NCCRESt

Urban Schools

"A Teacher Wrote This Movie": Challenging the Myths of "One Eight Seven" [movie review]
Reviews "One Eight Seven," a film about a teacher working with at-risk students. The film is an indictment of U.S.

"If There Is a Better Intercultural Plan in Any School System in America, I Do Not Know Where It Is": The San Diego City Schools' Intercultural Education Program, 1946-1949
Explores the history of the San Diego City Schools' attempts at intercultural reform after World War II, noting educators' response to specific student and community needs in the wake of racial, ethnic, and religious tensions. The 3-year intercultural program was one of the first of its kind in California and became a model for other cities to follow.

"Making Democracy Real": Teacher Union and Community Activism To Promote Diversity in the New York City Public Schools, 1935-1950
Examines how an interracial coalition of radical teachers from the Teachers Union of New York City and community activists from Harlem promoted black history and intercultural curriculum and collaborated with parents for school reform during the 1930s-40s. Their efforts to develop more culturally responsive schools were derailed in the late 1940s by the red-baiting of progressive scholars and teacher union activists during the cold war.

"Water as Rough as an Elephant's Foot..." Learning Geography through Poetry Writing at KS2
Describes how bilingual fourth and fifth graders at one London elementary school learned geography by writing poetry. This effort involved: engaging with the topic, consolidating knowledge and understanding, and extending knowledge and understanding.

"Why Tell On Yourself?": A Text-Based Moral Dilemma Revisited
Describes how the author incorporated a shared book reading using the multicultural book "Too Many Tamales" (by G. Soto and E.

A Multicultural Education Experience: The Importance of Process
Discusses issues and problems in the development and implementation of multicultural education programs, focusing on how a group of educators sought to help early childhood teachers deal with the increasing number of intergroup conflicts among their pupils. These educators developed a multicultural education resource book.

Alternative certification, minority teachers, and urban education
Uses data from the Schools and Staffing Survey 1993-94 to study the link between alternative teacher certification, minority teachers, and urban education and to compare alternatively and traditionally certified minority teachers in urban schools. Alternative certification appears to be effective in recruiting minority teachers to urban schools.

An Observational Study of Multicultural Education in Urban Elementary Schools
Presents an observational study of multicultural educational practices within 12 elementary schools in a major metropolitan area of the south central region of the United States. Reveals the use of the Multicultural Teaching Observation Instrument in measuring teacher support of students, classroom equity, and integration of students' culture within a multicultural education setting.

An Urban Field Experience for Rural Preservice Teachers: "I'm Not Afraid--Should I Be?"
Investigated the impact of an urban field experience on rural/suburban preservice teachers, examining what they learned and how they applied their learning. Data from observations and student self-reports indicated that the experience was very positive for the participants, and it raised their consciousness about urban education.

Asian Heritage Pupils, PE and Language
Investigated whether physical education (PE) classes could contribute to verbal skill development among limited English speaking Asian students. Surveys and interviews conducted at inner city English schools indicated that many PE teachers already planned lessons with such learning in mind, and relevant policies were well-developed.

Beyond Classroom-Based Early Field Experiences: Understanding an "Educative Practicum" in an Urban School and Community
Examined the experiences of preservice teachers in an urban school and community-based early field experience (integrated with foundations of education and general methods courses). Data from observations, interviews, reflective writings, and focus groups highlighted five categories of student experience: deepening multicultural, eye-opening and transformational, masked multicultural, partially miseducative, and escaping experiences.

Blending Cultural Anthropology and Multicultural Education: Team Teaching in a Teacher Education Program
Describes how a large urban university and K-6 classroom teachers collaborated to design an undergraduate teacher education program in elementary and special education, creatively combining subject matter curriculum with educational issues and pedagogy to better prepare teachers to succeed in diverse urban schools. The result was the team-taught Liberal Studies Seminar in Anthropology.

Changing middle schools: how to make schools work for young adolescents
This book tells the stories of four urban middle schools that have undergone deep transformation while participating in the Middle Grades Improvement Program (MGIP), an initiative that has nurtured fundamental change in school climate, structure and classroom practice in 16 urban districts and 65 schools in Indiana. .

