum? Leadership Preparation Programs and the Core Technology of Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Doolittle, Gini; Browne, Evelyn Gallagher

    2011-01-01

    This cross-case study utilizes the publically available data of three urban low-performing, low-socioeconomic-status districts designated as "districts in need of improvement" under No Child Left Behind legislation. Despite multiple interventions aimed at improving student learning, these and other districts remain in corrective action.…

  15. Raising Teacher Salaries: The Funds Are There.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Haberman, Martin

    2005-01-01

    School districts currently spend $2.6 billion annually on maintaining a system of recruiting and hiring teachers who quit or fail. The 120 major urban districts are the primary locus of this teacher churn. The causes include the negative conditions of work in these districts, the impersonal hiring procedures which recruit and hire the wrong people…

  16. Proceeding Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; Initial Decision in the Matter of Chicago Public School District #299 and Illinois Office of Education and City of Chicago, Illinois; Docket No. S-120. Administrative Proceedings in the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, National Science Foundation, Department of Housing and Urban Development.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Office for Civil Rights (DHEW), Washington, DC.

    This document presents the initial decision concerning a federal compliance review of the Chicago Public School District #299, the Illinois Office of Education, and the City of Chicago, Illinois. These proceedings try to determine if the school district under consideration was complying with Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Violations of…

  17. How the Cultural Contexts of Urban Teaching Affect Novice Science Educators: Implications for School Leaders

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Duncan, Marlina

    2014-01-01

    While the challenge to retain highly competent teachers affects all schools, the crisis is critical in urban districts, which historically suffer from high teacher turnover (Ingersoll, 2004). This high turnover is especially problematic in the content areas of science (Ingersoll & Perda, 2010). Through ethnographic case studies the first year…

  18. Inputs and Student Achievement: An Analysis of Latina/o-Serving Urban Elementary Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Heilig, Julian Vasquez; Williams, Amy; Jez, Su Jin

    2010-01-01

    One of the most pressing problems in the United States is improving student academic performance, especially the nation's burgeoning Latina/o student population. There is a dearth of research on variables associated with student achievement in Latina/o majority schools in urban districts. As the majority of Latina/o students are segregated into…

  19. Teaching or Service?: The Site-Based Realities of Teach for America Teachers in Poor, Urban Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Veltri, Barbara Torre

    2008-01-01

    "Business Week" and "Fortune Magazine" suggest that Teach for America (TFA) is a beneficial postgraduation option for corps members, who teach for a finite commitment in low-socioeconomic status urban school districts. This longitudinal qualitative study examines the complex issues that surround TFA through the voices of TFA corps members,…

  20. Looking for Leadership: Assessing the Case for Mayoral Control of Urban School Systems

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hess, Frederick M.

    2008-01-01

    Replacing boards of education conceived during the Progressive Era with mayoral control has been a popular reform strategy in urban districts such as Boston, Chicago, and New York City. A thorough review of the extant research, however, shows little evidence regarding its impact on governance, management, school organization, or teaching and…

  1. Teacher Adaptations to a Core Reading Program: Increasing Access to Curriculum for Elementary Students in Urban Classrooms

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Maniates, Helen

    2017-01-01

    This article examines how three urban elementary school teachers adapted pedagogical strategies from a school district--adopted core reading program to increase their students' access to the curriculum. Using teacher interviews and classroom observations to construct a descriptive case study of teacher adaptation, analysis reveals that the…

  2. Teacher Leaders Building Foundations for Data-Informed Teacher Learning in One Urban Elementary School

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Nicholson, Julie; Capitelli, Sarah; Richert, Anna E.; Wilson, Carrie; Bove, Claire

    2017-01-01

    We examine how teacher leaders (TLs), working in a low-income urban elementary school, supported their colleagues to learn how to collect quality formative data and to discuss it in collaborative conversations in order to make their students' learning visible. The TLs faced challenges reflecting consequences resulting from the district's high…

  3. Teacher Beliefs regarding Grade Retention in an Urban Elementary School

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gilmore-Hook, Toni

    2011-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to determine if exposure to a research-based presentation on grade retention, including the academic, socio-emotional and behavioral outcomes, would yield a change in teacher beliefs regarding retention as an intervention strategy. Teachers from a small urban school district were asked to complete a pre-survey, view a…

  4. A Narrative Inquiry of Latina/o Teachers in Urban Elementary Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hernandez-Scott, Erica

    2017-01-01

    Latina/o teachers are underrepresented in the educational workforce. As such, the purpose of this narrative inquiry is to explore the experiences of Latinas/os who are teaching in urban school districts. The central question addressed by this narrative inquiry was: "To what do Latina/o teachers attribute to their academic and career…

  5. "The Discipline Stop": Black Male Teachers and the Politics of Urban School Discipline

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Brockenbrough, Ed

    2015-01-01

    Calls for the recruitment and retention of more Black male teachers have unfolded amid popular depictions of Black men as patriarchal disciplinarians. Against that backdrop, this article investigates how 11 Black male teachers were positioned as disciplinary agents in a predominantly Black urban school district on the east coast of the United…

  6. Lessons for Establishing a Foundation for Data Use in DC Public Schools. The Senior Urban Education Research Fellowship Series. Volume I

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Smerdon, Becky; Evan, Aimee

    2010-01-01

    With a grant from the Council of the Great City Schools' Senior Urban Education Research Fellowship Program, the authors began a project designed to identify the roots of the dropout problem in the District of Columbia by identifying middle grades students' exhibiting behaviors associated with dropping out of high school. Their plan was to use DC…

  7. Tailoring New Urban Teachers for Character and Activism

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Boggess, Laurence B.

