Joshua Dunn's thoughtful review raises methodological and substantive issues that require clarification. According to Dunn, my coauthors and I “contend” that students' “statements” criticizing their lack of academic drive or that of their peers “show how students have ‘internalized’ the perspective of scholars such as Patterson.” This is evidence, he contends, that we “tend not to treat young people as ‘experts’ of their lives” when they failed to support our critique of the “culture of failure” thesis. However, we make no such contention. Moreover, his critique misrepresents our ethnographic approach. While researchers who conduct interviews as part of their methods often report statements by public officials and others to support their arguments, as ethnographers we engaged in an interpretative task.