No abstract

An increasing number of central cities across the U.S. are experiencing a growth in white middle-class population, which is associated with gentrification in historically disinvested and racially segregated urban neighborhoods. These changing neighborhood dynamics are starting to shift the context of urban schooling in some districts across the nation. While we know that racial and socioeconomic demographic shifts are associated with neighborhood and school gentrification, there is little conceptual clarity about how school gentrification unfolds over time and the varying conditions of schools in gentrified neighborhoods. To advance scholarship on the topic, researchers need an organizing framework. This study addresses this gap by drawing on existing research, 16 years of Census and American Community Survey data, and 6 years of district data in Austin, Texas. Highlighting Austin, an urban city with growing neighborhood gentrification, we put forth a typology to explain the experiences of schools in the district. We conclude with implications for future research.

Teacher hiring is a critical lever for improving school outcomes. However, the availability of supply is a significant barrier that affects principals' processes for teacher staffing. Drawing on sensemaking theory and concepts of fit, this study investigates how principals make sense of recruitment and hiring in a local labor market with severe teacher shortages. Findings illustrate labor market conditions constrained principals' attempts to hire strategically and shaped new practices and hiring behaviors. By presenting a conceptualization of these hiring arrangements-strategic, creative, and transactional hiring-this study reveals the micro-negotiations principals make when recruiting and hiring in teacher shortage environments. Teacher hiring is one of several key organizational tasks proven to be a significant predictor of school accountability performance and teacher satisfaction (Grissom & Loeb, 2011). As a critical lever for improving human capital within schools (Donaldson, 2013; Tamir, 2019), some have argued that teacher hiring is "the single most important task of a principal" (Mason & Schroeder, 2010, p. 18). Teacher hiring is a multifaceted process of recruiting, screening, and selecting the best candidate for the school environment (Engel & Curran, 2016; Harris et al., 2010; Jabbar, 2018). How principals go about this process is the focus of a growing body of research. Studies explore the kinds of tools principals use, principals' perceptions of applicant fit, specific screening and selection procedures across schools (i.e., charter or traditional public schools) and school levels, as well as the impact of policy accountability on principals' conceptualization of teacher quality (

The purpose of this study is to use geographic information systems to map the spatial distribution of traditional public school closures and the opening of charter schools in Detroit. To achieve this purpose, we examine the following research questions: (a) How are traditional public school closures and the opening of charter schools spatially distributed throughout neighborhoods in Detroit during three education policy eras? (b) How, if at all, might these schools' spatial patterns cluster in certain neighborhoods to create hot spots of traditional public school closures and/or charter school openings? As such, this descriptive study uses hot spot geospatial analysis to identify whether the spatial occurrence of traditional public school closures and charter school openings is randomly distributed or if it occurs in statistically significant spatial clusters. Rollback and rollout neoliberalism is used to theoretically frame the study and guide the analysis. Findings suggest that charter school openings occur more often in hot spots or concentrated ways than the closure of traditional public schools in Detroit. We conclude with implications for future research.

In recent decades, a growing body of work casts light on Black girls’ schooling experiences to inform the emerging field of Black girlhood studies. Our theoretical review applies intersectionality as a guiding analytic framework to synthesize literature in this emerging field. We specifically highlight the macro and microlevel domains of power (interpersonal, cultural, structural, and disciplinary) in U.S. K–12 schools shaping Black girls’ schooling experiences. The data were drawn from a systematic search of 75 research articles. Our analysis indicated that schools perpetuate racial containment through the policies and practices they maintain as well as the cultural artifacts, objects, and people that coalesce to influence school culture, the instructional practices and curricula Black girls encounter, and the social scripts and covert messaging that dictate how Black girls claim agency in school environments. A key contribution of this review aims to situate power—a central concept in intersectionality—to offer new insights and directions for research on Black girls.