In this article, I draw on observations and interviews to depict one urban secondary school’s independent reading efforts that resemble a literacy-focused community of practice. This research reconceptualizes our understanding of effective instructional practices for adolescents, emphasizing a multidimensional approach that highlights the role of reading as a social activity.
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From 2000 to 2002, the state of California attempted to expand access to Advanced Placement subjects for students attending public schools. This study shows this intervention succeeded in expanding the AP curricula and enrollments at disadvantaged schools; however, schools serving affluent communities broadened their AP offerings at the same (if not faster) rate, resulting in effectively maintained inequalities in AP access.
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In this study we use rich cross-national data to examine the distribution of teacher qualifications across two countries, Mexico and South Korea. We find that on average, the distribution of qualified teachers in South Korea is skewed toward disadvantaged children, while Mexican teachers tend to be distributed in a way that favors more advantaged students.
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This is a three-year longitudinal study that links teacher participation in content-focused professional development in mathematics to the use of particular types of instruction, and then examines links between those types of instruction and student achievement.
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“Education Savings Accounts” (choice vouchers) are the latest iteration of school voucher proposals and are touted by free market advocates as the future of school choice policies and a vehicle for education reform. In Arizona, where the state legislature has passed choice vouchers on two occasions, the policy discussion has been framed as a conflict between parental choice and bureaucratic mandates and the courts have sided in favor of parental choice. More correctly, the public policy discussion should be framed as a matter of competing parental choices; the choice to divert public funds away from public schools and the “constitutionally-supported” choice to send students to public schools. In setting priorities to resolve this conflict in an environment of scarce resources, I argue that the next available public school dollar must go toward meeting the constitutional mandate to fully maintain public schools on behalf of those parents who have chosen for their students to attend them before allowing other parents to divert public funds away from public schools. Alternately, if the legislature wants to hold true to their commitment to provide parents with the option to divert public funds away from public schools, a policy option with some legal precedent, then it must first maintain its public schools on behalf of the parents who have chosen for their students to attend them. This latter solution has the potential side benefit of achieving the education reform that advocates covet - maybe in a properly maintained public school system, there will no longer be anymore failing schools or underserved students.
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A case study of teacher bargaining contracts over a 30-year historical period.
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This article critiques the caricaturization of urban communities and their schools as places where students and community members lack agency and resources. Instead, through narrative inquiry, the authors reveal the community cultural wealth that they were exposed to as K-12 students in East St. Louis, Illinois.
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An interview with a young adolescent in jail for selling drugs, reveals the complex interactions among his background, the trauma of witnessing his father's murder, and how he came to "learn" just how unintelligent he was and how unsuccessful he was destined to become. He speaks about his country, culture, and family, and offers perspectives on justice, violence, and a failed educational history.
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This study examines the genesis of a neighborhood educational opportunity zone: a geographically defined area where a disproportionately large population of traditionally marginalized children and families are clustered and resources are intensely focused to respond to the concomitant needs. Guided by sociocultural learning theory, we examine how communities of practice influence the learning among the adults in a neighborhood educational opportunity zone.
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This article considers three movements across the 20th century that sought to reform schools through standards, tests, and accountability, identifies similarities in the ways in which higher status epistemic communities have been repeatedly able to purvey technocratic logics that overwhelm a weakly professionalized educational field, and suggests that educators need to organize themselves into a stronger profession if they want to improve outcomes and free themselves from the whims of external actors.
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The Chicago Teachers Union strike has been alternately characterized as a long awaited stand by organized labor and a self-serving choice to place teachers’ needs above students’. As educators deeply invested in the success of Chicago’s schools, we view both of these takes as simplistic and biased. Because teachers mediate among individual students’ needs, educational policies, and the realities of schools, their knowledge and interests are central to education generally. As they have in the past and still do in the present, teachers unions must continue evolving to remain indispensible to the pursuit of excellent, equitable schooling for all children.
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