TITLE Using a Lens of Social Justice To Reframe Principals' Interviews from High Poverty, Low Performing Schools. PUB DATE 2001-11-00

Students, teachers, principals, and communities-in areas of high poverty and high proportion of minorities are struggling to improve their test scores in this time of high-stakes testing and accountability. Discrimination, inequities, and injustices prevalent in these schools and communities are also issues that must be addressed. Ten principals from 10 schools labeled as failing were interviewed in a previous study. Their responses were reanalyzed using the concept of social justice as a lens to frame this new study's investigation. Four major themes emerged from the interviews: (1) effects of poverty; (2) building organizational capacity; (3) high-stakes testing and grading of schools; and (4) recruitment and retention of quality teachers. Results suggest that it is the lack of understanding of the effects of poverty that limits children's success in high-poverty schools. School leaders today need to be aware of the effects of poverty on teaching and learning, to know what effective practices are and how to support them in their schools, to know how context influences their roles and relationships in schools and within their communities, and to embrace the role of the educator in schools of poverty to transform the opportunities for children of poverty, not to maintain the status quo. (Contains 18 references.) (RT) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document