Hope deferred, constructed on a progressive politics of despair, is a common justification for poor teaching. It hides behind misinterpretations of research that connect the material conditions of poverty to the constraints placed on schools. Many teachers feel overwhelmed by the challenges urban youth face in their lives and consider themselves ill-equipped to respond with a pedagogy that will develop hope in the face of such daunting hardships. They are liberal-minded enough to avoid “blaming the victim,” turning instead to blaming the economy, the violence in society, the lack of social services, the “system.” These teachers have a critique of social inequality but cannot manifest this cri-tique in any kind of transformative pedagogical project (Solórzano & Delgado-Bernal, 2001). They “hope” for change in its most deferred forms: either a collective utopia of a future reformed society or, more often, the individual student’s future ascent to the middle class

Obama’s election has the potential to contribute to mythical hope, what Roland Barthes (1972) might have described as a false narrative of equal opportu-nity emptied of its historical and political contingencies. The significance of the election of a black man as the president of this country is undeniable, especially given our past and present national failure to meet the challenge of racial equality. But immediately after an election that few would have pre-dicted, the overstatement of its significance began; it became naturalized as the consequence of a fictitious color-blind society. In John McCain’s (2008) concession speech, after referencing the white rage that followed Booker T. Washington’s dinner with President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House in 1901, McCain proclaimed:America today is a world away from the cruel and prideful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the election of an African American to the presidency of the United States. Let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on Earth. (para. 6)McCain’s insinuation that this election signifies the “end of racism” (D’Souza, 1995) is mythmaking. His statement ignores the fact that people of color trail their white counterparts on virtually every indicator of social, political, and economic well-being. Educators must not use Obama’s election as evidence that we have emerged victorious in our battle with racism or with any of the oppressions (classism, patriarchy, xenophobia, homophobia) that continue to cripple our society. Obama (2006) himself preempted this argu-ment by pointing out:To say that we are one people is not to suggest that race no longer matters. . . . To suggest that our racial attitudes play no part in . . . disparities is to turn a blind eye to both our history and our experience—and to relieve ourselves of the responsibility to make things right. (pp. 232–233)Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/her/article-pdf/79/2/181/2112610/haer_79_2_nu3436017730384w.pdf?casa_token=AYANWQpJoukAAAAA:ddPEhYW3fllIeZJvdpHXEUDYdfPofGP1YLYgG70dUvjp1LcAeCVDMcO1cORzGIt1jaNloo0OIK1_ by University of California Irvine user on 04 March 2022

Angela Valenzuela’s Subtractive Schooling (1999) provides a profound exami-nation of how hokey hope is manifested in Seguin High School, a predom-inantly Latino school in Texas. She argues that Seguin is indicative of a national culture of ineffective schoolsthat is “structured around an aestheticcaring whose essence lies in an attention to things and ideas” (p. 22). Relation-ships between school officials and students become pragmatic, the teaching and learning process is strained, and an “impersonal and objective language, including such terms as goals, strategies, and standardized curricula, is used in decisions made by one group for another” (p. 22). This leads to a culture

In this essay, Jeff Duncan-Andrade explores the concept of hope, which was central to the Obama campaign, as essential for nurturing urban youth. He first identifies three forms of “false hope”—hokey hope, mythical hope, and hope deferred—pervasive in and peddled by many urban schools. Discussion of these false hopes then gives way to Duncan-Andrade’s conception of “critical hope,” explained through the description of three necessary elements of educational practice that produce and sustain true hope. Through the voices of young people and their teachers, and the invocation of power-ful metaphor and imagery, Duncan-Andrade proclaims critical hope’s significance for an education that relieves undeserved suffering in communities.The idea that hope alone will transform the world, and action undertaken in that kind of naïveté, is an excellent route to hopelessness, pessimism, and fatal-ism. But the attempt to do without hope, in the struggle to improve the world, as if that struggle could be reduced to calculated acts alone, or a purely scientific approach, is a frivolous illusion. (Freire, 1997, p. 8

