Our Schools Suck

Jeanne Theoharis (Author) Jeanne Theoharis is distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of CUNY. She is the co-editor of The Strange Careers of the Jim Crow North: Segregation and Struggle outside of the South (NYU Press, 2019), A More Beautiful and Terrible History (Beacon Press, 2018), The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks (Beacon Press, 2013), Want to Start A Revolution?: Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle (NYU Press 2009), Our Schools Suck: Students Talk Back to a Segregated Nation on the Failures of Urban Education (NYU Press 2009), and Not Working: Latina Immigrants, Low-Wage Jobs, and the Failure of Welfare Reform (NYU Press 2006).Gaston Alonso (Author) Gaston Alonso is Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.Noel S. Anderson (Author) Noel S. Anderson is Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York.Celina Su (Author) Celina Su is Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. She is the author of Streetwise for Book Smarts: Grassroots Organizing and Education Reform in the Bronx and co-author of Our Schools Suck: Students Talk Back to a Segregated Nation on the Failures of Urban Education.

• Acknowledgments; Introduction 1. Culture Trap: Talking about Young People of Color and their Education; 2. "I Hate It When People Treat Me like a Fxxx-Up": Phony Theories, Segregated Schools, and the Culture of Aspiration among African American and Latino Teenagers; 3. "They Ain't Hiring Kids from My Neighborhood": Young Men of Color Negotiating Public Schools and Poor Work Options in New York City; 4. "Where Youth Have an Actual Voice": Teenagers as Empowered Stakeholders in School Reform; 5. Conclusion: When Young People Talk Back to a Segregated Nation Methodological Appendix: Listening to Young People; Notes; Index; About the Authors

Our Schools Suck is a passionate, hard-hitting critique of a re-emerging hurtful and offensive discourse on the alleged & culture of failure among youth of color. Rather than demonizing children, we need to take aim at the role that schools play in the creation and maintenance of social hierarchies. This multi-voiced account is a soulful, if poignant, re-framing of what really is an urgent, national crisis to which we must all attend. - Angela Valenzuela,author of Subtractive Schooling and Leaving Children Behind Our Schools Suck offers a clear and unmitigated analysis of the perspectives and voices of students who are trapped in schools that fail at meeting their intellectual and social needs. - Pedro A. Noguera,co-editor of Unfinished Business: Closing the Racial Achievement Gap in Our Schools This book reminds us that there are lives and futures at stake and that young people are passionate and tenacious, despite the obstacles they face every day in our urban schools. - Nadine Dolby,author of Constructing Race: Youth, Identity, and Popular Culture in South Africa Our Schools Suck aims to give voice to some of the youth caught up in the maelstrom of 21st century urban education, within a critical framework of the cultural values and larger socioeconomic forces that shape the decade. (City Limits) For anyone desperate for a fresh look into the apartheid education system, in which Black and Latino students are currently trapped. (The Daily Voice)