Academic profiling [electronic resource] : Latinos, Asian Americans, and the achievement gap / Gilda L. Ochoa.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Machine generated contents note: -- 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.

" 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. "-- Provided by publisher.

Description based on print version record.