Poverty and Education Reader

The contributors to this book—teachers, students, parents, educational activists, and scholars—take on the prevalent deficit views of students and families in poverty. Rather than focusing on how to fix poor and working class youth, the contributors 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. Using a combination of brief, accessible essays, memoir, 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 tremendous resiliency, creativity, and educational aspirations of low-income families. It showcases proven strategies that imaginative teachers and schools have adopted for closing the opportunity gap. They do this by working in partnership with low-income families despite growing class sizes, the imposition of rote pedagogical models and teach-to-the-test mandates. This book addresses policy issues including, among many others, school funding, the problematic Teach for America Program, and other initiatives ostensibly meant to “help” low-income students. It also addresses the false promise of charter schools. Included are policies and practices that are known to work.

"The Poverty and Education Reader is a top pick for teachers and educators as well as social issues readers, and packs in essays, memoirs and poetry with the idea of analyzing the schooling experience of poor and working-class students. Low-income family experiences are targeted with the idea of profiling proven strategies teachers and schools have used for closing educational gaps, and contributions come from a range of writers, from teachers and students to parents and scholars, discussing views of poor students and their families and approaches that have made a difference. Don't consider this a 'fix' for poor students: look at it as a series of articles on ways youth is alienated by education practices - and how to overcome this with new school and classroom routines."-- "Midwest Book Review" (5/16/2014 12:00:00 AM)

Paul C. Gorski is Associate Professor of Integrative Studies in New Century College at George Mason University, USA where he teaches in the Social Justice concentration and the Education concentration. He is the founder of EdChange and the Multicultural Pavilion, a Web site that has won more than a dozen awards internationally for its contribution to multicultural education scholarship and practice. Julie Landsman has taught in Minneapolis Public Schools for 25 years. She has also been a visiting Professor at Carleton College in Northfield Minnesota, USA and an adjunct professor at Hamline University and Metro State University in St. Paul, USA. She has published numerous articles in journals such as Educational Leadership and Teachers and Writers Collaborative. She is the author of Basic Needs: A Year With Street Kids in a City School; A White Teacher Talks About Race; and Growing Up White: A Veteran Teacher Reflects on Racism,.