ABSTRACT
Since the 1990s, efforts to reform school systems in urban centers across the United States have been marked by the pursuit of accountability, most notably through the use of federal mandates, state-required secondary school exit exams, and mayoral control. Though several volumes have explored the follies of contrived accountability (Apple, 2005; Skrla & Scherich, 2003; Kozol, 2006; Noddings, 2007), few have excavated the consequences of accountability policies on secondary school completion (see Amrein & Berliner, 2003). Urban Youth and School Pushout: Gateways, Get-aways, and the GED examines the relationships between federal, state, and local education policies, the use and over-use of the General Education Development (GED) credential, and school pushout in New York City. I utilize the term pushout throughout this book to describe the experiences of those youth who have been compelled to leave school by people or factors inside school, such as disrespectful treatment from teachers and other school personnel, violence among students, arbitrary school rules, and the insurmountable presence of high stakes testing. Using new empirical data, I show how accountability policies such as mandatory exit exams and mayoral control, punctuated by pressures excited by No Child Left Behind, produce the conditions in which schools tacitly and explicitly encourage under-performing students to drop out under the auspices of the GED.
