It's a vivid and persuasive social polemic, rooted in real children's lives, that brings the schools of urban America leaping off the page — and should be forced reading for Michael Gove and his merry
band of free - schoolers, who, having filched the idea of charter and KIPP schools from the US, now need to look West again to
see how fiddling with school
structures can never, by itself, help pupils do better.