    2010-01-01

    This two-site, qualitative case study examined how the Chicago and Boston Public School Districts alternatively prepared new teachers through partnerships with private, nonprofit urban teacher residencies. Drawing on urban regime analysis and resource dependence theory, the study asked how the reform partners defined "teacher quality"…

  8. The "Big Box"

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gran, Warren; Krudwig, Kevin

    2007-01-01

    The small-schools movement has revolutionized educational concepts, design and construction. By reconfiguring large high schools into smaller learning academies, districts believe they can educate students more effectively. However, planners face numerous challenges in creating or renovating small schools, especially in urban environments where…

  9. Enhancing Public School Education: A Collaborative Partnership for School Resiliency

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cunningham, Henry R.; Lewis, Starr

    2010-01-01

    Urban schools are plagued with multiple issues that contribute to their low graduation rate. University of Louisville took a step forward by partnering with the school district to transform five schools into high performing schools. Building on the strengths of these schools, a collaborative partnership was developed that involved the entire…

  10. School-Community Links: Supporting Learning in the Middle Years

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hayes, Debra; Chodkiewicz, Andrew

    2006-01-01

    This paper reports on research into how schools, parents and local communities work together to support students' learning during the transition from primary to secondary schools in what is referred to as the middle years of schooling. The research was conducted in four Australian schools within one urban school district. These schools were…

  11. Promoting Children's and Adolescents' Social and Emotional Development: District Adaptations of a Theory of Action.

    PubMed

    Kendziora, Kimberly; Osher, David

    2016-01-01

    This article contributes to the broader discussion of promotion, prevention, and intervention in child and adolescent mental health by describing implementation and early outcomes of an 8-school district demonstration project aimed at making the promotion of social and emotional learning a systemic part of school districts' practice. Eight districts are 2-3 years in to their participation in the 6-year project. The districts are large, are predominantly urban, and serve many students who are at disadvantage. The evaluation involved collection of qualitative data to measure the degree to which the districts realized the goals established in the initiative's theory of action, as well as school climate data, extant student records, and surveys of students' social and emotional competence. To date, results show that districts have followed highly individual pathways toward integrating social and emotional learning systemically, and all have made progress over time. Although school-level implementation remains at moderate levels, 2 districts in which we could examine school climate showed gains from preinitiative years. Four of 6 measured districts showed improvement in social and emotional competence for students in Grade 3, and achievement and discipline showed overall improvements across all districts. Overall findings show that implementation of the initiative's theory of action by school districts is feasible, even in times of budgetary stress and leadership turnover. This establishes the potential for school districts to serve as a lever of change in the promotion of students' social and emotional development and mental wellness.

  12. School Health Profiles 2014: West Virginia Rankings

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    West Virginia Department of Education Office of Research, Accountability, and Data Governance, 2015

    2015-01-01

    The School Health Profiles (Profiles) is a system of surveys assessing school health policies and practices in states, large urban school districts, and territories. Profiles surveys are conducted biennially by education and health agencies among middle and high school principals and lead health education teachers. Profiles monitors the current…

  13. University-Partnered New School Designs: Fertile Ground for Research-Practice Partnerships

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Quartz, Karen Hunter; Weinstein, Rhona S.; Kaufman, Gail; Levine, Harold; Mehan, Hugh; Pollock, Mica; Priselac, Jody Z.; Worrell, Frank C.

    2017-01-01

    This commentary suggests that new school design is a fertile policy context for advancing research-practice partnerships. The authors represent four public universities that have created new school designs in partnership with urban school districts. Unlike the laboratory schools of previous generations, these university-partnered public schools…

  14. The Neighborhood School Stigma: School Choice, Stratification, and Shame

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    McWilliams, Julia Ann

    2017-01-01

    Social scientists have begun to document the stratifying effects of over a decade of unprecedented charter growth in urban districts. An exodus of students from traditional neighborhood schools to charter schools has attended this growth, creating troubling numbers of vacant seats in neighborhood schools as well as concentrating larger percentages…

  15. Chronic Disease Medication Administration Rates in a Public School System

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Weller, Lawrence; Fredrickson, Doren D.; Burbach, Cindy; Molgaard, Craig A.; Ngong, Lolem

    2004-01-01

    Anecdotal reports suggest school nurses and staff treat increasing numbers of public school students with chronic diseases. However, professionals know little about actual disease burden in schools. This study measured prevalence of chronic disease medication administration rates in a large, urban midwestern school district. Data from daily…

  16. Processes and Power in School Budgeting across Four Large Urban School Districts.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Goertz, Margaret E.; Hess, G. Alfred, Jr.

