Abstract: This dissertation examines the real and potential role of public schooling as a means of improving the life chances and quality of life for high-poverty urban students as a group. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research about a youth-led participatory research project in a high-poverty urban high school, the study investigates one attempt to implement critical pedagogy in this context. Critical pedagogy is defined as a model of education for social change, which seeks to promote social critique and political engagement among students who have been historically oppressed and excluded from political and economic power. Building from the level of classroom observations, this dissertation seeks to inform a more practical theory of critical pedagogy that is grounded in practice and sensitive to the context of a high poverty urban high school. The study identifies four features of the high-poverty urban high school that limited the effectiveness of critical pedagogy: (1) the school-based reliance on classroom rules, assignments, and assessments; (2) the schooling histories and poor academic skills of many students; (3) the school-based imperative to prepare students for success at future levels of schooling; and (4) the inaccurate belief that such preparation is by itself is a path to greater social equality. The study demonstrates the importance of academic literacy skills for deepening critical consciousness and effective political engagement. Academic literacy skills empower students to access new information, learn from diverse narratives and texts, identify and articulate root causes of social problems, communicate powerfully in speech and writing, and make political demands. While emphasizing the importance of academic literacy, this study suggests the inability of schooling alone to address the root causes of poverty and poverty-related social problems. To empower high-poverty students to effect meaningful social change, this study demonstrates that critical pedagogy must strengthen academic literacy skills while also going beyond them, it must provide the opportunity, inspiration, and guidance for political engagement beyond schools. To improve the life chances and quality of life for high-poverty urban students as a group, this dissertation argues political engagement must focus on a range of economic justice issues beyond educational access.