In a March 2006 New York Times editorial, sociologist Orlando Patterson highlighted and tried to explain the “tragedy unfolding in our inner cities,” particularly the “self-destructive” behavior of “young black men.” Provocatively, he identified what sociologists have labeled the “cool-pose culture” as the primary culprit. According to this “culture of failure” thesis, minority youth are partly responsible for this tragedy by choosing a lifestyle that disconnects them from the “socioeconomic mainstream.” It is this thesis that Our Schools Suck is determined to discredit. The authors, four scholars and also, importantly, self-professed activists, criticize scholars, politicians, political analysts, and entertainers, including Patterson, Barack Obama, Juan Williams, and Bill Cosby, for giving “nonwhite youth” a “moral flogging” rather than focusing on the real problem, “socioeconomic and school conditions” (p. 5). Instead of being unconcerned about education, they argue, urban minority youth value education and are acutely aware of their schools' shortcomings.

Following a critique of the culture-of-failure thesis, Gaston Alonso and his colleagues develop their argument through three ethnographic case studies of students in Los Angeles and New York City. One case study focuses on the writing journals of more than a hundred eleventh graders from Fremont High School in Los Angeles, another relies on interviews with four minority males participating in a New York City Upward Bound Program, and the last studies the activism of a small group of high school students in the South Bronx. Unabashedly normative, the authors also consider the young people at the center of their analysis “the ‘experts’ of their lives” (p. 217). Thus, they contend, we “need to listen to young people of color as they tell us about ‘what life is like for them’ and to explore the ways their voices push us to reshape our discussions regarding schooling and to rethink our policy initiatives” (p. 231).

The authors more than succeed in showing that the students included in their case studies value education. Reading the selections from student journals and interviews was, in many instances, heartbreaking. This volume does a valuable service in showing how these young people seemed all too aware of the challenges facing them and why they might have difficulty meeting those challenges. The students consistently report frustration at school violence, overcrowded facilities, and indifferent or unqualified teachers. A common sentiment, in the words of one young woman, was “I know I can't do anything in life without an education” (p. 91). But the book notes that such students know that “[i]f they mess up, there is no elaborate safety net to catch them” (p. 91).

The case studies, though, do not seem to disprove Patterson, Obama, and so on as much as show that there are important exceptions to the culture-of-failure thesis. Some of the evidence from the volume, in fact, supports the very position it seeks to discredit. Among various educational obstacles mentioned by students were the complacency of other students who, for lack of a better word, only want to strike a “cool pose” and the gang culture and violence attending it (pp. 85, 136). Many of them confessed that they were responsible for making poor choices and that they could make better choices. When reporting these statements, though, the authors tend not to treat the young people as “experts of their own lives,” contending instead that they show how students have “internalized” the perspective of scholars like Patterson. Hence, when we should and should not trust the judgment of the students is sometimes unclear.

Whether the balance of evidence supports one side or the other is probably not the most significant issue. Urban schools, as this volume often powerfully attests to, are failing students who truly desire to learn and succeed. The question is what to do about that failure. Based on their case studies, Alonso and his coauthors identify “two central areas of concern: the bodily experience students have in school, which derives largely from the resources available to their schools, and the governance and organization structure of their schools and the anti-intellectual nature of many of their classes” (p. 191). Solving these problems, they argue, calls for money and accountability “that our society has thus far not been willing to commit to” (p. 210). However, their remedies seem somewhat disconnected from the tragedy that this volume documents.

Most problematic is the assumption that the problems of urban education flow from a lack of resources. This is a popular but questionable claim. For example, New York City has had one of the highest per pupil expenditures in the country for decades. As well, one long-acknowledged reason for overcrowding in the city's schools, despite multibillion-dollar budgets, has been the outrageous cost of construction, which cannot be explained solely by the greater costs of building in New York City. Before Mayor Michael Bloomberg was granted control over the school district, a study by the city's Independent Budget Office found that the district's cost of high school construction was 414% higher than in New Jersey and the rest of New York State. A primary reason for this preposterously higher cost was the incompetence and inefficiency of the city's School Construction Authority (SCA). Reducing construction costs and reforming the SCA have been central concerns of Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein.

The authors note that because school funding in the United States is largely driven by property taxes, districts without significant residential and commercial property are at a disadvantage in raising revenue. But those conditions do not apply to urban school systems, which have if not a large residential property tax base then a significant commercial base. To name a few, Detroit, Los Angeles, Newark, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, St. Louis, Kansas City, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Richmond, and Boston—all serving largely minority and high-poverty populations, making arguments about intradistrict funding disparities less salient—spend more, sometimes significantly more, per pupil than statewide averages. Newark and Boston, for instance, at $24,000 and $20,700, respectively, spend nearly $8,000 and $7,000 more per pupil than state averages. Only by comparing urban districts to the very wealthiest of suburban districts do urban districts appear to be at a disadvantage. The authors dismiss those who question whether more money will help by incorrectly claiming that “they take this attitude only toward urban public education rather than expounding on the limited utility of expensive private or suburban schools” (p. 200). Those pointing out the tenuous connection between increased spending and educational outcomes have pointedly applied their analysis to the conspicuous educational consumption of posh locales like Westchester County just as much as New York City.

The real problem, then, is ensuring that money makes it to students. Here, the authors point in the right direction by calling for real accountability. However, other than criticizing reform efforts like mayoral control in New York City and No Child Left Behind (NCLB), they do not offer concrete proposals of their own. In the case of mayoral control, the authors criticize Bloomberg and Klein's focus on school safety. But if we are to follow the advice of young people, one of their case study participants reported that the burdensome but increased security helped minimize a significant educational distraction (p. 136). The authors also do not discuss the extraordinary steps taken by Bloomberg and Klein to remove demonstrably ineffective teachers from the classroom. Mayoral control is not an educational silver bullet (and we should all abandon the false dream of simple educational solutions, whether increased spending or school vouchers), but at least Bloomberg and Klein have tried to take responsibility for the issues of greatest concern to students in this book: safety, overcrowding, and substandard teaching.

Considering the students' complaints about their teachers, I was hoping for more discussion about how to get better teachers in the classroom and remove ineffective ones. Instead, the authors focus on how high-stakes testing and NCLB have encouraged formulaic teaching to the test. As a critic of teaching to the test and some of the perverse incentives created by NCLB, I am sympathetic to their concerns. But some standardized testing is necessary for demonstrating whether schools have fulfilled their basic educational obligations and for acting as a lever for reform and accountability. It is also difficult to see how NCLB is responsible for apathetic or unqualified teachers. The book hints at a potential solution when it mentions the success that KIPP (Knowledge Is Power Program) schools have often had with disadvantaged students. Unfortunately, while acknowledging the quality and dedication of KIPP teachers (who also labor under NCLB and high-stakes testing), the authors imply that KIPP schools' performance is due to “extra resources” that the schools garner (p. 202). But as largely public charter schools, they receive less funding, often much less, than traditional public schools, and can only try to narrow the gap through fund-raising.

Despite these concerns, Alonso and his colleagues should be commended for dramatically exposing the very real consequences for young people of urban educational failure and the urgent need for reform.