I grew up in a small South Texas border city, Laredo. In Laredo, most individuals, including myself, spoke Spanish as a first language, and gradually learned to speak, read, and write English in grade school. Another characteristic of Laredo was the distinction between families who were well off and those who were not, but there was never really an “in-between.” After attending private catholic school for 10 years, pre-kinder through eighth grade, my parents decided it was time for a change. My public high school, John B. Alexander, was a rather large school with each class averaging around 700 students. It was quite a change compared to my eighth grade graduating class of 48 students, but I was both ready and anxious for that change.
Alexander had a rigorous Health Science Magnet program that admitted around 120 students each year, and I was one of them. Students in this program were admitted based on an achievement test given the summer prior to their freshman year in school. If admitted, all students in the program were required to take only Pre-AP and AP classes throughout their 4 years in school. Outside of the program there were AP, Pre-AP, GT, regular, and remedial classes that were readily available to any other students. There were always those students who spoke in the hallways about the kids in “regular” classes who were “too dumb” to be put in Pre-AP or GT. Or those stuck in remedial classes because they didn’t pass their TAKS test requirements. But there were other students too, including some of my best friends. They were the ones who had the capability of succeeding in an AP course, yet they were put in regular classes. I never had any problems with this process since my status in the magnet program automatically ...
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According to Everett (2015) students who have college-educated parents are at an advantage when it comes to enrolling in and finishing college (p.53). She also mentioned that this presumption was established on a concept that was acknowledged as social capital. Social capital, as defined by the author, is “the value of a relationship that provides support and assistance in a given social situation” (Everett, 2015, p. 53).
Imagine seeing 10,000 of your classmates walking out of your school because they wanted a better education - a better way of life. In the 1960s’ Chicano students were being “pushed out”(Esparza) of school or being pushed towards vocational programs. East L.A was home to schools were “one out of every four Chicano’s completed high school”(Esparza). Instructors and the school board alike did not have an interest in helping Chicanos finish school to become someone other than a laborer and was expected of them to keep being a laborer. In “Taking Back the Schools”, Sal Castro a high school counselor claims, “I think the bottom line is the lack of concern of the teachers towards the kids and whether the kids were really getting an education or not...the reality set in that the teachers weren’t really concern for the kids.”(Esparza).
Bourdieu (1997) develops his notion of cultural capital, the learned competence in the valued way of doing things, as a way of explaining this unequal educational performance of students. Those with cultural capital not suited to Australia’s Western educational approaches are less likely to succeed than students with a predetermined skill set ideally suited to Australian education systems. That is to say, the students from minority groups a...
When one thinks about Hispanics, all too often the image of a field full of migrant workers picking fruit or vegetables in the hot sun comes to mind. This has become the stereotypical picture of a people whose determination and character are as strong or stronger than that of the Polish, Jewish, Greek, or Italian who arrived in the United States in the early 1900's. Then, the center of the new beginning for each immigrant family was an education. An education was the "ladder by which the children of immigrants climbed out of poverty into the mainstream." (Calderon & Slavin, 2001, p. iv) That ideal has not changed, as the Hispanic population has grown in the United States to large numbers very quickly and with little fanfare. Now, the population of Hispanics in the United States has reached numbers that are finally drawing that attention of schools, state offices, the federal government, and the marketplace. As the new, largest minority, as well as the largest bilingual group, in the United States, Hispanics are finally being recognized as a group of people with the potential to greatly impact economic, social, and education reform. In this paper, several issues will be examined that relate to education: language barriers, poverty, cultural representation, and problem schools. Through an understanding of the Hispanic culture and the motivation behind the Hispanic population, the American education system will be able to overcome the natural hindrances of a diverse society.
Secondary education is a highly debated subject. Many critics of secondary education say that inner-city high schools and students are not receiving the same attention as students from non inner-city high schools. Two of the biggest concerns are the lack of school funding that inner-city high schools are receive and the low success rate in sending inner-city high schools graduates to college. Critics say that while inner-city high schools struggle to pay its teachers and educate its student’s non inner-city high schools don’t have to deal with the lack of school funding. Also students from non inner-city high school are not being given the opportunity to attend colleges once the students graduate. But opponents of these critics blame an entirely different issue; and that is illegal immigrant students over crowding and attending high school at the expense of taxpayers. It cost millions of dollars a year for illegal immigrant students to attend high school and this is the main reason why schools are experiencing budget problems. Teaching illegal immigrant students creates a difficult learning environment and that is why students in inner-city high schools are not moving on to a higher education. This paper will explore the controversy and issues of secondary education; it will expose the hidden truths and prove that illegal immigrants are taking a toll on the education system.
Hispanics will represent more than one-quarter of school-age children in the United States by 2025. These children are more likely than others to be educationally and economically disadvantaged. Presently, 36 percent of Hispanic students live in families whose income is below the poverty line. As a result, Hispanic students are concentrated in high-poverty, largely racially isolated schools, and they often have limited access to the resources needed for academic success, such as highly qualified teachers, small classes, 21st century technology, and modern school buildings.