    1998-01-01

    Uses data from four cities (Chicago, Fort Worth, New York, and Rochester) to explore schools' budgetary and personnel discretion under school-based budgeting; how resource-allocation decisions are made; and factors influencing expenditure decisions. A school-based-budgeting process may increase stakeholder involvement and satisfaction without…

  17. Examination of the food and nutrient content of school lunch menus of two school districts in Mississippi.

    PubMed

    Addison, Clifton C; Jenkins, Brenda W; White, Monique S; Young, Lavon

    2006-09-01

    This study examined the diet quality of the school meals in two Mississippi school districts and compared them to the national guidelines. We examined the lunch menus of the two school districts that participated in the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program focusing on food quality and assessing both healthy and unhealthy foods and eating behaviors. This analysis was completed through a computerized review used to accurately determine the nutrient content. Both the standard and the alternative meals provided by the cafeterias in the two school districts exceeded the minimum requirement for calories for all grade levels. The meals from the urban schools cafeteria provide more calories than meals from the cafeteria in the rural school district. Although schools believe that they are making positive changes to children's diets, the programs are falling short of the nutrient recommendations. Poor nutrition and improper dietary practices are now regarded as important risk factors in the emerging problems of obesity, diabetes mellitus, hypertension and other chronic diseases, with excessive energy intake listed as a possible reason. Dieticians, school professionals and other health care practitioners need to accurately assess energy intake and adequately promote a dietary responsible lifestyle among children.

  18. A Study of Teacher Resilience in Urban Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Patterson, Janice H.; Collins, Loucrecia; Abbott, Gypsy

    2004-01-01

    This paper describes a qualitative research study that investigated strategies used by urban teachers to build their personal resilience. Sixteen resilient teachers from four urban districts that reported student achievement equal to or higher than the state average on standard tests of reading and mathematics were interviewed. The definition of…

  19. Limited Access to AP Courses for Students in Smaller and More Isolated Rural School Districts. National Issue Brief Number 80

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gagnon, Douglas J.; Mattingly, Marybeth J.

    2015-01-01

    This brief assesses trends in access to, enrollment in, and success in Advanced Placement (AP) coursework in relation to school district poverty, racial composition, and urbanicity. It uses data merged from the 2011-2012 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), the 2012 Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE), and the 2010 Decennial U.S.…

  20. The Expanding Educational Services Sector: Neoliberalism and the Corporatization of Curriculum at the Local Level in the US

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sloan, Kris

    2008-01-01

    This study analyzes and describes the links between the curriculum policies of one urban school district in the US and an intervention by the economics firm Standard & Poor's (S&P). It characterizes the languages and values introduced to the district leadership by S&P as ideologically neoliberal. This school-level case study that makes…

  1. Examining Behavioral, Relational, and Cognitive Engagement in Smaller Learning Communities: A Case Study of Reform in One Suburban District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Davis, Heather A.; Chang, Mei-Lin; Andrzejewski, Carey E.; Poirier, Ryan R.

    2010-01-01

    The purpose of this project was to examine the impact of Smaller Learning Community reform on students' behavioral, relational, and cognitive engagement in a suburban school district experiencing urbanization. We describe a project in which we evaluated the engagement of a cohort of 8th grade students as they transitioned to high school (n = 605).…

  2. Why Did a U.S. Secondary School District Retain Teacher-Librarians in a Time of Economic Crisis? A Case Study

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ewbank, Ann Dutton

    2010-01-01

    The number of U.S. teacher-librarians has greatly diminished despite advocacy efforts by stakeholders. This case study investigated the factors that led governing board members in a mid-sized urban high school district to retain certified teacher-librarian positions despite a major economic crisis. Themes constructed through the analysis were:…

  3. Barriers and Facilitators to Career Advancement by Top-Level, Entry-Level and Non-Administrative Women in Public School Districts: A Mixed Methods Study

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Ahmed, Eman Ibrahim El-Desouki

    2011-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to investigate the barriers and facilitators to career advancement among women administrators occupying top-level positions, those occupying entry-level positions and those in non-administrative positions in both rural and urban public school districts in central Pennsylvania. The need to increase the awareness of the…

  4. The Structure and Climate of Size: Small Scale Schooling in an Urban District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    LeChasseur, Kimberly

    2009-01-01

    This study explores mechanisms involved in small scale schooling and student engagement. Specifically, this study questions the validity of arguments for small scale schooling reforms that confound the promised effects of small scale schooling "structures" (such as smaller enrollments, schools-within-schools, and smaller class sizes)…

  5. Evaluation Findings from High School Reform Efforts in Baltimore

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Smerdon, Becky; Cohen, Jennifer

    2009-01-01

    The Baltimore City Public School System (BCPSS) is one of the first urban districts in the country to undertake large-scale high school reform, phasing in small learning communities by opening new high schools and transforming large, comprehensive high schools into small high schools. With support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a…

  6. School and Family Counselors Work Together to Reduce Fighting at School

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Canfield, Brian S.; Ballard, Mary B.; Osmon, Bonnie C.; McCune, Cecil

    2004-01-01

    To address the problem of fighting in four urban middle schools, school and family counselors collaborated to provide school-based multifamily counseling as an alternative to the mandatory 3-day external suspension program. Supported by district leaders and local school principals, the program was successful in reducing fighting recidivism rates.…

  7. Converting Data to Knowledge: One District's Experience Using Large-Scale Proficiency Assessment

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Davin, Kristin J.; Rempert, Tania A.; Hammerand, Amy A.

