Middle- and upper-middle-class students continue to outpace those from less privileged backgrounds. Most attempts to redress this inequality focus on the issue of access to financial resources, but as "Producing Success" makes clear, the problem goes beyond mere economics. In this eye-opening study, Peter Demerath examines a typical suburban…

The most exciting innovation in education policy in the last decade is the emergence of highly effective schools in our nation's inner cities, schools where disadvantaged teens make enormous gains in academic achievement. In this book, the author takes readers inside six of these secondary schools and reveals the secret to their success: they are…

Despite a myriad of school reform efforts, inner-city schools, attended for the most part by poor and working-class Black and Latino children, are failing to prepare students for our highly complex and changing world. This book suggests that reform efforts have failed because they focused upon school-based solutions and paid scant attention to the…