It was not easy, and he resisted at times, hut Ivan eventually passed the English Regents (and all of his Regents} and graduated from high school. He wanted to learn, he was capable of learning, but that first step of getting help was too much for him to initiate.

But when they talked, wrote, and discussed the complexities of their lives, their choices, and their behaviors, when they schooled me on what it was like to grow up as them, I realized they were so much more than the tough urban student veneer they projected to the world. When I got to know them as people, as individuals, instead of a nameless, faceless group, they became real to me.

. 1 • was a teenage mom, I have b1rac1al meces and a nephew a sister w 10 twice . . . . , h k d ler l·n my family my dad died of diabetes complications when I ave a crac ea ' dult and I was adopted as a baby because I was accidcntly ere-I was a young a , . . . . atcd by two curious high school semors. The realmcs of my life transcend my t and the students slowly understood that yes, although I am a White stereo ypc, . . . girl, I am also a complex person with a twisted, layered life who 1s a lot more than she might initially seem. We learned that about each other.

The interviews and observations suggested that crucial aspects of family life cohered. Within the concerted cultivation and accom-plishment of natural growth approaches, three key dimensions may be distinguished: the organization of daily life, the use of lan-guage, and social connections. ("Interven-tions in institutions" and "consequences" are addressed later in the paper.) These dimen-sions do not capture all important parts of family life, but they do incorporate core as-pects of childrearing (Table 2). Moreover, our field observations revealed that behav-iors and activities related to these dimen-sions dominated the rhythms of family life.

Quantitative studies of children's activities offer valuable empirical evidence but only limited ideas about how to conceptualize the mechanisms through which social advantage is transmitted. Thus, my second goal is to offer "conceptual umbrellas" useful for mak-ing comparisons across race and class and for assessing the role of social structural lo-cation in shaping daily life.

Over and over and over again in school I had been cued both verbally and nonverbally that I was poor. I wasn't good enough, I didn't have enough, and what I had was the wrong thing. School projects, holidays, extracurricular activities, and field trips would send a surge of panic through our house because they were yet another expense. There are other curricula besides the one being verbalized. There are the ones in the hallways with snide remarks from peers, on the playground with put-downs learned from parents, and in the celebration of holidays at school that can completely panic a happy family. More is caught than taught

Because of Ricky, I felt self-conscious about doing the family tree assign-ment. Everyone else's tree had beautiful, perfectly symmetrical limbs on it, a father limb and a mother limb. My fatherless tree only had a mother limb on one side, and it looked like those pine trees on top of Pikes Peak, where the wind had whipped all the limbs onto one side. My tree wasn't whole. It wasn't until I got to seventh grade and had to take shop class t~at I real-ized how important it was to have the prerequisite of a father. What dtd I know of hammers and tools and woodworking? I grew timid and unsure of myself in 23

owever, the lowered expectations that are common in many urban and rural schools are steeped in a belief that student are unable to learn. Schools reify hierarchies by the experiences they provide children. So instead of schools being the great equalizers, we see quite the opposite. What is the rationale as to why suburban schools have an extensive list of Advanced Placement (AP) courses but urban and rural schools do not?

Families are often blamed for their students’ lack of success in schools. Books (2004) points to this senti-ment in her work: “It has been said so often it now seems accepted as truth that parents in poor communities ‘don’t care’ about education. Neither research nor experience of school leaders supports this presumption” (p. 11). Just as in any social class strata, there are poor families who are dedicated to their children’s schooling and others who are not.

While students from adverse economic situations have always been a part of the nation’s schools, the recent recession has made it painfully obvious that poverty continues to be a significant and growing social problem in the United States. In light of this demographic reality, it is imperative for teacher educators to pay close attention to (or in some cases reexamine) the manner in which teachers are prepared to educate students from impoverished back-grounds. Moreover, keen attention needs to be paid to the knowledge, values, and perspectives preservice teachers are introduced to as they think about effectively educating students from low-income backgrounds.

Rural poverty occurs in nonmetropolitan areas with populations below 50,000. In rural areas, there are more single-guardian households, and families often have less access to services, support for disabilities, and quality education opportunities.

Urban poverty occurs in metropolitan areas with populations of at least 50,000 people. The urban poor deal with a complex aggregate of chronic and acute stressors (including crowding, violence, and noise) and are dependent on often-inadequate large-city services.

Absolute poverty, which is rare in the United States, involves a scarcity of such necessities as shelter, running water, and food. Families who live in absolute poverty tend to focus on day-to-day survival

Generational poverty occurs in families where at least two generations have been born into poverty. Families living in this type of poverty are not equipped with the tools to move out of their situations

6 | Teaching with Poverty in Mindsuffi cient to purchase basic needs—food, shelter, clothing, and other essentials—are designated as poor. In reality, the cost of living varies dra-matically based on geography; for example, people classifi ed as poor in San Francisco might not feel as poor if they lived in Clay County, Kentucky. I defi ne poverty as a chronic and debilitating condition that results from multiple adverse synergistic risk factors and affects the mind, body, and soul. However you defi ne it, poverty is complex; it does not mean the same thing for all people. For the purposes of this book, we can identify six types of poverty: situ-ational, generational, absolute, relative, urban, and rural.• Situational poverty is generally caused by a sudden crisis or loss and is often temporary. Events causing situational poverty include environ-mental disasters, divorce, or severe health problems.

I saw students nodding their heads. And I saw for the first tim e that there can be, and usually is, som e degree o f pain involved in giving up oid ways of thinking and knowing and )earning new approaches. I respect that pain. And I inducte recognition of it now when I teach, that is to say, I teach about shifting paradigms and talk about the discomfort it can cause. White students learning to think more critically about ques-tions o f race and racism may go home for the holidays and sud-denly see their parents in a different light. They may recognize nonprogressive thinking, racism, and so on, and it may hurt them that new ways of knowing may crea te estrangement where there was none. Often when students return from breaks I ask them to share with us how ideas that they bave Jearned or worked on in the classroom impacted on their experience out-side. This gives them both the opportunity to know that diffi-cult experiences may be commou and practice at integrating theory and practice: ways of knowing with habits of being. We practice interrogating habits ofbeing as well as ideas. Through this process we build community

I have found through the years that many of my students who bitch endlessly while they are taking my classes contact me ata later date to talk about how much that experience meant to them, how much they Jearned. In my professorial role I had to surrender my need for immediate affirmation of successful teaching ( even though som e reward is immediate) and accept that students may not appreciate the value of a certain stand-paint or process straightaway. The exciting aspect of creating a classroom community where there is respect for individual voices is that there is infinitely more feedback because students do feel free to talk-and talk back. And, yes, often this feed-back is critical. Moving away from the need for immediate affirmation was crucial to my growth as a teacher. I learned to respect that shifting paradigms or sharing knowledge in new ways challenges; it takes time for students to experience that challenge as positive.

When I first entered the multicultural, multiethnic class-room setting I was unprepared. I did not know how to cope effective!y with so much "diflerence." Despite progressive po li-tics, and my deep engagement with the feminist movement, I had never before been compelled to work within a truly diverse setting and I lacked the necessary skills. This is the case with most educators. It is difficult for many educators in the United States to conceptualize how the classroom willlook when they are confronted with the demographics which indicate that ''whiteness" may cease to be the norm ethnicity in classroom settings on all levels. Hence, educators are poorly prepared when we actually confront diversity. This is why so many of us stubbornly ding to oid patterns. As I worked to create teacbing strategies tbat would make a space for multiculturallearning, I found it necessary to recognize wbat I have called in other writ-ing on pedagogy different "cultural codes." To teacb effectively a diverse student body, I bave to learn tbese codes. And so do students. Tbis act alone transforms tbe classroom. Tbe sbaring of ideas and information does not always progress as quickly as it may in more bomogeneous settings. Often, professors and students bave to learn to accept different ways ofknowing, new epistemologies, in the multicultural setting.

Some express the feeling that they are less likely to suffer any kind of assault if they simply do not assert their subjectivity. They bave told me that many professors never showed any interest in hearing their voices. Accepting the decentering of the West globally, embracing multiculturalism, com pels educators to focus attention on the issue of voice. Who speaks? Who listens? And why? Caring about whether all students fulfill their responsibility to con tribute to learning in the classroom is not a common approach in what Freire has called the "banking system of education" where students are regarded merely as passive consumers. Since so many profes-sors teach from that standpoint, it is difficult to create the kind of learning community that can fully embrace multicultural-ism. Students are much more willing to surrender their depen-dency on the banking system of education than are their teachers. They are also much more willing to face the chal-lenge o f multiculturalism.

The unwillingness to approach teaching from a standpoint that includes awareness o f race, sex, and class is often rooted in the fear that classrooms will be uncontrollable, that emotions and passions will not be contained. To some extent, we all know that whenever we address in the classroom subjects that stu-dents are passionate about there is always a possibility of con-frontation, forceful expression of ideas, or even conflict. In much of my writing about pedagogy, particularly in classroom settings with great diversity, I have talked about the need to examine critically the way we as teachers conceptualize what the space for learning should be like. Many professors have con-veyed to me their feeling that the classroom should be a "safe" place; that usually translates to mean that the professor lectures to a group of quiet students who respond only when they are called on. The experience of professors who educate for critica! consciousness indicates that many students, especially students of color, may not feel atall "safe" in what appears to be a neutral setting. It is the absence of a feeling of safety that often pro-motes prolonged silence or lack of student engagement. Making the classroom a democratic setting where everyone feels a responsibility to contribute is a central goa! of trans-formative pedagogy. Throughout my teaching career, white professors have often voiced concern to me about nonwhite students who do not talk. As the classroom becomes more diverse, teachers are faced with the way the politics of domina-don are often reproduced in the educational setting. For exam-ple, white male students continue to be the most vocal in our classes. Students of color and some white women express fear that they will be judged as intellectually inadequate by these peers. I have taught brilliant students of color, many of them seniors, who have skillfully managed never to speak in class-

When the meetings concluded, Chandra and I initially felt a tremendous sense of disappointment. We had not realized how much faculty would need to unlearn racism to learn about col-onization and decolonization and to fully appreciate the neces-sity for creating a democratic liberal arts learning experience. All too often we found a will to include those considered "marginal" without a willingness to accord their work the same respect and consideration given other work. In Women's Stud-ies, for example, individuals will often focus on women of color at the very end of the semester or lump everything about race and difference together in on e section. This kind of tokenism is not multicultural transformation, but it is familiar to us as the change individuals are most likely to make. Let me give anoth-er example. What does it mean when a white female English professor is eager to include a work by Toni Morrison on the syllabus of her course but then teaches that work without ever making reference to race or ethnicity? I bave heard individual white women "boast" about how they have shown students that black writers are "as good" as the white male canon when they Embracing Change 39 do not call attention to race. Clearly, such pedagogy is not an interrogation of the biases conventional canons (if not all can-ons) establish, but yet another form of tokenism.