Understanding NCLB legislation. The students had all heard about NCLB from the media, but were not aware of any specific policies. After read-ing about NCLB, several of them searched the MPS website on their own to find the percentage of highly qualified teachers in other Metropolis schools and districts. As they learned more about NCLB, they began to feel excluded from the process of developing education policy because they realized that students’ voices had not been considered, which was evident in NCLB’s academic focus and inattention to other criteria that matter to students.Reviewing education literature. In addition to information on NCLB, the students read education literature that discussed teacher quality and ad-dressed issues of race, culture, language, pedagogy, and student–teacher relationships. It was important for them to analyze how their own experi-ences had been affected by these other factors. One article the students read was called “Getting to the Heart of Quality Teaching,” which appeared in the Rethinking Schools Special Edition entitled “Improving Teacher Qual-ity”(Winter 2005–2006).The students were particularly drawn to the ele-ments of quality teaching that the authors, Au et al., defined as “grounded in the lives of our students; critical; multicultural, antiracist, pro-justice; participator y, experiential; hopeful, visionar y; activist; academically rigor-ous; and culturally and linguistically sensitive” (2005–2006, p. 7). The stu-dents discussed with one another whether these factors mattered to them in what they considered a highly qualified teacher. They shared stories of their own relationships with teachers or those of their peers. They all felt that teaching should be grounded in students’ lives but had different ideas of what that would look like in practice. Analyzing their learning experiences. The students had to describe powerful moments or experiences when they really learned something, positive or negative, from someone else

The PAR framework is a key component of SLA because it allows students to have an active role in the change process while encouraging them to main-tain a strong commitment to their schoolwork. Merrifield (1997) discusses three important components of PAR: participation, action, and knowledge. This framework allows those who “would traditionally be the subject of re-search to decide what problems are worth investigating” (Merrifield, p. 3). PAR establishes a framework in which students act as both researchers and researched. They are involved in the entire research process, and their own daily realities drive the issues and questions they want to examine. PAR is em-powering because it raises the critical consciousness of those whose voices have been historically silenced and excluded from power long held by elites. It allows for the assumption that “knowledge is alive, rooted in social rela-tions, and most powerful when produced collaboratively through community-based social action” (Fine et al., 2001, p. 1). Through this work, students are tr ying to change the way adults — teachers, administrators, and other edu-cators who are making decisions and policies that have an impact on their education — think about the role of youth in defining and shaping their own high school experiences.

The students featured in this article are advocating for social change through their letters to teachers and with stories about the ways federal edu-cation legislation has affected their school experiences. They studied the is-sue of teacher quality and redefined it for themselves in the context of their education. This article is a rare opportunity for their voices to be heard. The students hope that the educators who read these letters will reflect on teach-ers who were instrumental (or not) in their own lives, and then consider how adults and youth can work together to make the issue of teacher quality re-sponsive to all students’ needs.The Vision and Development of Student Leadership and Action If academic performance is to improve for all students, and if teacher quality is a key component in that improvement, then educators and policymakers Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/doi/pdf/10.17763/haer.76.4.nu70771132536q86 by University of California Irvine user on 04 March 2022

In this article, four urban high school students and their student leadership and social justice class advisor address the question, “What are high school students’ perspectives on the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act’s (NCLB) definition of a highly qualified teacher?” As the advisor to the course, Garcia challenged her students to examine their high school experiences with teachers. The students offer personal sto-ries that describe what they consider the critical qualities of teachers — qualities not based solely on the credentials and education status defined by NCLB. The authors suggest that highly qualified teachers should cultivate safe, respectful, culturally sen-sitive, and responsive learning communities, establish relationships with students’ families and communities, express their high expectations for their students through instructional planning and implementation, and know how students learn. This article urges educators and policymakers to consider the students’ voices and school experiences when making decisions about their educational needs, including the critical issue of teacher quality.

