What are the implications of education accountability reforms, particularly in urban schools, in a political, economic, and cultural context of intensifying globalization and increasing social inequality and marginalization along lines of race and class? High StakesEducationprovides a cogent and critical examination of such questions, investigating concretely the political economy of neoliberal education reforms and the cultural politics of race. Using Chicago--a standard bearer for high stakes testing and centralized regulation of schools--as a case study, noted scholar Pauline Lipman argues there is a strategic relationship between these policies and processes of economic restructuring, racialized social control, and globalization.