High School Students of Color Talk About Accusations of “Acting White”

Fordham and Ogbu (1986) have described fear of acting white as a significant factor that influenced the attitudes and often undermined the achievement of African-American students at Capital High in Washington, D.C. The present qualitative study investigated 38 relatively high-achieving African-American and Mexican-American students in various high schools, public and private, in a midwestern city. The respondents did not report avoiding academic achievement in order to avoid accusations of acting white. Most of the students we interviewed reported no loss of ethnic identity. The students felt strong resentment toward their peers' accusations of acting white and did not seem to be intimidated by the accusations, though they were bothered by the accusations. It would be useful if future research addressed the conditions under which avoidance of acting white is most likely to occur.     

“Brothers Gonna Work It Out:” Understanding the Pedagogic Performance of African American Male Teachers Working with African American Male Students

Drawing from ethnographic data, this paper explores how African American male teachers working with African American male students performed their pedagogy. This paper highlights how teachers’ understanding of African American males social and educational needs shaped their pedagogical performance. Interestingly however, teachers’ performance was contingent on the diverse ways they imagined African American males should engage within their social and political worlds. These findings suggest then that African American male teachers’ pedagogic performances were both complex and multifaceted.     

Collective Identity and the Burden of “Acting White” in Black History,Community, and Education

After more than 15 years of comparative study of minority education, I concluded that I would have to study two additional factors, namely collective identity and cultural frame of reference to more fully explain the variability in minority school performance. In 1986, I published an article with Signithia Fordham on how oppositional collective identity and cultural frame of reference or oppositional culture contributed to Black students' school performance. Many critics have misinterpreted the joint article and even constructed a different thesis of oppositional culture than the one we proposed in the joint article. The thesis is that Black students do not aspire to or strive to get good grades because it is perceived as acting White. Furthermore, they have translated my cultural–ecological theory into an oppositional culture theory. I am writing this paper to correct the misinterpretations of the joint article in order to advance scholarship on the subject. I begin by explaining the meaning of collective identity and distinguishing it from other concepts of identity. Specifically, I summarize the evolution of oppositional collective identity and cultural frame of reference or oppositional culture among Black Americans and discuss the Black experience with the burden of acting White in the contemporary United States. Finally, I suggest some continuity between Black historical and community experiences with the burden of acting White, as experienced by Black students.     

“Acting White”: How the Past Implementation of School Desegregation Helped Create Today’s Attainment and Achievement Gaps

ABSTRACT

Summarizing my prior work, the only book length treatment of the “acting White” phenomenon (Buck, 2010), I argue that while desegregation was both a moral necessity and a social good, the manner in which desegregation was implemented by White authorities led indirectly to today’s achievement gaps. In the course of desegregation previously all-African-American schools were closed, with their faculty and administrators typically demoted or terminated, and their students sent to previously all-White schools, where they were not always welcomed. This massive social change established scholarly achievement as part of a White identity, not a Black identity. Unfortunately, this diagnoses may not lend itself to easy solutions.     

“I am in School!”: African American Male Youth in a Prison/College Hybrid Figured World

Educational programs are seen as a vehicle for improving the educational experiences and life outcomes for youthful offenders. In 1998 North Carolina started the Workplace and Community Transition Youth Offender Program (YOP). The program offers youth post-secondary educational courses. Our study examines 2007–2009 data from YOP youth participating in the program. Using students’ voices our study shows that YOP not only decreases recidivism drastically, but has a personal impact in the youth participants’ lives. YOP provides a space of change that is not prison or a traditional college. The hybrid figured world provides an opportunity for African American male youth to re/author themselves creating new hybrid identities. The youth author themselves as students versus inmates. These new identities and educational competencies have potentially long term benefits for youth offenders and for communities.     

“To Virgo or not to Virgo”: Examining the Closure and Reopening of a Neighborhood School in a Predominantly African American Community

Neighborhood schools engender the idea that schools can be integral community centers, with learning facilitated by the personal relationships developed among teachers, administrators, students, and parents. Neighborhood schools also have represented stigmatized segregated spaces located in communities with high poverty rates, low high school graduation rates, and little opportunity for social mobility. Drawing from print and online media sources related to the closure and reopening of D.C. Virgo Middle School (Virgo), a racially- and economically-segregated middle school in an urban, southern community, this study uses conceptual content analysis to examine the competing discourses surrounding Virgo. The authors conclude that the public discourse examined herein represents the tension between public schools as stigmatizing beloved spaces. As a stigmatizing space, the school can transfer the stigmatized identity to associated students and personnel. As a beloved space, the school can nurture possibility and hope.     

“I have to be three steps ahead”: Academically Gifted African American Male Students in an Urban High School on the Tension between an Ethnic and Academic Identity

This case study investigation of three Academically Gifted African American male high school seniors in a predominantly African American urban high school examines the interplay between their ethnic and academic identity. Using an embedded micro-ethnographic approach, we explore the extent to which these students value educational attainment, the extent to which they connect with their ethnicity, and those “significant others” who inhibit or dissuade the development of their ethnic and/or academic identity. Consistent with the conclusions of more recent educational literature, findings indicate participants in this investigation value the purpose and intent of schooling and the mobility associated with it, express “Blackness” is an essential component of their academic achievement and overall self concept, and credit people within their immediate social network for opening their eyes to social injustices within the world at an early age. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

Latino High School Students’ Perceptions of Caring: Keys to Success

This mixed methods investigation specifically examined Latino high school adolescents’ perceptions of teacher behaviors that demonstrate caring. A chi-square test was conducted to analyze the frequency of responses, and focus group interviews were conducted to expand on the results. The data indicated that although Latino male students were as likely to perceive the same behaviors Latina female students perceived as important or very important, a higher percentage of female students rated the same items as important. This investigation situates Latino high school adolescents’ voices as a pivotal agent to inform about the critical nature of caring for all students.     

