Urban schools

Federal policies to increase student achievement and improve teacher quality underlie this study. After the first year of implementation, eight elementary teachers were interviewed about how they viewed a Response to Intervention (RTI) reform effort. RTI is a federal policy intended to reform instruction by using a tiered, school-wide system. The following question drove our research: After the first year of implementation, how do educators view the RTI change process? Data were analyzed using a consensual qualitative methodology. Results indicated that teachers positively viewed the reform effort. However, many teachers expressed concerns about the implementation of RTI.The majority of teachers associated the following positive outcomes with the first year of reform: using data to inform instructional planning, using progress monitoring to measure the effectiveness of the instruction, and better knowing “when” to refer English language learners for special education services. Teachers identified the culture of the school as “positively mixed,” meaning positive shifts are taking place and teachers are working along a continuum of understanding and adoption practices. Key concerns of implementation are also presented as implications for effective adoption of the model at the elementary school level.

The rollout of rigorous new standards and assessments throughout the country over the last decade has tasked school districts with the responsibility of meeting these challenges equitably across sites. Specifically in math, English language arts, and science, new goals encompass new grade-level content and require new capabilities within these content areas. Despite what may be clear goals, the roadmap for districts to support teachers in their instruction towards these goals has been more nebulous. In Systems for Instructional Improvement, Paul Cobb, Kara Jackson, Erin Henrick, Thomas M. Smith, and the Middle School Mathematics and the Institutional Setting of Teaching (MIST) team propose a pathway for districts to support a coordinated development of ambitious and equitable instruction in response to new state standards. The authors argue that successful efforts towards instructional improvement require the intentional coordination of supports, strategies, and initiatives across the system, namely between district and school leaders as well as classroom teachers. Merging literature on teaching and learning with that of educational policy and leadership, Systems for Instructional Improvement offers district leaders an empirically-based Theory of Action (ToA) across levels, from the classroom to the central office. While the authors' empirical work focuses specifically on supporting the development of ambitious and equitable instruction in middle-grade mathematics across four ethnoracially diverse, traditional public school districts, they also provide a relevant framework applicable to all disciplines. They also provide specific empirical examples related to their practical goal of contributing to the instructional improvement of partnering districts and a broad-level systems analysis that is " relevant to school and district leaders " (p. 228) in the United States. The authors divide Systems for Instructional Improvement into 15 chapters based on the elements of their ToA. In short, the ToA includes three top-level components: (a) a coherent instructional system, (b) school leaders' practices as instructional leaders, and (c) practices from the district office that support school capacity. These top-level components merit (and assuredly have generated) books devoted entirely to each one, but here the authors connect them all together, stressing the importance of their " alignment and coherence " (p. 228). As they note, " no single strategy is, by itself, likely to support instructional improvements that will enable large numbers of students to meet more rigorous learning standards " (p. 3). Privileging a backwards design with student learning at the center, Systems for Instructional Improvement presents an initial overview and outline of the research sites before diving into the coherent instructional system, the first top-level component of the ToA. A visual aid in the Introduction helps organize this multidimensional system. Student learning goals and a vision of high-quality instruction rest in the center, surrounded by three facets: (a) supports for teacher learning, (b) instructional materials and assessments, and (c) supplemental supports for struggling learners. Chapters Four through Eleven address the individual components of these facets, such as pull-out professional development, teacher collaborative time, and supplemental supports. Each chapter includes a discussion of the potentials and limitations of the intervention, a summary of prior research findings, challenges that arose in their partner districts, and areas for future research. Deliberate coordination of these various components becomes a theme threading through these chapters, especially as without this coordination, " teachers feel that they should select the practices that best suit them, thereby undermining the potential of any one form of support [or material] to have a lasting impact " (p. 69).

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 literature, the present study explored how inefficiencies within and across schooling ecologies culminated in what we term as reform stall. This article concludes with a discussion of recommendations that reformers, and districts should consider to increase the prospect of effective implementation of urban school reforms and minimize the likelihood of a reform stall.

African-centered pedagogy aims to cultivate a positive and productive culturally based identity for Black children, and African-centered schools endeavor to supply that cultural base, placing the history, culture, and life experiences of individuals of African descent at the center of everything that they do. Our study examines the historical contexts in which African-centered education has emerged and the justification for racially separate schooling. The article’s major contribution is its examination of whether African-centered schools prepare Black children to participate in a democratic society and whether the construction of an essentialist racial identity might compromise their mission and success. We conclude that African-centered schools provide many of the same strengths found in other forms of community-based education but that they must continue to wrestle with essentialist notions of Black identity on which its discourse is built.

In this article, Travis J. Bristol and Joy Esboldt examine the supports and constraints teachers at one midsized urban school serving predominately Latinx students encountered during school-based professional development aligned with becoming a National Board Certified Teacher (NBCT). Research has established that Black and Latinx students have less access to NBCTs when compared to White students, yet few studies offer insight into the organizational conditions that influence urban school teachers' capacity to earn certification. Drawing on two years of ethnographic observations, interviews, and artifact analysis, this study finds that district and school-based factors constrained teachers' capacity to earn National Board Certification, reporting that participants believed there was a misalignment between the district's vision for instructional improvement, which focused on Direct Instruction, and the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

This study explores the impetus for and impact of four urban teachers' extracurricular investments. Framing teacher investment as work voluntarily undertaken with an eye toward bringing about a highly desired, yet highly uncertain, end, we argue that the outcome of these often-hidden investments have identity and career implications for teachers. Through a comparison of two case studies in the southeast and northeast United States, we investigate why and how teachers come to invest themselves in particular extracurricular projects, the identity implications of the investments, and how the ultimate outcome of the investments may influence their decision to stay in or leave the profession. Findings reveal that teachers' extracurricular investments—either in individual students or whole-school projects—are intimately tied to their identities and career trajectories. Implications are offered for research, teacher education, and policy.

This study investigated the efficacy of INSIGHTS into Children’s Temperament (INSIGHTS) in supporting the
behaviors and engagement of low-income kindergarten and first-grade children with high-maintenance
temperaments. INSIGHTS is a temperament-based social–emotional learning intervention that includes
teacher, parent, and classroom programs. Participants in the study included N = 435 children (Mean
age = 5.38 SD = 0.61) from 22 under-resourced, urban elementary schools who were randomly assigned
to INSIGHTS or a supplemental after-school reading program. Sixty-nine children were identified as
having a high-maintenance temperament, characterized by low levels of task persistence and high
levels of motor activity and negative reactivity. Individual growth modeling showed that children
with high-maintenance temperaments in INSIGHTS evidenced faster reductions in disruptive behaviors
and off-task behaviors across kindergarten and first grade than their peers in the supplemental
reading program. Such children in INSIGHTS also had lower overall levels of both disruptive behaviors
and off-task behaviors and higher levels of behavioral engagement than children in the comparison
group at the end of first grade. Intervention effects for children with high-maintenance temperaments
were partially mediated through improvements in their relationships with their teachers. Implications
for social–emotional learning intervention for high-risk children and early educational policy are
discussed.