For example, important research by Tara Brown andstudents from Rock Creek Alternative High Schoolprovides “insider” perspectives into school policiesthat serve to alienate and exclude students from school(Brown, Bridges, & Clark, 2008). While much of theresearch exploring dropping out focuses on risk factorsamong students, their families, and communities, thehigh school researchers in Brown’s project providevaluable insights into the role and responsibility ofschools in creating dropouts. As part of their project,student researchers critically examined how schools“push” students out of school through problematicpedagogical practices and policies and how schoolsmight be constructed to better support students. Dataemerging from the efforts of Project ARISE (ActionResearch into School Exclusion) speak to the potential ofyoung people to positively inform school reform effort

Multicultural education is a process of comprehensiveschool reform and basic education for all students. It chal-lenges and rejects racism and other forms of discrimina-tion in schools and society and accepts and affirms the plu-ralism (ethnic, racial, linguistic, religious, economic, andgender, among others) that students, their communities,and teachers reflect. Multicultural education permeatesschools’ curriculum and instructional strategies as wellas the interactions among teachers, students, and familiesand the very way that schools conceptualize the natureof teaching and learning. Because it uses critical peda-gogy as its underlying philosophy and focuses on knowl-edge, reflection and action (praxis) as the basis for socialchange, multicultural education promotes the democraticprinciples of social justice (Nieto & Bode, 2008; p. 4

YPAR demonstrates the potentialto reinvigorate the field and bolster our efforts to useteaching and learning as a vehicle for simultaneouslyfacilitating the development of academic and interper-sonal skills among students and engaging youth as equalpartners in the struggle for social justice and educationalequity. As scholars in this themed issue take inventory ofthe field and speak to where we are now, this piece affirmsthe need to “reACTivate”1multicultural education andhighlights current, hopeful practices well-aligned withthe goals of multicultural education that are improvingthe educational experiences and outcomes for youth whohave been marginalized by schools and society at large

This passage speaks volumes about the “coming-out” experience and how it is portrayed inAmerican film and media. Oftentimes when non-LGBTQ+ people hear the term “coming-out,”they always attribute it to this giant event that happens once in a person's life. But in reality,coming-out as queer, gay, lesbian, trans, or non-binary and gender nonconforming is somethingthat occurs repetitively and continuously for many LGBTQ+ youth. When Ngo says that “you’repotentially coming-out whenever you meet someone new” he attributes it to his own K-12experiences in middle and high school. Ngo believes that many of his peers and classmateswould “hint” that they’re queer, and they would come-out at different times and with differentpeople who fall under the same spectrum. Ngo even explains how coming-out became arecurring activity with his own mother, “I will say that, in terms of coming out in middle andhigh school, it’s definitely true that there is no set coming out experience. I told my Mom, andshe didn’t believe me, I told her later and she didn’t believe me. I told her two years later and shedidn’t believe me” (Ngo, 2022). In his book, Mayo explains how LGBTQ+ youth lack supportfrom family members within their immediate household and school environments, “these [lackof supports] may include a lack of role models in schools, discomfort with parental involvementor, especially in the case of children with LGBTQ parents, difficult relations between school andfamily” (Mayo 2014). And this ties back to that idea of a continuous coming-out experience.Ngo says how his mother and father were both staunchly conservative, if not, oblivious to talksabout the LGBTQ+ community. Ngo explains how she [his mother] cared more about her owndaughter’s academic success in a heteronormative world, as opposed to how her daughter feltand who she identifies as. For many LGBTQ+ teens like Thi Ngo whose parents are deeplyrooted in a heteronormative values, it can be difficult to comfortably exit as queer in onespontaneous go. And for students’ part of the LGBTQ+ community, coming-out can take monthsor even years before parents, relatives, and immediate peers could take the hint. And this issomething that will be discussed in further detail.

