Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"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
Table of ContentsContents
AbbreviationsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Academic Profiling at a Southern California High School
Part I: Prevailing Ideologies and School Structures1. Framing the “Gap”: Dominant Discourses of Achievement2. Welcome to High School: Tracking from Middle School to International Baccalaureate Programs
Part II: School Practices and Family Resources3. “I’m Watching Your Group”: Regulating Students Unequally4. “Parents Spend Half a Million on Tutoring”: Standardized Tests and Tutoring Gaps
Part III: Everyday Relationships and Forms of Resistance5. “They Just Judge Us by Our Cover”: Students’ Everyday Experiences with Race6. “Breaking the Mindset”: Forms of Resistance and Change7. Processes of Change: Cycles of Reflection, Dialogue, and Implementation
Conclusion: Possibilities and Pitfalls in Any School U.S.A.
Appendix: Student Participants, Staffulty, and ParentsNotesBibliographyIndex
