“This is a rare and powerful take on the role and work of supplementary educational services. In investigating these services, Koyama has staked out a whole new domain for closer inquiry, successfully convincing us that they deserve scrutiny and often perpetuate failure. Making Failure Pay should be shared and should inform future research and policy making.”

Edmund T. Hamann, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

“A riveting and highly disturbing account of the unforeseen effects of NCLB in the New York City Public Schools, Making Failure Pay demonstrates the full force of new anthropological approaches to the examination of educational policy. It exposes NCLB’s hidden public-private ‘liaisons’ that enable companies to profit from the provision of substandard and poorly regulated services that perpetuate student failure. Conceptually sophisticated and lucidly written, this book is indispensible reading for educational policymakers, policy researchers, and all who have a stake in U.S. urban schools.”

Peter Demerath, University of Minnesota

“While the book is engaging, its results are highly disturbing, as it reveals the degree to which SES providers are unaccountable and ineffective. . . . The book is unique due to the subject of investigation, and because it studies education policy by focusing on studying how legal requirements are enacted and negotiated by actors at the level of the school and the school district. It is a must read for both general audiences and students of education policy.”

Choice