In discussing socioeconomic integration before audiences, the author is frequently asked: What about high-poverty schools that do work? Don't they suggest that economic segregation isn't much of a problem after all? High-poverty public schools that beat the odds paint a heartening story that often attracts considerable media attention. In 2000, the conservative Heritage Foundation published a report, titled "No Excuses," meant to show that high-poverty schools can work well. The forward of the report proudly declared that the author "found not one or two ... [but] twenty-one high-performing, high-poverty schools." Unfortunately, these 21 schools were dwarfed by the 7,000 high-poverty schools identified by the US Department of Education as low performing. Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP), a chain of 125 schools educating more than 35,000 students in 20 states and the District of Columbia, is often cited as evidence that high-poverty public schools ought to be able to produce very positive results. The school program emphasizes "tough love": a longer school day and school year, more homework, and the explicit teaching of middle-class habits and norms. (Contains 21 endnotes.)