This study uses a new-to-educational-research methodology, based on the legal process, to build a case that U.S. students have been largely ignored in discussion and planning for their own, presumed futures. A variety of evidence, from two large and distinct data bases, is drawn together to show: (1) students perceive their classrooms in ways distinctly different from the ways in which teachers perceive the same classrooms, (2) students' values are fundamentally different from teachers', (3) student and teacher cultures work together to perpetuate the status quo, and (4) existing educational policy, and the research on which it is based, does not adequately consider student culture. A global student culture of dealing is described and it is argued that this culture is an underlying cause of the deterioration in the achievement of U.S. students and the failures of so many reform efforts to bring about substantial and lasting change. (Contains 3 tables.)