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This case study analyzes how and why student engagement differs across 581 classes in one diverse high school. Factor analyses of surveys with 1,132 students suggest three types of engaging teaching practices—connective instruction, academic rigor, and lively teaching. Multilevel regression analyses reveal that connective instruction predicts engagement more than seven times as strongly as academic rigor or lively teaching. Embedded case studies of five classes use interviews and observations to examine how various classes combine connective instruction, academic rigor, and lively teaching and how these practices individually and collectively engage students. Across these analyses, this study introduces a typology for thinking systematically about teaching for engagement.

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This study explores the role of high school students’ perceptions of teacher understanding in the development of caring student-teacher relationships. Whereas past research has embedded understanding as a facet of care, this research distinguishes between care and understanding to examine whether and how understanding is necessary for care. Extending Noddings’ (1992) conceptions of caring as virtue and caring as relation to consider understanding as virtue and understanding as relation , the researchers analyzed 33 interviews with high school students discussing 65 student-teacher relationships to consider the nuances within these different types of relationships. The findings confirm that caring as relation is the more desirable form of teacher care and that in most instances of relational caring, students perceive that teachers understand them both as people and learners. However, this is not uniformly the case, and many students perceive agency in co-creating their relationships with teachers by regulating the extent to which they allow teachers to understand them. The researchers recommend greater attention to the development of understanding as virtue within high schools as a middle ground between a complete lack of understanding and extensive relational understanding. This research has implications for teachers and school leaders seeking to foster stronger student-teacher relationships.

Responding to recent reports that Latina students often lack feelings of belonging at school and are dropping out in increasing numbers, this study explores how classroom environments influence engagement or disengagement among Latina students. Through case studies with five Latina 10th-grade students, this research examines how variations in the learning environment along three dimensions influence variations in classroom engagement as students travel from class to class in a given school day. Marshaling interview and observational data, the author demonstrates that Latina students experience the greatest levels of classroom engagement in learning spaces that are safe, affirming, and productive.

Becoming a better teacher by learning and implementing new ways of teaching requires time, effort, persistence, and a belief that new strategies will enhance student learning. But when educational leaders try to improve teachers and teaching from the outside, by bringing in reformers to transform how teachers engage in the core business of teaching, reforms rarely stick because the first transformation that must occur is in the perspective of initially resistant teachers. This transformation in perspective comes, in part, from teachers working to improve the quality of teachers and teaching in their own schools by developing a common vision, trust in teacher leadership, and openness to learning. Teachers who promote change can make a lasting impact.

Standards-based accountability policies that include high-stakes testing are currently the dominant school reform approach in the United States. These policies are designed to raise students' educational outcomes and reduce race and class achievement gaps by linking students' test scores to rewards and sanctions for both schools and students. Such policies are based on a straightforward set of assumptions: Educators will improve instruction and students will learn more if (1) policymakers clearly articulate rigorous standards, (2) a curriculum that is aligned with the standards is developed and implemented, (3) regular assessments are taken to determine if students are meeting the standards, and (4) rewards and sanctions for schools and/or students based on these test results are imposed. By establishing a clear set of goals, motivating educators and students through incentives, and providing schools with objective data on student learning outcomes, these policies are designed to create more educational equality.Debates about the impact of high-stakes testing center on two opposing lines of argument related to the use of testing data. One suggests that the use of testing data will enhance the quality of schoolbased decision making and instructional practice because school leaders and teachers will use data to make better-informed decisions. According to these arguments, such practices will enhance instructional quality, particularly in the lowest performing schools, and create more educational equity (Coleman et al., 1997;Shouse, 1997).An alternative perspective suggests that the use of testing data will have negative consequences for certain students because school offi-

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