Education changes lives. It opens doors and provides us with the skills and dispositions to achieve what we believe in. But not all students flourish in their educational settings. The ways students experience their education are shaped by the differences among them. Despite many years of equity-based reform in schools, the children most at risk of educational alienation, failure or withdrawal in the third decade of the twenty-first century are, for the most part, the same children who were most at risk 50 and 100 years ago. Children from low socioeconomic backgrounds, rural and isolated areas, non-dominant cultural, language, or religious groups, students with disabilities, and many who don’t fit the stereotypes associated with a particular subject area, gender or culture have been shown to experience schools as places of alienation, not as places of growth, opportunity and learning. Issues of sexual and gender identity, mental health, and instability of citizenship, housing, and employment combine to make the situation even more complex.