Anne Galletta

Why Are You Doing This? Questions on Purpose, Structure, and Outcomes in Participatory Action Research Engaging Youth and Teacher Candidates.

Our article is based on a study of our integration of social foundations coursework with filmmaking and participatory action research, bringing teacher candidates and middle and high school students together. The project was carried out in partnership between an urban university and two nearby public schools within a Midwestern city known for high child poverty rates and weak academic outcomes. The project sought to stretch the imagination of teacher candidates in areas related to school reform and to provide opportunities for the youth in terms of inquiry and activism concerning their schools and neighborhoods. The article discusses the direction of the project over the semester and the challenges encountered in carrying out this work. Study findings suggest that the students valued the use of film and learning of research skills, as well as the coming together each week. Technology glitches precluded a final film product, compromising the extent to which project goals concerning activism in the area of educational and public policy were achieved. The study serves as careful reminder of the challenges in carrying out PAR and the need to frequently revisit questions about project intentions and direction.

The press for accountability at the nexus of resilience, estrangement, hope, and inequity

ABSTRACT This article examines the experience of school closure as narrated by youth in survey responses and as evident in school-level characteristics drawn from publicly available data during the 2010–2012 years of district reform in Cleveland, Ohio. Among ninth-grade students reporting closure of their K–8 schools, closed-ended survey data suggest nearly half of the students reporting ease in transitioning schools following school closure. Open-ended data offer a more nuanced story, with some students narrating loss of relationships, sense of uprooting, and emotional upset and others describing a fresh start, new friends, and discovery of self in the transition. Survey data also indicate regularity of changing schools and transportation challenges. A study of publicly available data, comparing student characteristics at the school level between receiving and non-receiving schools, indicates that schools that received students following closures were less likely to graduate students on time and were more likely to discipline students. Receiving schools were more likely to serve students who were identified as having cognitive, learning, and emotional disabilities. Though survey data portray both struggle and resilience, the study of student characteristics in schools receiving students displaced by closure suggests considerable strain on receiving schools, revealing conditions exacerbated in school closure for students of color, poor students, and students with disabilities.

The intersection of culture and institutional support for Latino students’ academic success: Remediation or empowerment?

ABSTRACT The study is framed by critical race theory to explore the intersection of cultural and institutional factors that influence Latino students’ completion of high school. The purpose of this study is to determine the extent to which factors related to students’ background, culture, socioeconomic status, and institutional-support such as participation in mentoring and/or dropout-prevention programs, can predict Latino students’ successful completion of high school. The overarching research question is: To what extent do family background, students’ educational aspirations, and institutional support programs predict whether Latino students’ complete high school? Using data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 (ELS: 2002), from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) with 2,217 Hispanic participants, the study used a logistic linear regression model for the analysis. The findings identified students’ gender, socioeconomic status, first language, educational aspirations as well as the aspirations of their parents, school poverty concentration, and school support programs to be significant predictors of high school completion. The logistic regression model correctly classified between 78%, 85%, and 81% of the cases included in the group for timely completion according to first-, second-, and third-generation respectively. A similar classification was found for high school completion-within-two-years. The discussion highlights marked differences between the effect of dropout-prevention programs and that of mentoring programs on Latinos’ high school completion. In addition, that the factors represented by individual and institutional variables might not operate in isolation but instead might intersect with socioeconomic and cultural factors that ultimately create barriers for this minority group.