A struggle to leave no child behind: the dichotomies of reform,urban school teachers,and their moral leadership

Abstract

Urban school reform has most often occurred in a top-down direction as a means to increase student achievement. Schools' personnel are expected to acquiesce 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.