Prioritizing Urban Children, Teachers, and Schools through Professional Development Schools

How can we better educate disadvantaged urban students? Drawing on over five years' experience in a broad partnership involving twelve urban professional development schools in five districts, a teachers' union, a comprehensive public university, and several community-based organizations, the contributors to this volume describe how they worked together to help disadvantaged urban students through an innovative professional development program. By networking with educators at different levels and coordinating curriculum projects, they were able to begin overcoming rigid and ineffective mandates and curricula tied to standardized test scores and get through to their students on more meaningful and productive levels. The contributors share their successes and failures with these efforts, as well as insights related to the ethical, political, and academic challenges faced by professional development schools.