After presenting an overview of metropolitan schools, described as not successful in providing an adequate education for economically disadvantaged students, the authors examine four critical issues: compensatory education, educational accountability, decentralization and community control, and desegregation. While compensatory education has not been successful, movements toward accountability and community control offer promise for the future. However, the future of desegregation is uncertain. Long-range plans taking into account the difficulties of implementing desegregation may encourage careful and intelligent responses to the underlying issue; or the pretense that metropolitan segregation does not exist may continue. Interracial contact, it is contended, contributes to interracial understanding and cooperation; conversely, the absence of contact generates and/or perpetuates hatred and misunderstanding. It is understood that current conditions lead to low academic achievement caused, in part, by the sense of hopelessness and the feeling of illegitimacy inner-city students experience. Among potentially important school responses are a careful structuring of learning experiences leading to independence and self-control, parent involvement, minimization of failure, and positive self-definition. (Author/DW)