Since my formative education took place m on my tm mg. . . ted schools I spoke about the expenence of racmlly segrega ' . . . h one's experience IS recogmzed as central and Jearnmg w en . . . d then how that changed w1th desegregatwn, sigmficant an bl k hildren were forced to attend schools where we when ac e . rded as obiects and nat subJects. Many of the profes-were rega " ent at the first meeting were disturbed by our overt sors pres . . . d. ussion of political standpoints. Agam and agam, 1t was nec-mc . . ¡· . 11 t remind everyone that no educatwn 1s po 1tica y neu-essary o . . 1 Emphasizing that a white male professor m an Enghsh tra. ,. ak d arttnent who teaches only work by "great white men IS m -ep . . ing a political decision, we had to work cons1stently agamst and through the overwhelming will on the part of folks to deny the politics of racism, sexism, heterosexism, and so forth that · form how and what we teach. We found again and again that :most everyone, especially the old guard, were more distur~ed by the overt recognition of the role our political perspectives play in shaping pedagogy than by their pa~sive acce~tance of ways of teaching and learning that reflect bmses, particularly a white supremacist standpoint

Arnong educators there has to be an acknowledgment that any effort to transform institutions so that they reflect a multi-cultural standpoint must take inta consideration the t'cars teachers have when asked to shift their paradigms. There must be training si tes where teachers have the opportunity to express those concerns while also learning to create ways to approach the multicultural classroom and curriculum. When I first went to O berlin College, I was disturbed by what I felt was a Jack of understanding on the apart of many professors as to what the multicultural classroom might be like. Chandra Mohanty, m colleague in Women's Studies, shared these concerns. Thoug~ we were both untenured, our strong belief that the Oberlin campus was not fully facing the issue of changing curriculum and teaching practices in ways that were progressive and pro-moting o f inclusion led us to consider how we mig ht intervene in this process. We proceeded from the standpoint that the vast m,Yority of Oberlin professors, who are overwhelmingly white, were basically well-meaning, concerned about the quality of education students receive on our campus, and therefore Jikely to be supportive of any effort at education for critica! con-sciousness. Together, we decided to have a group of seminars focusing on transformative pedagogy that would be open to all professors. Initially, students were also welcome, but we found that their presence inhibited honest discussion

At Alhambra High, this increased separa-tion was infl uenced by a tracking system and, aft er tracking was offi cially discontinued in the late 1990s, by a conspicuous divide between who took honors and AP classes (overwhelmingly Asian American students) and who took “regular” classes (the vast majority of Latina/o students). Because AP and honors classes as well as many extracurricular activi-ties such as social clubs and student government were so predominantly Asian, for many students, especially those categorized as “high- achieving” students, racially segregated social groups were easily perpetuated and naturalized.In educational circles as well as popular discourse, distinctly racial-ized socioacademic orders in school are commonly referred to in the language of the “achievement gap,” a term that denotes a consistent dis-parity in grades and/or test scores between one category of students and another. While divisions are sometimes laid out along lines of gender or other identity categories, over time, the term has acquired distinct racial connotations and most oft en refers to racial disparities.16 Beginning in the 1960s and 1970s— concurrent with the rise of tremendous struggles over school segregation and desegregation17— a considerable amount of popular media and academic research focused on the “achievement gap” between Black and white students. In California, as demographics shift ed and white enrollment in public schools declined, att ention to the achieve-ment gap focused increasingly on grade and standardized test- score disparities between white and Asian American students on the one hand and Latina/o and Black students on the other.

Twenty- two- year- old Nancy Tran, whose ethno- Chinese parents fl ed Vietnam aft er the fall of Saigon, put it this way: “I guess in Alhambra you only have a choice— a ‘choice,’ and that’s in quotations— between Latinos or Asians.”13 Nancy’s mother was a clerk for Los Angeles County, while her father worked 2 a.m.- to- noon nightshift s as a machine operator for a manufacturing company.In eighteen- year- old Paul Pham’s view, at Alhambra High, students who were neither Asian nor Latina/o were so uncommon that “we would prob-ably assume that they were either Asian or Hispanic even if they weren’t. I think that would be the way we approached them, until they actually told us.” For example, he remembered a few Middle Eastern friends “who were assumed to be Hispanic.” He continued, “I know that our school does not have very many white or Black people. And when we do see them, we kind of stare for a second, actually. We would actually go, ‘hey, we do have them here’ [laughing].”14 Paul’s family was also ethno–Chinese Vietnamese and escaped Khmer Rouge rule in Cambodia via Vietnam and then Los Ange-les. Paul’s father worked in an auto body shop, and his mother worked as a seamstress.

Most school systems seem to allow much racist teasing. Respondents who protested to teachers were usually told not to take racial taunting seriously. Young Asian Americans are told to thicken their skin, while white and other non-Asian children are often allowed to continue. The parents of tormented students are frequently fearful about complaining of racial taunting and teasing and do not want to “cause trouble” or generate white retaliation. In this era of school multiculturalism, many administrators encourage teachers to celebrate diversity in classrooms, and this superficial “be happy” multiculturalism may sometimes reduce their ability to see the impact of such racist treatment on students of color, as well as the underlying reality of institutionalized racism in their educational institutions

Helena provides an example of how Asian Americans are often classed together by others. Some white classmates did not bother to find out that she was Korean. When discussing such events, Helena, like other respondents, is still in pain from them and has a difficult time making eye contact. She keeps her head down and speaks softly, crying a few times as she recounts painful memories. She was not accepted for being the smart, high-achieving youngster she was, but was ostra-cized for her intelligence and identity. Helena fit the “model” myth because she was a standout student. Frank Wu explains that the myth is important because it “is useful, even if it is not true. Its content assuages the conscience and assigns blame, a function that is psychologically needed and socially desired.”7 In this otherwise savvy comment Wu never clarifies whom the myth is useful for and does not specifically name whites as the central culprits.

In the public mind Asian Americans are often synonymous with academic excellence, in part because their group scores on standardized tests and their college enrollment levels often exceed those of other groups, often including whites. One study found that whites, African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans perceived Asian Americans to be superior in college preparedness, motivation, and expectations of future career success.3 These perceptions of aca-demic achievement come with a price, however, as Asian American students are also portrayed in the media and in much private discussion among non-Asians as robotic overachievers in the classroom who are nerdy, passive, or inept on a social level.Yet this racial stereotyping misses the discriminatory character of many U.S. institutions. While their participation in sports, student government, and clubs compared to their white counterparts may not be as extensive, this is often not for lack of trying. Mostly white spaces like these may be uninviting or hostile, keeping Asian American students from wanting to participate.4 As we have seen in the opening account and will see throughout this chapter, Asian American students frequently endure blatant acts of racism in their schooling environments. Several respondents have tried to view racial teasing and taunting as normal, as a “fact of young or adolescent life.” The language used by respondents to describe school experiences implies that they must endure a certain standard level of racist teasing and taunting. This incessant mistreatment has driven many to choose all-Asian or mostly Asian friendship groups, yet they frequently seem to lack the concepts to explain why such decisions were forced and how they were made

The incident with my friend Farrah was not the first one I had experienced with Asian American women I know. In the fall of 2001, R. W., a young Chinese American, bludgeoned and strangled her mother. While her mother lay dead on the floor, she covered her and called the police, confessing her crime. This school valedictorian was an accomplished musician who had begun her education at a prestigious Ivy League school and graduated with honors from her southern university. Her crime received little local notice. Only one full-length newspaper article was published, and after her indictment she was barely mentioned. This tragic incident hit home for the first author because she is acquainted with the family, which was one of the few Chinese families in her hometown. The inci-dent sent shockwaves through the Asian American community of which they were part. R. W.’s failure to stay at her first college program, an elite institution, may well have contributed to her several suicide attempts and eventually to the homicide. She may now live out her years in a mental institution, and family and friends are left stressed and wondering “why?”

