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.”

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

On December 3, 2009, fifty 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 had enough after this day of massive attacks, and they staged a boycott for eight days. Media outlets highlighted the racial tensions between the mostly black student attackers and the Asian American victims.2

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

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.” What I thought were irrational fears from the night before had, in fact, become a reality.

inding 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.

massive student walkout in October 1989, and a number of school reforms sud: as site-based management, little has changed to significantly alter its underachieving profile. Seguin is locked in inertia. Steeped in a logic of technical rationality, schooling centers on questions of how best to administer the curriculum rather than on why. as presently organized, it tends to block the educational mobility of huge segments of its student body. Excepting those located in the privileged rungs of the curriculum-that is, honors classes, the magnet school program. and the upper levels of the Career and Technology Education (CTE) vocational programl-the academic trajectories of the vast majority are highly circumscribed. Because as a group, 9th graders are especially "at risk," I tried to talk to as many of them as possible and to incorporate their voices and experiences into this ethnographic account

Schools subtract resources from youth in two major ways. The first involves a process of "de-Mex.icanization," or subtracting students' culture and language, which is consequen-tial to their achievement arid orientations toward school. The second involves the role of caring between teachers and students in the educational process. De-Mex.icanization erodes students' social capital (Coleman 1988, I 990; also see Stanton-Salazar, 1997), by making it difficult for constructive social ti~s to develop between immigrant and U.S.-born youth:

I 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. If teachers are to teach effectively, recognition of che impor-tance of student perception of teacher intent is critical. Prob-lems arising from culturally different interactional styles seem to disproportionately affect African-American boys, who, as a result of cultural influences, exhibit a high degree of physicality ,,,.

The clash between school culture and home culture is actual-ized in at least two ways. When a significant difference exists between the students' culture and the school's culture, teach-ers can easily misread students' aptitudes, intent, or abilities as a result of the difference in styles of language use and incer-actional patterns. Secondly, when such cultural differences exist, teachers may utilize styles of instruction and/or disci-pline that are at odds with community norms.

In any discussion of education and culture, 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. The question is not necessarily how to cre-ate the perfect "culturally matched" learning situation for each ethnic group, but rather how to recognize when there is a problem for a particular child and how to seek its cause in the most broadly conceived fashion. Knowledge about culture is bur one tool that educators may make use of when devising solutions for a school's difficulty in educating diverse children.

ransition 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

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.

n individual is not likely to explore all identity domains at once, therefore it is not unusual for an adolescent to be actively exploring one dimension while another remains relatively unexamined. Given the impact of dominant and subordinate status, it is not surprising thar researchers have found that adolescents of color are more likely co be actively engaged in an exploration of their racial or ethnic identity than are White adolescents. 2

ne thing that happens is puberty. As children enter adolescence , they begin to explore the question of identity, asking "Who am I? Who can I be?" in ways they have not done before. For Black youth, asking "Who am I?" usually includes thinking about "Who am I ethnically and/or racially? What does it mean to be Black?

LK 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?" Principals want to know, teachers want to know, White students want to know, the Black students who aren't sitting at the table want to know.

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.

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 being poor. In fact, I did not know anyone who marched in the streets with their fist in the air saying, "Poor is beautiful." I loved being Black, but I hated being poor.

My students rarely out themselves as being poor. You could not tell they struggle financially by the papers they turn in to me or by what they say when we discuss things in my sociology classes at the University of St. Thomas. During office hours, however, students reveal to me that they grew up poor, and often they tell me that they are the first person from their family to go to college. They talk about the social distance they feel from their peers who have money. They tell me they often hang out with other poor students to avoid being reminded of what they simply don't have. Many low-income students do not own cars. They are less likely to dine at off-campus restaurants or to have an entire wardrobe of brand-name clothes. They do not go to vacation resorts on spring break. They get tired of being reminded of these differences when they are with wealthier students.

Social scientists have identified significant resources, or forms of capital, th::tr play a role in influencing student academic out-comes. Research has shown that economic capital, that is, the w~alch and income of parents, is one of the primary factors influ-ep.cing student achieveme11t (Coleman and others, 1966; Roth-stein, 2004; Farkas, 2004 ). Student achievement is also influenced _l,y more subtle resources sud; as social capital-the benefits derived from c<;mnections to networks and individuals with power and influence (Coleman, 1988; Stanton-Salazar, 1997, 2001; Noguera, 2003 )-and cultural capital (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992)-the t~sces, styles, habits, language, behaviors, appearance, and customs c.hat serve as indicators of status anJ privilege. All three forms of c?pital-e';onomic, social, and cultural-play a role in perpetuat-ing disparate educational experiences anJ differential access to edu-cational opportunities. However, they do so in interaction with seemingly neutral structures that operate within schools and society. Chantelle's comments reveal how easily a student who lacks economic, social, and cultural capital can become lost within Berkeley High's large and impersonal bureaucratic structure. She

Jennifer: Much easier. I'm in geometry, :rnd it's like "Oh, okay. I know how to do that." I have a [private] tutor now, and she's planning to be a math teacher at Berkeley High, and rhe [geome-try] books she's like an exjpert at going through because her school created them. So she's, like, "I understand how they think about this." So she understands the books ... and she helps me with that. So I'm getting a lot better, and I'm understanding things a lot better now, but it's only because of her.

hantelle: Yeah, 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 then he went to algebra here, and he never went to prealgebra here, so he needed to go to prealgebra this year because it's his last year.

Why might growing gaps in family income cause an increasing gap between the school success of low-income and higher-income children? According to economic theory, families with higher incomes are better able to purchase or produce important "inputs" into their young chil-dren's development-for example, nutritious meals, enriched home learn-ing environments and child-care settings outside the home, and safe and stimulating neighborhood environments.4 Alternatively, psychologists and sociologists focus on how economic disadvantage impairs the quality of family relationships. 5

The study first assessed the children shortly after they began kinder-garten, providing a picture of their skills at the starting line of their for-mal schooling. It shows that children from families in the top 20 percent of the income distribution already outscore children from the bottom 20 percent by 106 points in early literacy. This difference is nearly twice the size of the gap between the average reading skills of white and both black and Hispanic children at that age, and nearly equal to the amount that the typical child learns during kindergarten. Moreover, the reading gap was even larger when the same children were tested in fifth grade. Gaps in mathematics achievement are also substantial. 2

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.

A SNAPSHOT OF Alexander Williams and Anthony Mears at age twenty finds them on strikingly different educational and, in all likelihood, career trajectories. Alexander appears well on his way to an Ivy League degree and medical school. Anthony has a job, but the recent violent deaths of two friends have him just hoping that he will still be alive in five years.

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.

We meet in the comfortable living room, facing glass doors opening onto a patio, a serene blue pool, and a colorful garden. Pictures of Isa-bella in dance costumes accent a grand piano. The adjacent dining room provides a calm space for conversation and homework, an environment that served as a refuge from Troy High School, which all three children attended and where, Clara reports, you can feel quivers of anxiety, as kids compete for the highest SAT scores and spots at Harvard, Stanford, and NYU. Her kids have had a very different experience growing up here than Clara and Ricardo had growing up a generation ago in South Central LA.

hat 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.

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.

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.

Students taught me, too, that it is necessary to practice com-passion in these new learning settings. I bave not forgotten the day a student came to class and told me: 'We take your class. We learn to look at the world from a critica! standpoint, one that considers race, sex, and class. And we can't enjoy life anymore."

Making the classroom a democratic setting where everyone feels a responsibility to contribute is a central goa! of trans-formative pedagogy.

To share in our efforts at intervention we invited professors from universities around the country to corne and talk-both formally and informally-about the kind of work they were doing aimed at transforming teaching and learning so that a multicultural education would be possible

Despite the contemporary focus on multiculturalism in our society, particularly in education, there is not nearly enough practica! discussion of ways classroom settings can be trans-formed so that the learning experience is inclusive. If the effort to respect and honor the social reality and experiences of groups in this society who are nonwhite is to be reflected in a pedagogical process, then as teachers-on all levels, from ele-mentary to university settings-we must acknowledge that our styles of teaching may need to change. Let'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 teachers. Most of us learned to teach emulating this model.

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).

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.

hat 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 exploiting such a freely available opportunity to improve their lots.

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.

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-

et 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

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.

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.

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.