High-poverty High Schools Research Articles

“Are We an Advisory Board or a Decision Making Entity?”: Teachers’ Involvement in Decision Making in Instructional Leadership Teams

ABSTRACT This study explored teachers’ involvement in decision making processes in instructional leadership teams (ILTs) in three high-poverty high schools. Two factors influenced the extent of teachers’ involvement and authority in decision making processes on the team: 1) the design of teachers’ roles on the ILT and 2) routines used for agenda setting, facilitation, and discussion in ILT meetings. Although administrators often constrained teachers involvement and influence in decision making processes, study findings suggest that more inclusive approaches to involving teachers in decision making can enhance decision quality and are essential for cultivating teachers’ commitment to implementation.

From permission to partnership: Participatory research to engage school personnel in systems change

ABSTRACTData collected from teachers in a racially diverse, high-poverty high school were used to inform the initial steps in developing a school–university partnership to create a culturally responsive trauma-informed community school. The project utilized community-based participatory research to explore sensitive areas of school system functioning. School–university partnerships and community-based participatory research (CBPR) projects offer important opportunities for innovation, but the process of how these relationships evolve is not often described. Thus, the process of the research as it unfolded over the course of a school year and lessons learned are described along with findings. Findings include teachers’ perceptions of the impact of trauma on students, their own stress level and self-efficacy in addressing students’ social-emotional and behavioral concerns, and the role of race in the teachers’ perceptions.

Toxic Schools: High-Poverty Education in New York and Amsterdam By Bowen Paulle

Toxic Schools: High-Poverty Education in New York and Amsterdam By Bowen Paulle University of Chicago Press, 2013 Reviewed by Ariel H. Bierbaum Bowen Paulle’s Toxic Schools is an often-riveting transatlantic comparative ethnography that focuses on the psychosocial dynamics of high-poverty high schools in New York City and Amsterdam. Paulle, a native New Yorker and US-trained sociologist, is a professor of social and behavioral sciences at the University of Amsterdam. His work builds not only on sociological theory, but also on public health and epidemiological research. Paulle argues that the heightened levels of violence and stress in high- poverty schools and neighborhoods are toxic to the health, well-being, and life trajectory of both students and teachers. His novel approach to toxicity offers rich material and insights for planning scholars and practitioners who work at the intersection of public health, education, and poverty studies. Planning scholars and practitioners understand that access to high-quality education, adequate health care, well-paying jobs, and affordable housing and transportation are the key components of people’s “geographies of opportunity.” While volumes of urban scholarship and policy today aim to build more equitable geographies of opportunity, this work’s focus on the metropolitan or regional scale does not allow for careful interrogation of the everyday reality of living in high-poverty neighborhoods and attending high-poverty schools. Toxic Schools helps fill this gap, bringing to life the uneven geographies of opportunity and raising important questions for our methodological approaches as planning scholars and practitioners that shape the contexts and built environments in which these high-poverty schools persist. Paulle’s narrative is based on six years of ethnographic fieldwork as a full- time high school teacher in the South Bronx of New York City and as a part- time high school teacher in southeast Amsterdam. Both neighborhoods and schools had high concentrations of poor and minority students. According to Paulle, in both locations students and teachers described their schools similarly as “the ghetto” and invoked metaphors of “dumping grounds” and “garbage cans.” Paulle uses his introductory chapter to situate the reader theoretically as well as geographically. For those not already familiar with scholarship in

Examining College Opportunity Structures for Students of Color at High-“Minority,” High-Poverty Secondary Schools in Texas

This study conducts an intersectional analysis of two adjoined qualitative studies, reanalyzing the data using a college opportunity framework (González, Stoner, & Jovel, 2003) to examine how sources of social capital available within three high-“minority,” high-poverty high schools in Texas shape college opportunities for Latina/o and Black high school students. Findings indicate that counselors and teachers were sources of college information and support while advanced courses prepared students for college-level curriculum. However, these same support mechanisms often deterred students’ access to quality academic preparation and college information. The increased focus on state-mandated accountability measures at the schools also limited students’ level of academic preparation and college access. Additionally, state college access policies designed to increase the college participation of underrepresented groups effectively accomplished this policy intent, but these same policies influenced students’ college choice decisions.

