In this book, we examine tenets of the American Dream as a merit narrative enacted in schools to better understand how beliefs about talent, hard work, and perseverance support the status quo rather than critical analysis of barriers to educational success for students of color and students from a poverty context. Using narrative methodologies, the authors explore the connections and consistencies within and between their personal narratives and the narratives of school youth and educators that work with them. Based on analysis of these shared stories, we argue for the importance of moving from individualized success stories that reify hard work and perseverance to collective, communal stories that serve to break down myths of meritocracy, critically examine inequities, and move educational advocates forward in authentic, audacious, hopeful ways.

Over a decade ago, the first edition of City Schools and the American Dream debuted just as reformers were gearing up to make sweeping changes in urban education. Despite the rhetoric and many reform initiatives, urban schools continue to struggle under the weight of serious challenges. What went wrong and is there hope for future change? More than a new edition, this sequel to the original bestseller has been substantially revised to include insights from new research, recent demographic trends, and emerging political realities. In addition to surveying the various limitations that urban schools face, the book also highlights programs, communities, and schools that are making good on public education’s promise of equity. With renewed commitment and sense of urgency, this new edition provides a clear-eyed vision of what it will take to ensure the success of city schools and their students. “City schools continue to play one of the most important roles in our quest to restore democracy. This is a must-read . . . again!” —Gloria Ladson-Billings, University of Wisconsin–Madison “The authors provide concrete examples of innovative strategies and practices employed by urban schools that are succeeding against all odds.” —Betty A. Rosa, chancellor, New York State Board of Regents “This is the book every teacher, parent, policymaker, and engaged citizen should read.” —Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, UCLA

The American Dream and the Public Schools examines issues that have excited and divided Americans for years, including desegregation, school funding, testing, vouchers, bilingual education, and ability grouping. While these are all separate problems, much of the contention over them comes down to the same thing--an apparent conflict between policies designed to promote each student's ability to succeed and those designed to insure the good of all students or the nation as a whole. The authors show how policies to promote individual success too often benefit only those already privileged by race or class, and often conflict with policies that are intended to benefit everyone. They propose a framework that builds on our nation's rapidly changing population in order to help Americans get past acrimonious debates about schooling. Their goal is to make public education work better so that all children can succeed.

This book reports an ethnographic study of thirty teachers from eighteen schools who participated in a staff development programme in multicultural education. The study examines how multicultural education was actually presented to teachers, and areas in which their classroom teaching and perception of students changed over the two-year period. Although most of the teachers reported learning a good deal, changes in their teaching and their discussions of teaching were fairly limited. After reporting the data, the book examines why changes were limited, analyzing three areas: the nature of staff development and how multicultural education was packaged; the structure of schools as institutions; and the identities and life experiences of teachers as White women, often from working class backgrounds.

The ideology of the American dream--the faith that an individual can attain success and virtue through strenuous effort--is the very soul of the American nation. According to Jennifer Hochschild, we have failed to face up to what that dream requires of our society, and yet we possess no other central belief that can save the United States from chaos. In this compassionate but frightening book, Hochschild attributes our national distress to the ways in which whites and African Americans have come to view their own and each other's opportunities. By examining the hopes and fears of whites and especially of blacks of various social classes, Hochschild demonstrates that America's only unifying vision may soon vanish in the face of racial conflict and discontent. Hochschild combines survey data and vivid anecdote to clarify several paradoxes. Since the 1960s white Americans have seen African Americans as having better and better chances to achieve the dream. At the same time middle-class blacks, by now one-third of the African American population, have become increasingly frustrated personally and anxious about the progress of their race. Most poor blacks, however, cling with astonishing strength to the notion that they and their families can succeed--despite their terrible, perhaps worsening, living conditions. Meanwhile, a tiny number of the estranged poor, who have completely given up on the American dream or any other faith, threaten the social fabric of the black community and the very lives of their fellow blacks. Hochschild probes these patterns and gives them historical depth by comparing the experience of today's African Americans to that of white ethnic immigrants at the turn of the century. She concludes by claiming that America's only alternative to the social disaster of intensified racial conflict lies in the inclusiveness, optimism, discipline, and high-mindedness of the American dream at its best.

This book reports an ethnographic study of thirty teachers from eighteen schools who participated in a staff development programme in multicultural education. The study examines how multicultural education was actually presented to teachers, and areas in which their classroom teaching and perception of students changed over the two-year period. Although most of the teachers reported learning a good deal, changes in their teaching and their discussions of teaching were fairly limited. After reporting the data, the book examines why changes were limited, analyzing three areas: the nature of staff development and how multicultural education was packaged; the structure of schools as institutions; and the identities and life experiences of teachers as White women, often from working class backgrounds.