“These People Are Never Going to Stop Labeling Me”: Educational Experiences of African American Male Students Labeled with Learning Disabilities

This investigation employs Disability Critical Race Studies as a theoretical framework to determine the interdependence of racism and ableism in school settings. African American male students with learning disabilities are queried about their interpretations of special education placement and labeling while attempting to secure educational opportunities during high school. Their responses were used to determine the consequences of labeling as they intersect with factors such as race, gender and, to a lesser extent, social economic status. Subsequently, as a result of this investigation, implications for empowering students through self-advocacy and enhancing teachers' knowledge of diverse learning styles are discussed.     

Perpetuating Privilege: Students’ Perspectives on the Culture of a High-Performing and High-Pressure High School

The present study used focus group data to explore students’ perceptions of the culture of their upper-middle-class high school. Although students described a high-pressure school with negative physical and psychological consequences, they valued the social and educational advantages this context conferred. They also simultaneously faulted and appreciated parents’ efforts to maintain the school's competitive climate and status. The discussion addresses how stakeholders work to sustain a culture of privilege, despite costs entailed.     

Student Achievement for Whom? High-performing and Still ‘Playing the Game,’ the Meaning of School Achievement Among High Achieving African American Students

The preponderance of the research on African American students has generally focused on issues of school failure and underperformance. While the literature on high achieving Black students is sparse, very little is known about these students’ school experiences and the meanings that they assign to achievement. Using student-based inquiry research, this study investigates the meaning of school achievement among high-performing African Americans. The findings reveal that the students were not convinced that standardized examinations, and to a lesser extent course grades, were accurate or valid measures of achievement. Thus, they challenged the dominant achievement paradigm and created their own sense of school success, which included social dimensions such as community involvement and personal growth and development. Although collectively the students concluded that standardized exams and grades were not achievement or accurate measures of achievement, yet they clearly knew how to ‘play the game.’ While students must meet the norms of standardized measures and end-of-course testing related to the Common Core, schools can respond to their diverse assessment needs by incorporating broader measures that include, but are not limited to standardized tests. The findings of this study and student recommendations have great implications for teacher education and student assessment.     

Between a “ROC” and a School Place: The Role of Racial Opportunity Cost in the Educational Experiences of Academically Successful Students of Color

Despite numerous reform efforts, schools have not achieved equitable academic outcomes for all students. To better identify where schools have failed, research has sought to understand the complex role the school environment plays in mediating academic success, particularly for students of color. In this article, we forward the concept of racial opportunity cost and then use it as a lens to encapsulate the price academically successful students of color pay in their pursuit of school success. Through individual and focus group interviews, 18 African American and Latina/o students revealed nuances of the costs their academic achievement brought in the racialized, White-normed spaces that often permeated their school cultures. The purpose of this article is to provide theoretical support for the racial opportunity cost concept using existing interdisciplinary scholarship and to describe the racial opportunity costs that emerged from our analysis of student interviews.     

Site‐Based Management and School Success: Untangling the Variables

Site‐based management (SBM) has received decidedly mixed reviews as a reform strategy. Although most scholars who have studied it note that this form of governance can be linked to some positive changes in culture or parent or teacher satisfaction, only a few have observed clear changes in student achievement that can be tied to site‐level autonomy and shared decision‐making within the school. The absence of learning effects may be due to problems in theories undergirding SBM, to weak or uneven implementation, or to methodological problems in evaluative studies. In this study, researchers set out, not to evaluate SBM, but rather to understand how it worked in a school that, by many criteria, could be considered a success. After engaging in a year long, intensive case study at one urban elementary school, the authors concluded that four commitments, deeply embedded in the minds of educators and, to a lesser extent, parents, drove successful reform at this site. The central and organizing commitment was a kind of “learning imperative.” Administrators and teachers were passionate and knowledgeable about learning and determined to do whatever it took to see that students and their families had optimal educational experiences. This imperative was buttressed and supported by three other “imperatives.” Educators viewed themselves as members of a community and felt an imperative to interact in supportive and respectful ways. Most teachers, all administrators, and a number of parents, responding to a leadership imperative, willingly and actively took responsibility for life at the school, and administrators and teachers were determined to be guided by a capacity‐building imperative which required that resources be aimed at promoting learning. Site‐based management facilitated the ability of persons at this site to act on these imperatives. It did not, however, influence the quality of decisions to any great degree.     

A Contextual Understanding of the Process of Educational Resilience: High Achieving Dominican American Students and the “Resilience Cycle”

This article explores the lives of academically resilient Dominican American college students at a selective private university in the Northeast. The conceptual framework used to guide the inquiry is based on the assumption that there are certain protective factors that play significant roles in the students' defiance of the odds and their ultimate academic achievement. The findings presented here focus on the emergence of a resilience cycle present during these students' academic journeys. The cycle is presented and its practical implications explored.     

Students’ and teachers’ perceptions: initial achievements of a Project-Based Engineering School

A unified academic model based on the project-based learning (PBL) methodology was implemented, in the 2012–2013 period, in the School of Engineering at Universidad Europea de Madrid. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether teachers and students participating in the capstone projects feel that the objectives for which this methodology was designed for are being achieved. The data were collected through interviews to participants at the end of the PBL experience. The results are encouraging, as students seem to be more motivated, and they say that they are experiencing deeper learning, and have developed key competitive skills required for their professional lives. Findings also suggest that teachers face positively the PBL as a learning approach since they perceive that students obtain a deeper learning, develop transversal skills with the projects and are more engaged with their studies. Implications and recommendations for the future of the model are also discussed.