My greatest desire is to move urban education, even if only a little bit, into the positive direction of social justice.  I always think back to the graphic of the little boy and the tree (see Figure 1).  I see my students reaching for their opportunities and just missing their grasp.  I want to change the whole tree so that my students and all students in urban education can grow and succeed in any field they choose. I have the perspective of someone that has worked in urban education for over twenty years.  I also have the perspective of someone that loves urban students.  If you allow your students to learn how they want and need to learn and let them be their true authentic selves, you will see that this is not a biased statement.  I want to show this perspective of love for urban students and urban schools in my research.  They say food tastes better when the person making it, “puts love into it,” I hope that my research shows my love of urban students and urban education.  From the research I have read on this topic from a strength-based perspective like Ratchetdemic by Christopher Emdin when you put love into your topic the point comes across much more effectively.  Emdin states, “To be ratchetdemic is to get to a place where we unapologetically love ourselves as educators, to love and accept young people however they show up to school, and to get young people to fully love themselves.” (Emdin, 2021) I believe that the strategies that came forward in my research will allow urban students to be themselves and get the support they need to become anything that inspires them.   

One of my favorite aspects of my job is when former students come back and tell me what they are doing.  I have former students that are teachers, mechanics, college students, youth ministers, working for non-profit organizations, and many other really fulfilling careers. I also have students that have not been able to follow their dreams.  I sadly say that way too many of my students did not graduate, did not go on to college or any other program.  One of my students who I worked with this year spoke with me about “stepping off the porch.”  He said that in his neighborhood there is so much pressure to join a gang and do illegal things to make money.  Many students in urban public schools understand this way of thinking because this is their reality.  This would indicate that the problem is not necessarily with urban education, but with our society as a whole.  It must be considered that it is not possible to change society as a whole without first changing urban education.  As discussed in the review of literature, so much of the research done on urban education is biased against urban students and urban education systems.  I argued that this bias impacted policies developed around urban education.  Evidence for this can be found in the fact that packaged education programs became so prevalent in research. This demonstrates the biased perspective on urban education in that researchers felt the answer to reform had to come from outside of urban education not from within. The problem is that thirty years of research on urban education has yielded no significant change in equity within the education system as a whole. 

In this project I wanted to shift the focus from an outside perspective to an inside perspective.  To do this, I utilized a CRT perspective to 1. put a spotlight on the fact that inequity does exist in urban education, 2. urban educators need to have a voice in the discussion of equity, 3. dismantle the deficit-based perspective in research conducted on urban education, 4. use storytelling and counter-storytelling to enhance the readers’ understanding of my research, and 5. to highlight the fact that most of the researched package programs sold to urban education systems come from an outsider perspective.  I asked questions that would lead to answers about what would support our urban students as they move toward graduation and post-secondary work from the perspective of an urban educator listening to the voices of other urban educators.  If we can find answers to these questions, I believe our society will be headed on a pathway toward true social justice.   

In the book American Education by Joel Spring (2018), he states, “I propose that school policies be evaluated on their contribution to the social conditions that provide the conditions for human happiness and longevity rather than being judged by their contribution to economic growth and income.”  In my utopian society, every school would have the ability to create programs that best support their students on their academic journey to post-secondary work or the workforce.  We realize as educators that to get this utopia, we must have the freedom to see what works for our students and then put those supports into practice.  My project's purpose is to find the factors urban educators use that are successful and then discuss what makes them successful.  If the factor helps to support urban students on their path toward graduation and entry into post-secondary programs, then the factor supports the overall equity of the system and can lead to increased social justice in American society. I believe that through my research I have come upon factors that urban educators feel best support their students on their journey.  If we start implementing the strategies indicated, we could see an increase in equity within urban education systems and hopefully also in our urban communities.   

In my first research question, “What factors are urban education systems using to create equity within their system?” I asked urban educators to discuss the strategies they see being utilized in their buildings and whether they see the researched strategies from the review of literature being utilized.  Urban educators stated that there were four strategies that were most used: Restorative Practices in discipline at 97% from Lustick (2021) and Jabbari and Johnson (2023), attendance interventions in 9th grade at 91% from MacIver and Messel (2012), online school for credit recovery at 91% from Rickels et al (2014) and mentorship programs at 88% from Green (2013) and Moore (2021).  These are the most frequently used programs in urban high schools.  My second and third research questions spoke to effectiveness and ineffectiveness of the programs.  Urban educators felt that trust between administrators and teachers, online school for credit recovery, industry certifications, and attendance intervention at 9th grade, etc. (refer to Table 21) would be the most effective ways to support urban students move toward graduation and post-secondary programs.  They also felt that graduation packaged programs, School Within a School, academic support packaged programs, and transcendental meditation would be the least effective in helping students move toward graduation and post-secondary programs.  

The first strategy that I believe could effect a positive change and equity within urban education would be to increase trust between administration and teachers.  This would indicate that as urban school district leaders decide on where to spend their resources, they need to consider the relationships between teachers and building leaders very carefully.  I believe this could equate to more time spent on allowing building principals to build relationships with their staff, asking principals to survey their staff either formally or informally about their opinions about how things are going and to make sure principals demonstrate that the thoughts of their teachers are present in each decision they make.  Principals need to feel free to take the time needed to build strong relationships with their staff.  I have had many different types of principals over the years and I would say that not one did everything perfectly, but above all, the principals that would listen to my ideas and then demonstrate how they utilized those ideas made me feel the most appreciated and made me feel like I could trust them. Teachers, by nature, are a caring group of people, but they also need to feel like they are cared for, listened to, and supported.  The principal needs to utilize their position of power and share it with the teachers.  The support for this type of strategy could be included at the training stage or during the professional development principals have throughout the year.  Further, when the district leadership sees that a principal struggles to build relationships with staff, they need to decide whether that principal is well suited to the role and provide additional support.  This could look like someone from the district office working closely with the principal at the building level to help guide them as they run the building.  It could also mean that the principal surveys the staff to see what they believe needs to be done to make the building run more efficiently.  I have had principals in the past who would ask staff to complete a survey and then never use the results.  Teachers need to see evidence that their thoughts are important to the principal for there to be trust.   

