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Racial minority evaluators increase the democratic capacity and potential of institutions to the extent that they draw on their experiences and those of other marginalized communities. Their reflection on these experiences helps to disclose institutional power dynamics that are often veiled in neutrality. Of course, this depends on sound consideration of the context in and around institutions. This essay has two general aims. The first is to outline the components of this argument in relation to pertinent scholarship. The second is to demonstrate the ways that the author might bring this understanding to bear on the evaluation of new school systems such as charter schools. Along the way, the author hopes to contribute to the discussion on culturally competent evaluation.

This qualitative study compares and analyzes the social network experiences of two working-class Chinese students from immigrant families (Sally, Alex) to those of one working-class Latina student from an immigrant family (Elizabeth). Theory holds that these students would have difficulty obtaining educational resources and support (i.e., social capital) to hurdle educational discrimination (Biddle, 2001). They would also have difficulty devising post-secondary education plans. As is argued throughout, it is Chinese students' presence in the more resource-full networks and organizations that facilitate their acquisition of social capital. This bears on their greater educational trajectories. The Latina student's experience contrasts theirs. Her limited social capital complicates her ability to hurdle educational discrimination. This reduces her high school opportunities and her post-secondary educational opportunities.

This interview with Ilan Stavans addresses central experiences tied to the educational and immigrant experiences of Latinos in the United States. Culture, immigration, assimilation, and language are the prisms through which this experience is understood. Ilan Stavans responds to questions concerning cultural heterogeneity and cultural homogeneity. For instance, to what extent might any degree of homogeneity or heterogeneity among Latinos factor into their incorporation in the U.S. social order generally and the educational establishment in particular? Thus, the reader is invited to question commonsense assumptions regarding language, culture, and assimilation.

Photographs are powerful vehicles of ideology. Rather than simply documenting and reflecting a lived, material reality, photos express and retain traces of the belief systems that structure a time and a place. Photographs from American Indian boarding schools document a time and a place, but they also express the shifting ideological landscape of what Gerald McMaster calls "colonial alchemy"-the conversion of children from different sovereign indigenous nations into (U.S.) citizens. This article analyzes photographs from the Thomas Indian School located on the Cattaraugus Reservation in western New York taken between the 1890s and 1950s to illustrate the changing terrain of U.S. racial ideology. The photographs show how the goal of colonial alchemy remained consistent, but the knowledge systems that defined Indianness, citizenship, and the humanitarian mission of American Indian boarding schools changed over time.