Chapter 6: Powerful Learning: Creating Learning Communities in Urban School Reform

This paper focuses on one urban middle school’s response to a major school reform initiative. Data for this paper were drawn from a larger research and evaluation study of this reform initiative located in a large city in the southwestern US. Funded schools invested heavily in high-quality professional development for teachers. Reformers believe that increasing teacher learning will improve student academic achievement. In the middle school presented here as a case study, administrators and teachers chose to focus on improving “regular” (nonmagnet) students’ academic achievement by increasing opportunities for their teachers to participate in high-quality professional development. By engaging in their own powerful learning, teachers created a set of innovative curriculum programs targeted toward previously low or underachieving students. As a result of these new curriculum programs, student achievement over all socioeconomic and academic groups increased dramatically during the five-year reform effort.