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 w

136 OUR KIDS 15 percent in 1980) and account for nearly half of the county's K-12 students. 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 H

food diets. That image has, however, been gradually altered by large-scale de-mographic changes over the last 40 years. Since 1970 the population of Orange County has more than doubled to over 3 million people. The county is now the sixth most populous

good class. Then, she told me she believed I belonged in the class, and she wanted me to start partici-pating in discussions. I promised to do my best. She was instructing me in a part of the hidden curriculum, that speaking up in class is important for my success

can remember is that Rebecca would speak loudly. She hung out exclusively with the other few Black students in school. 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 stu

Racism and Classism As a youth, I was psychologically equipped to confront racism in school. I was taught by my mother to stand up for myself when people used racial slurs. She consistently reminded my brother and me that we should never feel inferior because of the color of our skin. However, I was not adequately prepared to address classism in the education system. There was no pride in bei

6 COUNTERS TORIES I 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.

I 6 COUNTERS TORIES I 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

tarting in kindergarten, schools rarely reward poor students for the quali-ties they bring to their schools: their perseverance, compassion, flexibility, patience, and creativity, just to name a few. Instead they are judged on quali-ties determined by dominant cultural norms: the attitudes, preferences, tastes, mannerisms, an

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

eah, because last year I had prealgebra and this year I'm going to take one semester of prealgebra, and then maybe I'll be ready for algebra, hut ifl'm nor, I'm going to take prealgebrn again so I really know what I'm doing. Because, see, my brother, when he came [to Berkeley High], he didn't go to prealgebra. He went to prealgebra in middle school, and

car mechanic and lives nearby, never married his mother, but his regular visits to the family keep him connected with Harold. 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 pla

26 RESTORING OPPORTUNITY ENRICHMENT EXPENDITURES Increasing income inequality contributes to the growth in achievement gaps, in part because income enables parents to promote learning oppor-tunities and avoid some of the myriad risks to the healthy development of their children. 6 Garrett Tallinger is the pseudonym given by Lareau to a white fourth grader living with hi

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-an

job, but the recent violent deaths of two friends have him just hoping that he will still be alive in five years. It is easy to imagine how the childhood circumstances of these two young men may have shaped their fates.

et's face it: most of us were taught in classrooms where styles of teachings reflected the hotion of a single norm of thought and experience, which we were encouraged to believe was universal. This has been just as true for nonwhite teachers as for white teacher

36 Teaching to Transgress classroom where there is no one way to approach a subject-only multiple ways and multiple referen ces. 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 paradigm

social JUStice framework. For years I have been floored by the number of candidates who believe not only that public education is the great equalizer but also that children and families who remain poor are to blame for not exploiting such a freely available opportunity to improve their lots.

the gross and growing disparities among the social classes. We continue to need methods for shrinking overwhelming and widen-ing class divides. Many of us choose to address the equity gap by struggling to supply universal access to high-quality, free, and appropriate public education. Nearly two centuries later, "the great equalizer" cannot equalize soon enough

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

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 ach