Ngo is an Education Science major who, at the time of this writing,attends the University of California Irvine. Ngo is a Vietnamese American who is part of theLGBTQ+ community. And as a female-born individual, Ngo identifies as a non-binary queerwho wishes to transition as a male. In hopes of providing more research into queer and genderdiscussions, I, along with my colleague Emily Mercado, have decided to create our very firstacademic podcast entitled Uncloseted, a one-hour conversation that delves deep into theintersectionalities, struggles, and personal challenges that our guest speaker, Thi Ngo, hadexperienced as an LGBTQ+ student in Northern California. Our podcast also pulls ideas fromCris Mayo’s 2014 book entitled LGBTQ Youth and Education. Mayo is a world-renowned authorwho currently serves as Director and Professor of the Interdisciplinary Studies master’s degreeprogram in the U.S. Department of Education (uvm.com). And it is through his readings thatwe’ll begin to debunk previous misconceptions about the coming-out experience, look at theissues of being LGBTQ+ under an Asian American household, and explain how unfairgovernment policies and school practices persist at removing queer and non-binary conversationsinside American classrooms. This paper hopes to expose those practices and shed light on theintersectional experiences of Thi Ngo during his K-12 years. Likewise, our study hopes to findpossible action steps or suggestions that could better the school experience for many current anduncloseted LGBTQ+ students in the countr

Students' health and risk behaviors also are affected by homophobic andtransphobic experiences at school. Negative experiences at school involv-ing gender identity or anti-gay harassment are associated with depression,stress, anxiety, and consideration of suicide, among other things (D'Augelliet al., 2006; Williams et al., 2005). Students who feel unsafe at school orunconnected to school because they have no support for their experiencesof homophobia and transphobia may engage in unsafe sexual behavior andsubstance abuse (Bontempo & D' Augelli, 2002). LGBTQ students not onlymay lack support at school, but also may face rejection from their families,with a similar outcome of greater risk for thoughts of suicide, unsafe sexualbehavior, and substance abuse (Grossman & D' Augelli, 2006; C. C. Ryanet al., 2009). Thinking about the obstacles faced by LGBTQ youth, whoexperience a wide range of exclusions in their attempts to access education,may help provide a better school-based response to ensure their educationalsuccess. In addition, because LGBTQ youth may not find support at home,school-based support and advocacy for their access to education are all themore crucial.RESITUATING"BULLYING"IN SEXUALHARASSMENTThe topic of bullying has gotten much media coverage and school-basedattention in the past several years. But bullying as a term does not capturethe institutional scope of exclusion that LGBTQ and other minority youthexperience. Nor does the term bullying itself necessarily encourage schoolpersonnel to think broadly about exclusionary and hostile experiences stu-dents face, especially those that are based on gen<ler and sexual orienta-tion. Indeed, researchers on bullying caution that misunderstandings aboutthe relationship between bullying and institutional, pervasive bias miss notonly the rights-based aspects of gender-based bias, but the damaging ef-fects of such experiences as well. Nan Stein (2003) cites a Vermont casewhere a young, middle school boy was harassed by students who thoughthe was gay. His parents, using a then-new Vermont law on bullying, took

King's story underscores the strength of young gender nonconforming,gay, and transgender people, their sense of confidence about their identity,and, as well, the very real dangers they can face in public schools. As ayoung person of color, King's experience was further amplified by racism.Wearing eye shadow to school and trying to be authentic in this hostilecontext of school, King was continually open to taunting and bullying, andtried to keep strong by flirting with tormentors (Saillant, 20086). Reportsindicate that school officials were aware of the potential difficulties betweenKing and the attacker but did not intervene (Saillant, 20086)

Schools, like the rest of the social world, are structured by heterosexism-the assumption that everyone is and should be heterosexual (that such anassumption should have to be stated or even reinforced by policies indicatesthat everyone might not be heterosexual but they should be). Curricula, texts,and schools too often are constructed to reflect that heterosexuality is notonly the norm but also the only possible option for students. Heterosexismalso is reinforced by homophobia, overt expressions of dislike, harassment,and even assault of sexual minority people, a practice that members of theschool community often ignore or dismiss as typical behavior based on theheterosexist assumption that either there are no LGBTQ people present inschool communities or, if there are, those LGBTQ people ought to learnto expect a hostile environment. While homophobia possibly may be-atleast in some places-less socially acceptable today than it was previously,it is nonetheless the case that schools are not very supportive places formost LGBTQ, questioning, intersex, and ally students. The pressure to con-form to rigid ideas about proper gender and sexuality is also damaging toheterosexual and gender conforming students. Many students of all sexual52

