This book deals with aspects of a special case in the crisis of urban education, in which blacks are central both as teachers and students, but it also attempts to consider aspects of the more general issues as well. It reports research on the behavior and attitudes of black elementary-school teachers in Washington, D.C. That city's system is in some ways distinctive. But its rapid transformation since the mid-1950s into a system very largely black in student population and its many difficulties render it comparable in many ways to other urban school systems. At the same time, the book focuses on sources and character of teacher adaptation in such a setting--adaptations that are found widely in American schools. Studying black teachers in an urban school system who are dealing with a massively black student population, we have been able to focus on problems of teachers functioning that cannot be attributed to racial differences. The research presented in this book suggests the existence of a defensive subculture among teachers that helps them to adapt to personally and professionally difficult situations in the schools. The creation and maintenance of this subculture is shown to have negative effects on students, while positively affecting teachers' level of job satisfaction. (Author/JM)