I often encourage my students to feel when we learn about inequality, because oppression works in a way so that we no longer feel empathy for target groups. My community of friends faced shock and confusion and in the first edition of the book, Joe and I argue that, while it is very difficult to measure how much racism affects Asian Americans and people of color in general, the mental health statistics show that Asian American women are overrepresented in rates of suicide and depression.In the first edition, we argued that it is a dangerous assumption that Asian Americans are free from racism. Their relatively high levels of educational attain-ment and household income, and their overrepresentation in professional occu-pations, make it seem as if they are doing better than other racial minorities or even some whites. However, the white-constructed label of “model minority” awarded to Asian Americans does not protect them from prejudice and racism

I slept terribly, and the next morning, I reached out to other friends to see if they had heard from her. I was nervous and anxious for hours. And then I got the phone call. When I answered, I got the news. Farrah had jumped out of a window that morning and was in a nearby hospital. I was stunned. In academia, we scholars are often taught to distance ourselves from our research, but this hit home. This was not a lecture in class where I discuss health disparities and how there is growing evidence that racism plays a role in disparate outcomes. This was someone close to me, in my inner circle

We say we believe that all children can learn, but few of us really believe it. Teacher education usually focuses on research that links failure and socioeconomic status, failure and cultural difference, and failure and single-parent households. It is hard to believe that these children can possibly be successful after their teachers have been so thoroughly exposed to so much negative indoctrination. When teachers receive that kind of education, there is a tendency to assume deficits in students rather than to locate and teach to strengths. To counter this tendency, educators must have knowledge of children's lives outside of school so as to recognize their strengths.

Another example of stereotyping involves African-American girls. Research has been conducted in classroom settings which shows that African-American girls are rewarded for nurturing behavior while white girls are rewarded for acade-mic behavior. Though it is likely true that many African-American girls are excellent nurturers, having played with or helped to care for younger siblings or cousins, they are penal-ized by the nurturing "mammy" stereotype when they are not given the same encouragement as white girls coward academic endeavors. Another example of stereotyping concerns Native Ameri-can children. Many researchers and classroom teachers have described the "nonverbal Indian child." What is often missed in these descriptions is that these children are as verbal and eager to share their knowledge as any others, but they need appropriate contexts - such as small groups - in which to talk. When asked inappropriate questions or called on to ta!k before the entire class, many Native American children will refuse to answer or will answer in as few words as possible.

Another example of assessment difficulties arising from dif-ferences in culture can be found in the Latino community. Fre-quently, Latino girls find it difficult to speak out or exhibit aca-demic prowess in a gender-mixed setting. They will often defer to boys, displaying their knowledge only when in the company of other girls. Most teachers, unaware of this tendency, are likely to insist that all groups be gender-mixed, thus depress-ing the exhibition of ability by the Latino girls in the class. A final example involves Native Americans. In many Native American communities there is a prohibition against speaking for someone else. So strong is this prohibition that to the question, "Does your son like moose?," an adult Native American man responded to what should have been asked instead: "I like moose." The consequence of this cultural interactional pattern may have contributed to the findings in Charlotte Basham's study of a group of Native American col-lege students' writing. The students appeared unable to write summaries and, even when explicitly told not to, continued to write their opinions of various works rather than summaries of the authors' words. Basham concludes that the prohibition against speaking for others may have caused these students considerable difficulty in trying to capture in their own words the ideas of another. Because they had been taught to always speak for themselves, they found doing so much more com-fortable and culturally compatible.

Researcher Harry Morgan documents in a 1990 study what most of us who have worked with African-American children have learned intuitively: that African-American children, more than white, and boys more than girls, initiate interac-tions with peers in the classroom in performing assigned tasks. Morgan concludes that a classroom that allows for greater movement and interaction will better facilitate the learning and social styles of African-American boys, while one that disallows such activity will unduly penalize them. This, I believe, is one of the reasons that there recently has been such a movement toward developing schools specifically for African-American males. Black boys are unduly penalized in our regular classrooms. They are disproportionately assigned to special education. They do not have to be, and would not be, if our teachers were taught how to redesign classrooms so that the styles of African-American boys are accommodated.

would like to suggest that some of the problems may cer-tainly be as this young man relates. Yet, from my work with teachers in many settings, I have come to believe that a major portion of the problem may also rest with how these three groups of teachers interact and use language with their stu-dents. These differences in discourse styles relate to certain eth-nic and class groups. For instance, many African-American teachers are likely to give directives to a group of unruly stu-dents in a direct and explicit fashion, for example, "I don't want to hear it. Sit down, be quiet, and finish your work NOW!" Not only is this directive explicit, but with it the teacher also displays a high degree of personal power in the classroom. By contrast, many middle-class European-American teachers are likely to say something like, "Would you like to sit down now and finish your paper?", making use of an indirect command and downplaying the display of power. Partly because the first instance is likely to be more like the statements many African-American children hear at home, and partly because the second statement sounds to many of these youngsters like the words of someone who is fearful (and thus less deserving of respect), African-American children are more likely to obey the first explicit directive and ignore the second implied directive. The discussion of this issue is complex but in brief many ' ' ' of the difficulties teachers encounter with children who are different in background from themselves are related co this underlying attitudinal difference in the appropriate display of explicitness and personal power in the classroom

Transition to this new understanding is typically precipitated by an event or series of events that force the young person to acknowledge the personal impact of racism. As the result of a new and heightened awareness of the significance of race, the individual begins to grapple with what it means to be a member of a group targeted by racism. Re-search suggests that this focused process of examination of one's racial or ethnic identity may begin as early as middle or junior high school.9 In a study of Black and White eighth graders from an integrated urban junior high school, Jean Phinney and Steve Tarver found clear evidence for the beginning of the search process in this dimension of identity. Among the forty-eight participants, more than a third had thought about the effects of ethnicity on their future, had discussed the issues with family and friends, and were attempting to learn more about their group. While White students in this integrated school were also beginning to think about ethnic identity, there was evidence to sug-gest a more active search among Black students, especially Black girls. 10 Phinney and Tarver's initial findings, and the findings of more than two decades of subsequent studies, 11 are consistent with my own study of Black youth in predominantly White communities, where the environ-mental cues that trigger an examination of REC identity often become evident in middle school or junior high school.

Most children of color, Cross and Cross point out, "are socialized to develop an identity that integrates competencies for transacting race, ethnicity and culture in everyday life."6 But how does that identity de-velopment take place in the life of a young Black adolescent? From early childhood through the preadolescent years, Black children are exposed to and absorb many of the beliefs and values of the dominant White culture, including the idea that Whites are the preferred group in US society. The stereotypes, omissions, and distortions that reinforce no-tions of White superiority are breathed in by Black children as well as White. Simply as a function of being socialized in a Eurocentric culture, some Black children may begin to value the role models, lifestyles, and images of beauty represented by the dominant group more highly than those of their own cultural group. On the other hand, if Black parents are what I call race-conscious-that is, actively seeking to encourage positive racial identity by providing their children with positive cultural images and messages about what it means to be Black-the impact of the dominant society's messages are reduced

Why do Black youths, in particular, think about themselves in terms of race? Because that is how the rest of the world thinks of them. Our self-perceptions are shaped by the messages that we receive from those around us, and when young Black men and women enter adolescence, the racial content of those messages intensifies. A case in point: When my son David was seven, if asked to describe himself, he would have told you many things: ''I'm smart, I like to. play computer games, I have an older brother." Near the top of his list, he would likely have mentio~ed, ''I'm tall for my age." At seyen, he probably would not have mentioned that he is Black or African American, though he certainly knew that about himself and his family. Why would he mention his height and not his racial group membership? As a child, when David met new adults, one of the first questions they asked was, "How oid are you?" When David stated his age, the inevitable reply was, "Gee, you're tall for your age!" It happened so frequently that I once overheard seven-year-old David say to someone, "Don't say it, I know. I'm tall for my age." Height was salient for David because it was salient for others.

Lola says chat Santa Ana High was "a total different story," com-pared to their previous schools. The girls observe chat the Santa Ana High School buildings are not so bad, though they are ringed by a high chain link fence, "Keep Out" signs decorated with gang graffiti, and lurking police cars. Jr's the social environment, not the physical plant, that makes Santa Ana High a very different place from Troy High. Sofia: Going to school every day was very scary. There were kids with guns in the school. Lola: She [Sofia] was going there when someone was acruaJly murdered. Sofia: Right across the street. The kid who got murdered was just standing there, and these gangsters came up to him and asked him "Where you from?" He didn't say anything, so they just shoe him and left him there. Lola: There's still bullet holes in the signs. Sofia: The kids will literally spit in the teachers' faces, start fights, try to kill them. A girl threatened to 1-8-7 me. [" 1-8-7" is gangsta slang for "murder."] Lola: The worst one for me was a guy in class that was a gang

Isabella and her brothers all attended Troy High School, just down the hill from their home. Troy is a public magnet school, and by most academic measures is exceptional-in 2013 Newsweek ranked it as the 47th best high school in America. Kids from outside the district have to cake a highly competitive entrance exam, and according to Clara only about 400 students are selected from among several thousand applicants each year. Troy offers a highly demanding science-and-technology track (dubbed Troy Tech) and an almost equally demanding International Baccalaureate curriculum, along with dozens of Advanced Placement courses. The school is a perennial winner of such national competitions

Clara and her twin brother, Francisco, were born and raised in a small Mexican village. Their father had come to California on his own as a bracero railway worker during World War II, and when Clara and Francisco were eight, he brought his entire family (the twins, their mother, and two older siblings) as legal immigrants to Los Angeles. Be-cause family resources were scant, they settled first in Watts, a poverty-stricken, gang-ridden, mostly black neighborhood. As light-skinned Hispanics they stood out, and Clara has vivid memories of being chased home by black kids from school through a darkened freeway underpass.