If we look at how sexual norms function to create and stabilize themeaning of gender, we get a better idea of the links between sex and power.In a classic article exploring the relationship between sexist cultural andpolitical institutions and the way that heterosexuality becomes "compul-sory" for women, feminist theorist and poet Adrienne Rich (1980) detailshow the assumption of heterosexuality is an active process of ensuring thatwomen are dependent on men and that particular forms of gender identitythat reinforce this heterosexual relationship are fostered in institutions likeschools. Her conclusion is that all women have been actively kept from un-derstanding and experiencing their sexuality because of gender and sexualnorms. R. W. Connell (1987) and M. Kimmel (2010) each discuss similarprocesses of instilling normatively gendered behavior among young boysin order to educate them into normative sexuality that is defined throughmale dominance. Deborah Tolman (2006), in her research on adolescentgirls, revisits Adrienne Rich's notion of compulsory heterosexuality to showhow normative heterosexuality relies on hegemonic and interlocked defini-tions of masculinity and femininity. Tolman suggests that studying "gendercomplementarity" (p. 80), that is, how the hegemonic forms of each gen-dered identity encourage particular sorts of activities-for example, boys ingroups boasting that they can get girls, and girls using femininity to holdthem at bay-will provide us with a better picture of how gender functionsin a social context defined by male power. But she cautions, too, that suchmale power is not available to all men and so studying the way norms func-tion also can help us understand how race, class, and sexuality position menoutside of normative and hegemonic masculinity. Her work also has impli-cations for thinking about how the normative gender binary restricts otherpossibilities of gender, including transgender identities

Gender bias is also a problem not only for women. Young men whounderstand cultural messages about masculinity as encouraging their dem-onstration of superiority show their power through aggressive taunting.Whether because of pressure to conform to this problematic notion of malepower or out of concern that they will be thought to be weak or gay if theydon't harass, young men are the group most likely to harass LGBTQ youthand young cisgender women as well. Even though we live in a time whengender norms continue to stretch, especially for women, schools are stillinstitutions where gender sorting occurs, whether it is in the classroom or incommunity settings that debate policy and curricula. Sex education contin-ues to be a relatively conservative part of schools, leading with abstinencc-until-marriage messages that not only exclude most LGBTQ students,but also leave girls at disproportionate risk for unwanted pregnancy (notbecause-obviously-only girls can get pregnant, but because so few youngmen are held responsible for the children that result)

Drawing on theories discussing gender as a process, homophobia, and intcr-sectionality, this chapter examines the pervasiveness of heteronormativityand the varieties of queerness to help readers understand where bias comesfrom, as well as be attuned to differences in the experiences of gender di-verse, creative, and/or nonconforming students and/or sexual minority stu-dents. Looking at the roots of homophobia in bias against gender diversitywill help link homophobia to transphobia and sexism as well. Examiningsexuality as racialized and gendered, in turn, will illuminate differences inexperiences of sexual minority students across diverse identities and providea fuller understanding of how race structures sexuality. This chapter willhelp readers understand the theories of gender, sexuality, and race rha t haveinfluenced writing and research on LGBTQ students as well as helped struc-ture current LGBTQ and ally political projects in schools

Hispanics and inner city residents stilldrop out much more frequently than others, the gap between black and whiteachievement rose during the 1990s after declining in the previous decade, theachievement gap between students from lower- and higher-class families hasbarely budged, and poor students in poor urban schools have dramatically lowerrates of literacy and arithmetic or scientific competence. Most importantly, lifechances depend increasingly on attaining higher education, but class back-ground is as important as ever in determining who attends and finishes a four-year college

The paradox lies in the fact that schools are supposed to equal-ize opportunities across generations and to create democratic citizens out ofeach generation, but people naturally wish to give their own children an ad-vantage in attaining wealth or power, and some can do it. When they do, every-one does not start equally, politically or economically. This circle cannot besquared

T HE AMERICAN DREAM IS A POWERFUL CONCEPT