Meaningful Urban Education Reform: Confronting the Learning Crisis in Mathematics and Science

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments xiii The support and guidance of colleagues and friends throughout the course of our project, “Assessing the Impact of the National Science Foundation’s Urban Systemic Initiative,” helped contribute to the success of this research. We would like to thank the directors of the Urban Systemic Initiatives and their staff members in our four research sites. Their continuous support of our project enabled us to conduct our research with considerable ease. We would like to extend our gratitude to our Technical Advisory Network members who provided valuable insight during the formative stages of our research as well as throughout the research process. We would like to thank our program director, Bernice Anderson, her staff, and all our colleagues at NSF who encouraged us throughout the life of this grant. We would also like to thank our consultants: Rolf Blank, John Smithson, Ken Frank, Carol Kelley, and those who worked on the pilot community study. Our heartfelt gratitude goes to more than 7,000 people who were participants in our research. They not only provided the data that enabled us to complete our study, but also, more importantly, helped us to understand what occurs in districts, schools, classrooms, and communities involved in systemic reform. The authors acknowledge the support of the National Science Foundation through NSF Grant # 9874246: “Assessing the Impact of the National Science Foundation’s Urban Systemic Initiative.” Any opinions , findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. In addition to the authors of this book, the efforts of many people have contributed directly to this research. These include the following: Timothy Carey, Nikhil Mehta, Ellen Puccia, Karen Moriarty, Susan Greenbaum, Linda Callejas, Julian Smothers, Shantanu Vaidya, Christiana Schuman, Danielle O’Connor, Jessica Pearlman, Troy Sadler, Sandra Cade, Jonathan Gayles, Cathleen Larrimore, Amy Fox-McNulty, Kathleen Del Monte, Jonathan Poehlman, Charmaine Evans, Sandhya Ganapathy, Erin Healy, Ellen Kang, Joy Stallard, and Eric Eyles. Finally, the authors would like to thank the SUNY press team including Lois Weis, Editor of the Series, Prescilla Ross, Director, Marilyn P. Semerad, Production Manager, and Freelancer Nancy Dziedzic who did a superb edit of the final manuscript. xiv MEANINGFUL URBAN EDUCATION REFORM ...