What do young black males say about what stands in the way of their academic success? Rather than rely on scholarly researchers to answer this question, the authors talked with a number of black males between ages 13 and 22 in Washington D.C., and Milwaukee, Wis., to learn what they had to say. These young men rarely talked about schools or…

Recently, two separate studies--one by Alan Ginsburg, a former director of Policy and Program Studies in the U.S. Department of Education, the other by a committee constituted by the National Research Council (NRC)--have sought to discredit the work of Michelle Rhee, former chancellor of schools for the District of Columbia. According to Ginsburg,…