Using data from a multi-year study of eleven low-performing high schools, Cooper and Davis examine the academic aspirations and motivations of urban African American high school students in California. Situating their discussion within the context of neoliberalism and its manifestation in urban school reform and community cohesion, the authors highlight the ways in which inequitable school reform policies exacerbate existing disparities in success. The authors challenge deficit-oriented perspectives often employed to blame students and families for the well-cited, yet poorly addressed academic achievement gap. Cooper and Davis demonstrate that urban African American high school students are motivated to excel and aspire for excellence and note that families and peer networks play an important role in such dispositions.