By pairing the book with the film, we wanted the students to have a sense both of the harsh realities of urban schools and of the possibilities to transform and transcend those realities.

Rather, we sought to encourage a critical dialogue whereby our students would understand that they possessed the individual and collective ability to achieve even within a structure that can only be labeled as oppressive

Nothing promotes border crossing or tolerance more than helping students to arrive at an implicit understanding of what they have in common with those they have been taught to perceive as differ-ent.

We certainly applaud these goals, but we also feel as though the field at present insufficiently explores the applications of critical peda-gogy to urban education.

Teachers at Harlem Prep recognized that teachers and students could learn from each other and worked hard to engage students differently than they had (unsuccessfully) been engaged before in their prior schooling experiences.

the school’s constant lack of resources and diverse population did not hinder it from sending hundreds of non-traditional students to many highly selective colleges nationwide

Harlem Prep became a prominent community effort that sought to reach the increasing youth population who desired—and deserved—a second chance at an edu-cation

For Ihave done so much with so little for so long that now Ican do anything with nothing at all.

As these observations about localism suggest, the gap between belief in the American dream and its practice has demographic and historical as well as in-dividual and structural causes. In the United States, class is connected with race and immigration; the poor are disproportionately African Americans or recent immigrants, especially from Latin America. Legal racial discrimination was abolished in American schooling during the last half century (an amazing ac-complishment in itself), but prejudice and racial hierarchy remain, and racial or ethnic inequities reinforce class disparities. This overlap adds more diffi-culties to the already difficult relationship between individual and collective goals of the American dream, in large part because it adds anxieties about di-versity and citizenship to concerns about opportunity and competition. The fact that class and race or ethnicity are so intertwined and so embedded in the structure of schooling may provide the greatest barrier of all to the achieve-ment of the dream for all Americans, and helps explain much of the contention, confusion, and irrationality in public education

Introduction 5 munities are divided not only by geography but also by race and class, as they are in much of the United States, the schools will mirror these divisions. Americans want neighborhood schools, decentralized decision making, and democratic control. They see these devices in part as ways to ensure that schools can accommodate distinctive community desires, and to give parents a greater say about what goes on in them. Despite the fact that participation in school elections is very low and information on which to base a vote is often scarce, Americans will not surrender local control without a fight. They simply will not permit distant politicians or experts in a centralized civil service to make educational decisions. The reasons for this preference are complicated, in-cluding the incredible diversity of the population and the huge size of the coun-try. Not least important, however, is the fact that local districts mirror and reinforce separation by class and race. Democratic control, therefore, not only provides support for public education but also creates a forum for the occa-sional exercise of bigotry and xenophobia; localism not only accommodates community idiosyncrasies but also serves as a barrier to changes in the distri-bution of students and resources.

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.

Because most Americans now believe that the American dream should be available to all American citizens, public schools in the United States have made real progress toward enabling everyone to pursue success as they understand it. Compared with a few decades ago, dropout rates have fallen, achievement scores have risen, resources are more equally distributed, children with dis-abilities have the right to an appropriate education, and black children are not required by law to attend separate and patently inferior schools

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

also to make them good citizens who will maintain the nation's values and · In-stitutions, help them flouri~h, and pass them on to the next generation. The American public widely endorses both of these broad goals, values public ed-ucation, and supports it with an extraordinary level of resource

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 histor

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