This article offers analysis and critique of John Ogbu's last ethnography, titled "Black American Students in an Affluent Suburb", in which he described a set of community forces contributing to the academic disengagement of African American youth. Its purposes are threefold: first, to briefly layout Ogbu's findings; second, to compare these to findings emerging from the authors current research on school factors that promote and impede success in school for working-class and migrant students of Mexican descent; and third, to point to ways in which Ogbu, by his almost singular attention to the role of community forces, discounted the power of school factors--both as barriers to achievement and as forces for promoting school engagement and academic success. The article concludes with a discussion of the policy implications that flow from Ogbu's analysis, as well as the author's research.