This inequality is also reflected in Orange County schools. Consider two high schools chat "input" measures (see Table 4.1) suggest are sur-prisingly similar: Troy High School in Fullerton and Santa Ana High School. Spending per pupil at the two schools is comparable, for exam-ple, as are the student-teacher ratios, the number of guidance counselors, and two standard measures of teacher quality: formal education and experience. Troy offers a richer menu of extracurricular activities than Santa Ana, but, as we shall see, private fund-raising explains chat differ-ence, not unequal investment by the school districts. On the measures most obviously controlled by school systems-spending, teacher quan-tity and quality, and counseling-the two schools seem broadly similar. What is decidedly not similar about these two schools, however, are their student populations, as measured by poverty rates, ethnic backgrounds, English proficiency, and even physical fitness. Santa Ana students are overwhelmingly poor and Latino and heavily Spanish-speaking, whereas Troy students come from ethnically diverse, eco-nomically upscale backgrounds. More striking still are the contrasts in the "output" measures of the two schools-graduation rates, statewide academic and SAT test scores, truancy and suspension rates. Students at Santa Ana are four times more likely than students at Troy to drop out, roughly ten rimes more likely to be truant or suspended, and only one third as likely to take the SAT. If they do take the SAT, on average they score in the bottom quartile nationwide, whereas the average SAT taker at Troy scores in the top 10-15 percent.

Orange County includes 34 incorporated cities, many of them worlds apart. As one local demographer puts it, "You have areas of pov-erty and areas of great affluence and less of a middle." 3 Laguna Beach, for example, is 91 percent non-Hispanic white, with a per capita income of $84,000, whereas Santa Ana, the county seat, just 20 miles away, is 95 percent Hispanic (50 percent foreign-born), with a per capita income of$17,000. Most Latinos in Orange County live in the impoverished cities of the inland valleys of the northern half of the county, among them Santa Ana. A 2004 report by rhe Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government identified Santa Ana as the Most Troubled City in America because of its high unemployment, high poverty rate, undereducated population, and crowded housing. Latinos in Orange County are more likely to live not only in poverty bur also amidst street violence and gang activity. Santa Ana alone is home co 29 street gangs.4 However, many upwardly mobile middle-class Latinos (mostly second-or third-generation descendants of immigrants) are moving rap-idly from impoverished Latino areas in Los Angeles and Orange County into formerly white Orange County communities. Between 1990 and 2010, the percentage of Latino residents in each of the county's pre-dominantly white, affluent cities increased. In north Fullerton, the home of Cal State Fullerton, where the median household income was roughly $100,000 in 2012, the percentage of Latinos more than doubled from about 10 percent to 25 percent. Though Fullerton is far from the most opulent part of Orange County, the draw for these Latinos is clear: high-quality schools, a thriving economy, and increasingly rich cultural pluralism.

Although I socialized with both Black and White students, I self-identified as "Black." After the name-calling, and after I realized the students who were not compliant and submissive were the ones who were ridiculed, I questioned my friendships with White students. According to some scholars, the school system privileges individuals who comply with dominant culture, like that of middle-class and upper-middle-class teachers, professional staff, and administrators (Bourdieu, 1984, 1986; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1990; Musoba & Baez, 2009). Bourdieu suggests that these privi-leges are likely to be based less on merit or hard work than on the cultural atti-tudes, behaviors, norms, and values of dominant groups. Because Rebecca was assertive and independent, she was penalized. And of course her race made her an especially easy target. It is when these two come together that we see how poverty and race intermingle to marginalize students. Low-income students are more likely to achieve positive educational outcomes (e.g., passing test scores or graduating) once their strengths are recognized, affirmed, and rewarded to the same degree that their middle-class peers' are. Because I was respectful and did not disagree with or challenge other students or educators, teachers accepted me. I was one of the "good ones." My compliance and obedience were rewarded with good grades. However, there were things about the hidden curriculum that became more relevant in high school. My African American teacher had suggested I take an honors class in ninth grade. The majority of the students in the class were White. Only one other person of color, a Black male, was in the class. As I listened to students talk about the different places they visited during their summer vaca-tions, I felt more and more out of place and uncomfortable. I made eye contact with and smiled at some students, but no one reached out to me. Suddenly a short, stout, White woman approached me, introduced herself as Ms. Hill, and stated she was happy I was in her class. She introduced me to the class, directing their attention my way, and asked the students to introduce themselves to me. As class went along Ms. Hill called on different individuals to read aloud passages from a text. Next, she asked us to analyze the passages and look for larger social meanings in them. I was uncomfortable speaking out because I did not want to make dumb comments. During the second week of school,

was shaped and nurtured by my mother and grandmother. My mother gradu-ated from a Mississippi high school, and while she eventually earned a certifi-cate in early childhood education from a community college in Milwaukee, she primarily worked at jobs that paid minimum wage. My grandmother, who had only a sixth-grade education, was a former sharecropper and domestic servant in Mississippi. They raised me to respect adults and people in authority. I was social-ized to say "ma'am" and "sir" when addressing my elders. I was a quiet and shy child, and for the most part, I followed adults' instructions and rules. In this way I was raised to be compliant, one element of the hidden curriculum in our schools. This insistence on compliance is also one aspect of schooling that keeps some students from feeling they can challenge the very structures that repress them. They often feel silenced and alienated from public education at an early age. In my household, we did not have many books. I believe my lack of books contributed to my below average reading test scores. In third grade I was read-ing at a second-grade level. Research indicates that social class can influence cognitive abilities because a lack of money results in fewer experiences at muse-ums and traveling, fewer books in the home, and less access to preschool educa-tion (Bowles & Gintis, 2002; Good & Brophy, 1987)

Chanrelle's experience illustrates why students who lack eco-nomic, social, and cultural capital ace more vulnerable to the i_inpersonal and ineffective structures at the school. Without an adult to encourage her to cake algebra, the gateway to college preparatory math and science courses, or to advise her on where she might seek academic support, Chantelle made a decision that is likely to affect her preparation for college and therefore will have bearing in the long term on her opportunities after high school. By taking prealgebra in the ninth grade, Chantelle is all hut ensured that she will be unable to meet the admissions requirements to the UC or California State University (CSU) systems. Given that so much is at stake, it must be recognized that a system of course assignment that allows students to choose which classes to take will invariably work better for some than others. Jennifer's words are equally revealing. Like many of Berkeley High's more affluent, white ninth graders, she did not attend Berke-ley's public school system. In fact, according to school records, some 12 percent of Berkeley High School's class of 2000 attended private

There is relatively little that the school can do to address the inequalities in the backgrounds of students like Jennifer and Chantelle. However, it is possible to address school conditions that contribute to disparities in achievement, such as school size, the student-to-counselor ratio, procedures that are used to track stu-dents into higher-an<l lower-level courses, and processes used to provide academic support co students who are struggling. These aspects of the school structure all contribute co the achievement gap, and unlike the backgrounds of students, they can be easily modified and reformed.

By structures we are referring to operations ..11 ,~1d procedures such as teacher assignment, course selection and placement, and resource allocation, which profoundly influence student experiences at Berkeley High School (BHS). Our exami-nation of school structures also includes a focus on the organization of the school-the decentralized nature of decision making within departments, the distribution of authority and responsibility among administrators, the accountability (or lack thereof) anJ funcrion of special programs (such ::ts English as a Second Language, Ach-anced Placement, and Special Education). We examine how these struc-tures shape and influence the academic outcomes of students. As we will show, these seemingly neutral aspects of the school structure chat coo often are taken for granted play a central role in reproduc-ing patterns of success and failure and, by extension, in reproducing inequality and privilege. The achievement gap at Berkeley High is, in ome sense, a source of puzzlement. How, in a progressive community like Berkeley and in a high school that appears to revel in its commitment to diversity-with its African American Studies Department and freshman ethnic studies requirement-does the structure of the school lend itself to repro<lucing the racial achievement gap? Perhaps even more puzzling, why has it been so difficult to confront and transform the features embedded in the school structure that arc responsible for facilitating success for some and failure for ochers

We may not be able to untangle the precise effects of all these family-related factors-language use, parental management strategies, and fam-ily stress-on the disparities in children's school readiness and success that have emerged over the past several decades. But the evidence linking income to children's school achievement that we have reviewed suggests that the sharp increase in income differences since the 1970s and the con-comitant gap in children's school success by income is hardly coincidental. Moreover, as states have raised academic standards-a topic we address in the next chapter-the differential impact of income on family life may mean more than it did in the past. America has long depended on its schools to help level the playing field for children who are disadvantaged by early family conditions. Horace Mann, an early advocate of public education in the United States, argued that schools could help to "equalize the conditions of men." Current data show that less advntaged children start school well behind their more for-tunate peers. The gaps in academic performance and behavior between high-and low-income children do not decrease between kindergarten and high school, and they are larger now than at any point in the last forty years. Part of the reason is that school quality itself has been affected by rising income inequality. How and why this should be so is the subject of the next chapter.

The Hart and Risley study is a sobering reminder that it takes more than money to promote young children's development.28 Parents from higher-income families appear to offer their children language advantages that would persist even if their annual incomes rose or fell by $10,000 or even $20,000. Research has shown that maternal education and IQ levels, not family income, are most closely associated with parental use of lan-guage. 29 So while money matters, other family factors do too. Lareau's detailed look at the lives of the children in her study revealed other striking differences between high-and low-income families, includ-ing the degree to which middle-class parents "managed" their children's lives, while working-class and poor parents left children alone to play and otherwise organize their activities.

Grow-ing up in a single-parent family appears to have particularly detrimental consequences for male children, in part because they receive less attention than daughters and in part because their behavior is especially sensitive to levels of attention and warmth.23 Parental education levels probably matter even more than family struc-ture and income.24 Alexander's and Garrett's parents had a keen sense of what it would take for their sons to gain admission to a top university; for example, Alexander's mother helped him secure a summer internship in a medical office. None of Anthony's or Harold's parents had any experience with a four-year college. In her conversations with Lareau, Harold's moth-er revealed that she was not acquainted with anyone who was a teacher, reading specialist, family counselor, psychologist, doctor, or lawyer. These kinds of differences affect children's daily experiences and ulti-mately their educational outcomes. Even if the income gap were to narrow, some of these other differences would remain and continue to influence children's educational outcomes. In the 1970s, Betty Hart and Todd Risley discovered an important source of a literacy gap among kindergarteners. 25 The researchers recruited forty-four families with children who had just celebrated their first birthdays. Hart and Risley made an effort to recruit families from all socioeconomic strata-professional, working class, and welfare recipients-all of which were residentially stable and relatively free of dysfunction. For the next two years, team members paid monthly visits

Similar results showed up in experimental welfare reform studies from the 1990s.19 Income-boosting programs produced improvements in chil-dren's academic achievement in preschool and elementary school, while programs that only increased employment did not. A $3,000 increase in annual family income raised young children's achievement test scores by the equivalent of about 20 SAT points, on average-not a huge amount, but equal to about two-thirds of the growth in the test-score gap between richer and poorer children in the past three decades.