    2014-01-01

    The present study reports data from a large-scale foreign language proficiency assessment to explore trends across a large urban school district. These data were used in conjunction with data from teacher and student questionnaires to make recommendations for foreign language programs across the district. This evaluation process resulted in…

  8. Evaluating Magnet Schools Effectively: Challenges and Cautions.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gaines, Margie L.

    Magnet schools have become increasingly popular as alternatives to traditional curriculum offerings and as tools to promote voluntary desegregation in urban school districts. Most evaluations of magnet schools have been concerned with monitoring objectives and compliance with regulations. Few reports assess the impact of magnet curricula on…

  9. Medications at School: Disposing of Pharmaceutical Waste

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Taras, Howard; Haste, Nina M.; Berry, Angela T.; Tran, Jennifer; Singh, Renu F.

    2014-01-01

    Background: This project quantified and categorized medications left unclaimed by students at the end of the school year. It determined the feasibility of a model medication disposal program and assessed school nurses' perceptions of environmentally responsible medication disposal. Methods: At a large urban school district all unclaimed…

  10. The Charter School Catch-22

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hill, Paul T.; Lake, Robin J.

    2010-01-01

    When charter schools first emerged nearly two decades ago, critics claimed they would promote segregation by serving privileged white students whose families take advantage of choice. But state laws, philanthropists, and charter school founders targeted these new schools to serve disadvantaged students in urban districts. Critics then tried to…

  11. Philanthropic Due Diligence: Exploratory Case Studies To Improve Investments in Urban Schools.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Campbell, Christine; Harvey, James; DeArmond, Michael

    This paper is designed to help funders avoid some of the pitfalls of embarking on major reform efforts in troubled urban districts, proposing exploratory case studies as a tool to improve philanthropic giving. The paper explains what is behind the two major flaws of philanthropic investment (not knowing how one thinks schools will improve and not…

  12. Meeting the Needs of Urban Youths in Columbus City Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Deglau, Dena A.; Barnes, Diane

    2009-01-01

    With 55 percent of the 53,400 students on free and reduced lunch programs, a 78 percent mobility rate, and a diverse population, Columbus City Schools (CCS) in Ohio faces the challenges common to other urban districts. In spite of the challenges, CCS has made a long-term commitment to engage students in high-quality physical education and physical…

  13. Implementing Problem-Solving Techniques in an Urban Central Office Department by Establishing Teams and Infusing TQM Concepts.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Smith, Jewell R.

    This practicum is designed to assist central office personnel in evaluating the work environment for better coordination to accomplish work, plan for a change effort, and implement a participatory change initiative. The work setting involved a K-12 urban school district (193 schools) containing 431 central-office administrators and more than…

  14. Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps Career Academies and Their Impact on Academic Achievement in Urban Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Neely, Sheryl Austin

    2012-01-01

    Low attendance, poor behavior, low test scores, and low graduation rates among at-risk students have created a concern in urban school districts. The purpose of this study was to illuminate the impact of Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps (JROTC) Academy programs on students' academic performance. The theoretical foundation of the research…

  15. Interpersonal Relationships and the Development of Behavior Problems in Adolescents in Urban Schools: A Longitudinal Study

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Montague, Marjorie; Cavendish, Wendy; Enders, Craig; Dietz, Samantha

    2010-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to investigate the trajectories of behavioral problems for a sample of predominately minority adolescents (n = 212, 91% African-American and/or Hispanic, 45% boys, 55% girls) in a large, urban school district and to determine the impact of parental and peer relationships, gender, and risk status on their development…

  16. The Association between Externalizing Behavior Problems, Teacher-Student Relationship Quality, and Academic Performance in Young Urban Learners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sanchez Fowler, Laura T.; Banks, Tachelle I.; Anhalt, Karla; Der, Heidi Hinrichs; Kalis, Tara

    2008-01-01

    The present study examined the relation between teacher ratings of student social functioning and academic performance and teacher-student relationship quality. Data were collected from 230 students and 20 teachers in two high-poverty, low-performing schools in a large urban school district in the Midwest. Students were 93% African American.…

  17. Principal Sensemaking of Inclusion: A Multi-Case Study of Five Urban School Principals

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    DeMatthews, David Edward

    2012-01-01

    This study examined how five principals working in one urban school district made sense of inclusion. I employed a multi-case study guided by the theoretical framework of sensemaking. Weick's sensemaking theory was useful in examining the way principals made sense of inclusion. Each of the seven characteristics of Weick's sensemaking…

  18. An Exploratory Study of Value-Added and Academic Optimism of Urban Reading Teachers

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Huff-Franklin, Clairie L.

