Scholar-Practitioner Reflections on the Urban Education Contexts of Race and Social Class in the Current Climate of Standards and Accountability
Th e complexity of urban education continues to be a challenge for urban educators. Th is paper explores the urban education context of race and social class in the current climate of standards and accountability through the refl ections of two public school scholar-practitioners. First, the fundamental tenets of scholar-practitioner leadership are presented in the context of a critical pragmatic praxis. Th e perspectives of two Philadelphia scholar-practitioner urban educators in their attempts to deal with urban educational complexity in relation to the infl uences of race, social class, and the standards and accountability mandates are presented. Th e one educator is a charter school Social Studies Department chairperson, and the other is the academic facilitator for a tech prep consortium at a Philadelphia community college. Additionally, both educators discuss how the scholar-practitioner concept positions them to better deal with the complex challenges of urban education.
A Study of Ninth-Grade Transition Practices across the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Concerns over the academic success of first-time ninth-grade students transitioning into the high school setting continue to stimulate substantial interest in identifying the various factors that cause the ninth-grade bottleneck. Extensive research shows that when ninth-grade students transition into the high school setting, students have a difficult time navigating the more academically rigorous, less nurturing, usually larger and anonymous high school setting. Studies have shown that transition practices to help ninth-grade students are successful in making this transition smoother and more successful for incoming freshmen, thereby leading to more credits and a stronger chance for students to earn a diploma. This dissertation is a replication of a previous Virginia Tech study completed by Henry Johnson titled High School Transition Practices for Ninth Graders: A Descriptive Study of Maryland Public High Schools, but it focuses on public schools in the Commonwealth of Virginia. The primary data collection method was a survey that was sent to all Virginia principals. First, results from the survey were analyzed to develop a description of the various transition practices existing in Virginia’s public high schools in relation to school size, demographics, and community type. Second, the survey data were analyzed to determine the various perceptions of school officials concerning the effectiveness of reported transition practices. The data provide a description of the transition practices in Virginia’s public schools. Results from this study give administrators and policymakers an idea of what type of transition practices exist in the
Reversing Underachievement Among Gifted Black Students: Promising Practices and Programs (EDUCATION AND PSYCHOLOGY OF THE GIFTED SERIES)
This text offers a discussion of the effort to end underachievement among gifted Black students and to increase the multicultural and multiracial representation of youth in gifted education.