Part I. Counterstories : insiders' views on poverty and schooling -- ch. 1. First grade lesson / Sandy Nesbit Tracy -- ch. 2. On lilacs, tap-dancing, and children of poverty / Bobby Ann Starnes -- ch. 3. Class, race, and the hidden curriculum of schools / Buffy Smith -- ch. 4. How school taught me I was poor / Jeff Sapp -- ch. 5. The place where we live and learn : mementos from a working-class life / Jaye Johnson Thiel -- ch. 6. Alone at school / Scot Allen -- ch. 7. Low-income, urban youth speaking up about public education / Iabeth Galiel Briones, Diamond Dominique Hull, and Shifra Teitelbaum -- Part II. Identifying the "problem" : from a deficit view to a resiliency view -- ch. 8. Save you or drown you / Stacy Amaral -- ch. 9. On grifters, research, and poverty / Bobby Ann Starnes -- ch. 10. There really is a culture of poverty : notes on black working-class struggles for equity and education / Kristen L. Buras -- ch. 11. Way down yonder in the pawpaw patch : resiliency in Appalachian poverty / Joy Cowdry -- ch. 12. Mending at the seams : the working-class threads that bind us / Jaye Johnson Thiel -- ch. 13. "Student teachers" : What I learned from student in a high-poverty urban high school / Lori D. Ungemah -- ch. 14. The poor are not the problem : class inequality and the blame game / Nicholas Daniel Hartlep -- Part III. Making class inequity visible -- ch. 15. Blissful abyss or how to look good while ignoring poverty / Tricia Gallagher-Geurtsen -- ch. 16. The great equalizer? : Poverty, reproduction, and how schools structure inequality / Taharee A. Jackson -- ch. 17. A pedagogy of openness : queer theory as a tool for class equity / Whitney Gecker -- ch. 18. First faint lines / Sherrie Fernandez-Williams -- ch. 19. "Who are you to judge me?" : What we can learn from low-income, rural early school leavers / Janet Kesterson Isbell -- ch. 20. Looking past the school door : children and economic injustice / Steve Grineski and Ok-Hee Lee -- Part IV. Insisting on equity : students, parents, and communities fight for justice -- ch. 21. Reckoning / Paul C. Gorski -- ch. 22. Traversing the abyss : addressing the opportunity gap / John N. Korsmo -- ch. 23. Fostering wideawakeness : third-grade community activists / Lenny Sanchez -- ch. 24. Parents, organized : creating conditions for low-income immigrant parent engagement in public schools / Russell Carlock -- ch. 25. Challenging class-based assumptions : low-income families' perceptions of family involvement / Lisa Hoffman -- Part V. Teaching for class equity and economic justice -- ch. 26. V / Elizabeth E. Vaughn -- ch. 27. Coming clean / Carolyn L. Holbrook -- ch. 28. Insisting on class(room) equality in schools / Curt Dudley-Marling -- ch. 29. Cultivating economic literacy and social well-being : an equity perspective / Susan Santone and Shari Saunders -- ch. 30. Becoming upstanders : humanizing faces poverty using literature in a middle school classroom / Wendy Zagray Warren -- ch. 31. Literacy learning and class issues : a rationale for resisting classism and deficit thinking / Peggy Emingson -- ch. 32. Imagining an equity pedagogy for students in poverty / Paul C. Gorski -- Part VI. Poverty, education, and the trouble with school "reform" -- ch. 33. Student collage / Henry Hughes -- ch. 34. The Teach for America story from a voice of dissent / Mariah Dickinson -- ch. 35. "Do you have fidelity to the program?" : Matters of faith in a restructured Title I middle school / Brian R. Horn -- ch. 36. The inequity gap of schooling and the poverty of school "reform" / P.L. Thomas -- ch. 37. Homage to teachers in high-poverty schools / Moriah Thielges -- ch. 38. Questioning educational "reform" and the imposition of a national curriculum / Mark Brimhall-Vargas -- ch. 39. Local education foundations and the private subsidizing of public education / Richard Mora and Mary Christianakis.