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As community schools grow in numbers, this article argues that the model needs to be interrogated in order to address the power imbalances that exist between non-dominant families and schools. This paper draws on a citywide study of parent interviews as well as public documents and interviews with key community school leaders in Baltimore to understand the state of family engagement with community schools. Using Ann Ishimaru's equitable collaboration framework, we analyze the data and conclude that while there is a strong foundation, there is room to develop a model that truly engages families as partners with community schools.

This article examines how a particular set of critical pedagogical strategies was used in a critical service-learning course to shift student perspectives and serve community partners. A self-study of a critical service-learning course that asked university students at a predominantly White institution to serve in urban schools was performed to ascertain how effectively critical service-learning may have addressed the weaknesses in traditional service-learning by (1) dismantling hegemonic discourses White students bring to the classroom and (2) engaging in service that would address inequities present in urban schools. By examining 2 years of data from student assignments, interviews with community partners, and course evaluations, this article argues for the efficacity of several pedagogical tools that can contribute to shifting the perspectives of White students as well as students of color.

The middle school years are important for social and emotional learning, and the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated social-emotional learning needs. At this age, young people are paying attention to the social world and exploring their identities and need learning environments that respond in kind. Jessica Shiller and Inte'a DeShields describe a model for middle school learning built on their need to connect with their peers, learn about their cultural identities, and receive social and emotional support. Pairing college students with middle schoolers, the model for literacy instruction produced positive results.

This article expands upon and problematizes the practice of community-engaged research (CES) through the lens of school closings. Rather than employ a one-dimensional view of CES that portrays university researchers and community partners as collaborating equally on all stages of the research, we suggest a broader, more flexible understanding that incorporates various contextual factors. Drawing on local examples, from New York City and Baltimore, and one national effort to resist school closings, we present three forms of CES: participatory action research (PAR), in which university researchers and community partners collaboratively engaged in almost all aspects of the process; the engaged learner, in which the researcher documented a community organizing campaign with the full support of the campaign organizers; and a grassroots listening project implemented without university partners. In each case, participants had to navigate the thorny issues of power differentials, race and racism, ownership and voice, and presentation and representation. Difficulties notwithstanding, CES has made important contributions to both the literature on and practice of school closings. We conclude the article with a discussion of some of the lingering tensions that characterize community - engaged scholarship.

Public school teachers around the country are engaged in strikes. They walked out of their classrooms and schools to gain attention from state legislators, and not just for better salaries and benefits for themselves (although most Americans agree that teachers need better pay). Teachers are calling attention to a sticky problem in American public education funding: long-term inequitable distribution of funding that predictably falls along racial lines. Maryland, just like every other state, faces this kind of inequity. For example, the state has consistently underfunded Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPSS) in violation of their constitutional definition of adequacy, upheld by the courts multiple times. The funding inequity dates back to the Jim Crow period, during which Blacks paid taxes in Maryland but received nothing in return to fund their schools. For many years, the Baltimore Teachers Union (BTU) argued for more funding and increased salaries for its members. It was so committed to the latter that it negotiated a contract that included merit pay. Neoliberal school reform advocates across the country hailed the 2010 contract that promoted school choice as "progressive." However, many teachers were unhappy with this contract negotiation and thought it ignored many of the issues that were important to teachers. This discontent was not lost on a small group of teachers who decided to come together informally. They began by learning. They read common texts, visited union caucuses in other cities (e.g., Caucus of Rank and File Educators in Chicago), and regularly discussed their vision for Baltimore schools. Through this process, they built durable relationships with each other, reached out to others, and began to identify leaders among them. This group called themselves BMORE (Baltimore Movement of Rank and File Educators). [Co-written with the BMORE Caucus.]

The goal of this article is to describe a university-community partnership sponsored by a university office of civic engagement. University-community partnerships are common, but many collaborations are fraught with challenges because of power inequities or differing goals and ways of operating. Aware of the potential pitfalls, the university-community partnership described moved through these issues together, making differences explicit, yet still remaining committed to a larger project and their collaboration.

