Academic Profiling: Latinos, Asian Americans, and the Achievement Gap (original) (raw)
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Achievement Gap of Latina Students
1 RUNNING HEAD: LATINA ACHIEVEMENT As a Latina activist and a Spanish teacher, the question I want to examine in this paper relates to the "No Child Left Behind"(NCLB) proposal approved by President Bush in 2001. With this legislation in place, why is it that Latina students continue to under achieve in high schools, and then in adult life, often fare economically worse than other females their age? Why is there inconsistency in levels of achievement among Latinas in schools across the United States? In this paper, I demonstrate the effect of three critical lenses, (historical, economical and cultural) which contribute to the lack of success in high schools of the Latina student. I give insight into why the Latina student does not excel academically in high school. How great injustices toward Latina's continue daily throughout the education system, and how Latina students have lost self-empowerment in today's society. Throughout this paper, I use the term Latina to include people of Hispanic, Mestizo, and of Mesoamerican indigenous backgrounds. An article titled, Listening to Latinas: Barriers to High School Graduation inspired my desire to learn more about this topic for this paper. (Greenberger et al., 2009) In this article, I found that through research and oral documentation there were specific reasons why a majority of Latinas are unnoticed in school settings and, therefore, poorly taught by American educational institutions. Specific criteria leading to an invisibility for Latina students within the school system are being undocumented, having limited English skills, and living in or close to the poverty guidelines. (Greenberger et al., 2009) Additionally, most Latina students do not have a clear idea of their identity as is the tendency for most teenaged students. Further, it becomes impossible for them to envision themselves as successful in today's society. More than being a teenage, Latina youth experience a non-knowing of themselves due in part to lack of historical 2 RUNNING HEAD: LATINA ACHIEVEMENT
Educational Studies, 2016
LOCKE, TABRON, AND CHAMBERS currency, or capital. In public schools, having greater skills and larger networks-or capitaloften facilitates future success, achievement, and opportunity. However, extant research has shown that students from traditionally marginalized groups (TMGs; e.g., students of color, students from low income backgrounds, nonheritage English speakers, students who are first-in-thefamily college bound) come to school with various forms of capital that are often not recognized or not valued by schools (Villapando & Solórzanzo, 2005; Yosso, 2005). At the same time, separate research has illustrated that achievement may come at significant personal and community costs for students from TMGs (Chambers, Huggins, Locke, & Fowler, 2014; Chambers & McCready, 2011). These costs may include a devaluation of the student as a member of a particular cultural, racial, and/or linguistic group. The devaluation of some forms of capital in schools, then, along with the high costs of success for students from TMGs, makes building increased equity, access, and opportunity across educational environments particularly challenging. The purpose of this article is to illustrate some forms of capital that students from a TMG bring to school, the potential impact on students in schools that fail to recognize this capital, and the associated costs students may bear for utilizing this capital. To do so, we present counternarratives from Latina students who participated in two separate studies. The student voices included are those from students who, at the time of data collection, were attending an Early College High School (ECHS; 1 Locke, 2011) or one of two highly selective, private colleges (Chambers et al., 2014; Chambers & McCready, 2011). The focus of both studies, however, was on the students' perceptions of their high school experiences regarding the supports and barriers they encountered in their school environments. Critical race theory (CRT) scholars (e.g., Bell, 1980; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Yosso, 2005) have argued that oppressed individuals' reflections, personal stories, or counternarratives, should be considered legitimate representations of their experience. We use the combined lenses of two CRT-based theories, CCW and ROC, to better understand the students' experiences, or counternarratives, in terms of the capitals and costs associated with their secondary schooling. This combined approach was motivated by two specific factors. First, we wanted to illustrate a more comprehensive or holistic portrait of secondary schooling experiences for a group of students from a TMG. Second, we sought a means to better articulate and provide a working language regarding the schooling experiences of Latina students in particular. Thus, this article is both empirical and conceptual. A focus on Latinas is especially important, as they are the largest population of girls of color across US schools and also experience the largest drop-out rate, compared to other groups of girls of color (Locke & McKenzie, 2015; National Women's Law Center [NWLC], 2009; Peguero & Shekarkhar, 2011). Interestingly, and despite this trend, they remain an understudied group. That said, we do know that despite their comparatively low education levels, Latina students have high educational aspirations-often beyond postsecondary schooling (Locke & McKenzie, 2015; NWLC, 2009). LITERATURE REVIEW Much research within the dominant discourse has been dedicated to pervasive achievement and high school completion disparities for students from TMGs in efforts to frame why these inequities persist. Often, the dominant discourse employs a deficit perspective focused on student