Forty years ago, low-income families spent about $880 (in 2012 dol-lars) on child enrichment expenditures, while higher-income families spent more than $3,700, already a substantial difference (figure 3.2).12 By 2005-2006, low-income families had increased their expenditures to about $1,400, but high-income families had increased theirs much more, to more than $9,300 per child. The differences in spending between the two groups had almost tripled in the intervening years. Activities such as music les-sons, travel, and summer camps accounted for the largest difference

Harold's mother is as passionate as Garrett's parents about provid-ing what it takes for her children to be successful and happy, but she sees her role as providing food, "clothing and shelter, teaching the difference between right and wrong, and providing comfort."8 In contrast to Gar-rett, Harold-like Anthony-is free to play with the many children in the neighborhood, and is not expected to ask permission. Permission is needed if Harold or his sister wants something to eat, because food is always in short supply: "One Friday night, for instance, the two pizzas in the oven must be divided among [six family members]. When Harold asks for a second piece of pizza, he is redirected to drink soda. Another night, each child has one meatball, canned yams, and canned spinach for dinner. There is not enough for second helpings." Even more revealing is Harold's younger sister's response when asked what she would do if she had a million dollars: "Oh boy! I'd buy my brother, my sister, my uncle, my aunt, my nieces, and my nephews, and my grand-pop, and my grandmom, and my mom, and my dad, and my friends, not my friends, but mostly my best friend-I'd buy them all clothes ... and sneakers ... and I'd buy my mom some food, and I'd get my brothers and my sisters gifts for their birthdays."9 This level of deprivation can harm children in many ways.10 Poor nutri-tion and inadequate health care have long-term effects on children's in-tellectual development. Exposure to lead paint affects children's nervous systems, resulting in hyperactivity and irritability, with long-term con-sequences for both intellectual and emotional development. Exposure to violence results in an inability to stay focused on the task at hand. In other words, poverty creates deficits in children that are long-lasting and very difficult to overcome. Moreover, as we explain in the next chapter, children

6 Garrett Tallinger is the pseudonym given by Lareau to a white fourth grader living with his well-to-do parents and two broth-ers in a four-bedroom "classic home in the suburbs." Like Alexander at that age, Garrett is tall and thin, and while his personality is more in-troverted than Alexander's, his competitiveness is on display during his frequent sports activities. Tracking the details of Garrett's life for several weeks, Lareau's fieldworkers observed him as he played baseball and soc-cer, practiced with his swim team, and took piano and saxophone lessons. All but the saxophone were extracurricular activities. They consumed an inordinate amount of the family's weekday and weekend time, and also cost a lot of money: "Soccer costs $15 per month, but there are additional, larger expenses periodically. The ... soccer team's new warm-up suits, socks and shirts cost the Tallingers $100. Piano runs $23 per weekly lesson per child. Tennis clinic is $50; winter basketball $30. It costs the family money to drive to out-of-state tournaments and stay overnight. Fees for Garrett's summer camps have varied; some have cost $200 per week .. . [Mrs. Tallinger] reported expenditures for Garrett alone as exceeding $4,000 per year, a figure that other middle-class families also report."7 These kinds of expenses were not unusual for the upper-middle-class families in Lareau's study. All could easily afford comfortable and reliable cars to transport their children from activity to activity. All lived in spa-cious houses in quiet, relatively crime-free neighborhoods. Circumstances were very different for the working-class and welfare-recipient families. We have already seen the financial constraints that An-thony Mears's family labored under. His family did not have a reliable car and his mother worried about crime in the neighborhood

Children are more successful in school when they are able to pay at-tention, when they get along with peers and teachers, and when they are not preoccupied or depressed because of troubles at home. Using the same SAT-type metric as for reading scores, figure 3.1 shows that, according to teachers, children from more affluent families are more engaged than their low-income peers. Also, children from low-income families are more likely to engage in antisocial behavior and to have mental health problems. These differences are smaller than the differences in reading skills. None of these advantages for high-income children shrinks over the course of elementary school, nor do they decline as children move to high school. Indeed, another national data set focusing on eighth graders in 1988 shows that 95 percent of students from families in the top quarter of the income distribution graduated from high school, as compared with only 64 percent of those from the bottom quarter.3 As we saw in chapter 2, the income-based gap in college graduation rates is even larger and has grown sharply over the last three decades.

Which of these factors are most powerful in determining a child's s Uc-cess in school? While Annette Lareau and her team did not monitor school progress or behavioral development for the children in her study, includ-ing Anthony and Alexander, many national studies have investigated gaps in school performance among children from similarly disparate back-grounds. As shown in chapter 2, math and reading gaps between high-and low-income children have grown substantially over the past three decades. Data from a recent national study of children who entered kindergarten in the fall of 1998 allow for a more detailed look at income-based gaps as chil-dren progress through school (figure 3.1).1 As before, a 100-point difference in figure 3.1 corresponds to one standard deviation. Each bar shows the relative size of the gap between high-and low-income children. Figure 3.1 Skill and behavior gaps between high-and low-income kindergarten-ers and fifth graders +121 Reading achievement School engagement -27 --42 Anti-social behavior D Gap between high-income and low-income students in kindergarten E'.J Gap between high-income and low-income students in 5th grade -30 -31 Mental health problems Source: Authors' cal~ulations based on data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten ~ohort. B~rs ~ho-:V differences on an SAT-type scale between children in the top and bottom 20% of the income d1stnbut1on in kindergarten and 5th grade. Note: A positive gap shown above th b · d" • t • . ' . e ar, in icates that richer students scored higher than poorer s u dents on this measure _(as_in the case of reading achievement and school engagement). A negative gap, sho~n below the bar, indicates that poorer students scored higher than richer students on this measure (as in the case of antisocial behavior and mental health problems).

When they set foot in kindergarten, how many years "behind" are they in learning opportunities, literacy and numeracy development, reading and writ-ing "behaviors," and the many benefits of quality early care? Although the nosy neighbor in our favorite film highlighted the disgustingly expensive extremes to which the wealthy will go to start their children's educational careers off right, the n~tion ~f needing to start every child's education with the highest quality expenences is spot on.

When I first constructed the ladder to describe how schools structure inequality, I struggled with where to begin. My training as an early childhood educator, experience as a child care provider, education in developmental psychology, and specialization in human development told me to start in the womb. What are the factors that affect poor children before they are even born? First, women and children are overrepresented in poverty (Gollnick & Chinn, 2009). Part-time employment is the only sphere in which women outearn men. Their pay on full-time jobs continues to lag, with women earning a mere 81 cents to the dollar when compared to men with equal or fewer credentials (Mundy, 2012). I often share with students that my sister's employer worked her 39 hours per week for years to avoid providing health insurance. She had no access to pap smears, annual "well woman" breast exams, birth control, or a regular physician when she took ill. My mother recently ended a one-year stint at Walmart, where she was daily promised full-time employment. She is 63 years old, takes 11 prescrip-tion medications and suffers from a number of health conditions that require frequent doctor ;isits. She was consistently worked just shy of 40 hours-again, the employer avoiding having to provide full-time benefits. During her final week on the job, she worked 39.5 hours. Lack of access to health care and, more specifically, to prenatal health care plagues far too many women in poverty and, consequent!~, their chil~ren a~d future public school students. Inadequate nutrition, und1~gnosed d1fficult1es prior to childbirth and treatable in vitro illnesses all contnbute to the poorer health of these fut~re scholars. And because so many poor neighbor~oods are veritable "food deserts" where fresh produce, meats, and healthy items are

c~ Affordability THE GREAT EQUALIZER? Affirmative action/legacy admission Postgraduation connections/capital ~.,,..,.,... High School AP/18/GA Tor vocational education Paid standardized test preparation First-generation college capital Work or extracurriculars? Middle SchOQ/.. Staffing and cuniculum Collegepreparatory trajectory PSA T/standaroized test awareness ON, $W Elementary School Early tracking Gifted and talented (GA 7J Head Start/Pre-K/Klndergarten Quality early education Access to school trajectory Lags in literacy/numeracy Emb.iI1h Employment Prenatal care Adequate nutrition pre-and pas/birth Social Stru~ Racialized classism Generational wealth Housing segregation School funding Figure 16.1 How Schools Structure Inequality. II9

Why Are People Poor? An Introduction to Reproduction My new tradition is to begin each foundational course in my program by con-textualizing and historicizing public education. To assist me, I use the diagram shown in Figure 16.1. The topics I address and the stories I tell within each rung of the ladder of structured inequality are candid, personal, and decidedly pointed in order to stimulate discussion. When I begin discussions about poverty and achievement in public schools, my students often ask, "Why do poor students perform poorly?" The question is not about poor students and why they underperform in a system purportedly designed to elevate their opportunities and outcomes. The question is, "Why are people poor?" I insist that we begin with the lowest "rung" on the diagram because there we unpack the existence of a class of "poor people" who seem not to be living up to their potential in a presumably benevolent public education system that was designed-at least in the spirit of Horace Mann-specifically with them in mind. Any serious discussion about the inception of poverty in this country m~st begin by recognizing that class is highly racialized (even globally), and vice versa. The origins of poverty among people of color-specifically descendants of African slaves-are rooted in several centuries of colorized, chattel_ 5l~ve~ with no economic reparation after its formal or informal "end." The maiontyl r poor people in the United States are White, but the majority of people of co 0 ------~•

