preface<br > Like many Americans， I belatedly discovered the "crisis in urban edu-<br >cation" in the late 1960s. This was a time in the United States when the<br >ghettos were in revolt， when local groups demanded community control of<br >the schools， and when teachers went on strike to protest some of the black<br >community s demands. Black leaders claimed that the schools provide their<br >children with inadequate opportunities to learn. White middle-class parents，<br >feeling that large city public schools are not only inadequate but dangerous，<br >emigrated to the suburbs. Some teachers， believing that ghetto children are<br >unmanageable， demanded (and sometimes got) police protection. Other<br >leachers， alienated by the system， produced a spate of books-for example，<br > Kohl s 36 Children-which inveighed against the schools oppression and out-<br >lined .radical solutions.<br > The crisis in education was not limited to the city s problems， altlmugh<br >~these naturally received most of the national news coverage. Small town and<br >.rural America suffered， too. In Ithaca， New York， a local parents group<br >formed a "Black Board of Education" to protest the regular school board s<br >polidies and practices， especially its alleged failure to provide adequate teach-<br >ing and :guidance for black children. Nearby， in the farm conmmnity of<br >Dryden， there were no protests and no overt sigus of conflict. But in Dryden<br >many poor rural whites drop out of school， and those who stay in learn little.<br >Most of these children find that education neither enriches their lives nor<br >improves their social and economic position.<br > Before the crisis in education forced itself into the public conscions-<br >ness， many educators and psychologists were engaged in attempts to improve<br >poor children s education. Psyclmlogists conducted research on poor children s<br >intellectual abilities and attempted to develop and evaluate new programs<br >of compensator?， education. Many teachers experimented with techniques in-<br >tended to break the cycle of failure associated with poor children s schooling.<br > ix<br >