This juxtaposition veers toward a pathologizing of poverty, but it’s not at all wrong—just incomplete in my opinion. What poor kids “bring” is shaped by centuries of extraction, surveillance, and systemic neglect. Until we address that inheritance, no amount of grit will suffice.

The language here—“para-school”—is used as if a second shadow education system exists, operated by parents with means. This reinforces that schools are not necessarily equal just because they are “public.”

Peer composition is then not serving as a mere footnote, but as a largely influential force. Defining “good schools” is not just about funding or curriculum, but who surrounds you—academically, socially, aspirationally, and economically.

I don't personally view this research as information that complicates the narrative because we all play silent parts in systems that we don't agree with, but this as a stand alone statement could easily complicate things painting school as non-originators, giving them the opportunity to deflect any responsibility at all. Schools are not the originators, but they are deeply implicated as amplifiers. It forces a reframe of educational reform—away from fixing schools in isolation, and toward tackling the layered socioeconomic inputs shaping them.

Schools functioning as attendance-funded machines, preventing truancy at a state level, rather than institutions of care is a moral failure that provide students with the tools to be civil parts of society. Sofia’s narrative highlights how commodification of students can dehumanize them completely.

This is educational malpractice masquerading as disillusionment. When teachers admit their disengagement, it legitimizes hopelessness. It’s also a glaring indictment of the environments we assign our most vulnerable students to.

This level of drive for a parent is admirable, but it may also reinforce a competitive landscape where only the best-resourced survive. The system rewards hyper-involvement and punishes those who, due to labor or language barriers, cannot perform such parental labor. We have to acknowledge what parts we play in the systems we are trying to dismantle because we have been groomed to conform to them as a "moral duty." With that being said with how racist the systems tend to be I would never blame a POC parent for only thinking of the good of their children and family.

Housing for children within the schooling system is a modernized form of educational privilege. Clara’s meticulous school shopping reflects the high-stakes marketization of opportunity.

Clara’s voice cuts to the heart of immigrant resilience. But the burden of “getting out” often falls entirely on the child. Success is framed as escape—rarely as transformation of the system left behind. That’s the cruelty of “mobility” and escapism from the environment a person is created, born, and formed as a human in, as the only imagined victory.

This is why it is so important to portray these grave disparities numerically because it plainly showcases the severe inequality. These statistics are not educational accidents—they are structural blueprints. It’s not just what schools teach; it’s what they assume their students will become.

This signifies a shift in the American immigration narrative, while also setting the stage for the layered contradictions in educational access. While Ellis Island symbolized opportunity, here the “American Dream” is unevenly distributed, especially when radicalized and class-based geographies stratify access to high-quality schooling.

I think we would be largely remiss if at the beginning of each statement surrounding multicultural education and the newfound data around income inequality for students that Black people will always be considered the lowest of the low. We are socially dead beings and our freedom from this necessitates the end of the world. Human equality will often not include Black bodies because we are not considered human by the standards of social life vs. social death. It is so crucial to make progress where we can, but we must acknowledge that this progress often does not include everybody.

Until we hold structures—not students—accountable, the cycle of racialized failure will continue, cloaked in language of “achievement gaps.”

The racial calculus of calculus: this gap in access to advanced math isn't incidental—it’s a predictive map of future exclusion. We talk about STEM diversity, yet ignore the early and persistent divestment in Black and Brown talent.

This is one of the most powerful lines in the reading to me. It calls out the neoliberal myth of educational choice. When support isn’t equitably distributed, “choice” becomes a setup. We can’t keep hiding institutional neglect behind the façade of personal responsibility.

So from this example would it be informed to essentially summarize it as: Education access is not just about course offerings, but insider knowledge—usually inherited or whispered from parent to parent. It’s nepotism masquerading as open access.

This is why it is essential to highlight numerical statistics. Not only is that the best way some people learn and visualize, but it puts it into a larger scale perspective that is comprehendible to the average human mind. These numbers reveal the not-so-hidden curriculum of racial tracking. Even in “progressive” districts like Berkeley, race determines rigor. We pretend ability grouping is objective, but this data shows it’s just a polite mechanism for segregation within schools.

As a Black woman it is clear to me that this statement was written by a non-Black person. That achievement gap is global weaved intricately into the foundations of every single system. If we escape that it necessitates the end of the word (Wilderson III, Afropessimism). Puzzling? Not at all. In fact, it is the exact opposite and extremely expected as a part of the systems. A progressive community does not mean freedom, opportunity, and equality for Black beings. That is something we create on our own because we are socially dead and seen as so other that we are not even a part of the definition of "community" let alone truly considered within a "progressive" one. What it is is unfortunate, despicable, and inhumane. It is quite the opposite of puzzling to me. Once we acknowledge that these are our systems and always have been instead of just --emphasis on "just" because questions should never stop being asked-- questioning "why," we can mobilize against them.

This is an urgent and necessary call to action We —American school systems— cannot continue pretending that school is a neutral space. The curriculum may say one thing, but the culture—the tone, the body language, the silence—teaches something entirely different.

Marginalized students often invest in the few teachers who seem safe—only to be retraumatized when that trust is broken. Teacher preparation should include how to carry that trust ethically and with care.

Acceptance in school often depends on silence and submission—especially for poor students of color. The hidden curriculum is not about learning; it’s about learning to not take up too much space as a person of color. Our influence and embracing of our unabashed selves and cultures is often punished in ways that have more to do with education and less to do with a student expression or influence. The disadvantage this creates cannot be statistically quantified.

