Since the main goal of this study was to capture the experiences of Asian American girls, I did not include most of the other Basement Group students in my research. There may be gender, ethnic, and/or racial differences that are not reflected in this study. As an exception, I talked with Savannah and Meli, two Salvadoran immigrant girls who were close friends with the Asian American girls and part of the core members of the Basement Community. Their perspectives helped deepen my understanding of the experiences of the main participants

But when I think about it, there was no one there saying, “hey, I care about you and I want to help you stay in school”. I was needed by my family and I get that. I’d do anything for them, you know.

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.

One 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.

More insidious and more widespread has been the rapid prolifera-tion of pay-to-play policies now imposed on students in more than half of American_ high schools.

first, fundamental fact is residential sorting. As we have seen in Port Clinton, Bend, Atlanta, and Orange County, rich and poor Ameri-cans are increasingly living in separate neighborhoods.21 Although not all kids attend schools based on their parents' residence, most still do. Thus, residential sorting by income over the last 30 to 40 years has shunted high-income and low-income students into separate schools.

Everybody is friends and everything, but some-times you can feel it. 1he only bad thing about chat is that it's almost like a double-edged sword that you have to be in the cop 10-12 per-cent. Getting Bs was considered failing.

What 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.

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.

CLASS, RACE, AND THE HIDDEN CURRICULUM OF SCHOOLS 2I 2. We should incorporate into our teaching the assets low-income students bring to school. If poor students' resilience, flexibility, and persistence toward a goal is affirmed and integrated into the school culture, students would not drop out at the rate they do. 3. One approach to reducing structural inequality in schools is to create an activist mentoring culture in which educators model the practice of questioning and challenging the status quo. While mentors work to bol-ster students' academic skills, they also can be role models of activism and hope in their communities. Teachers could learn from the mentors as well, developing collaborative relationships with them. They could develop creative role-playing exercises, allowing students to develop the ability to feel comfortable in situations where they previously have been uncomfortable. Spoken-word poetry, neighborhood projects, and even political advocacy can be ways to build confidence and inspire hope for justice and real change. 4. Parents have to be an integral part of the mentoring process. They can rein-force the skills students learn at school and provide important information to teachers about the strengths of their sons and daughters. For their part teachers can help parents to help their children access scholarships and funding for summer programs and other opportunities many do not know about because they have been left out of the information loop. In conclusion, if we do not intentionally unveil the hidden advantages that middle-class and upper-class students have over their low-income peers, we run the risk of indirectly reinforcing these inequalities in our classrooms. Many of us enter the teaching profession to challenge the status quo. Then we get swept up in rules and mandates and procedures, and we lose sight of why we went down this road in the first place. It takes courage to go on our own in a system that perpetuates itself at the expense of poor students. But not challenging this, not aligning ourselves with the strengths of the communities and neighborhoods from where our students come, is going back on our own moral center. It is, in the end, a civic responsibility to ensure that all students have opportunities to imagine lives of great hope.

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. To my own surprise, I raised my hand the next day. Ms. Hill smiled. She appreciated my remarks and agreed with many of my comments.

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.

Starting 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, and abilities valued by a system that never was designed to meet their needs (Apple, 1982, 1990).

Rut the.: relation bc.:rween the individual students and rhe schcx.11 docs nnt simply Jcvelop through one-on-one interactions between children and ,1dults in and out of sclux>I; instead it is mediated by an emerging peer culwrc that develops both in and out of school, from common

Math placement typically serves a benchmark for ninth-grade aca-demic standing, ;rnd the <lisparities in math placement by race arc striking. As is true nationally, white, mid<lle-class, or affluent stu-dents at BHS tend to receive access to advanced math courses early, and thus start their high school careers with a major ndvantage (Moses and Cobb, 2001; Perry, reelc, and Hilliard, 2004).

Without an adult to encourage her to cake algebra, the gateway to college preparatory math and science courses, or to advise her on where she might seek academic support, Chantelle made a decision that is likely to affect her preparation for college and therefore will have bearing in the long term on her opportunities after high school.

The study generated the often-cited finding that over a year's time, pro-fessional parents utter an average of eleven million words to their toddlers. The corresponding figures for working-class and welfare families were six and three million, respectively.

Poor nutri-tion and inadequate health care have long-term effects on children's in-tellectual development. Exposure to lead paint affects children's nervous systems, resulting in hyperactivity and irritability, with long-term con-sequences for both intellectual and emotional development.

Children are more successful in school when they are able to pay at-tention, when they get along with peers and teachers, and when they are not preoccupied or depressed because of troubles at home.

It is easy to imagine how the childhood circumstances of these two young men may have shaped their fates.

When a student who is poor makes it to college, it is unlikely that he or she is a "legacy admit."

Does every middle school have the capacity to facilitate PSAT testing for its students in the lower grades? Does every middle school in economically blighted districts have highly qualified teachers who can teach college prepara-tory courses? Does every middle school employ counselors who can set each student on a trajectory toward college?

The question we must ask of children reared in poverty is, When they set foot in kindergarten, how many years "behind" are they in learning opportunities, literacy and numeracy development, reading and writ-ing "behaviors," and the many benefits of quality early care?

When I begin discussions about poverty and achievement in public schools, my students often ask, "Why do poor students perform poorly?" The question is not about poor students and why they underperform in a system purportedly designed to elevate their opportunities and outcomes. The question is, "Why are people poor?"

Public schools are essential to make the American dream work, but schools are also the arena in which many Americans first fail.

Decisions about schooling also take place in a context that makes it hard to change anything and especially difficult to alter the structure of privile.ge. Unlike schooling in every other major industrialized country, public educaoo~ in this country is democratic and deeply local

Yet 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.

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."

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.

Despite the focus on diversity, our desires for inclusion, many professors still teach in classrooms that are predominant-ly white. Often a spirit of tokenism prevails in those settings. This is why it is so crucial that "whiteness" be studied, under-stood, discussed-so that everyone learns that affirmation of multiculturalism, and an unbiased inclusive perspective, can and should be present whether or not people of color are pre-sent. Transforming these classrooms is as great a challenge as learning how to teach well in the setting of diversity.

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.

Hence, educators are poorly prepared when we actually confront diversity.

Caring about whether all students fulfill their responsibility to con tribute to learning in the classroom is not a common approach in what Freire has called the "banking system of education" where students are regarded merely as passive consumers.

Many professors have con-veyed to me their feeling that the classroom should be a "safe" place; that usually translates to mean that the professor lectures to a group of quiet students who respond only when they are called on. The experience of professors who educate for critica! consciousness indicates that many students, especially students of color, may not feel atall "safe" in what appears to be a neutral setting. It is the absence of a feeling of safety that often pro-motes prolonged silence or lack of student engagement.

Since our intent was to educate for critica! consciousness, we did nat want the seminar setting to be a space where anyone would feel attacked or their reputation as a teacher sullied. We did, howev-er, want it to be a space for constructive confrontation and crit-Embracing Change 37 · To ensure that this could happen, we had to interrogauon. 1 de students. exc u .

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.

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.