Modes of Belonging: Debating School Demographics in Gentrifying New York

This article examines the frameworks that stakeholders bring to debates about diversifying schools in gentrifying areas of New York City. Using critical ethnographic methods, I explore stakeholders’ hopes and fears about the effects of shifting school demographics and the relationships between student demographics and school quality. I find that stakeholders use racialized discourses of belonging to discuss whether, why, and how student demographics matter. These discourses of belonging overlap with perceptions of demographic change as opportunities for integration, fears of gentrification, and threats to individual property. Complicating celebrations of ‘‘diversity,’’ I explore the ways in which race is implicated in considerations of who belongs in a school and to whom a school belongs.

Expanding and Enhancing Food and Nutrition Education in New York City Public Schools: An Examination of Program Characteristics and Distribution

To expand their capacity, many schools partner with food and nutrition education programs (FNPs). Public policies and funding can support FNPs, but comprehensive data on the organizations that run FNPs, their program characteristics, or distribution across schools did not exist in NYC. This study aims to help local education and health agencies assess the characteristics of food and nutrition education in schools, as well as to measure progress implementing school policies and practices. A cross-sectional study on NYC FNPs was conducted during the 2016–2017 school year. Survey data on organizations and the FNPs they operate were collected. Data on schools in which FNPs operate were gathered. To determine distribution of FNPs across schools and by school demographics, the database of FNPs in schools was combined with a publicly available database of NYC schools. In 2016–2017, 40 organizations operated 101 FNPs in 56% of NYC public schools. These FNPs varied by goals, content, activities, location, and populations served. Information on these variations can help policymakers, advocates, funders, and schools expand school-based food and nutrition education. To ensure equitable access, more coordination, investment, and collaboration are needed.

Beliefs About Effective Instructional Practices Among Middle Grades Teachers of Mathematics

This study explores beliefs about effective mathematics instruction among middle grades teachers of mathematics. Using prior syntheses of research on instructional practices linked to students’ mathematics achievement, the conceptual framework draws on features and strategies associated with Explicit Attention to Concepts (EAC) and Student Opportunities to Struggle (SOS). Data sources include mathematics teachers’ self-reported priorities, comfort, and frequency of implementing EAC and SOS strategies, as well as the participants’ teaching context and school demographics. Participants include 98 full-time Grades 6-8 mathematics teachers from 22 districts, and 34 schools in southwest and central Idaho. Findings include positive correlations among EAC and SOS beliefs, comfort, and frequency of implementation, as well as differences across school settings, years of experience, and number of distinct mathematics courses taught.

A study on factors affecting school principals’ competencies in Vietnam’s mountainous provinces

Given principals’ central role in school performance, this study seeks to explore factors that influence school principal competency. The study employed a quantitative research approach. A survey questionnaire was administered to 290 principals across six northwestern mountainous provinces in Vietnam. The questionnaire considered eight areas of principal competency, including self-development and the development of others; school organization and operation; staff development; instructional programme management; education quality assurance management; management of financial resources; engagement with families, community and government; and the school’s strategic planning. Analyses of variance and correlation (Pearson’s r) techniques were used, and the findings demonstrate that principals’ competencies were statistically affected by both internal factors (gender, experience, health, family and IT skills) and external factors (school location, school demographics and school facilities). However, the study found no correlation between principals’ academic qualifications and their competencies.

Diversity Dissonance as an Implication of One School’s Relocation and Reintegration Initiative

Purpose: This article describes one charter school’s ‘diversity’ initiative—a relocation to a racially and socioeconomically diverse site—intended to reintegrate minoritized students displaced by gentrification. Research Design: We employ Critical Race Quantitative Intersectionality to frame the descriptive analyses of student enrollment, city census, and parent survey data that narrates the resulting student demographics after a school’s relocation. Our goal in utilizing an anti-racist framework rooted in Critical Race Theory is to a) quantify the racist material impact of “race-neutral” reform through intersectional data mining, b) disrupt the notion of letting “numbers speak for themselves” without critical analysis, and c) taking a transdisciplinary perspective to reveal the hidden patterns of whiteness under the guise of diversity. Findings: Our findings highlight the limits of a school’s agency to implement ‘diversity’ policies aimed at reintegrating minoritized students displaced from opportunity. While the relocation racially diversified the student population, the policy failed to reintegrate the district’s historically minoritized population. This exclusion both limited who had the right to use and enjoy the school and reinforced the school’s status and reputation, thus cementing its whiteness as property. Implications: We conceptualize diversity dissonance as a framework that challenges the unary ahistorical criteria that describe current school demographics, and calls for leaders and policymakers to problematize how the construct of diversity is interpreted when considering minoritized students’ access to programs and schools. Diversity dissonance situates diversity from solely an inclusive rhetoric to an exclusionary one, where limited access reinforces status—mimicking rather than juxtaposing whiteness.

Compliance of Public Elementary Schools with the Enhanced School Improvement Plan

This descriptive-comparative research was conducted to determine the compliance level of public elementary schools in Bacolod City Division with the Enhanced School Improvement Plan (E-SIP) as assessed by internal and external assessors when taken as a whole and when compared according to school demographics in the major phases of E-SIP development and implementation process. Likewise, it detailed the challenges and actions undertaken in the E-SIP compliance. Using the standardized SIP quality assessment tool, the results revealed a ‘satisfactory’ level of E-SIP compliance as a whole while ‘highly satisfactory’ levels in plan and act phases. It further showed significant differences in preparatory, assess and act phases for both school performance and designation of assessors. The results of the assessment were attributed to varying interpretation of some criteria and the absence of mode of verification in the E-SIP compliance. Hence, a policy recommendation was designed to attain successful E-SIP compliance of public elementary schools.

Modes of Belonging: Debating School Demographics in Gentrifying New York

This article examines the frameworks that stakeholders bring to debates about diversifying schools in gentrifying areas of New York City. Using critical ethnographic methods, I explore stakeholders’ hopes and fears about the effects of shifting school demographics and the relationships between student demographics and school quality. I find that stakeholders use racialized discourses of belonging to discuss whether, why, and how student demographics matter. These discourses of belonging overlap with perceptions of demographic change as opportunities for integration, fears of gentrification, and threats to individual property. Complicating celebrations of “diversity,” I explore the ways in which race is implicated in considerations of who belongs in a school and to whom a school belongs.

The Nationwide Landscape of K–12 School Websites in the United States

This study sought to collect URLs (web addresses) of all K-12 schools in the United States (N = 98,477) and analyze website home page system and service data for all available U.S. institutional websites (n = 65,899). Building upon previous research related to Web 2.0 educational potentials, this first-of-its-kind study sought (a) to provide descriptive results of system and service adoption and website data for all schools in the United States and (b) to detect theorized differences based upon school demographics and service/system type (e.g., open source vs. proprietary). Results indicated that proprietary and purchased systems were much more common than free and open systems, that adoption patterns were generally not meaningfully influenced by demographic data (except for charter school status), and that K-12 institutional adoption of Web 2.0 seems to be more focused on educational uses of these tools that might not strictly be considered pedagogical (e.g., community outreach).