Urban school reform has most often occurred in a top-down direction as a means to
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to certain norms, beliefs, and behaviors. Teachers, however, hold particular
perceptions about the extent to which topdown reforms affect their capacity for
innovative teaching within the teaching and learning process. Teachers define their
innovative teaching as being grounded in ethical and moral decisions about the ways
in which their classroom and instructional practices directly affect the learning
and lives of their students. Such decisions are often ignored by top-down policies
that define high stakes accountability reform. This phenomenon accents the
dichotomous context of reforms that makes problematic the potential for viable and
sustainable school reform. This case study reveals that attention to
teachers' moral leadership offers a clear perspective toward detangling the
tensions of reform and improving the educational experiences of those students
attending historically low performing schools.
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