Policies Are Insufficient to Shift Low-Income and Minority Secondary Students into High-Level Courses

Freedom of choice policy in course placement, though popular among educators as a means to promote greater equity within secondary schools, fails to eliminate other barriers to high-level courses, particularly for low-income students and students of color. According to a team of California researchers, complicated cultural and political issues intertwine with issues of race and class to inhibit the movement of poor and minority students into higher-track classes.

Results of the three-year, longitudinal study of 10 racially and socio-economically mixed urban and suburban secondary schools across the nation appear in the spring 2002 issue of the American Educational Research Journal, a quarterly publication of the American Educational Research Association.

To explain the limitations of a choice policy, authors Susan Yonezawa, University of California, San Diego; Amy Stuart Wells, Teachers College-Columbia University; and Irene Serna, University of California, Los Angeles, cite factors that worked against the elimination of course hierarchies, including institutional barriers, student aspirations, and students' desire for respect.

For example, information on honors courses often was distributed through word-of-mouth sources, limiting access for students outside such informal networks. In other cases, educators engaged in selective flexibility by acquiescing to the course placement requests of upper-income white and Asian students while delaying or denying requests of low-achieving students, many of whom were Latino or African American.

When given the opportunity, many students were ambivalent about attempting honors courses because their aspirations had been leveled by teachers who did not believe in them for so long or they were reluctant to leave familiar classroom spaces in which they felt they belonged. In contrast, parents and students who operated from powerful places in the local hierarchy supported choice policies because they allowed families to secure the best teachers and class placements.

Minority students reported role strain in their situations. They ". . . found that their contradictory identities as successful students and under-represented minorities made it difficult for them to be accepted." Instead of pursuing honors courses, some "sought out 'safespaces' or 'homeplaces,' where they could explore their identities as racial minorities and strengthen their sense of self-worth, free from the domination they experienced in daily life."

Many low-income students of color had already built strong bonds and friendships within the low-level classes to which they had been assigned in previous years, and these students developed a sense of belonging and identity within these low-track classrooms. In some cases, peer pressure acted against increased academic achievement; in others, students were reluctant to accept the challenge of higher-level classes because change meant giving up the social support of their racially segregated peer groups and the identities they had formed.

African American students, the researchers reported, mentioned during interviews that "high-track benefits were a poor trade for the dignity they felt in majority-Black classes."

Although the researchers acknowledge that solutions are neither easy nor obvious, they offer one suggestion to make all students feel valued and powerful: the creation of "safe spaces or homeplaces," where students are affirmed for the knowledge and experience they bring, without fear of reprisal or the burden of justifying the value of their participation.