For America's children, for students, growing up urban has become a tainted label. By acquiring one simple label, the urban student has become the other, illegitimate, different from the norm. The urban student has indeed been bastardized in America. The constructs of race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and social capital combine to oppress the urban student. This text takes the suggestion that urban has become inextricably linked to race one step further and proposes that it has become a socially constructed category in its own right that serves to disempower all those who self-identify or are labeled as such. The structure of this book seeks to give the reader a series of rich contexts in which to understand how the American urban student and urban school came to fruition. Through the use of historical and quantitative data, interviews and observations, Fisher provides a comprehensive view of the many factors at play that merge to create the urban high school.