Focusing on issues of equity and opportunity in one urban high school, the book reveals how prominent American cultural values--in particular, students', teachers', and administrators' conceptions of educational opportunity--undermined the education that students received.

In recent years, public school discipline policies have taken a punitive turn, disproportionately impacting students of color and creating a link between certain schools and the criminal justice system. This dissertation details a year-long ethnographic study of disciplinary practices---including zero tolerance, the use of a high-tech security apparatus, and order maintenance-style policing---in an urban high school. Through the use of participant observation and ethnographic interviewing, the researcher examined the lived experience of schooling and how students and school personnel made sense of and negotiated disciplinary practices. Drawing on critical educational theories, theories of crime and punishment, and related empirical data, the researcher also examined how school discipline policies are shaped by political, economic, and cultural forces. Findings suggest that current disciplinary practices help to create a culture of penal control inside the school. Within the new disciplinary paradigm, students' non-criminal behaviors were often subjected to criminal procedural level strategies, arrests, and summonses to criminal court. As penal management became the implicit mission, attention appeared to be deflected from students' educational needs, and the causes of disruption and violence were not sufficiently addressed. Findings also revealed that students found creative, albeit sometimes destructive, ways to preserve valued identities and contest policies. Finally, findings suggest that the school has assumed a key role in the management of an educationally and economically marginalized group---poor and working class urban youth of color.

This multidisciplinary overview introduces readers to the historical, sociological, anthropological, and political foundations of urban public secondary schooling and to possibilities for reform. Focused on critical and problematic elements, the text provides a comprehensive description and analyses of urban public high schooling through different yet intertwined disciplinary lenses. Students and researchers seeking to inform their work with urban high schools from social, cultural, and political perspectives will find the theoretical frameworks and practical applications useful in their own studies of, or initiatives related to, urban public high schools. Each chapter includes concept boxes with synopses of key ideas, summations, and discussion questions.