As a field, school leadership has maintained a colorblind stance, marginalizing practitioners' awareness of culturally sustaining practice, and erasing the experiences of Indigenous and other minoritized groups of students, teachers, and families. Looking to research and practice that attempts to embrace racial and cultural difference in order to make schools more culturally sustaining places to be is imperative in order for the field to respond to the growing diversity in schools. This article specifically explores culturally sustaining and Indigenous school leadership practices. Using data collected from interviews with ten school leaders in Aotearoa (New Zealand) as well as school documents, this article presents new insights into the implementation of culturally sustaining school leadership, which has implications for theory and practice in the field of educational leadership, which has been too long dominated by white ways of knowing.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the possibilities of public education. We argue that public schools, despite their flaws, still provide necessary spaces of civic engagement. When major social and/or political events happen, young people have few outlets to discuss, process, and understand implications. In this article, we share the experiences of Baltimore's teachers after the death of Freddie Gray, an unarmed Black man, who lived in Baltimore and died in police custody. Following his death, the city exploded in protest, both violent and peaceful. We interviewed eight teachers and collected curriculum samples to make sense of how they used the public school classroom as a space of critical care, social justice, cultural relevance, and anti-racism to contextualize current events in their city. There are implications here for school district professional development and teacher education.

Community schools are schools which recognize that children are apart of communities, and therefore, attempt to directly address the outside of school factors that impact student learning by offering services to students, their families, and the broader community through a variety of partnerships with governmental and community-based organizations. Based on empirical research, this paper argues that while the community schools provide a much-needed approach to educating students beyond their academic needs, the schools work within deeply-rooted racist systems and structures. Seen through the lens of racial capitalism, in particular, the work of community schools may be quite limited in what they can accomplish. Using census data from the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance (BNIA) combined with GIS mapping, this paper investigated the racially segregated contexts in which community schools operated in Baltimore. In so doing, the paper argues that the potential of community schools is circumscribed by the spatial injustice that the neighborhoods experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This mixed methods study examines the relationship between full-service community schools (FSCSs) and student attendance in Baltimore City Public Schools. We hypothesize the FSCS strategy promotes student attendance by building meaningful partnerships between families and schools via personal relationships and systematic opportunities for school-based involvement. First, we present information collected from local FSCS stakeholders regarding the impetus for FSCSs in Baltimore. Second, we present data collected during interviews with FSCS coordinators about their approaches to maintaining and improving student attendance, and finally, we examine whether years of implementation relate to attendance using mixed linear regression modeling. The results suggest the FSCS strategy has a positive relationship with attendance over time; however, attendance in schools with high poverty has proved more resistant to FSCS approaches than attendance in more economically advantaged contexts.

This article describes the work of a civic education program in New York City schools called Youthbuilders, which existed from 1938 to 1948. Youthbuilders' aim was to engage youth in civic education projects and teach them about their place in a democracy and worked with them to support racial and social equality. Shortly after World War II, they were attacked by a conservative Catholic organization that was working to eliminate groups associated with so-called Communist beliefs like social justice and racial equality. Youthbuilders shut their doors by 1948. The story is one that helps us understand the fragility of working for democracy and race equity in times of social anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the results of a participatory action research project about the impact of the closings on the parents, teachers, and students experiencing school closure. Using participatory action research methods, the researcher, the author of this article, and a community-based organization worked together in "contingent collaboration" to surface a counter-narrative about school closings which was used to critique and ultimately advocate against the policy of school closings. While the research was used for advocacy, it is also analyzed by this researcher to demonstrate the possibilities of the participatory action research to counter to neoliberal discourses prevalent in research on urban schools and communities, which paint those communities as damaged and in need of fixing. It uses the work of critical race theorists as a lens to view the school closings, pointing out that educational inequalities always have a racial component. At the same time, the article also reveals the pitfalls of this kind of research, showing that the collaboration between a white university researcher and a community-based, youth of color-led organization cannot be truly free of racism and white hegemony, even when trying to expose it in a policy reform.

The National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) shows a civic knowledge gap similar to the achievement gap, showing urban youth struggling in particular. However, research has shown that urban youth can be civically engaged when they are involved in projects or organizing intended to improve community conditions, not simply absorbing civic knowledge. This article shares findings from case studies of two Bronx-based community organizations that have successful models of civic engagement with urban youth. The findings reveal the practices that the adults use in the organizations to get urban youth civically engaged and to develop a "civic identity". (Contains 2 tables and 4 notes.)

