Academic profiling: Latinos, Asian Americans, and the achievement gap by Gilda L. Ochoa
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Academic pro fil i n g : L a t i n o s , As i a n A m e r i c a n s , a n d th e a c h i e v e m e n t g a p Gilda L. Ochoa University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota, MN, 2013, 314pp., $25.00, ISBN: 978-0816687404 (paperback)
Latino Studies (2015) 13, 447–448. doi:10.1057/lst.2015.25
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. Academic Profiling: Latinos, Asian Americans, and the Achievement Gap focuses specifically on the experiences of students, families and teachers of a California high school, and brings to light needed research on relational aspects of Asian Americans and Latinas/os in the education system. A true testament to inclusive academic literature, Ochoa opens Academic Profiling by providing a past and present snapshot of Southern California High School while ensuring that all readers understand schooling and its role in fostering gaps. Utilizing a macroscopic, mesolevel and microscopic approach, the author engages this intersectional and multilevel framework to enhance awareness of the “interactional influences of structure and individual agency” (11). Beautifully accessible, this macromeso-micro explanation assists readers in identifying the cracks in a system that is seen as functioning. Ochoa further plays on the trileveled framework, by organizing this work into three parts: (i) overarching ideologies, (ii) school and familial practices, and (iii) microscopic and
everyday relationships at the high school. The author offers honest and critical reflections on her role as the main researcher for this work. Her acknowledgment of personal positionality and “lessons learned” (259) is refreshing and works to increase her credibility as a researcher. In the final section of Academic Profiling, Ochoa admits that her presence did impact all participants in Southern California High School. Speaking against the lack of a “holistic conceptualization of education” Ochoa’s research includes the voices of 190 individuals, most of whom are students, to illustrate the impact that perceptions, relationships, opportunities and inequalities, particularly for students of color, have on high-school student education and achievement. Ochoa’s book is timely as it pushes readers to move from the Black/White binary to exploring the experiences of ethnic minority students attending schools that are not predominantly White institutions. This work is a pivotal contribution to Latino studies, as it unearths and creates space for the experiences of ethnic minority students who are part of academic communities where they are the numerical majority, but still the minority in terms of academic achievement. Communities such as this are rarely discussed when focusing on achievement gaps. Although at first glance the
© 2015 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1476-3435 Latino Studies www.palgrave-journals.com/lst/
Vol. 13, 3, 447–448
Book Review
book may seem narrow
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