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.