Parents and community activists around the country complain that the education system is failing our children. They point to students' failure to master basic s

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

"This seminal work . . . establishes a persuasive new paradigm."--Contemporary Sociology No book since Schooling in Capitalist America has taken on the systemic

McNeil traces the poor quality of high school instruction t the tensions between the social control purposes of schooling and the schools' educational goals.

What do we really want from schools? Only everything, in all its contradictions. Most of all, we want access and opportunity for all children—but all possible