Classroom Multiculturalism: A Closer Look
Uses field data gathered in two school districts to explore multicultural activity in social studies classrooms. The focus is on the source, treatment, and incorporation of multiculturalism into the lessons.

Collaboration in the Science Classroom To Tackle Racism and Sexism
Describes techniques used in a British secondary school classroom to encourage collaborative learning to promote science while addressing sexism and racism in the classroom. Group work practices were extended to include students monitoring of themselves and their interactions, with feedback and discussion of the social processes.

Colloquium on Student Achievement in Multicultural School Districts: Keynote Address
In educating diverse students, the emphasis should be on what teachers do to make children succeed. Poverty and culture are not impediments to learning, but the quality of service children receive can be an impediment.

Community Elders: The Roles of Parents in a School of ”Choice”
"This paper critiques the common argument that schools will become more responsive to parents and more equitable when ”chosen” by the clients they serve. Based on a qualitative study of an urban Catholic high school that is ”chosen” by an increasingly diverse clientele, the paper demonstrates that, even in schools that are outwardly characterized by values cohesion, shared goals, and voluntary affiliation, interaction between a school and its environment is likely to be a process of ongoing negotiations and unarticulated struggles for voice among unequals.

Community Organizing for School Reform, Washington, DC: A Recovering Plantation
Because the District of Columbia (DC) is a federal district, its governance is peculiar. Poor management, internal strife, unstable leadership, low student achievements, shrinking enrollments, and declining community confidence have plagued the DC public school system.

Community Organizing for School Reform, Washington, DC: A Recovering Plantation
Because the District of Columbia (DC) is a federal district, its governance is peculiar. The DC public school system is plagued by poor management, internal strife, unstable leadership, low student achievement, shrinking enrollment, and declining community confidence.

Creating Cross-Cultural Connections
Describes a project partnership aimed at helping college students and urban high school students better understand each other's worlds, highlighting the massive miscommunication that often occurs in such environments. Through e-mailing, letter writing, face-to-face experiences, literary experiences with multicultural themes, idea walks, reflections, webbing, and quilt making, this project coaxed participants to break institutional and social barriers in their personal systems.

Cultural Proficiency: A Manual for School Leaders
Developed for work in mental health agencies, cultural proficiency is a relatively new approach to diversity that can be applied in educational and community settings. Cultural proficiency refers to the policies and practices of a school or the behaviors of a person that enable the school or person to interact effectively in a culturally diverse environment.

Culturally Relevant Teacher Education: A Canadian Inner-City Case
This case study of an inner-city teacher education program in Canada documents the tensions at work on a social reconstructionist academic staff attempting to produce a culturally relevant teacher education program. Staff members acknowledge the social and educational contexts in which they work while working for the long-term interests of their students.

Cultures in Conflict
The implementation of a multicultural program for African-American and Hispanic students in an urban high school is presented. Increased intergroup tensions relating them to the students' concepts of culture and race are discussed.

Decentering Whiteness: In Search of a Revolutionary Multiculturalism
The present focus on diversity in multicultural education is often misguided because the struggle for ethnic diversity makes progressive political sense only if it can be accompanied by a sustained analysis of the cultural logics of white supremacy. A real revolutionary multiculturalism must consider the construction of subjectivities within relations of power and privilege linked to capitalism.

Discomfort Zones: Learning about Teaching with Care and Discipline in Urban Schools
Multicultural principles, discipline, and curriculum theory should be integrated and revisited across the teacher-education program via case studies, portfolio assessment, and field experiences. Authors deplore prescriptive, procedural approaches to teaching and value ongoing faculty/student conversations, university alliances with "best" teachers and principals, and trust in children's power.

Diversity, Equity and Community in Educational Reform
Educational equity demands are progressively being framed in terms of multiculturalism and diversity within the educational process. This change of focus means that strategies aiming to secure rights should make room for others that emphasize the building of relationships, mutual knowledge, and community.

Editorial. Immigration and Urban Education in the New Millennium: The Diversity and the Challenges
Introduces a special issue that explores new immigration trends and major issues related to K-12 schooling in urban areas. The seven articles fall into three categories: a national and historical overview; examples of two types of educational change; and the acculturation and schooling experiences of various racial/ethnic immigrant groups.