Minority within a Minority Paradox: Asian Experiences in Latino Schools & Communities
Multicultural Education, 2013
Sarai Koo recently earned a Ph.D. degree in the College of Educational Studies at Chapman University, Orange, California. Trisha S. Nishimura is an assistant professor in the Department of Education at Whittier College, Whittier, California. cans and Latina/os—are pigeon-holed with particular sterotypical characteristics that often do not accurately describe them in general or in particular. In addition, we believe strongly that as minority groups who experience racial oppression, albeit in different ways, Asian Americans and Latina/os could and should be strong partners in the fight for social justice and equity. Drawing on Critical Race Theory (CRT) (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995), we report on narratives of education collected from three young Asian women living in and attending a predominately Latina/o community and school. We explored how Asians and Latina/o groups intersect in a majority minority community. Specifically, we sought to understand:
Asian American and Pacific Islander Students: Equity and the Achievement Gap
The authors studied more than 1 million Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) and White seventh graders in a statewide California testing program between 2003 and 2008, examining their reading and math achievement. AAPI student performance is often reported as an aggregate in discussions of the success of schoolchildren and issues of racial and ethnic achievement gaps. The authors disaggregated the performance of 13 AAPI subgroups and found significant achievement gaps between White Americans and their AAPI peers in reading and math. The data refuted the premise of the model minority myth. The evidence indicated that AAPI students are diverse in their achievements and demonstrate a continuum of academic performance.
Cracks in the schoolyard: confronting Latino educational inequality
Choice Reviews Online
Latina/o students have among the highest school push-out and lowest GED-passing rates among all racial/ethnic groups in the United States. Within this group, Mexican-origin students are even more likely to leave school without a diploma. In this chapter we investigate the experiences of Mexican-American youth from a low-income agricultural community who are enrolled in a dropout prevention program in a nontraditional high school. Our findings show that despite odds stacked against them, individual and school-level factors are tied to persistence. In addition to student commitment to education, the combination of academic and social supports from family ties, peer groups, and institutional agents was critical to their engagement and persistence in school. We apply a social capital framework to examine the approach taken by "institutional agents" who facilitated access to resources that increase school persistence.
Journal of Hispanic Higher Education, 2005
Using critical race theory (CRT) as a framework, the authors analyze the educational inequities and racialized barriers faced by Latina/o college students when navigating the educational pipeline leading to a college degree. The impact of racialized structures, policies, and practices is examined in the context of how they influence the educational attainment and academic progress of Latinas/os. The article concludes by offering CRT-based policy and practical approaches to enhancing the success of Latina/o college students.
BOOK REVIEW Latinos and Education: A Critical Reader
In Antonia Darder and Rodolfo Torres' edited book, Latinos and Education: A Critical Reader, the authors seek to address and contextualize the historical, political, and economic factors that have shaped the schooling of Latina/o students since the publication of the first edition in 1997. Despite the growth of the Latina/o student population, the authors argue this community continues to experience persistent educational and economic inequality. In attempting to explain this inequality, mainstream analysis and public policy initiatives have been framed from deficit notions that simply blame the culture, parents, and communities of Latina/o students for their failure. Instead of using a victim blaming approach, Darder and Torres suggest that researchers need to develop a new language and theoretical frameworks that place Latina/o educational studies , " within the larger contexts of both the United States and the worldwide political economy " (pg. 11). Researchers developing this wider framework will need to understand the dialectical relationship of public schools within the economy and Latina/o communities. Schools have historically served to maintain and reproduce social class hierarchies and have been viewed by Latina/o communities as sites where they can attain social and economic mobility. By developing a critical understanding of the impact and influence of the political economy on the structure and practices of schools, researchers may begin to develop emanci-patory pedagogies that challenge and transform these conditions. These important concerns are critically engaged in a variety of ways by the excellent articles included in this collection. The volume is clearly divided into seven overarching themes: