iE AMERICAN STORY is one of immigration and accommodation, in which groups of people from diverse backgrounds arrive and seek to forge a common destiny. After the peoples we now call Native Americans made their way to these lands, three major human flows-the settlement of the original colonists, the involuntary transfer of African slaves until the Civil War, and the great trans-Atlantic diaspora that began at the end of the Napoleonic Wars and endured until the Great Depression-set the stage for the current realities of immigration to the United States

Students who live in poverty, however resilient, face obstacles that are lay-ered, like matryoshka dolls, and once one issue is somewhat rectified, another one might reveal itself.

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).

Issues surrounding the prospect of grow-ing up black and male in this society were threaded through Alexander's life in ways that had no equivalent among his middle-class, white male peers.

Middle-class parents engage in concerted cultivation by attempting to foster children's talents through organized leisure activities and extensive reasoning. Working-class and poor parents engage in the accomplishment of natural growth, providing the condi-tions under which children can grow but leaving leisure activities to children them-selves. These parents also use directives rather than reasoning. Middle-class chil-dren, both white and black, gain an emerging sense of entitlement from their family life. Race had much less impact than social class

I mean really poor; not poor like a college student living on ramen or struggling-artist poor. I mean poor as in working as hard as you can your whole life and still living week to week and check to check. Have you ever been that kind of poor? I have.

White trash

In applying the “poor” label to a child, teachers may use the label to excuse why some students fail. In this way, teachers can convince themselves that their teaching plays little to no role in students’ academic outcomes. We both have heard in-service teachers lament how little differ-ence they can really make when students are poor and “have no support at home” or have parents who “don’t value education.”

Often, poor children live in chaotic, unstable households. They are more likely to come from single-guardian homes, and their parents or caregivers tend to be less emotionally responsive (Blair et al., 2008; Evans, Gonnella, Marcynyszyn, Gentile, & Salpekar, 2005).

ronic tardiness, lack of motivation, and inappropriate behavior.

n 2002, the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act, with its explicit focus on “closing the achieve-ment gap between high and low performing children, especially minority and non- minority students,”23 testifi ed to the continued centrality and urgency of the issue on a national level

n the spring of 2005, Alhambra High received the Title I Academic Achievement Award, which recognizes schools with low- income stu-dent populations that have made progress in closing the achievement gap.2Principal Russell Lee- Sung arranged a meeting with student government leaders to announce the good news. One of the students present at the meeting was Robin Zhou, an inquisitive, first- generation Chinese American senior, who began to wonder why this gap— a persistent discrepancy in test scores and grade point averages between Alham-bra’s Asian American and Latina/o students— existed in the first place. The results of his speculations ran in Robin’s monthly school newspaper column, “Nerd Rants,” on March 22, 2005. Following the headline, “Latinos Lag behind in Academics,” he wrote that “Hispanic students” were not “pulling their weight” and attributed the cause to cultural factors, suggesting that Asian parents “push their children to move toward academic success,” while Latino parents “are well- meaning but less active

Based on extensive field research in a large child-care center, Debra Van Ausdale and Joe Feagin concluded that the “strongest evidence of white adults’ conceptual bias is seen in the assumption that children experience life events in some naïve or guileless way.”5 Children mimic adults’ racist views and behavior, but that does not mean they do not understand and know numerous elements of the dominant racial frame and use its stereotypes and interpretations to enhance their status among other children

Asian American students were attacked on and around their South Philadelphia High School campus. Thirty of them sustained injuries serious enough to warrant a hospital visit. These Asian American stu-dents were targeted, and school officials had ignored their complaints of bully-ing and pleas for protection for years. School days were rough for these Asian American students, as their classmates routinely hurled racial epithets; pelted them with food; and beat, punched, and kicked them in school hallways and bathrooms. The students finally ha

ad a terrible, uneasy feeling in my stomach and I picked up the phone to hear panic in the voice on the other end of the line. “She jumped out the window. Farrah* jumped out of the window.”

Another finding from survey data corroborated in the ethnographic account is that immigrant youth experience school significantly more positively than do their U.$.-born peers. That is, they see teachers as more caring and accessible than do their U.S.-born counterparts, and they rate the school clir1;ate in more positive terms as well. They are also much less likely to evade school rules and policies

Although this intervention is not a miracle cure for every school . , It does highlight what can happen when we think about the developmen-tal needs of Black adolescents who are coming to terms with their own sense of identity. It might seem counterintuitive that a school involved in a voluntary desegregation program could improve both academic performance and social relationships among students by separating the Black students for one period every day. But if we understand the unique challenges facing adolescents of color and the legitimate need they have to feel supported in their identity development, it makes perfect sense.

Another reported, "Almost every day on Call of Duty: Black Ops [a video game involving other online players] I see Confederate flags, swastikas and black people hang-ing from trees in emblems and they say racist things about me and my teammates." Another game-related incident was this one: "Me and my friends were playing Xbox and some kid joined the Xbox Live party we were in and made a lot of racist jokes I found offensive.

WALK INTO ANY RACIALLY MIXED HIGH SCHOOL CAFETERIA AT LUNCH-tune 3:11d you will instantly notice that in the sea of adolescent faces, there is an identifiable group of Black students sitting together. Con-versely, it could be pointed out that there are many groups of White students sitting together as well, though people rarely comment about that. The question on the tip of everyone's tongue is, "Why are the Black kids sitting together?"

Cathy was dutifully going about the task assigned to her, that of placing a number of objects next to various numerals printed on a cloth.

it is important to remember that children are individuals and cannot be made to fit into any preconceived mold of how they are "supposed" to act.

This fact has all sores of consequences. Many studies have shown chat parental engagement-everything from asking about homework co accending PTA meetings-is associated with higher academic perfor-mance, better socioemotional skills, and ocher facets of student behavior, such as less use of drugs and alcohol. As educational researchers Anne Henderson and Nancy Berla have put it, summarizing the trends in such studies, "When parents are involved at school, their children go further in school, and the schools they go co are better.

The student body is racially diverse, with 46 percent Asian American, 24 percent non-Hispanic white, 23 percent Latino, and 6 percent black and mixed-race minorities, though it is much less diverse in terms of its students' socio-economic backgrounds (as we saw in Table 4.1)

the Ellis Island of the twenty-first century." 1 By 2013, 46 percent of the county's population spoke a language other than English at home. 2 Latino immi-grants today make up more than a third of che population (up from only

The next day, Ms. Hill did not warmly greet me at the beginning of class. I raised my hand, and she called on me last. When I shared my perspective, she was noticeably silent. She had something positive to say about everyone else's comments but mine. Soon this treatment became the new norm. I stopped meeting with her during my lunch periods. As weeks passed, Ms. Hill never gave me praise, so I became silent again. This time my silence did not matter to my classmates or Ms. Hill. No one cared. I was invisible to them.

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

Enrichment expenditures and improved mental health, lower stress, and more "room for error" are some of the potential reasons that increased income might be associated with better school progress among lower-income children. What do all of these possible influences add up to? Two experimental studies involving three sites examined the overall impacts on children of income supplements that boosted family income by as much as 50 percent.

Another factor that affects school achievement is the quality of family re-lationships. When families are free from persistent strain, relationships are easier and less fraught with tension.14 When parent-child relationships are warm, children respond well. When children respond well, harsh parenting practices are less common

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 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.

It is easy to imagine how the childhood circumstances of these two young men may have shaped their fates. Alexander lived in the suburbs while Anthony lived in the city center. Most of Alexander's suburban neighbors lived in families with incomes above the $125,000 that now sep-arates the richest 20 percent of children from the rest. Anthony Mears's school served pupils from families whose incomes were near or below the $27,000 threshold separating the bottom 20 percent (see figure 2.4).

Multiculturalism compels educators to recognize the nar-row boundaries that have shaped the way knowledge is shared in the classroom. It forces us all to recognize our complicity in accepting and perpetuating biases of any kind.

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.

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.

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.

Multicultural World

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.

The surest way to build wealth-as indicated by the real in real estate-is to own a home. Both Katznelson (2005) and Wise (2005) mapped, in bril-liantly unconsidered ways, how "affirm~tive action" in the United States has always benefited Whites and most significantly in the building of White wealth. From establishing the country's earliest legislation restricting the landed gen-try to White males, to offering mortgage loans to Whites only via the Federal Housing Authority and the GI Bill, to excluding Blacks and people of color from home loans and subdivisions by way of redlining and restrictive covenants, both scholars illuminate the long-standing and state-sponsored wealth gaps (ravines) between Whites and all others.

What scores of students-well-meaning educators, all-fail to realize is that public education does not serve its intended function as the great equal-izer. Quite contrarily, schools actually structure inequality (gasp!) in insidiously subtle ways. To introduce countless future teachers to this "radical" notion ' I devised a plan to combat pernicious thinking about poor students, the educa-tional "failures" of poor students, and the "self-inflicted" demise of the poor.

1 have been teaching teachers for over a decade, primarily in teacher educati?n ~rograms designed to prepare urban educators and always guided by a 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

Horace Mann was on to something. When he witnessed an angry street riot in New England, his conviction that "the educated, the wealthy, the intelligent" had gone morally astray by abandoning the public was fortified {Johnson, 2002, p. 79). Mann chided the economic elite for shirking obligations to their fellow man by favoring private education over common schools. He conceptualized public education as "the great equalizer," or the most powerful mechanism for abating class-based "prejudice and hatred," and, most important, the only means by which those without economic privilege or generational wealth could experience any hope of equal footing.

Irrational policymaking can be explained by the fact that public official have made their choices at least partly on the basis of claims that pursuing col~ lective goals of the American dream could endanger or has endangered the in-dividual achievement of privileged children. Under pressure they have been willing to sacrifice the wider objectives or put them at risk for the sake of the narrower ones, whether or not there was good evidence that the objectives re-ally were in conflict

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

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."

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

We have a great national opportunity-to ensure that every child, in every school, is challenged by high standards, ... to build a culture of achievement that matches the optimism and aspirations of our country. -President George W Bush, 2000 There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America. -President Bill Clinton, 1993