Effects of a Hmong Intern on Hmong Students
A program on Hmong culture, language, and history was implemented in a diverse, urban, public elementary school. Observations of two Hmong students while in the Hmong program and in their regular classroom were compared.

Empowering Pedagogies That Enhance the Learning of Multicultural Students
Discusses the tenets of critical pedagogy, describing research on the presence of those tenets within discourse patterns and pedagogical practices in urban, community-based classrooms. Discourses and pedagogies of three female, African American teachers are highlighted, examining how teachers challenge students to consider alternate life possibilities, become critical thinkers, and consider transformation of their own and others' life situations.

Enhancing Achievement for Language Minority Students: Classroom, School, and Family Contexts
Presents an ecological model for examining the educational and familial contexts that influence the educational achievement of language minority students. The framework outlines conceptual and philosophical bases to serve as guiding principles for urban school reform efforts committed to developing multicultural, pluralistic environments where all students can learn.

Ethnicity and Comparative Youth Disaffection in Multicultural Contexts: Some Multiracial Experiences of Education in Thanet and Lille
Explored youth disaffection, focusing on K-12 schools in England and France. Data from student interviews, staff interviews, and classroom observations indicated that educational inclusion in the two countries was not meeting the educational needs of disaffected youth.

Family Diversity in Urban Schools. ERIC/CUE Digest, Number 148
This digest identifies several common types of nontraditional families and presents a few of their characteristics relevant to their children's education. It also offers some recommendations to help schools provide support for the families to ensure their inclusion in all aspects of schooling.

Forty Years After Brown: The Impact of Immigration Policy on Desegregation
Examines how current legal trends and policies shape the efforts of educators in urban schools serving the multicultural communities where immigrant families reside. Relevant laws and policies are reviewed, as well as the strategies educators use to meet the needs of immigrant children, including access to schools and programs, assessment and placement, and engineered school climates.

Give Us a Taste of Your Quality! A Report from the Heartland on the Role of the Arts in Multicultural Settings
Discusses the role of the arts in multicultural education, explaining how diverse students react to and need support in the arts in order to succeed. Focuses on the efforts of urban elementary and secondary schools in Madison, Wisconsin.

Having Arrived: Dimensions of Educational Success in a Transitional Newcomer School
Examines a program for newly arrived, non-English-speaking immigrant children in a California city. Findings from a fourth-grade class demonstrate how a nurturing setting, culturally flexible teaching approach, linguistic and cultural validation, and a valued spatial environment contribute to newcomer students' success.

Identifying the Prospective Multicultural Educator: Three Signposts, Three Portraits
Investigates how prospective teachers respond to social differences they encounter in educational discourse and public schools, identifying three signposts indicative of prospective multicultural educators (desiring change because of identifying with educational inequality, valuing critical pedagogy and multicultural social reconstructivist education, and wanting to understand educational inequality and its causes). Presents data from observations and interviews with three teacher candidates.

Immigrant Students in New York City Schools
The immigrant population residing in New York City has expanded enormously in recent years and profoundly affected the public school system. As significant as the expansion of immigrant students enrolled in New York City public schools has been, even more remarkable is the diversity in the countries of origin of new students.

Immigration and Pluralism in Urban Catholic Schools
Investigates how Catholic schools are making the transformation from national to multicultural schools as they meet the needs of new immigrants in the inner city. Focuses on the concept of mediating institutions, investigating urban Catholic school principals' willingness to experience diversity.

Improving Urban Schools in the Age of Restructuring
"Restructuring schools in urban settings requires a commitment to establishing and evaluating equity and excellence. Beliefs and values about schooling and the interests of all students should be made explicit and examined by educators in an attitude of critical inquiry.

Inside City Schools: Investigating Literacy in Multicultural Classrooms. The Practitioner Inquiry Series
The members of the Multicultural Collaborative for Literacy and Secondary Schools (the M-CLASS Project) wrote chapters in this book. Their essays deal with classroom research on learning, diversity, bias, inequality, and real teaching issues in a culturally responsive framework.

Involving Parents in Children's Learning: A Strategy To Raise Standards in an Inner-City Primary School
Describes a strategy to raise standards in a British inner-city school through parent involvement in learning and decision making and the recognition of religious and cultural diversity. Communication, particularly with language minority parents, is vital to the program's success.