Yet this progress has met limits. Hispanics and inner city residents still drop out much more frequently than others, the gap between black and white achievement rose during the 1990s after declining in the previous decade, the achievement gap between students from lower-and higher-class families has barely budged, and poor students in poor urban schools have dramatically lower rates of literacy and arithmetic or scientific competence. Most importantly, life chances 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 gap between belief and action has emerged in different school districts at different times over different issues; education policy has therefore been not only contentious but confusing. Policymakers have pursued, with con-siderable support, one goal or set of goals for a while and then stopped or shifted emphasis; some policymakers have pursued a direction in one jurisdic-tion while their counterparts elsewhere have moved strongly in another. Some schools and districts seized upon orders to desegregate as an opportunity to in-stitute desired reforms; others fought all efforts at desegregation and sought to minimize the changes it entailed. Some districts and states embrace public school choice and charter schools; others ( or the same ones under different leadership) resist or ignore them. Some districts focus on basic skills while neighboring districts emphasize the teaching of higher-order thinking. The gap between beliefs and actions not only leads to contention and con-fusion, it also generates policies that are irrational in the sense that they are inconsistent with evidence of what works or are not based on any evidence at all. At times policymakers have abandoned proven reforms or have promoted them only over stiff opposition. Desegregation enhanced the long-term life chances of many African American students and rarely hurt white students, but the movement to complete or maintain it has largely been over for 2 5 years. School finance reform broadens schooling opportunities for poor children with-out harming those who are better off, but equity in funding has depended mostly on the intervention of the courts. At other times policymakers have adopted reforms for which there is no empirical support or on the basis of conflicting assessments. There is at best mixed evidence of the benefits of separating stu-

Despite this consensus Americans disagree intensely about the education policies that will best help us achieve this dual goal. In recent years disputes over educational issues have involved all the branches and levels of government and have affected millions of students. The controversies-over matters like school funding, vouchers, bilingual education, high-stakes testing, desegrega-tion, and creationism-seem, at first glance, to be separate problems. In im-portant ways, however, they all reflect contention over the goals of the American dream. At the core of debates over one policy or another has often been a con-flict between what is (or seems to be) good for the individual and what is good for the whole; sometimes the conflict revolves around an assault on the valid-ity of the dream itself by certain groups of people. Because education is so im-portant to the way the American dream works, people care about it intensely and can strongly disagree about definitions, methods, and priorities. Sustained and serious disagreements over education policy can never be completely resolved because they spring from a fundamental paradox at the heart of the American dream. Most Americans believe that everyone has the right to pursue success but that only some deserve to win, based on their tal-ent, effort, or ambition. The American dream is egalitarian at the starting point in the "race of life," but not at the end. That is not the paradox; it is simply an ideological choice. The paradox stems from the fact that the success of one generation depends at least partly on the success of their parents or guardians. People who succeed get to keep the fruits of their labor and use them as they see fit; if they buy a home in a place where the schools are better, or use their superior resources to make the schools in their neighborhood better, their chil-dren will have a head start and other children will fall behind through no fault of their own. The paradox lies in the fact that schools are supposed to equal-ize opportunities across generations and to create democratic citizens out of each 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 be squared. Many issues in education policy have therefore come down to an apparent choice between the individual success of comparatively privileged students and the collective good of all students or the nation as a whole. Efforts to promote the collective goals of the American dream through public schooling have run up against almost insurmountable barriers when enough people believe (rightly or wrongly, with evidence or without) that those efforts will endanger the com-parative advantage of their children or children like them. At that point a gap

T HE AMERICAN DREAM IS A POWERFUL CONCEPT. It encourages each person who lives in the United States to pursue success, and it cre-ates the framework within which everyone can do it. It holds each person responsible for achieving his or her own dreams, while generating shared values and behaviors needed to persuade Americans that they have a real chance to achieve them. It holds out a vision of both individual success and the col-lective good of all. From the perspective of the individual, the ideology is as compelling as it is simple. "I am an American, so I have the freedom and opportunity to make whatever I want of my life. I can succeed by working hard and using my tal-ents; if I fail, it will be my own fault. Success is honorable, and failure is not. In order to make sure that my children and grandchildren have the same free-dom and opportunities that I do, I have a responsibility to be a good citizen-to respect those whose vision of success is different from my own, to help make sure that everyone has an equal chance to succeed, to participate in the dem-ocratic process, and to teach my children to be proud of this country." Not all residents of the United States believe all of those things, of course, and some believe none of them. Nevertheless, this American dream is surpris-ingly close to what most Americans have believed through most of recent Amer-ican history. Public schools are where it is all supposed to start-they are the central institutions for bringing both parts of the dream into practice. Americans ex-pect schools not only to help students reach their potential as individuals but

Recently in class we read The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and if you have ever read any of her works, you know that each sentence contains many mes-sages that you do not get from reading it only once. An example: “Nuns go by as quiet as lust, and drunken men and sober eyes sing in the lobby of the Greek hotel.” From first glance, my peers and I really only understood that nuns were walking by and drunken men with sober eyes are in the lobby of a Greek hotel. But that is not what Mr. M saw. He went deeper into the text to understand what the author tried to convey to the reader. Mr. M asked us questions like, “How do you analyze the writer’s style?” “Why do you think this writing style is appropriate for the stor y?” “Why do you think the characters behave in a certain way?” As we discussed this text, I remember seeing Mr. M also do several other things simultaneously: he wrote on the board, listened to the conversation we had about the book, explained quickly what he wrote on the board, and then went to the students he saw who were “not getting it.” After hearing Mr. M analyze this particular sentence, I realized that Mor-rison is a ver y descriptive writer because she uses a lot of adjectives. It is easy to get lost in the rhythm of her writing and how she uses words to describe her emotions

Scene Two: IDEAL English class, Tuesday, 12:20 p.m.I walk into English class with a couple of my classmates in front of me. We take our seats. The tables are set up in a U-shape. The room is ver y organized — even your desk — and there is no trash on the floor. There is one TV in the back of the room. The room smells like scented board markers. You walk in and wait a little bit for the rest of the students to come in. You tell ever y-one to read independently and to write in his or her journal after reading. You wait until ever yone begins reading, and then go around talking with stu-dents about their books. You ask questions like, “Is the book interesting?” or “Do you understand what is going on?” When reading time is over, you tell us to take out our homework so you can check it. After checking our homework, you ask us to take out our Hamlet books. We read and take notes about what is going on in the play. You don’t tell us what is happening but let us figure it out. We talk about the text as a class. You lead the discussion, but we all share our ideas about the book. Sometimes, if we are confused, you give us clues or teach us strategies that help us figure out what is happening. You give us a handout with a list of soliloquies from Hamlet, and you tr y to help us unde

Scene One: A Typical Day in English Class, Tuesday, 12:20 p.m.When I walk into English class, there are only two students in the classroom; the tables are set up in a U-shape. The room is not organized, your desk is messy, and the room has trash ever ywhere. There is one TV in the back of the room. The room smells like scented board markers. I walk to my seat and wait for you to get ever yone settled in the classroom. After more students arrive, you ask us to read our independent reading book for about 25 minutes. Some of us do what you ask while you work on your computer. Then three students get kicked out because they didn’t do what you wanted them to do, they were talking back, or maybe you were just having a bad day. We don’t have a jour-nal to write about our books and you do not ask us what we are reading dur-ing this time. When independent reading time is over, you tell us to take out our Hamlet books. We read Hamlet as a class for the rest of the period. While we are reading, we have to take notes about what is happening or write sum-maries in our Hamlet notebook. You tell us what you think about the text and what is happening in the play. Most often, we simply write what you tell us to write. This happens ever y single day. Class is over and you didn’t assign any homework — you rarely do

The Letter-Writing Process with StudentsI wanted to do this project not only for the experience of improving my writ-ing but also I think that the students’ voice is not always heard entirely, even through dialogue. I feel that by doing this journal we can make a difference with our personal experience and touch the heart of someone who is willing to stand by us. I also wanted to get the attention of other students who may be feel-ing the same frustration I have felt

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

Another significant feature of multicultural educationis that it is explicitly anti-racist education and challengesall forms of discrimination. As urban youth of color aresystematically marginalized by schools, YPAR can serveas a vehicle for challenging multiple forms of oppression.The media often disseminates negative depictions ofurban youth, contributing to the development of grandnarratives, or common misperceptions, that contribute to anegative portrayal of this group. A study by Jeff Duncan-Andrade (2007) documents how a group of studentsenrolled in a summer research institute that focused onmedia literacy used YPAR to develop counternarrativesrelated to inequality, debunking majoritarian notions, andcontributing to a more robust and accurate portrayal ofurban youth of color.Urban youth have also leveraged YPAR to addressdiscrimination and advocate for expanded educationalopportunities in their communities (Stoval, 2006). InDavid Stoval’s collaborative study, student researchersorganized to develop a new community high school intheir neighborhood. Their innovative proposal calledfor students in various aspects of school governanceincluding the design of the curriculum and disciplinepolicies. In contrast to the common perceptions of youthas unable to identify their own needs and requiring adultsto intercede on their behalf, the urban youth featured inStoval’s (2006) research assert agency and foreshadownew possibilities for relationships between school agentsand students, schools, and communities

