Schooling for Resilience: Improving the Life Trajectory of Black and Latino Boys (Youth Development and Education Series) Third Printing, 2015 Edition

I did not know Edward Fergus or Margary Martin, but Pedro Noguera has been one of my longtime education heroes. The presence of Noguera's name prompted me to make this purchase and I could not be more pleased! As a career educator who has opened an all-male middle school and is working toward a Doctorate in Educational Administration and Supervision in order to open an all-male high school this book is phenomenal...and I'm not even finished reading it yet! Each chapter addresses the reflections I've personally experienced with the middle school I started (with no prior experience), while giving me a plethora of considerations as I work towards designing and opening a school to accommodate the needs of Black and Latino boys. As the father of six Black sons this book is reflective/prescriptive of the past and current educational struggles and successes that my own boys have experienced.

There is good amount of history, and specific cases. The book is just the right length. One of the best books I have read for my masters program so far.

I had to buy this for a class. It didn't really have anything useful.

great!

Excellent volume.

This book isn't about how to make resilient Black and Latino male students in schools the country over. This is an analysis of seven schools designed for boys of color and it asks if they accomplish their goals. Please note that the sample size is small and the book says two of the schools were shut down quite soon as their test scores were too low. The book implies that these schools are now legal under No Child Left Behind. However, when such schools were made in the 1990s, I believe they were deemed a violation of the Civil Rights Act, as being discriminatory against female students. Professor Michael Messner said he opposed schools for boys of color as the presence of female classmates is not the reason why so many boys of color do not score as well on standardized tests as other groups. The book doesn't make much of a solid conclusion, but please know that it can be critical of these schools, rather than just gushy. I get the sense that when the book states "Black and Latino," it really means more "African-American and Afro-Latino" than it means non-Black Latino males. If you see the program "Dropout Nation," it showed Latino students who were at-risk in ways that African-American students were not, i.e., (illegal) immigration matters. Here you never hear of Latino-specific concerns. The schools may have been a tad bit selective, but they brought in students with academic challenges. These were not magnet schools that may have a leg up just by having above-average students naturally. I like that "boys of color" are not treated as a monolithic group. There are a few pages about sexual orientation issues and concerns about gender-nonconformity. I admire Dr. Pedro Noguera immensely, but I wasn't feeling this book the way I assumed I would. In fact, it took me quite awhile to read it as it became less exciting to me.