Two good reads

Garrett Delavan's book, The Teacher's Attention (Temple U.) makes the case for smaller schools and smaller classes, or as he calls it "relationship load reduction." Delavan is a high school teacher in Salt Lake City.

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Blue-Chip Black (University of California) by Karyn Lacy, is a study of middle-class African-Americans in Prince George's County, Maryland, one of the largest such communities in the nation. It's a community set apart from both poor blacks and whites -- avoiding traditional classrooms in favor of selective enrollment magnet schools or elite private schools. It is also a community being devastated by the current economic disaster, making Lacy's work that much more significant. She writes:

Cross-racial alliances are most prevalent in Prince Goerge's County, where the county's dismal fiscal conditions united black and white residents on key issues, namely development and schools.