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 efforts

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. 44

Multicultural Education and the ElusiveQuest for Social JusticeMulticultural education emerged during the civil rightsmovement as a response to severe societal inequities andtheir manifestation in schools (Grant, 1995). Educationduring this era was characterized byde juresegregation,resulting in a two-tiered system with stark contrastsin resources and opportunities for White students andstudents of color. English was the exclusive mode ofinstruction, even for students who had little if anyunderstanding of the language. The curriculum inmost schools was Eurocentric, often misrepresenting orcompletely excluding the perspectives of people of colorand others. The development of multicultural educationaccompanied the wave of civil rights legislation emergingfrom the civil rights movement, including Brown v. Boardof Education (1954) which ruledde juresegregation wasunconstitutional and Lau v. Nichols (1974) whichlegislated that education for language minority studentshad to be linguistically accessible

Youth in general, and urban youth of color morespecifically, have been pathologized and demonized insociety, blamed for the underperformance of schoolsand a host of other social ills, resulting in an escalatingassault on youth that has been manifested in a variety ofways. Educational policies such as high stakes testingand increased accountability measures, for example, withtheir myopic focus on standardized test scores, haveserved to limit opportunities for students traditionallyunderserved by schools. The limited snapshot of testscores is exacerbated by the practice of neglectingthe variance—often determined by race and class—instudents’ access to the educational content needed topass the test or a qualified teacher to assist with learning(Kohn, 2000; Noguera & Akom, 2000). Furthermore,the increased hyper-vigilant surveillance of urban youthof color vividly demonstrated by the practice of placingpolice officers, security cameras, metal detectors and thelike in schools, illustrates the mind-set and the role thatschools play in contributing to and reifying the school-to-prison pipeline.

Even if a child had a voucher the previous year, the family must go through the whole process again.And in practical terms, advocates and providers say, the relatively tight timeline is a mirage. Getting avoucher often takes months

A program called the Committee on Preschool Special Education then picks up services for childrenbetween the ages of 3 and 5, but it seems to have dropped the ball in T.J.’s case. T.J. was evaluated afew months before his third birthday and found to be well behind his peers, according to Departmentof Education records. He was recommended for speech and occupational therapy and services from aspecial-education teacher, but it’s not clear if he ever received them. Kerrin said he got no servicesafter he turned 3. (T.J.’s family does not have all of his records. The family’s lawyer first asked theDepartment of Education for records over a year ago and still has not received them all.)

So T.J.’s mother, Kerrin, called the pediatrician and asked what she could do. (T.J. and his familymembers are being identified by their middle names or initials to protect his privacy.) That call beganT.J.’s troubled journey through the labyrinthine bureaucracy of New York City’s special educationsystem. A decade later, T.J. is a friendly 12-year-old boy with a generous smile. He giggles whilewatching cartoons, always says “please” and “thank you” to his teachers, and he makes his brotherlaugh with his goofy sense of humor.Even though he has started sixth grade, T.J. still reads at a first-grade level. Instead of composingessays, he struggles with putting sentences together. He forgets to use punctuation.

The disproportionate representation of students of color in special education has been a concernabout the education of students from low-income familiesfor many years. Low-income students are more often identified in subjective disability categories, such as emotional disability and intellectual disability, and more frequently placed in separate classrooms. Further, after being identified in this manner, these pupils tend to be placed in classrooms where academic outcomes are worse, expectations for success are lower, and the stigma associated with special education is higher (Schifter, Grindal, Schwartz, & Hehir, 2019). They are also frequently placed in classrooms with teachers who have less expertise in math, English, and science. These circumstances have raised concerns about systemic racial bias because low-income children are more likely to be students of color (Tatter, 2019)

The disproportionate representation of students of color in special education is a serious concern that has lasted for forty years. Research suggests that students of color are too often not identified accurately for special education and that the programs they are placed in are frequently poor in quality. This trend contributes to a less-than-optimal learning environment that lowers their chances for future success. Some of the factors that may contribute to this problem include poverty and inaccurate teacher perceptions. To reduce this problem, teachers can be trained to be culturally responsive and the public-school system can be improved so that students from low-income households receive better services.

To provide an idea of what our lived lives are like, I will first relate a typical, though constructed, week during the winter of one elementary school year in order to make our intersecting challenges a bit more concrete. I also want to point out that despite the many challenges we face, our lives are no doubt much easier than those without our many privileges of skin color, social class, and language: we are European American, middle class, and English is our first language. In addition, as a former preschool teacher and current professor of education, I have both educational and experiential familiarity with schooling, and hence social capital on which I can and do draw.

I wish to note that I am only addressing one facet of Lydia's identity here. Identity is multiple, contradictory, and dynamic, and she, like everyone else, is a multi-faceted being with many complex overlapping identities (see, e.g., Davies, 1993; Scholl, 2001). Further, Lydia is not merely a passive recipient of an ascribed identity. She resists, but is also increasingly complicit in the active construction of her identity as a child with, as she says, "special learning needs." That she now so self-identifies speaks to the power of this discourse. However, self-identifying in this way doesn't mean Lydia has a positive view of her positioning. As I was preparing to present the first iteration of this paper, I worried I might be attributing inaccurate feelings to her so I asked her how she felt about being labeled as a child with special needs. She fired back with no hesitation, "I hate it!"

I situate my exploration in the view that distinctive ways of knowing arise out of and are tested against her lived, everyday experiences, and draw on my life story as a (single) mother and teacher educator/scholar to give "testimony" or "bear witness" (Burdell & Swadener, 1999) to her/our ongoing struggles with a society that exacts a steep toll on those who are "different." Based on my daughter's and my struggles with our "profoundly interrelated lives" (Hillyer, 1993, p. 105), I will raise some issues to ponder, and identify some implications of her/our situation. I end with recommendations for personal, educational, and societal policies and practices that would be less painful and limiting, and more inclusive, supportive, and ultimately democratic. Through auto-ethnography, I am, then, attempting to re-write the self and the social (Reed-Danahay, 1997). Greene (1998) writes about the power of the human experience to concretely and powerfully convey the depth and effects of social injustice; I hope her/our story in some small way does this.

2media portrays the coming-out experience to be, Ngo explains how the process of “exiting the closet” is pervasive and continuous across all contexts. When asked how his K-12 experience was different from that of his peers-and how his identity as LGBTQ+ affected those experiences, Ngoexplains how his coming-out experience was never a one-time thing, In terms of coming out, I suppose I never necessarily “came out” as a whole event. I feel like in the early 2010s, a lot of people viewed coming out as one huge thing in your life. I would say that perception comes out as this huge shocking thing. But when you’re actually LGBTQ+, you’re potentially coming-out whenever you meet someone new. (Ngo, 2022

Mayo is a world-renowned author who currently serves as Director and Professor of the Interdisciplinary Studies master’s degree program in the U.S. Department of Education (uvm.com). And it is through his readingsthat we’ll begin to debunk previous misconceptions about the coming-out experience, look attheissues of being LGBTQ+under an Asian American household, and explain how unfair government policies and school practices persist atremoving queer and non-binary conversations inside American classrooms.

A lot of the times when people label things to be age-appropriate or age-inappropriate, it’s not because of their genuine concern for their child. It’s because of their belief that, ‘I don’t want my kids to learn about things that I personally do not understand, or things that I do not wish to understand.’” (Ngo, 2022)

Thinking about the obstacles faced by LGBTQ youth, who experience a wide range of exclusions in their attempts to access education, may help provide a better school-based response to ensure their educational success. In addition, because LGBTQ youth may not find support at home, school-based support and advocacy for their access to education are all the more crucial.

One quarter of students reported homophobic assault at schools, and one-fifth reported gender-identity-related assault (Kosciw et al., 2020). While supportive interventions did make a difference to stu-dents (Kosciw et al., 2020), Robinson and Espelage (2012) found that bul-lying explains only some of the disparities in risk factors of LGBTQ youth compared with heterosexual youth. They warn that by focusing only on bul-lying, schools will miss other possibilities for improving the lives of LGBTQ youth. Ullman (2018) further suggests that policy that focuses on bullying intentionally avoids more systemic discussions of gender-identity-related bias that pervade schools.

hile homophobia possibly may be-at least in some places-less socially acceptable today than it was previously, it is nonetheless the case that schools are not very supportive places for most LGBTQ, questioning, intersex, and ally students.

One way to think about the roots of homophobia is to think about how gender normativity-what counts as a "normal" male or female-gets taught and learned. How do genders become understood as having particular qualities, actions, appearances, and so on? How do gen-der identity and sexual orientation, stabilized as normative, then become the foundation for the normative and normal communities and personal re-lationships? To understand these processes within schools, Thorne (1993) looks at not only adult expectations and definitions, but also the general tendency of institutions, especially educational institutions, to sort and label their members. Her work pushes us to see as well that countermoves fol-low each of these institutional moves: The elementary school students whose classroom work and playground activities she observes in her study play with gender as a border category, that is, a category whose meanings are understood but also open to challenge.

People of all sexualities and genders experience these social pressures to conform, whether they actively try to conform or they are nonconformist or they don't even know they are trying to conform.

Practices like having elementary students line up by gender or organizing teams of boys against girls, she argues, highlight the importance of gender differences to young students at a time when they also are working through different ways of being gendered themselves.

In contrast, both to the stereotype that there are few literacy resources in low-income homes and to studies such as Neuman and Celano’s (2001) that found few “reading materials” in such neighborhoods, this investigation found that the boys and their families had created rich literacy spaces that reflected their lives and interests. In addition to workbooks, worksheets, and books brought from school for homework, the families had books of their own, library books, newspapers, folders of student awards and report cards, school and city notices and questionnaires, advertising flyers, lists, cook-books and recipes, games with instructions, photo albums, Bibles and reli-gious books, televisions and TV schedules, soccer magazines, computers, videotapes, electronic games, CD players and CDs, iPods, and global posi-tioning system (GPS) devices among others.