Mentorships: Transferable Transactions among Teachers
As dispensers of information, mentors can support teachers through career stages from recruitment to retirement. This article explores mentorships as transferable transactions.

Multicultural Education. Theory to Practice
Teachers from two urban elementary schools completed surveys about their multicultural education practices. The surveys examined demographics, content integration, instructional and grouping practices, and parent-community involvement practices.

Newcomer Programs: An Educational Alternative for Secondary Immigrant Students
Examines the small but growing presence of newcomer programs being implemented in urban middle and high schools, providing the rationale for newcomer schools for recent, limited-English-speaking immigrants and summarizing data collected from a national study. Describes program designs in urban schools and their educational goals, instructional practices, and acculturation strategies.

Now You See It; Now You Don't: A District's Short-Lived Commitment to an Alternative High School for Newly Arrived Immigrants
Describes the response of an urban school district to the unexpected enrollment of large numbers of newly arrived immigrants. Focuses on the processes that resulted in the implementation of an alternative high school and its abrupt closure a year later, and explores the implications of these decisions for policy and practice.

Of Kwanzaa, Cinco de Mayo, and Whispering: The Need for Intercultural Education
Multicultural education can improve understandings among students of different ethnic groups only if it is implemented systematically. Research with 75 adolescent mothers in an inner-city California high school shows how the celebration of Kwanzaa leads to exclusion and isolation and the speaking of Spanish results in conflict and resentments.

On...Transformed, Inclusive Schools: A Framework To Guide Fundamental Change in Urban Schools
This report presents a systemic change framework for creating inclusive urban schools. It explains that if a key feature of reform focuses on multicultural education as a fundamental social and educational transformation, then opportunities for all students to achieve educational equity will be realized in U.S.

Organizational Structures to Promote Teacher Engagement in Urban Schools
This monograph considers the prospects for improving teacher engagement in urban schools through professional and organizational reform…. This paper does not focus on the characteristics of urban schools that may make them less effective, but on those that affect motivation and ability to teach all students who appear at the classroom door….

Oyster School Stands the Test of Time
Describes Oyster Elementary School's award-winning two-way bilingual (Spanish-English) program. The school's success has been maintained by strong parent and community support, high academic standards, and ongoing professional development efforts.

Partnership Teaching: Success for All Children Using Math as a Vehicle
Using a constructivist and multicultural approach, math skills were taught in urban elementary classrooms. Acceptance of self and others, teamwork, problem solving, and critical thinking were emphasized.

Perspectives on a Reconceptualized Early Field Experience in an Urban School
Teacher education in the U.S. faces a critical dilemma: preparing white, middle-class preservice teachers to teach increasingly diverse student populations in public schools.

Professional Control and Lay Governance in Schools: Implications for Addressing Student Diversity
Author explores the tension between professional control of schools through educational administrators and lay governance as provided by a board of education as this tension relates to issues of student diversity. New models of school governance are considered for their effects of teacher professionalism with respect to student diversity.

Professional Control and Lay Governance in Schools: Implications for Addressing Student Diversity
Explores the tension between professional control of schools through educational administrators and lay governance as provided by a board of education as this tension relates to issues of student diversity. New models of school governance are considered for their effects of teacher professionalism with respect to student diversity.

Project Change Evaluation Research Brief
Project Change is a community-driven anti-racism initiative operating in four communities: Albuquerque, New Mexico; El Paso, Texas; Knoxville, Tennessee; and Valdosta, Georgia. The formative evaluation of Project Change began in 1994 when all of the sites were still in planning or early action phases.

Project Support Evaluation. Los Angeles Unified School District, Report #3 - Final Evaluation
Project Support, a 3-year project funded by the federal government, was designed as a demonstration of the impact of a comprehensive school-based drug and gang prevention program for high-risk students in six elementary schools in Los Angeles (California).

Raising Achievement for Asian Pupils
Analyzes why ethnic minority groups, such as Asians, are achieving marginal academic success. Analysis of the management, pedagogic, curriculum, resource, and community issues indicates what political guidance might be effective to help improve academic achievement.

Recent Changes in School Desegregation. ERIC/CUE Digest Number 133
This digest discusses some of the major trends and changes that are taking place in school desegregation in the 1990s. One of the most prominent current trends is the increasing number of court cases that release school districts from court supervision of their desegregation efforts (known as granting "unitary" status).