    2017-01-01

    The purpose of this study is to explore the correlation between state-recorded value- added (VA) scores and academic optimism (AO) scores, which measure teacher self-efficacy, trust, and academic emphasis. The sample for this study is 87 third through eighth grade Reading teachers, from fifty-five schools, in an urban school district in Ohio who…

  19. Cultivating Leadership Development for Support Staff.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Russell, Sharon

    1997-01-01

    Describes an urban school district's focus on leadership development for support staff. The project identified and trained 500 front-line supervisors representing office managers, food service managers, head custodians, and district maintenance supervisors. This paper explains program design, objectives, participants, management support, content,…

  20. Making Waves or Treading Water? An Analysis of Charter Schools in New York State

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Silverman, Robert Mark

    2013-01-01

    This article compares charter schools and other public schools in New York State. School Report Card (SRC) data measuring student, teacher, and school characteristics from the state's 16 urban school districts with charter schools were examined. Descriptive and multivariate analysis was used. The findings suggest that there are more similarities…

  1. Public school segregation and juvenile violent crime arrests in metropolitan areas.

    PubMed

    Eitle, David; Eitle, Tamela McNulty

    2010-01-01

    Previous research has established an association between residential segregation and violent crime in urban America. Our study examines whether school-based segregation is predictive of arrests of juveniles for violent crimes in U.S. metro areas. Using Census, Uniform Crime Report, and Common Core data for 204 metro areas, a measure of school-based racial segregation, Theil's entropy index, is decomposed into two components: between- and within-district segregation. Findings reveal evidence of a significant interaction term: Within-district segregation is inversely associated with arrests for juvenile violence, but only in metropolitan areas with higher than average levels of between-district segregation.

  2. Job Satisfaction among Elementary School Teachers

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chambers, Sandy Kay Bass

    2010-01-01

    This study examined teacher job satisfaction as influenced by school factors. One hundred and twenty-four elementary teachers, from one large urban school district in North Carolina, rated their level of job satisfaction. The independent variables were schools factors of (a) academic achievement, (b) student racial composition, and (c) social…

  3. Parents as Partners

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Brooks, Michele P.

    2011-01-01

    Family involvement is a key ingredient of improving underperforming schools, but families are often unaware of how to get involved. To engage families in schools, an urban school district offers Parent University to teach family members how to become leaders in schools and advocates for their children. Parent University is one of Boston Public…

  4. Student Mobility, Segregation, and Achievement Gaps: Evidence from Clark County, Nevada

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Welsh, Richard O.

    2018-01-01

    Student mobility and school segregation are two important issues with significant equity implications for urban school districts that are often addressed separately. This article examines the relationship between student mobility and school segregation. The findings indicate that more segregated schools typically have smaller within-school…

  5. School Nurse Perspectives regarding Their Vocational Decisions

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Smith, Shirley G.; Firmin, Michael W.

    2009-01-01

    This is a phenomenological, qualitative study of 25 school nurses employed in a large, urban school district in the Midwestern section of the United States. The study's participants possess histories of professional work experiences in nursing specialties other than school nursing. Thematic analysis of the data revealed three prominent factors…

  6. Strategic School Funding for Improved Student Achievement

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Chambers, Jay G.; Brown, James R.; Levin, Jesse; Jubb, Steve; Harper, Dorothy; Tolleson, Ray; Manship, Karen

    2010-01-01

    This article features Strategic School Funding for Results (SSFR) project, a new joint initiative of the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and Pivot Learning Partners (PLP) aimed at improving school finance, human resources, and management systems in large urban school districts. The goal of the project is to develop and implement more…

  7. An Advocate for Every Student at Millard Central Middle School

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Balkus, Beth

    2006-01-01

    Central Middle School, part of the Millard Public School District, is a grade six through eight urban school located in Omaha, Nebraska. Omaha has a metropolitan and surrounding suburban population of approximately one million. Along with approximately 800 students in traditional middle school teams, CMS also offers a Montessori mini-magnet and…

  8. Reversing the Cycle of Deterioration in the Nation's Public School Buildings

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Council of the Great City Schools, 2014

    2014-01-01

    Across the nation, large urban school districts are experiencing premature and rapidly accelerating deterioration of school buildings. The conditions of buildings and equipment, most importantly in classrooms and school support spaces, are deteriorating to the point of hindering the core mission of schools: educating children. This report is the…

  9. Social Network Implications of Normative School Transitions in Non-Urban School Districts

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Temkin, Deborah A.; Gest, Scott D.; Osgood, D. Wayne; Feinberg, Mark; Moody, James

    2018-01-01

    This article expands research on normative school transitions (NSTs) from elementary to middle school or middle to high school by examining the extent to which they disrupt structures of friendship networks. Social network analysis is used to quantify aspects of connectedness likely relevant to student experiences of social support. Data were…

  10. Measuring School and Teacher Effectiveness in EPIC Charter School Consortium--Year 2. Final Report

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Potamites, Liz; Booker, Kevin; Chaplin, Duncan; Isenberg, Eric

