Academic Profiling: Latinos, Asian Americans, and the Achievement Gap

by Gilda L. Ochoa

Overview

Today the achievement gap is hotly debated among pundits, politicians, and educators. In particular this conversation often focuses on the two fastest-growing demographic groups in the United States: Asian Americans and Latinos. In Academic Profiling, Gilda L. Ochoa addresses this so-called gap by going directly to the source. At one California public high school where the controversy is lived every day, Ochoa turns to the students, teachers, and parents to learn about the very real disparities—in opportunity, status, treatment, and assumptions—that lead to more than just gaps in achievement.

In candid and at times heart-wrenching detail, the students tell stories of encouragement and neglect on their paths to graduation. Separated by unequal middle schools and curriculum tracking, they are divided by race, class, and gender. While those channeled into an International Baccalaureate Program boast about Socratic classes and stress-release sessions, students left out of such programs commonly describe uninspired teaching and inaccessible counseling. Students unequally labeled encounter differential policing and assumptions based on their abilities—disparities compounded by the growth in the private tutoring industry that favors the already economically privileged.

Despite the entrenched inequality in today’s schools, Academic Profiling finds hope in the many ways students and teachers are affirming identities, creating alternative spaces, and fostering critical consciousness. When Ochoa shares the results of her research with the high school, we see the new possibilities—and limits—of change.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780816687404
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	10/16/2013
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Gilda L. Ochoa is professor of sociology and Chicana/o-Latina/o studies at Pomona College. She is the author of Becoming Neighbors in a Mexican American Community and Learning from Latino Teachers and coeditor of Latino Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

Contents

Abbreviations
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Academic Profiling at a Southern California High School

Part I: Prevailing Ideologies and School Structures
1. Framing the “Gap”: Dominant Discourses of Achievement
2. Welcome to High School: Tracking from Middle School to International Baccalaureate Programs

Part II: School Practices and Family Resources
3. “I’m Watching Your Group”: Regulating Students Unequally
4. “Parents Spend Half a Million on Tutoring”: Standardized Tests and Tutoring Gaps

Part III: Everyday Relationships and Forms of Resistance
5. “They Just Judge Us by Our Cover”: Students’ Everyday Experiences with Race
6. “Breaking the Mindset”: Forms of Resistance and Change
7. Processes of Change: Cycles of Reflection, Dialogue, and Implementation

Conclusion: Possibilities and Pitfalls in Any School U.S.A.

Appendix: Student Participants, Staffulty, and Parents
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Remarkably provocative and perceptive, Academic Profiling is a meticulously researched and masterfully argued comparative study of how the system of schooling, contrary to the rhetoric of equal opportunities, re-enforces the achievement gap and reproduces disparities. With ethnographic insight and analytical precision, Gilda L. Ochoa details how immigration, racialization, class, and gender differentially impacts the educational trajectories for Asian and Latino students, and presents compelling lessons for transforming the context, culture, and process of learning." —Linda Vo, University of California, Irvine

"In the absence of an all-encompassing social movement, Ochoa demonstrates how only a courageous, power-conscious, counter-hegemonic curriculum can act as a counterweight to divisive policies and practices like student tracking. Ochoa has done the important work of addressing the complexities of Latino/a and Asian American schooling in one community and given us a language, framework, and perspective with which to discuss and critique it." —Angela Valenzuela, University of Texas, Austin

"By centering students’ experiences, in Academic Profiling Ochoa exposes the many faults in our educational system and the ways that students and our communities are hurt."—Pomona College News

"A valuable and long overdue piece of research on the achievement gap."—Sociological Inquiry

"An ambitious ethnographic study of a single racially diverse high school in southern California. This book stands out because it moves beyond the conventional black/white comparison and instead systematically compares Latino and Asian American students, an important contribution because of the increasingly diverse racial makeup of the United States."—American Journal of Sociology

"Powerful and purposeful in both argument and research, Gilda L. Ochoa unapologetically calls attention to the ways in which lived disparities of Latinos and Asian Americans in school lead to more than just gaps in achievement."—Latino Studies

"Some of the strengths of Academic Profiling lie in its rich data, its ability to turn the rhetoric of equal opportunity on its head, and Ochoa’s awareness of her influence as a Latina researcher. Her work clearly shows that while teachers emphasize freedom of choice, students are not all equally free."—Anthropology Education Quarterly

From the Publisher