The latest wave of reform in urban schools, led by the venture philanthropists, has made a great deal of change, without much progress. Foundations with a venture philanthropy bent, like the Walton Family Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the Broad Foundation, say market principles, such as choice and competition, will improve schools. If parents and students have choices, the theory goes, schools will be forced to compete for customers. That will school quality, according to these philanthropists. While they have made changes to urban districts, there is more enthusiasm than evidence for the venture philanthropists' market-based approach.

The objective of this article is to critically examine a school reform effort that has taken hold in New York City over the past seven years. A largely privately funded venture, the New Century Schools Initiative (NCSI), opened hundreds of new small high schools in poor urban communities in New York City starting in 2002. The theory behind opening small schools on a such a large scale has come from market principles of competition and consumer choice. By flooding the market with hundreds of schools, competition for students would, in turn, drive up the quality of the schools. Although support appears to be ubiquitous for the market-based reforms in New York City, this article argues that we need to look critically at reforms like NCSI, especially with the recent failure of market-driven policies to deliver on their promises. Using neoliberalism as a conceptual framework, this article asks two main questions: (a) How do neoliberal school reform policies play out in individual schools? and (b) To what extent do neoliberal policies contribute or detract from educational equity? (Contains 13 notes.)

This article examines a recent reform effort that has opened hundreds of small high schools in poor urban communities in New York City, The New Century Schools Initiative (NCSI). Outcome data have shown that NCSI has dramatically increased graduation rates among poor students and students of color. However, an ethnographic study of the instructional practices at 3 NCSI high schools revealed that these schools are struggling to maintain high expectations and to prepare their students for higher education. In a climate that prioritizes outcome data, these challenges are obscured. Consequently, this article argues that urban school reform focus its efforts on improving instructional practice so to truly make sustainable improvements in the education of poor students. (Contains 4 tables and 16 notes.)

This article examines a recent reform effort that has opened hundreds of small high schools in poor urban communities in New York City, The New Century Schools Initiative (NCSI). Founders hoped that the small schools strategy would create personalized environments where relationships could develop between teachers and students, leading to improved outcomes for poor students and students of color. Looking at three of the NCSI high schools in the Bronx, this ethnographic study reveals that small school size does not always lead to relationship-building between teachers and students. Teachers need support and training which is currently missing from NCSI's theory of action. The study suggests that NCSI can be strengthened with incentives and support for teachers to develop relationships with their students.

Globalization has not only created the conditions that have made such educational reforms necessary, but it has also provided market-based ideology to undergird reform efforts from Santiago to New York City. Although a neoliberal approach to education is clearly en vogue, many educators and critics nonetheless have questioned the premises behind the current reforms. Does a market-based paradigm really work to improve schools? Does it indeed improve the educational opportunities for poor families? Can a market-based approach combat social inequality? In this article, the author seeks answers to these questions through a close examination of a prototypical educational reform effort, the New Century Schools Initiative (NCSI) in the United States. Specifically, the author considers how NCSI has appeared to work in New York City, drawing upon 3 years of observations from her work as a staff developer and consultant in 15 NCSI schools. This article is not an empirical study, but a critique based upon the author's experiences.

State and national social studies standards have laid out what young people need to know about history, government, and other social studies subjects, but they do not provide information on what young people actually know and believe about a subject. The perspectives or frameworks of knowledge and beliefs that young people bring to their social studies lessons are significant not only because they can serve as a scaffold or springboard for learning, but also because they serve as filters through which teaching, subject matter, and learning must pass. Young people's perspectives about the social world, like those of historians and teachers, are shaped by their identities as members of families, communities, regions, and nations, as well as by their affiliations with racial, ethnic, religious, and other groups. These identities and affiliations influence if, how, and how much young people engage with social studies teachers and texts in schools and how much they learn from school subjects. This article summarizes research that has examined the relationships among children's, adolescents' and adults' social identities (their national, racial, ethnic, and gender identities) and their knowledge of, engagement with, and beliefs about texts and tasks related to the study of national history. The purpose is to bring to teachers' awareness the multiple forces that shape and differentiate young people's understanding of national history. With this awareness, teachers can recognize and build on their students' perspectives and in this way help more students learn. (Contains 14 endnotes.)

This interview describes the way in which a paraeducator working in Baltimore City Schools and member of the Baltimore Movement for Rank-and-File Educators (BMORE) went from staff member who knew nothing of the union to become a union leader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]