Constructing School Success: The Consequences of Untracking Low Achieving Students

by Hugh Mehan, Irene Villanueva, Lea Hubbard, Angela Lintz, Dina Okamoto

Overview

Bolstering the academic success of low achieving students and providing a more egalitarian classroom setting are two constant challenges to our schools. This book describes the process of "untracking", an educational reform effort that has prepared students from low income, linguistic and ethnic minority backgrounds for college. Untracking offers all students the same academically-demanding curriculum while varying the amount of institutional support they receive. This book is a highly readable account of a successful school reform effort. It provides systematic research results concerning the educational and social consequences of untracking previously low achieving students, and will be of great importance to researchers in educational and social psychology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521560764
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	06/13/1996
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.18(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.79(d)

Table of Contents

1. Does untracking work?; 2. The influence of background characteristics on college enrollment; 3. The social scaffolding supporting academic placement; 4. Organizational processes influencing untracking; 5. Peer group influences supporting untracking; 6. Parents' contributions to untracked students' careers; 7. Conclusions and implications.

Editorial Reviews

"This book is invaluable for its identification of the fact that we require fundamental change in school sorting practices..." Ellen Weber, Journal of Educational Thought

"The book offers eloquent theory...Constructing School Success remains an important book for those interested in school reform and social stratification literatures...The book is eloquent, and raises some provocative and important theoretical points. Educators, researchers, and graduate students interested in schools' potential to generate social and cultural capital, to modify structural constraints, and to facilitate the type of social agency that can propel disadvantaged youth to success should read this book." Stephen B. Plank and Nancy L. Karweit, Contemporary Sociology

From the Publisher