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Farrar, Straus and Giroux
October 2006
On Sale: October 3, 2006
496 pages
ISBN: 0374131945
EAN: 9780374131944
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Political
In Cross-X, journalist Joe Miller follows the Kansas City
Central High School’s debate squad through the 2002 season
that ends with a top-ten finish at the national
championships in Atlanta.
By almost all measures, Central is just another failing
inner-city school. Ninety-nine percent of the students are
minorities. Only one in three graduate. Test scores are so
low that Missouri bureaucrats have declared the school
“academically deficient.” But week after week, a crew of
Central kids heads off to debate tournaments in suburbs
across the Midwest and South, where they routinely beat
teams from top-ranked schools. In a game of fast-talking,
wit, and sheer brilliance, these students close the
achievement gap between black and white students—an
accomplishment that educators and policy makers across the
country have been striving toward for years.
Here is the riveting and poignant story of four debaters and
their coach as they battle formidable opponents from elite
prep schools, bureaucrats who seem maddeningly determined to
hold them back, friends and family who are mired in poverty
and drug addiction, and—perhaps most daunting—their own
self-destructive choices. In the end, Miller finds himself
on a campaign to change debate itself, certain that these
students from the Eastside of Kansas City may be the saviors
of a game that is intrinsic to American democracy.
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