Recentering Multiculturalism: Moving Toward Community
Educators (n=21) in the New York Public School system were interviewed about multicultural education. Some viewed multiculturalism as diversity, others as difference.

Reflections on the Challenges, Possibilities, and Perplexities of Preparing Preservice Teachers for Culturally Diverse Classrooms
Describes one professor's personal struggle and growth in facing the challenges and perplexities of planning and developing strategies to initiate the critical process of teaching multicultural concepts to teacher education students early in their education by providing them field experiences in urban schools. Student attitudes and attitude changes are discussed.

Reinvented inclusive schools: A framework to guide fundamental change
This report presents a systemic change framework for creating inclusive urban schools. It explains that if a key feature of reform focuses on multicultural education as a fundamental social and educational transformation, then opportunities for all students to achieve educational equity will be realized in U.S.

Restructuring Kindergarten in an Urban School District: The Case of Newark, New Jersey
A collaborative project of Bank Street College and the Newark Public Schools, the New Beginnings initiative was designed to bring about progressive restructuring of kindergarten classrooms. This study used a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to examine the impact of the initiative on curriculum, professional development, and student outcomes in its first year.

Restructuring Urban Schools: A Chicago Perspective
The Chicago (Illinois) School Reform Act of 1988 set in motion a chain of reform efforts that have been the subject of considerable study. The plan emphasizes returning control of the schools to parents and the community through school-based management and local school councils.

Service-Learning in Teacher Education: Enhancing the Growth of New Teachers, Their Students, and Communities
This book provides teacher educators, administrators, practicing teachers who work with preservice teachers, policymakers, and researchers with information on the conceptual, research, and application areas of service-learning in preservice teacher education.

Small schools, big imaginations: A creative look at urban public schools
School reform leaders from Chicago (Illinois), Denver (Colorado), New York (New York), Seattle (Washington), Philadelphia (Pennsylvania), and Los Angeles (California) created the Cross City Campaign for Urban School Reform to work to improve urban education so that all urban youth are well-prepared for postsecondary education, work, and citizenship.

Strength through diversity: Houston Consortium for professional development and technology centers
The challenges of burgeoning enrollment and the high concentration of lower-income and ethnic minority students, a climate of low expectations, teacher and student mobility, and increasing drop-out rates, led to the formation of the Houston (Texas) Consortium of Urban Professional Development Centers.

Student Self-Empowerment: A Dimension of Multicultural Education
Examined ways in which 27 urban ninth graders from diverse backgrounds displayed empowering behaviors and attitudes. Students clearly voiced that they were in control of their actions.

Teacher Education in Urban School-Based, Multi-Agency Collaboratives
Content Abstract: This article suggests that students in teacher education programs can benefit from the experience of working with an urban school-based multi-agency collaborative if presented early in the learning process. This is particularly important because constructing new learning about issues of race and poverty may affect students’ ability to successfully teach in an urban school.

Teacher Self-Evaluation of Renewal Efforts of Their Teaching Practices To Improve Student Achievement
This study evaluated how teachers perceived their efforts to improve their teaching practices by participating in the Jacksonville Urban Educational Partnership (JUEP), a Professional Development School (PDS). The JUEP was designed to create sustained, high quality, professional development systems for inservice educators in three PDSs.

Teacher-Researchers Entering into the World of Limited-English-Proficiency (LEP) Students: Three Case Studies
Examines three white teacher researchers' classroom inquiries on their limited English proficiency students. Teachers were investigating students' way of perceiving, learning, and using their native and second language in different circumstances.

Technology and Multicultural Education: The Question of Convergence
Examines the potential for convergence of technology and multicultural education, identifying strategies for and barriers to developing common ground. The paper explains differences and oppositions, examines parallels in the pedagogical work of the two groups, and discusses whether parallel beliefs and pedagogies might support collaborative, simultaneous efforts toward the achievement of both agendas.

Telling Their Side of the Story: African-American Students' Perceptions of Culturally Relevant Teaching
Examined African American elementary school students' interpretations of culturally relevant teachers within urban contexts. Student responses indicated that culturally relevant teaching strategies had a positive effect on student effort and engagement in class content.

