1st Edition
Inequality, Power and School Success Case Studies on Racial Disparity and Opportunity in Education
This volume highlights issues of power, inequality, and resistance for Asian, African American, and Latino/a students in distinct U.S. and international contexts. Through a collection of case studies it links universal issues relating to inequality in education, such as Asian, Latino, and African American males in the inner-city neighborhoods, Latina teachers and single mothers in California, undocumented youth from Mexico and El Salvador, immigrant Morrocan youth in Spain, and immigrant Afro-Caribbean and Indian teenagers in New York and in London. The volume explores the processes that keep students thriving academically and socially, and outlines the patterns that exist among individuals—students, teachers, parents—to resist the hegemony of the dominant class and school failure. With emphasis on racial formation theory, this volume fundamentally argues that education, despite inequality, remains the best hope of achieving the American dream.
Biography
Gilberto Q. Conchas is professor of education policy and social context at the University of California, Irvine. Conchas’ research focuses on inequality with an emphasis on urban communities and schools. He is the author of The Color of Success: Race and High-Achieving Urban Youth (2006), Small Schools and Urban Youth: Using the Power of School Culture to Engage Youth (2008), and StreetSmart SchoolSmart: Urban Poverty and the Education of Adolescent Boys (2012).
Michael A. Gottfried is an assistant professor in the department of education at the Gevirtz School at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Dr. Gottfried’s research focuses on the economics of education and education policy. Using the analytic tools from these disciplines, he has examined issues pertaining to peer effects, classroom context, and STEM. Dr. Gottfried has published numerous articles in these areas and won multiple scholarly awards for his research, including the AERA’s Outstanding Publication in Methodology Award (2010 and 2012) and the Highest Reviewed Paper Award (2013).
"In this important new volume, Conchas and Gottfried demonstrate why placing race at the center of analyses of education and inequality is so essential. Rather than reducing racial inequality, education in the US is too often implicated in its reproduction. Through carefully analyzed case studies the authors demonstrate how this occurs and point to what it might take to reverse these patterns. For those interested in advancing the possibility that education can serve as a force for equality and social justice, this book will be an invaluable resource." - Pedro A. Noguera, University of California – Los Angeles, USA
"Schools are a preeminent site for conflict: over inequality, citizenship, social identity, and democracy itself. Inequality, Power, and School Success explores the experience of schooling for distinct groups of racially-identified students. All over the world, but particularly in the United States, these issues of social justice, opportunity, mobility, and indeed national culture, all center on problems of race and racism. If you take educational equality seriously, you must wrestle with this book. Highly recommended for adoption!" - Howard Winant, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA
"This is a comprehensive volume bringing together leading scholars in sociology, education, and race. It convincingly documents how inadequate schools, impoverished communities, and a criminalizing system impact education. Its broad scope includes studying teachers as well as students, taking note of gender and immigration status, offering solutions to problems, and extending beyond the educational system in the United States. This groundbreaking volume brings the invisible to the foreground." - Vilma Ortiz, University of California, Los Angeles, USA