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

Ochoa, Gilda L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816687404 ISBN 13: 9780816687404

Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2013

Synopsis

2015 Social Science Book Award, presented by the Association of Asian American Studies 

2014 Co-Winner Oliver Cromwell Cox Book Award, presented by the Racial and Ethnic Minorities Section of the American Sociological Association 

2014 Co-Winner Eduardo Bonilla-Silva Outstanding Book Award, presented by the Division of Racial and Ethnic Minorities of the Society for the Study of Social Problems 

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.

About this title

About the Author

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

Review

"This book is unique insofar as the author looks simultaneously at Asians and Latinos, and also takes an intersectional perspective. Ochoa takes class and gender seriously in her analyses by considering the roles gender and socioeconomic status play at SCHS [Southern California High School]."  - Tanya Golash-Boza, Professor of Sociology, Race and Racisms: A Critical Approach Blog

"... an important read for anyone who seeks to re-imagine schools..." - Marco Antonio Murillo, InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies

"... the book fills a critical void in research about students from diverse backgrounds at multicultural urban schools." - Diverse Issues in Higher Education

"...Ochoa drills down as she investigates the very roots of the [achievement] gap..." - Hispanic Outlook Magazine "...an ambitious ethnographic study...This book stands out...a long-overdue contribution."-- 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." -- Cecilia E. Suarez, Latino Studies

Edition details

• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0816687404
• ISBN 13: 9780816687404
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 336