ABSTRACT
A group of researchers led by Stanford economist Raj Chetty recently investigated if the USA was indeed a “land of opportunity.” What Chetty and his colleagues (Chetty, Hendren, Kline, & Saez, 2014) found was that the USA was “better described as a collection of societies, some of which are ‘lands of opportunity’ with high rates of mobility across generations, and others in which few children escape poverty” (p. 1554). In other words, not all neighborhoods in which children live, grow up, and go to school are places of opportunity (Chetty, Hendren, & Katz, 2016; Sampson, Morenoff, & Gannon-Rowley, 2002). In this book, I focus on low-opportunity urban communities of color and their schools. I define low-opportunity urban communities as places that have been racially segregated by racist government housing policies, where few families escape poverty, and where children have limited access to adequate housing and healthcare, high-quality schools, healthy foods, and safe spaces to live and play. I have spent my career working in Baltimore, Washington, DC, and El Paso public schools and I have seen how limited opportunities within communities stifled the potential of students, especially when schools and principals are not understanding and responsive to the issues that arise from unequal opportunities. For schools to be responsive to the needs of students, principals need to recognize and understand the challenges within communities in which they work.
