The Street Stops Here: A Year at a Catholic High School in Harlem

by Patrick McCloskey, Samuel G. Freedman (Foreword by)

Overview

The Street Stops Here offers a deeply personal and compelling account of a Catholic high school in central Harlem, where mostly disadvantaged (and often non-Catholic) African American males graduate on time and get into college. Interweaving vivid portraits of day-to-day school life with clear and evenhanded analysis, Patrick J. McCloskey takes us through an eventful year at Rice High School, as staff, students, and families make heroic efforts to prevail against society's expectations. McCloskey's riveting narrative brings into sharp relief an urgent public policy question: whether (and how) to save these schools that provide the only viable option for thousands of poor and working-class students—and thus fulfill a crucial public mandate. Just as significantly, The Street Stops Here offers invaluable lessons for low-performing urban public schools.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520267978
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	10/30/2010
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Patrick J. McCloskey writes for many prominent publications, including City Journal, New York Times, STATS.org, Teacher Magazine and the National Post.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Powerful, eloquent, candid . . . should be required reading for those who seek to remedy the academic woes of our troubled urban schools.—Publishers Weekly

Should be required reading for anyone who is interested in the welfare of our kids.—Wall Street Journal

" A primer for urban school districts. . . (A) tale of educational triumph that the book rises to page after page."—San Francisco Chronicle

"If President Obama . . . . wants to know "what works for kids," particularly students on the social margins, he should pick up The Street Stops Here."—The Weekly Standard

"Hollywood should grab this plot and ensure Denzel Washington gets the lead role."—Ottawa Citizen

Editorial Reviews

While others have told the story of Catholic education today, none have told the story on the school level better than McCloskey.

National Catholic Reporter

If President Obama . . . . wants to know "what works for kids," particularly students on the social margins, he should pick up The Street Stops Here.

The Weekly Standard

Hollywood should grab this plot and ensure Denzel Washington gets the lead role.

Ottawa Citizen

A primer for urban school districts. . . (A) tale of educational triumph that the book rises to page after page.

San Francisco Chronicle

Should be required reading for anyone who is interested in the welfare of our kids.

Wall Street Journal

Anyone who questions the value of a good Catholic school education must read Patrick J. McCloskey’s “The Street Stops Here.”

New York Times

Not only an engaging read; it actually provides a model for reforming a segment of our nation’s schools.

Christianity Today/ Books & Culture

“ A primer for urban school districts. . . (A) tale of educational triumph that the book rises to page after page.

San Francisco Chronicle

Should be required reading for anyone who is interested in the welfare of our kids.

Wall Street Journal

Keeping the challenges of urban education in mind, McCloskey, who writes for the New York Times, monitors a year of studies at a Catholic high school in Harlem in his debut book, revealing the soaring cost of academically training young poor and non-Catholic black males for graduation and college. The subject of the yearlong investigation is Rice High School, with principal Orlando Gober, who keeps the street culture at bay while pursuing educational excellence and a high moral foundation. With the highest black student population in the regional diocese, Gober makes no excuses for how schools have failed: "parents and teachers made excuses, which crippled their willpower.... People have to be held responsible for what they do." It is illuminating to see the struggles and triumphs of a school day where students feud, teachers jockey for power, and administrative control must be maintained at all costs. Powerful, eloquent, candid, McCloskey's account should be required reading for those who seek to remedy the academic woes of our troubled urban schools. (Jan.)

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Publishers Weekly

McCloskey embarks on a qualitative exploration of a New York City parochial high school. "The most urgent problem in American education today," the author writes, "is the high dropout rate and low achievement of inner-city minority students." As the Catholic school model has shown a measure of success in educational achievement and graduation rates, often with fewer resources than public institutions, McCloskey undertook a nonideological inquiry to see what makes one inner-city, underfunded Catholic school successful. This entailed a yearlong immersion into Rice High School, an all-boys parochial academy in Harlem with a student body comprised of 85 percent African-Americans and 15 percent Hispanics. The author sat in on daily classes, attended events and teachers' meetings, conducted interviews and visited students on their home turf. Rice is no cakewalk for students or teachers: All kids, regardless of issues, are taught in the same way, with a demanding curriculum, and there are expectations, discipline and extensive parent-teacher interaction. No effort is made to convert students to Catholicism, but morality and social justice are tangible dimensions of daily life. McCloskey situates Rice within the evolution of U.S. public and parochial education, noting its imperfections, but also the fact that it graduates many more students than public schools with similarly difficult demographics. The author makes a solid case for public funding of inner-city parochial schools that is both hard to challenge-certainly as long as the pedagogical and administrative model meets resistance in the public-education sphere-and likely to cause church-state feuds. Still, he notes, "[t]he only certaintyhere is that people who fight against public funding for inner-city Catholics schools would never condemn their children to the public schools they so readily consign those children."The unadorned narrative is convincing in its portrayal of Rice's mission to put an education, not a creed, into young men's heads.

Kirkus Reviews