Promoting Access to Postsecondary Education for Low-Income Students With Disabilities

Few students with disabilities from high-poverty backgrounds attend college. We discuss the effects of disability and growing up in poverty on expectations for postsecondary education attendance. We describe the limiting effects of attending high-poverty high schools on student achievement followed by challenges faced by low-income students with disabilities in accessing and completing college programs including the role of federal student aid programs. Finally, we discuss the limited employment outcomes for adults with disabilities, in particular, those from high-poverty backgrounds who have not completed college. We conclude with implications and recommendations for policy.

An Early College Initiative in an Urban, High-Poverty High School: First-Year Effects on Student Achievement and Non-Academic Indicators

The Early College High School (ECHS) initiative developed in response to calls to significantly decrease the number of first-generation college and underserved students of color and from poverty who are high school dropouts or marginally graduates (i.e., ill prepared for college). The ECHS model is different from other educational reforms in that secondary and postsecondary faculty work collaboratively to align curriculum and supports that facilitate a successful high school-to-college transition. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of the initial implementation of ECHS on student achievement and nonacademic indicators in a high-poverty setting. Results indicated that, after an initial year of implementation, achievement results on criterion-referenced tests were significantly higher for all students relative to matched control students, but the statistically and practically significant impact on norm-referenced tests was limited to students enrolled in ECHS courses; school attendance remained the same, but suspensions were decreased. Implications for high school reform and research are discussed.

The materiality of fieldwork: an ontology of feminist becoming

Through the materiality of fieldwork at a high-achieving high-poverty high school, I discuss how the collision between practices of feminist methodology and the materiality of fieldwork forced me to rethink the “feminist” in feminist research. Using the work of Karen Barad, this material–discursive account of methodology as ontology looks at feminist research as a constitutive intra-action between the materiality of the field and discursive representations of “what count” as feminist research. I discuss “the matter” of feminist research, or how representations of it in the literature rubbed up against its practice. I illustrate how “the matter” of inquiry – bodies, buildings, books, desks, policies, theories, and discourses – was agential and affective. “Doing” of feminist research is an ontological engagement where the force of the material was simultaneously (re)constitutive of feminist methodology, theory, and practice. By engaging with these entangled intra-actions, I hope to narrate an ontological event of feminist becoming.

Exit Strategies: How Low-Performing High Schools Respond to High School Exit Examination Requirements

Background Over the past several decades, a significant number of states have either adopted or increased high school exit examination requirements. Although these policies are intended to generate improvement in schools, little is known about how high schools are responding to exit testing pressures. Purpose This study examined how five low-performing high-poverty high schools responded to the pressures of Texas’ exit testing policy. The goal of this study was to understand how schools responded to the pressures of Texas’ exit testing system (in terms of curriculum, instruction, and supports for low-achieving students) and how educators reconciled those pressures with other accountability pressures that they faced. Research Design This study employed qualitative case study design. Five low-performing high schools were sampled within the state of Texas, each of which served large concentrations of at-risk students. A total of 105 interviews were conducted across the five case study sites over the course of 2 years (2008–2009). Conclusions This study found that the Texas exit testing policy created a misalignment between educator and student-level accountability, which had particularly negative consequences for struggling students. The findings of this study suggest a need for policy makers to reconsider the assumptions on which exit tests are based and to more closely consider the goal of exit testing systems in the context of, and in relation to, the larger systems of accountability in which they are embedded. Acknowledgments The research reported herein was supported by a grant from the Spencer Foundation. The author would like to thank the editors of Teachers College Record, as well as the anonymous reviewers, for their helpful feedback on the manuscript. The author would also like to thank Meredith Richards and Rebecca Cohen for their assistance with data collection for the project.

Against Simplicity, Against Ethics

Simplified understandings of qualitative inquiry as mere method overlook the complexity and nuance of qualitative practice. As is the call of this special issue, the author intervenes in the simplification of qualitative inquiry through a discussion of methodology to illustrate how theory and inquiry are inextricably linked and ethically necessary. The goal of this article is to explore the ways in which Derridean deconstruction inspired an analytics of disruption as quasi-methodology, and to use this as an entry point to discuss how theory is a move toward ethical practice. The author discusses how this analytics drives quasi-methodological practices that embrace intertextuality, aporias, and difference. The author’s study of a high-achieving, high-poverty high school in Ohio provides a micro view of how theory serves to hold me accountable to the complexities of doing research with/for/on the lives of “urban” students. In conclusion, the author attends to the notion of ethics itself as a quasi-concept to think about the refusal of an innocent ethics as a last gesture against simplicity.