Louie, Vivian. 2001. “Parents’ Aspirations and Investment: The Role of Social Class in the Educational
---. "Immigrant Students and Public Schools: A Fluent Fit - Public School Review." Public School Review - Profiles of USA Public Schools. 15 Apr. 2010. Web. 01 Feb. 2011.
Hispanic culture has had a profound effect on American education when it comes to diversity in schools. “Here are now approximately 10 million Hispanic students in the nation’s public kindergartens and its elementary and high schools; they make up about one-in-five public school students in the United States” (Fry 5). There is predicted to be a strong growth in Hispanic students, by 2050 bureau projects predicts that the Hispanic school-age population will increase by 166% (Gonzales 5). With the increase of Hispanics in America, there has been an increase of the graduating Hispanics in school “A record seven- in – ten (69%) A Hispanic high school graduates in the class of 2012” (Fry 5). There has been a 97.1% enrollment rate for Hispanics in America ranging from ages 5 through 7 in 2011 (Fry 5). For college there has been a 15.3% enrollment for Hispanics ages 18 through 24, and for ages 25 and up the enrollment rate is 2.1% (Fry 5). More than 21% of schoolchildren are Hispanic (Samuels ...
The number of English language learning (ELL) students in the U.S. has grown dramatically in the last decade. According to a 1991 national study, there are over 2,300,000 students in grades K through 12 who are English language learners (August & Hakuta, 1997). This number has grown by over 1,000,000 since 1984. The majority of these students are Spanish-speakers (73%), followed by Vietnamese-speakers (3.9%). Because the overwhelming proportions of ELL students are Spanish speakers, the issue of bilingual education is largely a Latino one. No other language group makes up more than 4% of limited English proficient students. What complicates the issue of education for language minority students is their low socioeconomic status. 80% of ELL students are poor, and most attend schools where the majority of students also live in poverty and are English language learners. There is some difference in the level of poverty among language groups. Here, again, Latinos are disproportionately represented: 57% of Spanish-speaking families earn less than $20,000 compared to, for example, only 35% of families where Asian/Pacific Island languages are spoken (McArthur, 1993). Poverty has many implications for educational achievement, for example, parents' educational attainment mirror income levels, and parents' educational achievement is highly linked to that of their children's.
During the 1930s, Chicano parents, who suffered from Mexican revolution and hard labor, had hope for their America-born children to get the best education possible only to be obstructed by anti-Mexican Anglos that wanted a separate school for children of indigenous background. This issue was addressed in southern California within the Lemon Grove community. The Lemon Grove School District’s reason was that almost half of the students enrolled were Mexican descendant became a threat and claims that Chicano students were handicaps for Anglo students. A secretary of the Lemon Grove parent teacher association, Ms. Mandy claimed, “Overcrowding in the present classrooms, Mexican children are deficient in knowledge of the English Language, causing their classmates to learn at a much slower rate and a separate school would improve morals” (Espinosa)...
In an essay, Anne Wheelock, a prominent education critic writes, “Tracking does not result in the equal and equitable distribution of effective schooling among all students. Instead, tracking allocates the most valuable school experiences -- including challenging and meaningful curriculum, engaging instruction, and high teacher expectations -- to students who already have the greatest academic, economic, and social advantages…” This having been said, I found my high school experiences to be much different than that.
Stull, Judith C. (2013). Family socioeconomic status, parent expectations, and a child's achievement, Research in Education. Volume 90, pages 53-67.
Socioeconomic status (SES) is a measurement of a combination of education, income and occupation (American Psychological Association, 2014). It is more commonly known as class standing. There is a drastic difference in lifestyle between class standings. In today’s economy it has become more evident just how different the classes are. Lower levels of SES do not have access to good schools, or decent health care leading to a worse quality of life. Higher levels of SES have access to more resources and tend to allow for children to develop self-esteem, optimism, and perceived control (American Psychological Association, 2014). The traditional family with two parents, the father works, and the mother stays more is almost nonexistent. Households where the man works and the woman stays at home only represent 7% of the U.S. population (Malone, Stewart, Wilson & Korsching, 2010). It has become increasingly more difficult to live on one income especially with children. With ...
Bourdieu (1974) argues that the education system is biased towards those from middle and upper-class backgrounds. The culture of the ‘dominant classes’; the upper-classes, is imposed on young people in education, pupils from the upper-classes have an advantage as they have been socialised into the dominant culture and acquired skills and knowledge relevant to learning before entering the education system. These young people possess ‘cultural capital’; cultural capital includes mannerisms, a knowledge of creative and artistic parts of culture, the closer a young person presents themselves and their work to the style of the dominant classes the more likely they are to succeed as teachers are influenced by cultural capital. Also the grammar used by teachers disadvantages working class pupils as they cannot understand it. Bernstein (1961) argues teachers use elaborated speech codes; which is detailed and explanatory, working-class pupils are limited to using restricted codes; clear-cut and easy to understand speech, whereas middle an...