Benny and Miguel’s school and homes were located in adjacent low-income neighborhoods in Midwest City. Benny lived in Fountains, two blocks from the school in a subsidized apartment. The neighborhood was bounded by busy streets and a transportation hub. Data from the U.S. Census Bureau (2012)4 (R. Piiparinen, Center for Population Dynamics, College of Urban Affairs, Cleveland State University, personal communication, September 30, 2015) indicate that a little more than half of the people living in the neighborhood were Caucasian (56%), with substantial African American (32%) and Latino (20%) populations. The poverty level was 44%, 10 percentage points higher than that of the city as a whole (34%). Miguel lived in Lorimar, several blocks away from the school on a street lined with multistory wood frame homes like his own. There, the Latino population was slightly higher (23%) than in Fountains, the Caucasian population higher (69%), the African American population lower (23%), and the poverty level was less though still substantial (31%). Both neighborhoods had about dou-ble the percent of Latinos than the city as a whole (10%), and both had low levels of educational attainment with 32% and 28%, respectively, without a high school diploma

located in a midsize city that has “some of the same characteristics and sometimes challenges as urban intensive schools and districts in terms of resources, qualification of teachers, and academic devel-opment of students” (p. 560, emphasis added). Although urban decliningrather than urban emergent might be a more accurate label today for this Rust Belt city characterized by a shrinking population and industrial base as well as efforts to reverse this trend, the identification of the district as one in flux with characteristics of the much larger city it once was and aspirations to redevelop was appropriate

we focused on the strengths and resources of the children and their families, rather than their needs and alleged deficits as often described in the dominant discourse (Arzubiaga, Ceja, & Artiles, 2000). We knew that many Latino children had rich literacy lives—often invisible to teachers in urban schools or dismissed as irrelevant to school learning—and that they and their families possessed expertise and funds of knowledge (González, Moll, & Amanti, 2005; Long et al., 2007; Spencer et al., 2010) that could serve as the basis for a culturally relevant curriculum (Boardman et al., 2014; Gay, 2010)

In an article describing their “ecological study of four neighborhoods,” Neuman and Celano (2001) challenge the simplistic but common assump-tions that the characteristics of families determine children’s achievements in literacy and that all families have equal access to literacy resources. Their study investigating the affordances of low- and middle-income urban neighborhoods in terms of “access to print” looked at access to books, sig-nage, and other reading materials, as well as public places for reading and concluded tha

Ms. López respects Yamaira’s translanguaging space and acknowledges that even though the class is officially in English, Yamaira has opened a trans-languaging space that has transformed the class. Latinx bilinguals, who make up 75% of this middle school, have begun to understand that their trans-languaging is a resource, not a hindrance, for read-ing deeply about history and other content. This understanding is also now also available to stu-dents who speak languages other than English and Spanish, as well as to African American students. The class begins to understand that the way they use language and what they know is most impor-tant in making sense of reading any text.

Ms. López shows Yamaira some other strategies to bring her translanguaging abilities to bear on her reading of the English textbook. For example, Ms. López explains to Yamaira how to annotate the text, writing in Spanish in the margin or on sticky notes her interpretation of an idea or even the meaning of words. She also tells Yamaira not to be afraid to use Google Translate when she does not under-stand something in the text. Ms. López also advises Yamaira to read about the topic on the internet in Spanish before reading the English-language textbook

Ms. López begins to understand that Yamaira has an inquisitive historical mind, even though she is struggling with reading the textbook. She gives her two primary documents, written in Spanish, and asks her to read them for the following week. She also assures Yamaira that she will not be evalu-ated on her knowledge of English, but on her knowl-edge of history

Paco, Pre-Reading in a Bilingual HomeI start with Paco, the 3-year-old bilingual child whose mother is a U.S.-born Latina woman and whose father is a U.S.-born white man. The mother grew up in a bilingual home, the father in a monolingual one, but he studied Spanish in high school. The family is comfortable in a translanguaging space, where their use of English and Spanish is unbounded, dynamic, and fluid and adapts to meet the communicative expectations of the many different people who enter the hom

Most teachers in U.S. schools see their instruc-tion as being in English, and sometimes in Spanish or a language other than English. In this, most teach-ers reveal their monolingual view of literacy, insist-ing that the acts of literacy need to be performed in either one language or the other. Teachers also have a monoglossic view of literacy, as if the language of the school text is static and contains the only lin-guistic features that are valid

These resources are not equitably distributed in the population, and they are also not equally valued in society and schools. For example, in U.S. schools, English is valued more than Spanish. Almost exclu-sively, English is the language of the tests and texts. The verbal, especially its written mode, is also privi-leged over the visual or gestural among meaning-making systems. Furthermore, white middle-class English-speaking students are positioned vis-à-vis school tests and texts in ways that privilege them because the authors of those texts most often share the same socio-historical cultural legacies, as well as the same ways of using language

alone in the apartment, caring for her younger brother while her parents worked. As teenage daughters, the girls often were responsible for household chores and caring for younger siblings, which furthered their solitary and constrained feelings

Researcher positionalityMy various identities – a Japanese citizen, an Asian woman, a non-native English speaker, and a doc-toral student (at the time of my fieldwork), with a middle-class background, among other aspects of my identity and experiences – impacted the ways I understood phenomena and how I built relation-ships with the girls. I am aware of my positionality in representing the lives of the girls and producing this ethnography. I constantly reflected on my positionality, specifically thought about the privilege that I had relative to the girls, and negotiated this ‘ambiguous insider/outsider position’ (Kondo, 1990, p. 23). The girls and I had an Asian identity intersecting with gender identity and shared the marginalized experiences of being an Asian girl/woman in the uS. While our common Asian identity was salient in our relationships, I was aware of the privilege I had as a middle-class Japanese citizen compared to girls with working-class backgrounds who come from families from ‘developing countries.’ They sometimes envied my Japanese ethnicity, associating it with richness and both economic and cultural power. My Japanese language competency and nationality allowed me to build rapport with the girls, who enjoyed Japan’s popular culture and had interest in its culture and language. I was specifically mindful of the power of my adult status. I attempted to avoid coercion, for example, by not forcing the girls to talk about issues about which they were hesitant

Few scholars have focused on the sites of belonging and power that these young women construct and maintain (Maira, 2002; ngo, 2002; Shankar, 2008). For example, Maira (2002) examined the ways in which Indian American young women used Bhangra remix music and hybrid fashion to mediate between the multiple cultures in which they were embedded. ngo (2002) reconsidered the negative connotation of early marriage among Hmong American young women and revealed that they used early marriage to oppose the structural constraints they experienced in school and at home. While these studies focused on college-aged women, Shankar’s (2008) study looked at the lives of South Asian American (desis) high school students. She revealed that teen girls subjected to strong control and surveillance from their families and communities around issues of dating, marriage, and social life, actively negotiate, resist, and/or ‘quietly work around this (the) system’ (p. 168).

vague and undetermined place created by the emotional residue of an unnatural boundary’ (Anzaldúa, 2007, p. 25). They face a world of multiple, often contradictory, messages about who they are, what they should become, and how to navigate the world. Their parents expect them to follow and inherit their homeland traditions, beliefs, and values. There are messages inscribed in the contours of their lives, in schools and local communities that define who Asian American youth are, can be, and should be. There are messages embedded in media and popular culture that prescribe idealized versions of who Asian American girls should be and what they should look like. They negotiate this in-between terrain, which is ‘in a constant state of displacement – an uncomfortable, even alarming feeling’ (Anzaldúa, 2002, p. 1), while carving out a place to belong. Mired in a crucible of profound contradiction, alienation, and ambiguity, the girls fashion a borderland community of their own where they can affirm cultural hybridity, question and reject the mainstream values and beliefs that surround them, and imagine new possibilities for their present and future. Exploring the possibilities and constraints of the ‘Basement Group’ through the eyes of Asian American girls, this article attempts to illuminate their otherwise unseen sense of belonging, skills, and capacities of these immigrant young people who inhabit the borderlands. I explore the following research questions. (1) How do the girls navigate displacement in the uS, specifically in their family homes and school community? (2) How do they construct a community in response to mainstream spaces and homogeneous social groups at school?I first review literature on the experiences of Asian American girls and in-between s

IntroductionIt is lunchtime at Maple High. Several Asian American girls run downstairs to the school basement and gather on the floor of one of its darkest corners, joining their friends. They form a large loud crowd of about 25 students, including Asian, Latino, and black boys and girls as well as white girls. Some sit next to the Japanese language classroom door at the end of the hallway. Others sit in front of some student lockers, and a few gather in front of the janitor’s room. Some sit underneath the stairwell, which they love because it is ‘empty,’ hidden, and more ‘private.’ In this space, they share foods from various countries, talk loudly in a pan-Asian language, listen to music from around the world, dance together, use hybrid languages, tease each other, and laugh. It is where Bollywood, K-pop (Korean pop music), Japanese anime, and British boy bands are part of daily conversations. It is a community, a place where they feel comfortable, empowered, and affirmed and yet at times where they experience tensions, contradictions, and challenges. ‘We dominate the basement!’ Gina, a 15-year-old Chinese American girl, proudly proclaims. This article, based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork, examines how a group of Asian American1 immigrant high school girls (Filipina, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Indian) construct this basement into a community, which they name the ‘Basement Group.’ While this group comprises students with diverse backgrounds, I specifically focus on the perspectives, voices, and experiences of a group of Asian American girls who are its founders and core members.

A struggling school, we were victim to a bevy of new reform measures; each year we scraped to make Adequate Yearly Progress for No Child Left Behind until eventually we were put into a transformation model for Race to the Top money. Because of these stresses, the administration and teaching staff constantly shifted, and this hurt the student body, which was becoming increas-ingly poor and lower skilled (in regard to what was measured by the high-stakes tests).