The University of Pittsburgh School of Education launched the Center for Urban Education in 2003 under the direction of Alan Lesgold, the former Renée and Richard Goldman Dean. At the start, the Center had no director or staff – only an ambitious agenda designed around two key ventures: a pilot program in the Wilkinsburg School District, and a professional development program in the Pittsburgh Public Schools’ Phillips Elementary. In 2006, Pitt Chancellor Mark Nordenberg announced th...
The Heinz Fellows Program is a joint collaboration between the University of Pittsburgh Center for Urban Education (CUE) and The Heinz Endowments. The program, which kicked off on June 19, 2017, forwards CUE’s commitment to improving the landscape of urban education, increasing the teacher-of-color pipeline, and improving the quality of instruction of educators in the Pittsburgh region. Under the direction of Kenny Donaldson, CUE’s Associate Director of Strategic Programming and Ini...
The recent series of deaths of unarmed Black people at the hands of the police has spurred concern and conversation both inside and outside of school. While few researchers present ways for teachers to incorporate in-class learning opportunities that respond to racial injustices [1] , we acknowledge that what teachers talk about and do in their classrooms are often influenced by their worldviews. Therefore, we were interested in (a) understanding if teachers believed discussions of ra...
While talk about school choice is seemingly ubiquitous, actual uptake is more limited—about 16 percent of students attend public schools of choice and roughly 13 percent attend non-public schools of choice, according to a recent report by the Center for Public Education. The term “school choice” includes a variety of options, such as inter- and intra-district transfer, charter schools, private schools, vouchers, virtual schools, and home schooling. Proponents of school choice suggest t...