    2009-01-01

    New Leaders for New Schools, a nonprofit organization committed to training school principals, heads the Effective Practices Incentive Community (EPIC), an initiative that offers financial awards to effective educators. Through this initiative, New Leaders offers financial awards to educators in two urban school districts and a consortium of…

  11. In Good Faith.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Colgan, Craig

    2001-01-01

    Since 1991, the number of school district/faith-based organization partnerships jumped from 3 to 40 percent, promoted by President Clinton and the federally funded 21st Century Community Learning Centers initiative. Keys to success are identified, and programs, benefits, and problems in three large urban districts are profiled. (MLH)

  12. What's RITE in St. Louis? Empowering Urban Youth through a Community Tutoring Collaborative

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Cochran, Judith A.; Gardner-Andrews, Anna; Benson, Prescott W.; Durbin, Timothy; Peeler, Michelle

    2017-01-01

    This study profiles tutoring programs that empower urban youth within the Regional Institute of Tutorial Education (RITE), a community collaborative of universities, youth agencies, community service organizations, and school districts. Representative members of RITE detail how they address shared urban problems of academic deficits, school…

  13. The Impact of Service Learning on Pre-Service Teachers Preconceptions of Urban Education

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Weber, Sherri

    2017-01-01

    Urban schools, especially those serving high minority, high poverty, and low performing students, are in desperate need of high-quality teachers, yet issues with retention, recruitment, and preparedness plague urban districts (Aragon, Culpepper, McKee & Perkins, 2014). Teacher educators are challenged to prepare teacher candidates to overcome…

  14. UTEP: Urban Teacher Education Program. Final Report to the Lilly Endowment On Program Evaluation.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sandoval, Pamela A.

    The Urban Teacher Education Program (UTEP) is a project of Indiana University Northwest (IUN) and three urban school districts (Gary, East Chicago, and Hammond, Indiana) to develop novice teachers, continue professional development among experienced professionals, and provide a forum for research on teacher education. Following discussion of the…

  15. Enhancing Teacher Efficacy for Urban STEM Teachers Facing Challenges to Their Teaching

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Seals, Christopher; Mehta, Swati; Berzina-Pitcher, Inese; Graves-Wolf, Leigh

    2017-01-01

    This paper explores challenges of teaching in relation to teachers' efficacy for 49 teachers who were part of a year-long teacher development program (PD) called the UrbanSTEM program. This program took place in an urban school district that serves over 300,000 students. This research asked if there are common challenges that urban teachers face…

  16. School Improvement Grants: Progress Report from America's Great City Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Council of the Great City Schools, 2015

    2015-01-01

    This report measures trends in performance among urban schools receiving federal School Improvement Grant (SIG) awards as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). The Council of the Great City Schools aims to document how member districts of the Council of the Great City Schools implemented SIG and specifically what…

  17. Thinking Big about Getting Small: An Ideological Genealogy of Small-School Reform

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Kafka, Judith

    2008-01-01

    Background: Support for small schools, and specifically for the creation of small, autonomous schools of choice, has grown considerably in the past decade--particularly in the context of urban schooling. Funded by private and public monies, small-school initiatives have been implemented in most of the nation's city school districts and have become…

  18. Erasure and Survival: Creating a Future and Managing a Past in a Restructuring High School

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Galletta, Anne; Ayala, Jennifer

    2008-01-01

    Background/Context: With the growth of the small-school movement, many urban districts have restructured large underperforming high schools into new, small high schools or schools-within-a-school designed to engage adolescents in rigorous and meaningful learning along with strong teacher-student relationships. In the case of this study, the…

  19. The "U" in UTEP: Development of the Urban Curriculum and Its Delivery. Second Year Report to the Indiana Department of Education, Teacher Training and Licensing Advisory Committee.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Sandoval, Pamela A.

    This report provides an outline of the Urban Teacher Education Program (UTEP), describes curriculum development and delivery, and discusses the progress that has been made toward program goals. UTEP is a school district/university consortium for school-based professional preparation and development. Members of the consortium include: Indiana…

  20. Educational Followership on Twitter and Teacher Ratings on the Teacher Evaluation and Support System for One Urban Texas School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Terry, Shannon Dae

    2017-01-01

    The purpose of this quantitative study was to test the theory of connectivism (Downes, 2012) by comparing Twitter educational followership and no Twitter educational followership in terms of the Texas Teacher Evaluation and Support System (T-TESS) rating scores for elementary, junior high, and high school teachers in a large urban public-school…

  1. A Descriptive Study of Technology Use in an Urban Setting: Implications for Schools Change

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Teclehaimanot, Berhane

    2008-01-01

    Technology is an integral part of educational goals today. A study of technology use in a large urban Midwestern school district found that teachers have equipment available to them, but it is oftentimes inadequate, inconvenient, or not working. Teachers would like to use technology, but in reality they don't use it. Part of the reason is lack of…

  2. The Prevalence and Correlates of Compassion Fatigue, Compassion Satisfaction, and Burnout among Teachers Working in High-Poverty Urban Public Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Abraham-Cook, Shannon