Another strategy that I would like to highlight is the use of online schools for credit recovery.  I strongly believe that this is going to be even more widely utilized as we move toward the future of all education systems.  During the COVID-19 pandemic all education systems across the world were asked to pivot to a virtual model of education.  For urban education systems this was very challenging because so many school districts lacked the one-to-one technology.  In addition, after urban districts acquired the one-to-one there was still a large gap in students who did not know how to use the technology for education purposes.  Since this process started in 2020, urban students have come a long way.  I see in my students their ease of using the iPad and Chromebook.  I can also see how technology has evolved to better meet the needs of our students.  There were so many growing pains to start off with, but now I feel there is no going back. Technology usage is here to stay, and we will only utilize it even more.  Therefore, when considering the needs of our urban students, it is common sense that they would be allowed to use online credit recovery.  Our students have lives that only a few in urban education truly understand.  It is difficult for those outside of urban education to really understand the stressors that our urban students face on a daily basis.  Some may not even believe the truth if faced with it, but those who do understand find it amazing the strength these students have to come to school and do their best every day.  Due to some of these stressors, students may have their education disrupted, which is out of their control.  I have a student right now who is enrolled in virtual school because of a tremendous number of stressors in her life.  This student’s mom is facing stage four cancer, her family does not have permanent housing, and her father lost custody because of abuse.  The stress of these factors led to her exhibiting self-harming behaviors.  Her mother called the school for help on what to do.  I presented the idea of doing virtual school for the remainder of the school year and returning next year because it would allow her to focus on family life first and social pressures second.  Mom decided to try this because she was so afraid of what would happen next if she continued going to school in person.  The good news is that at this time the student is doing well in virtual school and will return to in-person next semester.  If we did not have the option of virtual school, there is a strong possibility that she would continue to get in trouble at school, continue to self-harm, and ultimately stop going to school. 

Online schools need to expand and also become more flexible.  We need to provide two options for parents and students moving forward.  If we want to see more students graduate and move into post-secondary programs, then urban districts need to offer an online school option and an in-person option.  Students can continue their education and have a job to support their family.  Further, where a student lives does not determine their ability to access their education, they could even stay enrolled while they are in transition.  Homelessness greatly impacts our urban students, and online school is a viable solution to keep the continuity of their education going and allow the student to keep pace with their peers. 

A final strategy that I would like to highlight as something I see as a great support to urban students is restorative practices.  This strategy is among the most effective in the opinion of urban educators.  Restorative practices as a concept grew out of the prison systems with the idea of restorative justice.  As I stated earlier, I want to disassociate anything prison related with urban education, but the concept of restorative practice I believe is integral in changing how urban education systems function.  Restorative practices are practices that seek to restore the child rather than tear them down.  It is the idea that consequences need to teach the student how to improve their behavior at school and become more successful.  Almost across the board the education system has done away with corporal punishment.  That is to say that the education system believes that consequences should not physically harm students.  We now need to consider the harm that other types of exclusionary punishments have on students and their ability to learn.  Restorative practices seek to find ways to provide consequences for students that also cause no harm and lead to a student growing in a positive way.  You may have seen memes out there about parents struggling with “gentle parenting.”  American society is trying to move away from harmful disciplinary practices and teach our children the positive way to do things.  This is a choice that many parents are making and should also be a choice that urban schools make. 

Urban school districts need to invest in training staff and leadership on how to run a program with little to no punitive punishment.  The goal should always be to have the student return to the classroom, but also with the knowledge of what they did wrong and how to correct the behavior.  As I mentioned before, I have a principal that is good at listening to his staff and adjusting based on their ideas.  We have a program at our school where a student has lunch detention if a teacher writes up a referral on their behavior in class.  This means that for one week the student misses out on socializing with friends during lunch and sits in detention instead.  I asked my principal if we could add a SMART goal component to this program.  He said that was fine so now when a student gets a referral, they need to create a goal that addresses the reason they got the referral.  I share that goal with the teacher and then the teacher and the student work together to accomplish the goal.  When the teacher feels the goal is accomplished the student can exit lunch detention.  This system can be flexible and modified for each student to meet their needs and the needs of the teacher.  There are also times when the goal writing does not work and there needs to be a restorative conversation between the student and the teacher before we can go back to the goal writing phase.  

Restorative practice leads to students and staff understanding each other better and being able to work together in a more positive way.  Not every teacher knows how to rebuild a relationship with a student after an incident happens in class and a process of restorative practice helps to restore the relationship.  While I was in school to be a teacher I did my internship at an urban high school.  I did not know I wanted to be an urban educator at the time, but this experience helped me in so many ways throughout the years.  My cooperating teacher, who herself had been an urban educator for almost thirty years said to me, “Respect is something that is earned not given.”  From that moment on this was how I approached my relationships with my students. This basic concept is also at the heart of restorative practices.  We need to understand that the relationship between the educator and student needs to be strong and built on respect otherwise it will easily disintegrate which can lead to students feeling like they are not wanted at school.  There are already so many stressors that urban students face that as a school system we need to be aware of that and find ways to make school a place they feel appreciated and supported.