I heavily relate to this comment, however, in a different way. I grew up middle to upper-middle class, but many aspects of being Black are violently hard to exist as while also being the most sought after and fetishized.

It unfortunately seems like at the core, there is much more encouragement, positivity, and self-motivating in wealthy environments and this is an important value to transfer over into adulthood. Not having that is hindering the progress, access to resources, and ability to ask for help for the poorer students leaves them lost, but unable to pinpoint what they are missing during college education and even while preparing their own children for schooling in the future if they are stuck in the same cycle. Which is a system that is very, very, VERY, easy to stay stuck in.

The phrase “enrichment expenditure” feels sterile for what it actually represents: access to imagination, opportunity, and future security. This number isn’t just a statistic—it’s the price of privilege. It’s what makes middle-class parents feel calm and low-income families feel frantic and lesser-than.

When inequality appears this early, it invalidates the very idea of a level playing field. It makes the American dream feel like a rigged game pretending to be fair.

This contrast between Alexander and Anthony reads like a quiet indictment of American meritocracy. It's not a matter of grit or intelligence—it’s capital. We need to stop treating disparities in educational outcomes as natural or unfortunate and start naming them as economic design choices. The gap isn't random; it’s structured and sustained.

Income and cultural background play the largest part in this scenario. Alexander's additional family income, quality parental time, and cultural environment have set him up for success and offered him with many more constructivist learning opportunities. Anthony, although he has a job, a clear will to live, and is in school he will be unable to afford to attend an ivy league school without a large scholarship. Additionally, his motivation is greatly impacted by the energy he spends at work, worrying about family situations, and he is much less likely to get a productive and positive educator who values his learning and even considers his harsh cultural and familial background.

This line struck me as more of a pedagogue. Learning is not always joyous—it can be a reckoning. hooks’s honesty about discomfort as part of transformation is a rare gift, offering grace to students and educators alike.

As a student of color who is the older sister to three other students of color this greatly speaks to the factual experience that educators often fail and refuse to recognize when sending POC students down the school to prison pipeline. Work place politics and burnt out, underpaid educators play a large part as well.

This reimagines education as collaboration, not transmission. The emphasis on voice, presence, and community resonates with Freire’s ideas and offers a practical compass for liberatory teaching.

Personal Note: Change isn’t just resisted out of ignorance—it’s also avoided because it threatens the illusion of control. It made me think about how faculty development should include emotional support, not just ideological training.

A multicultural world is just the world. The title sounds like this is the first time the author is acknowledging this or they are White and word things with slight microagressions without noticing it, as White people do.

I find this is a really great place to note that as a Black woman who came from a very diverse, ethical, inclusive, multicultural focused, liberal arts high school, places that do perpetuate this contemporary focus are far and few in between and are very sheltered places. I often go into an AFAM class that teaches about all of these concepts on an insanely deep level and then I will go to work in UTC, a STEM side of campus, or just outside in Irvine at all and I come face to face with a great lack of this awareness on these topics, a lack of willingness to gain said awareness, blatant racism, and microagressions. For as much as we place ourselves in environments that place focus on this there are people who do the exact opposite and remain in conservative spaces rooted in inequality. It is becoming more mainstream as Gen Z becomes adults, but we are in a bubble and it does not surprise me how little progress we have made within society.

This is the vast chasm between federally supported access and privately engineered advantage. Jackson’s comparison between Head Start and elite preschool prep is haunting—it’s not just about access, it’s about the quality and trajectory that follow.

This sentence stunned me in its simplicity and force. It demolishes the bootstraps myth and demands that we stop asking how poor students can do better and start asking why they were systemically placed at a disadvantage to begin with.

Jackson flips the script entirely, offering a radical but necessary reframing. Her clarity on this point is refreshing—it removes blame from students and situates it where it belongs: in systemic design.

Mann was absolutely correct with this statement. In EDUC 126: Ethics and Education one of the questions we have been, and continue to be asked is "what makes you moral?" My genuine answer is always that if I can provide another living thing with assistance, peace, relief, relaxation, happiness, anything at all and it causes no harm to me or anyone else I AM GOING TO DO IT. That is what moral humans do and it feels like the most natural instinct to me besides being a mother. Of course, cultural background, and personal motivation play a part, but the rich creating an essential war on the poor so that they always stay above is inhumane and insanely immoral. Why would a person do that to another person?

The worship of local control disguises class and race protectionism.

To me this clarifies why educational equity work feels fragmented and exhausting. We don't lack values; we lack the political will to embody them when sacrifice is required. It left me asking: How do we close the action gap without moralizing the privileged into paralysis?

This is exactly what the moral paradox of public schooling is: our individual instincts sabotage our collective ideals. This tension complicates policymaking and exposes why real reform is so hard to achieve—it would require self-sacrifice from those already advantaged.

The American Dream is indeed a powerful concept, however, it is crucially important to note that this power comes from what it promises, not what it provides. This saying came to be because the job market in America is objectively better than the wars, drug cartels, murders, kidnappings, arranged marriages, etc... in certain third world countries. America could have had half of the jobs we can offer and still have framed it that way because it was the objective lesser of all evils. Yet, when a person of color immigrates to America to achieve this dream they are given the absolute bare minimum because we know it is still better than what they came from.

Is it a dream compared to where they came from? Sure. A dream in the climate of America, considering what its citizens are given (i.e. minimum wage, voting rights, citizen rights, better opportunities, etc...)? Not by a long shot. It is very unfortunate, but true, and it must be recognized.