    2012-01-01

    Although public school educators employed in high-poverty urban districts are likely to encounter traumatized children on a regular basis, there is a scarcity of research exploring the psychological effects of secondary traumatic stress exposure in this population. As such, a primary goal of the study was to explore the prevalence and correlates…

  3. Strengthening Educational Technology in K-8 Urban Schools and in Preservice Teacher Education: A Practitioner-Faculty Collaborative Process

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Murphy, Karen; Richards, Judith; Lewis, Colleen; Carman, Elizabeth

    2005-01-01

    If classroom teachers are to meet the need for meaningful integration of technology in educational settings, there must be a restructuring of both teacher preparation programs and current classroom practice. The purpose of this paper is to share the progress of a collaborative partnership between an urban school district and a college of education…

  4. Examination of the Food and Nutrient Content of School Lunch Menus of Two School Districts in Mississippi

    PubMed Central

    Addison, Clifton C.; Jenkins, Brenda W.; White, Monique S.; Young, Lavon

    2006-01-01

    This study examined the diet quality of the school meals in two Mississippi school districts and compared them to the national guidelines. We examined the lunch menus of the two school districts that participated in the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program focusing on food quality and assessing both healthy and unhealthy foods and eating behaviors. This analysis was completed through a computerized review used to accurately determine the nutrient content. Both the standard and the alternative meals provided by the cafeterias in the two school districts exceeded the minimum requirement for calories for all grade levels. The meals from the urban schools cafeteria provide more calories than meals from the cafeteria in the rural school district. Although schools believe that they are making positive changes to children’s diets, the programs are falling short of the nutrient recommendations. Poor nutrition and improper dietary practices are now regarded as important risk factors in the emerging problems of obesity, diabetes mellitus, hypertension and other chronic diseases, with excessive energy intake listed as a possible reason. Dieticians, school professionals and other health care practitioners need to accurately assess energy intake and adequately promote a dietary responsible lifestyle among children. PMID:16968975

  5. Characteristics of joint use agreements in school districts in the United States: findings from the School Health Policies and Practices Study, 2012.

    PubMed

    Everett Jones, Sherry; Wendel, Arthur M

    2015-04-16

    Joint use or shared use of public school facilities provides community access to facilities for varied purposes. We examined a nationally representative sample of school districts in the United States to identify characteristics associated with having a formal joint use agreement (JUA) and with the kinds of uses to which JUAs apply. We analyzed data from the 2012 School Health Policies and Practices Study. The response rate for the module containing questions about formal JUAs was 60.1% (N = 630). We used multivariate logistic regression models to examine the adjusted odds of having a formal JUA and χ(2) analyses to examine differences in district characteristics associated with the uses of the JUA. Among the 61.6% of school districts with a formal JUA, more than 80% had an agreement for the use of indoor and outdoor recreation facilities; other uses also were identified. JUAs were more common in urban than rural areas, in large than small school districts, and in the West compared with the Midwest, South, and Northeast. In many districts, school facilities appear to be an untapped resource for community members. Formal JUAs provide an opportunity for shared use while addressing issues of liability, cost, and logistics.

  6. An Interdistrict Transfer Program

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gross, Norman

    1975-01-01

    This testimony, before the May 1974 public hearings of the New York City Commission on Human Rights by the Administrator, Urban-Suburban Transfer Program and Inter district Transfer Program, West Irondequoit School District, New York, reviews a program which began with 25 minority group youngsters from one racially-imbalanced Rochester school…

  7. Case Study on the Journey of an Elementary School Labeled as a Persistently Low-Achieving School

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Duncan, Annette

    2012-01-01

    This study examined an elementary school, located in an urban school district, which was labeled as a Persistently Low-Achieving School (PLAS) by the federal government in 2009 in order to determine how the school planned to change leadership and staff; increase student achievement; and implement new approaches for changes in school climate. The…

  8. Demographic and financial characteristics of school districts with low and high à la Carte sales in rural Kansas Public Schools.

    PubMed

    Nollen, Nicole L; Kimminau, Kim S; Nazir, Niaman

    2011-06-01

    Reducing à la carte items in schools-foods and beverages sold outside the reimbursable meals program-can have important implications for childhood obesity. However, schools are reluctant to reduce à la carte offerings because of the impact these changes could have on revenue. Some foodservice programs operate with limited à la carte sales, but little is known about these programs. This secondary data analysis compared rural and urban/suburban school districts with low and high à la carte sales. Foodservice financial records (2007-2008) were obtained from the Kansas State Department of Education for all public K-12 school districts (n=302). χ² and t tests were used to examine the independent association of variables to à la carte sales. A multivariate model was then constructed of the factors most strongly associated with low à la carte sales. In rural districts with low à la carte sales, lunch prices and participation were higher, lunch costs and à la carte quality were lower, and fewer free/reduced price lunches were served compared to rural districts with high à la carte sales. Lunch price (odds ratio=1.2; 95% confidence interval, 1.1 to 1.4) and free/reduced price lunch participation (odds ratio=3.0; 95% confidence interval, 1.0 to 9.8) remained in the multivariate model predicting low à la carte sales. No differences were found between urban/suburban districts with low and high à la carte sales. Findings highlight important factors to maintaining low à la carte sales. Schools should consider raising lunch prices and increasing meal participation rates as two potential strategies for reducing the sale of à la carte items without compromising foodservice revenue. Copyright © 2011 American Dietetic Association. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  9. Linking Schools of Thought to Schools of Practice

