Thesis advisor: Diana Pullin / In recent years, critical race theory (CRT) has garnered much attention in education scholarship as a way to examine the racialized practices that persist in U.S. schooling. This study was a grassroots attempt at using CRT as the theoretical framework to engage a group of administrators and teacher leaders at one urban school in inquiry-based discourse that focused on raising the educators' race consciousness and co-constructing an antiracist pedagogy. A combined method of action research and critical case study was used as the research methodology. This dissertation reports on three notable findings that surfaced from the study. One, the participants largely perceived racism an individual pathology, not as a system of privilege. Because the participants regarded themselves as educators who were committed to social justice, they were often deceived by their activism to recognize their own complicity in the perpetuation of racist ideologies in their practice. Two, despite the overwhelming criticisms against NCLB in scholarly literature, the participants at this low-income, racially-diverse, urban school were passionately in favor of the goals behind the statute. With the recent push toward the development of common core content standards through the Race to the Top program, increased dialogue regarding what knowledge should be considered "common" and "core" needs to occur in order to breach the impasse between the divergent curricular viewpoints held by all stakeholders. Three, although culturally relevant pedagogy is widely espoused and utilized in educational research and practice, it is often not commonly understood as a conceptual framework that advocates the three-pronged elements of academic success, cultural competence, and sociopolitical consciousness. Findings revealed wide misconceptions and misuse of the theory that stemmed from teachers' cultural bias, the nature of racism in school settings, and the lack of support to adequately implement theories into practice. ` All of these findings revealed issues of power, positionality, and privilege that were deeply entrenched in the policies and practices of the school, which suggested that greater collaboration between scholars and practitioners was necessary in order to engender ongoing critical self-reflection and reconceptualization of theories as viable pedagogical tools to begin the work of antiracism. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2010. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Administration and Higher Education.

As school accountability intensifies, school districts strive not only to prepare their students to meet the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) mandates, but also to prepare students for college and careers after high school. Understanding the necessary reading rigor to ensure academic success is key for educators. Although Texas opted not to adopt the Common Core Curriculum Standards and the accompanying Stretch Lexile measures for reading that require higher reading levels at each grade, Texas educators must still prepare students for academic success. This study determined how the use of more rigorous Lexile standards found in other states and associated with the Common Core Curriculum Standards would affect passing scores on Texas reading assessments in grades 6-8. The population for this study included three middle schools during the 2010 school year within one large suburban school district. State reading assessment data collected from these three schools included students' scores from grades 6, 7, and 8. A Chi-square Test for Independence determined that there was statistical significance for some groups of students in the accountability system: all students, Hispanic students, and economically disadvantaged students. Each of these groups was found to pass at a significantly lower rate when using the Stretch Lexile standard. Results were also examined in terms of political, economical, educational, and social policy implications. The policy implications discussed in this study are far-reaching for Texas educators and students, especially economically disadvantaged and Hispanic students. The higher standards can potentially trigger the school improvement process for campuses and districts failing to make NCLB's required adequate yearly progress. Additional expenses related to supplemental educational services, school choice, and professional development drain district Title I budgets due to mandatory set-aside amounts, disallowing funds for other student-centered programs. Implications for practitioners include clearly establishing intervention systems, adhering to a multi-tiered intervention system, and providing a screening tool for teachers so that progress monitoring can be accomplished for students as they move toward more rigorous reading expectations that will result in college and career preparedness.