"Anyon helpfully returns our attention to the tougher issues of race, class and urban neglect that have helped to produce the institutions that have failed ghetto students time and again, and in the process reminds us of possible solutions, once considered seriously but now absent from policy discussions in an era of budget balancing."
—New York Times Book Review

"How long, and with what clever self-deception, will we pretend that racial and caste sequestration of the children of the poorest of the poor can be ‘restructured’ rather than abolished and replaced by simple justice. . .? Through painfully strong narrative and carefully nuanced scholarly reflection, Dr. Anyon brings to life a day-to-day reality that urban children take for granted and the press, in large part, sugarcoats or subtly evades."

—Jonathan Kozol, author, Savage Inequalities

"Jean Anyon’s new book asks you to check your clichés at the door and see how Newark’s schools actually work. . . . There are a lot of unpopular truths in this book."

—Gary Orfield, Harvard University

"Anyon . . . knows what she’s talking about. Her new book convincingly argues that inner-city education cannot be turned around without improving inner-city life."

—Sunday Star-Ledger

"This important book is recommended for educators, sociologists, city planners, and public policy decisionmakers."
—Library Journal

In this disturbing but ultimately hopeful personal account, Jean Anyon provides compelling evidence that the economic and political devastation of America’s inner cities has robbed schools and teachers of the capacity to successfully implement current strategies of educational reform. She argues that without fundamental change in government and business policies and the redirection of major resources back into the schools and the communities they serve, urban schools are consigned to failure, and no effort at raising standards, improving teaching, or boosting achievement can occur.