With Breaking the Cycle, Nancy Brown Diggs has provided eloquent, powerful, and stimulating analysis of the troubles in our neighborhoods and the people assiduously working with interest and clear thinking to effectively protect them. Reading this book is recommended since it offers some hope to the hopeless.

The Journal of Negro Education

A “must read” for teachers, educators, sociologists, and reformers concerned about lost generations of at-risk students in dysfunctional, ineffective urban schools. Breaking the Cycle gives hope to educators and decision markers, and a model for how to change lives of at-risk students and potential dropouts. Young people who face seemingly insurmountable odds of being successful because of family and neighborhood environments with drugs, violence, single parent families, attitudes toward education, and poor schools are provided with the opportunity to succeed in this model school. “Cuddles, challenges, and cooperation” are keys to all students’ entering college—and completion. Readers will take away rich and moving descriptions of the challenges faced by urban young people, the work of teachers to meet their needs, and a model for structuring creative schools and classes.

Jeanne Ballantine, Wright State University

In Breaking the Cycle Nancy Diggs captures the voices of DECA – students and teachers, school leaders and founders - to tell the story of how an amazing school, against all odds, is preparing inner city students to succeed in college. This book inspires hope for the future and will serve as a guide to urban educators across the country.

Bob Taft, Governor of Ohio 1999-2007; Distinguished Research Associate, University of Dayton

For a long time now, researchers have asked ‘what about the schools and classrooms that are doing a great job in the most difficult circumstances?’ This account of the DECA Charter School in Dayton, Ohio by Nancy Brown Diggs provides one clear answer to that question. Here is the story of a school that has dramatically raised the bar on the meaning of success for high needs urban students. Anyone engaged with urban education needs to read it.

James Fraser, senior vice president for programs at Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation and professor of history and education at New York University, author of "Preparing America's Teachers: A History"