The Academic Achievement of Minority Students: Perspectives, Practices, and Prescriptions
This book presents a collection of papers by educators and researchers who discuss various methods of improving minority student achievement.

The Challenge of Affirmative Action
Explores the challenges of using affirmative action programs when competing groups of underrepresented people vie for limited school resources. The case study of a San Francisco (California) high school illustrates the difficulties of balancing competing goals when affirming diversity and addressing patterns of discrimination conflict with equal treatment of each individual.

The Decline of Youth Suicidal Behavior in an Urban, Multicultural Public School System following the Introduction of a Suicide Prevention and Intervention Program
Reports a five-year longitudinal study of suicidal behavior of students in southern Florida. Describes a district-wide suicide prevention program and offers statistical data organized into annual, monthly, grade-level, and school-level classification of the degree and direction of self-destructive behavior among youth.

The Fight Free Classroom
Describes implementation of the Fight Free Classroom intervention (designed to decrease fighting and aggressiveness by helping students take ownership of their behavior) in an urban elementary school that included students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD). Overall, aggressive acts among students with and without EBD decreased immediately after participation in the intervention.

The Multicultural Science Framework: Research on Innovative Two-Way Immersion Science Classrooms
Reviews the different approaches to multicultural science teaching that have emerged in the past decade, focusing on the Spanish-English two-way immersion classroom, which meets the needs of Spanish speakers learning English and introduces students to the idea of collaboration across languages and cultures. Two urban two-way immersion classrooms in Texas and New York are described.

The Permanent Exclusion of Asian Pupils in Secondary Schools in Central Birmingham
Examined the permanent exclusion of Asian students from secondary schools in Birmingham (England). City school records show that exclusion of Asian male students, particularly of Muslims, is on the increase.

Through Students' Eyes. Combating Racism in United States Schools
Racism has not been eradicated in U.S. schools, even though many educators do not view it as a major deterrent to the learning of minority students.

Training Urban School Counselors and Psychologists To Work with Culturally, Linguistically, Urban, and Ethnically Diverse Populations
Discusses the need to train urban school counselors and psychologists to address the needs of culturally, linguistically, urban, and ethnically diverse (CLUE) students, proposing a major CLUE philosophy training program to be incorporated into the existing degree sequence. Notes major competencies needed for multicultural training and presents key readings to help students and professionals familiarize themselves with the competencies.

Trends and Issues in Urban Education, 1998
This report examines several important trends and issues in urban education and minority education. It reviews major principles for rethinking urban schooling so that students from diverse racial, ethnic, linguistic, and gender groups will be able to receive a more equal education, and it considers specific issues in their education.

Urban Bilingual Teachers and Mentoring for the Future
Reviews the literature on mentoring teachers, focusing on bilingual and bicultural education and emphasizing issues relevant in urban settings. An interactive model of mentoring is proposed in which bilingual teachers, whether mentors or new teachers, can share perspectives sorely needed in this age of increasing cultural diversity.

Waging Peace in Our Schools
The Resolving Conflicts Creatively Program (RCCP) described in this book asserts that schools must educate the child's heart as well as the mind. RCCP began in 1985 as a joint initiative of Educators for Social Responsibility Metropolitan Area and the New York City Board of Education.

What Counts and How: Mathematics Teaching in Culturally, Linguistically, and Socioeconomically Diverse Urban Settings
Examined urban teachers' efforts to embrace mathematics reform with culturally, linguistically, and socioeconomically diverse student populations, noting teachers' roles in providing accessible and valuable mathematical learning opportunities to diverse students. Data from two third grade teachers indicate that such work is complex.

What Makes a Teacher Education Program Relevant Preparation for Teaching Diverse Students in Urban Poverty Schools? (The Milwaukee Teacher Education Center Model)
Urban teachers need a set of attributes that enable them to connect with children and youth in poverty and to function in dysfunctional school districts. The Milwaukee Teacher Education Center's (MTEC's) urban mission is to prepare educators to teach in the real world classroom of urban schools.

Will Privatizing Schools Really Help Inner-City Students of Color?
Although urban public school educators are not achieving optimal results, there is no evidence that for-profit educational companies will do any better or possess special expertise in educating poor students of color. Education Alternatives, Inc.

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Urban Schools