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Educational policies explicitly implemented in order to reduce educational gaps and promote access and success for disenfranchised youth can backfire—and often have the unintended result of widening those gaps. In this interdisciplinary collection of case studies, contributors examine cases of policy backfire, when policies don't work, have unintended consequences, and when policies help. Although policy reform is thought of as an effective way to improve schooling structures and to diminish the achievement gap, many such attempts to reform the system do not adequately address the legacy of unequal policies and the historic and pervasive inequalities that persist in schools. Exploring the roots of school inequality and examining often-ignored negative policy outcomes, contributors illuminate the causes and consequences of poor policymaking decisions and demonstrate how policies can backfire, fail, or have unintended success.

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.