Welcome to the Center for Urban Education at the University of Pittsburgh. As an organization, we
value the role that research plays in improving the work of students, teachers, policymakers, and
learning communities' nation wide. That's why the core of our most essential and distinctive activities
supports the development of new social tools and practices that aim to strengthen a wide range of
systematized instructional approaches by promoting high student achievement and providing a
knowledge base for teachers. We address the need to ensure that every child is well educated to
become a full participant in the information economy and to have full access to the American dream of
success in proportion to one's personal efforts. Our mission is to research and disseminate evidencebased
methods for improving urban education in the Pittsburgh region and nationally. Our business is
to guide, engage, and explore the elements of that mission as a new line of inquiry for the teaching
profession. Directed by some of the nation's foremost experts, the Center for Urban Education at the
University of Pittsburgh is an emerging resource for practitioners and policymakers everywhere.
Introduction
The Center for Urban Education aims to sustain conditions for K-12 communities that encourage
collaboration, and sponsor new dialogues focused on the meaning of scholarship and the experience
of School-University engagements. These conditions begin with the axiom between research and
practice: that the fundamental role of education in the twenty-first century is to synthesize reading-tolearn
development at the student level with evidence-based decision making at the teacher level to
inform a sound, fully-functional knowledge base at the professional level and beyond. The University of
Pittsburgh's School of Education has set the pace among peer institutions for research, teaching, and
education reform, and the Center for Urban Education serves alongside its most important school
liaisons to the regional K-12 educational community, providing a scholarship of application, discovery,
and integration, and leading initiatives in urban education research, training, and practice designed to
determine what kinds of evidence-driven methodologies might now be explored and developed.
Mission Statement
Our mission is to research and disseminate evidence-based methods for improving urban education in the Pittsburgh region and nationally. To achieve this mission, the Center for Urban Education currently pulls focus from the following three objectives:
Research and Practice
The Center for Urban Education will develop and evaluate improved approaches to teacher professional development and overall systemic improvement for urban school systems. Such approaches will be designed to prove that every child, regardless of race or economic status, can become competent for our information society and economy in well-operated public schools.
The CUE will help to develop and evaluate the concept of a high-quality regional educator training and professional development facility, and also develop, deliver, and document processes and tools that can yield major improvement in urban school systems.
Regional Service
The Center for Urban Education provides a strong base for partnership with the Pittsburgh Public Schools and other districts that have diverse student bodies, and work toward a systemic and coherent regional effort to improve the learning of diverse students.
Institutional Advancement
The Center for Urban Education will build a foundation for the next generation of diverse faculty by recruiting a strong role model as a senior faculty member, giving the School a clear national identity that leverages all relevant Pitt strengths.
History of the Center for Urban Education
The Center for Urban Education fulfills a major School of Education mission by focusing teacher and school leader preparation, research and service on urban education, receiving the first fully endowed chair in the 99-year history of the School of Education in 2006. Louis M. Gomez, Helen S. Faison Chair and Professor of Urban Education at the University of Pittsburgh, directs the Center.