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hunt, Lucy; Yoshida-Ehrmann, Erin

    2016-01-01

    Project Linking Learning ("Link") was created to target the needs of gifted students in urban school districts with historically underserved populations. Project Linking Learning implemented a linking curriculum between in-class instruction and an afterschool enrichment program for selected students in second through fifth grade.…

  10. The Kalamazoo Promise Scholarship

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Bartik, Timothy J.; Lachowska, Marta

    2014-01-01

    This study takes advantage of the unexpected announcement of the Kalamazoo Promise to study its effects on student achievement and behavior in high school. The Kalamazoo Promise provides college scholarships to graduates of Kalamazoo Public Schools (KPS), a midsized urban school district in Michigan that is racially and economically diverse.…

  11. Perceptions of Restorative Justice in Urban High Schools

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Crowe, Kathy R.

    2018-01-01

    Purpose: The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine, understand, and describe the elements of restorative justice programs (relationships, community building, accountability, empathy) that high school principals and teachers in public school districts located in San Bernardino County, California perceive as most beneficial for changing…

  12. Early Adolescent Health Risk Behaviors, Conflict Resolution Strategies, and School Climate

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    LaRusso, Maria; Selman, Robert

    2011-01-01

    Drawing upon an ethnically and socio-economically diverse sample of 323 7th grade students from twelve urban schools within one school district, this mixed method study examined early adolescents' self-reported health risk behaviors as related to their conflict resolution strategies and their school's conflict resolution climate. Survey data…

  13. School Choice, Student Mobility, and School Quality: Evidence from Post-Katrina New Orleans

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Welsh, Richard O.; Duque, Matthew; McEachin, Andrew

    2016-01-01

    In recent decades, school choice policies predicated on student mobility have gained prominence as urban districts address chronically low-performing schools. However, scholars have highlighted equity concerns related to choice policies. The case of post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans provides an opportunity to examine student mobility patterns in…

  14. Study of the Perceptions of Middle School Principals on Teacher Absenteeism within an Urban School District

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Seibert, Judy C.

    2013-01-01

    Nationally, teacher absenteeism has become problematic, in part, as a result of collective bargaining agreements between teachers' unions and school boards. Additionally, teacher absenteeism is increasingly problematic because the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) requires schools to meet yearly academic targets in reading and mathematics. The…

  15. Patterns of Exclusionary Discipline by School Typology, Ethnicity, and Their Interaction

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Noltemeyer, Amity; Mcloughlin, Caven S.

    2010-01-01

    Although exclusionary discipline has been linked to a variety of negative student outcomes, it continues to be utilized by schools. This study investigates two critical variables as they relate to exclusionary discipline: School typology (i.e., urban, rural, suburban) and student ethnicity. Using data from 326 Ohio school districts, a MANCOVA…

  16. Making School Choice Work

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    DeArmond, Michael; Jochim, Ashley; Lake, Robin

    2014-01-01

    School choice is increasingly the new normal in urban education. But in cities with multiple public school options, how can civic leaders create a choice system that works for all families, whether they choose a charter or district public school? To answer this question, the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) researchers surveyed 4,000…

  17. Unmasking Vandalism: A Case of Social Justice Leadership Complexities

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Gill, Hartej

    2013-01-01

    Waterfront Elementary School is located in a very affluent neighbourhood in a large urban multicultural school district. The school has some diversity in terms of its student population, but the majority of the students are White and come from upper middle-class families. Ms. Courtney Williams, the principal of the school was transferred to…

  18. Class Size Reduction in a Large Urban School District: A Mixed Methodology Evaluation Research Study.

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Munoz, Marco A.

    This study evaluated the Class Size Reduction (CSR) program in 34 elementary schools in Kentucky's Jefferson County Public Schools. The CSR program is a federal initiative to help elementary schools improve student learning by hiring additional teachers. Qualitative data were collected using unstructured interviews, site observations, and document…

  19. 77 FR 35947 - Applications for New Awards; Arts in Education National Program

    Federal Register 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014

    2012-06-15

    ... practices, policies, and student outcomes in elementary or secondary schools. (c) Providing reliable and... schools and school districts throughout the country, including in at least one urban, at least one rural... Persistently Lowest-Achieving Schools (up to an additional 5 points). Projects that are designed to address one...

  20. Building Relationships, Yielding Results: How Superintendents Can Work with School Boards to Create Productive Teams

    ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

    Hackett, Julie L.

    2015-01-01

    In "Building Relationships, Yielding Results," the seasoned superintendent of an urban school district provides a clear road map for effective collaboration with school boards and the type of relationship-building required to achieve long-term, sustainable reforms. Instead of keeping school board members at arm's length or inundating…

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