In this article, Mark R. Warren argues that if urban school reform in the United States is to be successful, it must be linked to the revitalization of the communities around our schools. Warren identifies a growing field of collaboration between public schools and community-based organizations, developing a typology that identifies three different approaches: the service approach (community schools); the development approach (community sponsorship of new charter schools); and the organizing approach (school-community organizing).

In this article, Laura Grandau traces a self-study research project focused on teaching algebra to fourth-grade students. Facing a new curriculum and a new grade level, Grandau considers what good instruction and “good habits of practice” may be.

International economic forces increasingly affect policy at multiple levels and in multiple domains. The interplay of three levels — international, national, and local — are underresearched in the social and educational policy fields, which includes educational policy studies. In this article, Frances Vavrus employs ethnography to investigate how these interactions play out in a Chagga community in the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania.