Urban Educational Identity

Sara M. Childers is an independent scholar and assistant director of The Women's Place, the women's policy office at The Ohio State University. She resides in Dublin, Ohio, USA.

“This book is an important contribution to the literature on urban education. It refutes the deficit and pathology-driven orientations so common to studying schools, school reform, and youth from historically marginalized urban areas. The author’s analysis provides a powerful testament to how one particular school is finding success through a hopeful, positive, and potential-driven lens.” –Brian D. Schultz, Bernard J. Brommel Distinguished Research Professor and Department Chair, Educational Inquiry and Curriculum, Northeastern Illinois University“In an era of shrinking resources for public education and inner-city schools confronting daily unkempt, sleepy children from troubled families, this book offers a story that is at once grim and full of hope.” –From the Foreword by Richard Delgado, John J. Sparkman Chair of Law, The University of Alabama“Urban Educational Identity articulates the complexities and paradoxes of U.S. urban education and is an exemplar of necessary shifts in policy studies, theory, and methodology. Childers provides a refreshing model of how to think poststructurally with race theory, deftly arguing that without these co-thinkings the discursive and material complexities of urban education—such as how equity and excellence are defined and experienced through daily practices and policies—will continue to be overlooked.” –Wanda Pillow, Associate Professor of Education and Gender Studies, University of Utah

• AcknowledgementsSeries Editor IntroductionChapter 1: Rethinking Urban EducationVignette: Can I get into Trouble? Negotiating the Terms of ResearchChapter 2: Ohio Magnet School Before and After BrownVignette: "See What We Don’t Have:" The Myth of the Boutique SchoolChapter 3: "State Standards are the Minimum of What We Do"Vignette: Winter Formal AssemblyChapter 4: Excellent Intentions: Racialized Enrollment Practices of a Successful? Urban SchoolVignette: International Baccalaureate Theory of Knowledge Course at OMSChapter 5: Urban CachetVignette: Mr. Hart’s English and History "Split" ClassChapter 6: Those StudentsVignette: "He Just Gave Us All the Answers:" Boys Participation in 10th Grade HumanitiesChapter 7: On Their Own TermsAppendix I: Getting in TroubleAppendix II: Recommendations