"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

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. Notes 1. The names of all the students and teachers are pseudonyms. 2. I provide more detailed research on the hidden curriculum, cultural capital, social capital, and mentoring process in my book Mentoring At-Risk Students Through the Hidden Curriculum of Higher Education (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013).

In this way I was raised to be compliant, one element of the hidden curriculum in our schools. This insistence on compliance is also one aspect of schooling that keeps some students from feeling they can challenge the very structures that repress them. They often feel silenced and alienated from public education at an early age

Their teachers and college professors rarely reward them for their diversity of attitudes, preferences, tastes, mannerisms, and abilities or encourage them to draw on their own experiences to achieve in school. So

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.

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)

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

However, it is possible to address school conditions that contribute to disparities in achievement, such as school size, the student-to-counselor ratio, procedures that are used to track stu-dents into higher-an<l lower-level courses, and processes used to provide academic support co students who are struggling. These aspects of the school structure all contribute co the achievement gap, and unlike the backgrounds of students, they can be easily modified and reformed.

Alexander's mother helped him secure a summer internship in a medical office. None of Anthony's or Harold's parents had any experience with a four-year college.

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.

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)

Both of Alexander's parents had professional degrees, so they knew all about what Alexander needed to do to prepare himself for college. An-thony's mother completed some classes after graduating from high school, but his father, a high school dropout, struggled even to read. And in con-trast to Anthony, Alexander lived with both of his parents, which not only added to family income but also increased the amount of time available for a parent to spend with Alexander. 23

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).

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.

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.

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.

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. My students struggle

orace 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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 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 colleg

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.

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.

"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."

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 Geor