The Poverty and Education Reader: A Call for Equity in Many Voices

Through a rich mix of essays, memoirs, and poetry, the contributors to The Poverty and Education Reader bring to the fore the schooling experiences of poor and working class students, highlighting the resiliency, creativity, and educational aspirations of low-income families. They showcase proven strategies that imaginative teachers and schools have adopted for closing the opportunity gap, demonstrating how they have succeeded by working in partnership with low-income families, and despite growing class sizes, the imposition of rote pedagogical models, and teach-to-the-test mandates. The contributors—teachers, students, parents, educational activists, and scholars—repudiate the prevalent, but too rarely discussed, deficit views of students and families in poverty. Rather than focusing on how to “fix” poor and working class youth, they challenge us to acknowledge the ways these youth and their families are disenfranchised by educational policies and practices that deny them the opportunities enjoyed by their wealthier peers. Just as importantly, they offer effective school and classroom strategies to mitigate the effects of educational inequality on students in poverty. Rejecting the simplistic notion that a single program, policy, or pedagogy can undo social or educational inequalities, this Reader inspires and equips educators to challenge the disparities to which underserved communities are subjected. It is a positive resource for students of education and for teachers, principals, social workers, community organizers, and policy makers who want to make the promise of educational equality a reality.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Part One. Counterstories. Insiders’ Views on Poverty and Schooling 1. First Grade Lesson - Sandy Nesbit Tracy 2. On Lilacs, Tap-Dancing, and Children of Poverty - Bobby Ann Starnes 3. Class, Race, and the Hidden Curriculum of Schools - Buffy Smith 4. How School Taught Me I Was Poor - Jeff Sapp 5. The Places Where We Live and Learn. Mementos From a Working-Class Life - Jaye Johnson Thiel 6. Alone at School - Scot Allen 7. Low-Income Urban Youth Speaking Up About Public Education - Iabeth Galiel Briones, Diamond Dominique Hull, and Shifra Teitelbaum Part Two. Identifying the “Problem”. From a Deficit View to a Resiliency View 8. Save You or Drown You - Stacy Amaral 9. On Grifters, Research, and Poverty - Bobby Ann Starnes 10. There Really Is a Culture of Poverty. Notes on Black Working-Class Struggles for Equity and Education - Kristen L. Buras 11. Way Down Yonder in the Pawpaw Patch. Resiliency in Appalachian Poverty - Joy Cowdery 12. Mending at the Seams. The Working-Class Threads That Bind Us - Jaye Johnson Thiel 13. “Student Teachers”. What I Learned From Students in a High-Poverty Urban High School - Lori D. Ungemah 14. The Poor Are Not the Problem. Class Inequality and the Blame Game - Nicholas Daniel Hartlep Part Three. Making Class Inequity Visible 15. blissful abyss or how to look good while ignoring poverty - Tricia Gallagher-Geurtsen 16. The Great Equalizer? Poverty, Reproduction, and How Schools Structure Inequality - Taharee Jackson 17. A Pedagogy of Openness. Queer Theory as a Tool for Class Equity - Whitney Gecker 18. First Faint Lines - Sherrie Fernandez-Williams 19. “Who Are You to Judge Me?”. What We Can Learn From Low-Income, Rural Early School Leavers - Janet Kesterson Isbell 20. Looking Past the School Door. Children and Economic Injustice by Steve Grineski and Ok-Hee Lee Part Four. Insisting on Equity. Students, Parents, and Communities Fight for Justice 21. Reckoning by Paul C. Gorski 22. Traversing the Abyss. Addressing the Opportunity Gap - John Korsmo 23. Fostering Wideawakeness. Third-Grade Community Activists - Lenny Sánchez 24. Parents, Organized. Creating Conditions for Low-Income Immigrant Parent Engagement in Public Schools - Russell Carlock 25. Challenging Class-Based Assumptions. Low-Income Families’ Perceptions of Family Involvement - Lisa Hoffman Part Five. Teaching for Class Equity and Economic Justice 26. V - Elizabeth E. Vaughn 27. Coming Clean - Carolyn L. Holbrook 28. Insisting on Class(room. Equality in Schools - Curt Dudley-Marling 29. Cultivating Economic Literacy and Social Well-Being. An Equity Perspective - Susan Santone and Shari Saunders 30. Becoming Upstanders. Humanizing Faces of Poverty Using Literature in a Middle School Classroom - Wendy Zagray Warren 31. Literacy Learning and Class Issues. A Rationale for Resisting Classism and Deficit Thinking - Peggy Semingson 32. Imagining an Equity Pedagogy for Students in Poverty - Paul C. Gorski Part Six. Poverty, Education, and the Trouble With School “Reform” 33. Student Collage - Henry Hughes 34. The Teach For America Story From a Voice of Dissent - Mariah Dickinson 35. “Do You Have Fidelity to the Program?” Matters of Faith in a Restructured Title I Middle School - Brian R. Horn 36. The Inequity Gap of Schooling and the Poverty of School “Reform” - P. L. Thomas 37. Homage to Teachers in High-Poverty Schools - Moriah Thielges 38. Questioning Educational “Reform” and the Imposition of a National Curriculum - Mark Brimhall-Vargas 39. Local Education Foundations and the Private Subsidizing of Public Education - Richard Mora and Mary Christianakis About the Editors and Contributors Index