Shaping Aspirations, Awareness, Academics, and Action

Mixed-method evaluation of two iterations of month-long summer enrichment programs for English-learning secondary students investigated impacts on participants’ beliefs about school and academic achievement, and on actual course choices, test outcomes, and graduation rates. Students ( N = 85) from one ethnically diverse, high-poverty high school in a large school district in Georgia took part in science and academic English-themed summer enrichment programs in 2006 and 2008. Questionnaires, interviews, and transcript analysis demonstrated that after taking part, students aspired to attend college, were aware of the steps necessary, and took steps such as tracking themselves into more advanced courses. Participants also were able to create and sustain peer support groups in their school, fostering a culture of academic achievement. Findings suggest that even such short-term programs can positively influence students’ attitudes, aspirations, and actual behaviors supporting academic achievement, graduation, and postsecondary education, lending promise to goals of ameliorating the academic achievement gap.

High-Poverty Youth

The authors compared involvement in educational planning and use of self-determination strategies reported by two groups of students attending a high-poverty, predominately Black high school: 19 students with severe intellectual disabilities and 20 general education seniors who were identified as successful. Findings revealed that special education students participated in few activities (e.g., general or career education classes, transition activities, or employment) on a daily basis outside their self-contained special education classes. Special education students were significantly less likely than their general education peers to report involvement in educational planning activities or use of self-determination strategies. Although successful general education peers did take an active and self-determined role in their high school education, they represented only 20 of 114 members of their graduating senior class. Findings are discussed in relation to increasing efforts to promote self-determination and resilience among students with severe intellectual disabilities and their general education peers who are attending high-poverty high schools.

Circumscribed Agency: The Relevance of Standardized College Entrance Exams for Low SES High School Students

The authors interviewed Black and Latino students from five high-poverty high schools as they attempted to make the transition into college. Their ability to exert individual agency with regard to their entrance exams and their college transition was circumscribed by the messages and behavioral norms that dominated their low-performing high school context. Students preserved their sense of academic competence, yet they drastically misestimated the relevance of their scores while remaining uninformed about their level of college readiness or how to improve it. The framework for analysis comes from three theories: college choice process, cultural capital, and self-efficacy.

Avoidable losses: High-stakes accountability and the dropout crisis.

In the state of Texas, whose standardized, high-stakes test-based accountability system became the model for the nation's most comprehensive federal education policy, more than 135,000 youth are lost from the state's high schools every year. Dropout rates are highest for African American and Latino youth, more than 60% for the students we followed. Findings from this study, which included analysis of the accountability policy in operation in high-poverty high schools in a major urban district, analysis of student-level data for more than 271,000 students in that district over a seven-year period under this policy, and extensive ethnographic analysis of life in schools under the policy, show that the state's high-stakes accountability system has a direct impact on the severity of the dropout problem. The study carries great significance for national education policy because its findings show that disaggregation of student scores by race does not lead to greater equity, but in fact puts our most vulnerable youth, the poor, the English language learners, and African American and Latino children, at risk of being pushed out of their schools so the school ratings can show "measurable improvement." High-stakes, test-based accountability leads not to equitable educational possibilities for youth, but to avoidable losses of these students from our schools.

Catching Up: Effect of theTalent Development Ninth-Grade Instructional Interventions in Reading and Mathematics in High-Poverty High Schools

Little is known about the feasibility and rapidity with which the academic learning of students who enter high school multiple years behind grade level can be accelerated. This study uses multiple regression analyses of standardized test and survey data from high-poverty high schools in two large urban districts to evaluate initial effects of the Talent Development High Schools (TDHS) ninthgrade instructional program in reading and mathematics. Pre-, post-, and match-control comparisons show that students in TDHS significantly outperformed students in the control schools in mathematics and reading. Supplemental surveys show a higher percentage of students in TDHS reported learning new skills, strategies, and concepts, and TDHS teachers indicated they were able to use a more varied set of activities during extended periods, use cooperative learning strategies, engage students in group projects, and have students present multiple solutions or methods and relate their academic work to real-world experiences and examples.