Urban Education Defined
Urban education is defined in many different ways. For the purposes of this learning
module, urban education refers to schools in metropolitan communities that typically are
diverse, characterized by large enrollments and complexity, many struggling with
growth. The public schools in these urban communities often serve students representing
many ethnic minorities, multiple languages, and have a greater concentration of the poor.
Some of these same urban issues in the 2000’s challenge suburban and even rural
schools.
Though there are many differences among children attending urban schools, one thing
that often ties many of the students together in the urban context is their socioeconomic
level. Many are children of poverty. Poverty affects children adversely, and they have
little opportunity to change their own circumstances.
Urban public schools face issues of drug and alcohol abuse, violence, and crime in the
surrounding communities. Social phenomena such as drugs, crime, violence, and family
issues impact urban children; and often result in psychological impact such as lowered
self-esteem and feelings of hopelessness on the part of children and youth. Students in
urban systems may need different types of support to assure their learning as they
represent different cultures, ethnicities, and socio-economic groups.
Today’s urban schools dwell within the economic, social and demographic changes of the
last fifty years. Corridors of new construction and the gentrification of older
neighborhoods often exist side by side with areas of deteriorating older housing. Though
some affluent persons choose to live in our metropolitan communities today, they may
not choose to send their children to public schools seeking instead private schools that
provide safety, vast resources and a more homogeneous student body. Heterogeneous
cultures, ethnicities, ways of life, beliefs, and values characterize most of our urban
communities.
A recent edition (March, 2005) of the ASCD journal, Educational Leadership, focused on
Urban Education. Writers in this issue suggest that many of our stereotypes of urban
settings from the 1990’s are eroding in the 2000s. Issues such as large numbers of
children of immigrants, high mobility rates, ethnic and racial diversity, a continuum of
poorest to wealthiest students, drugs, crime, and safety are often as common to suburban
and rural environments as to urban environments in the United States today.
Many of the ideas in this module will be relevant to any setting in which you may find
yourself teaching as many of the challenges of the 2000’s are the same no matter the
setting.