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      Within the next 48 hours, the eighth issue of Volume 2 of the
  EDUCATION POLICY ANALYSIS ARCHIVES will be published. Issue 8 is
  devoted to the article "Choosing Higher Education: Educationally
  Ambitious Chicanos and the Path to Social Mobility" by Patricia
  Gandara, University of California-Davis. An abstract appears below.
  The article is 2,800 lines long--about 50 single-spaced typed pages.

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                  EDUCATION POLICY ANALYSIS ARCHIVES
Volume 2 Number 8                                      ISSN 1068-2341
May 16, 1994                                             (2800 lines)
 ____________________________________________________________________

                    Choosing Higher Education:
   Educationally Ambitious Chicanos and the Path to Social Mobility

                        Patricia Gandara
                  University of California-Davis
                      pcgandara@ucdavis.edu

ABSTRACT: This is a study of high academic achievement found in the most
unlikely of places: among low-income Mexican Americans from homes with
little formal education. It examines the backgrounds of 50 individuals,
male and female from a single age cohort, who met most of the  predictors
for academic failure or "dropping out." All came from families in which
neither parent completed high school or held a job higher in status than
skilled labor; the average father finished the fourth grade and most were
sons and daughters of farmworkers and other unskilled laborers. Most also
began school with Spanish as their primary language.  Yet all completed
doctoral-level educations from the country's most prestigous institutions.
This study investigates the forces that conspire to create such
anomalies. Its aim is to suggest how such outcomes might be the product
of design rather than accident.

Excerpts from the conclusion to the article follow:

                 Implications for Educational Policy

         1. Policymakers should take seriously the effect of
 integrated schools and multiethnic peer experiences on the
formation of academic goals, and shape state education policy
accordingly with respect to the racial/ethnic composition of
schools.
          Excellent minority schools may provide students with the
skills they need to continue their education, but will not provide
the validation that comes with competing in an arena that mirrors
the society into which they will be thrust. During the ongoing
debate about abandoning desegregation efforts in areas where it has
proved difficult to implement, many people have advocated putting
resources that might otherwise be spent on desegregation efforts
into building high-quality, all-minority schools, arguing that the
critical variable is school excellence, not the students' racial or
ethnic mix. The data from this study would point to exercising
great caution in that regard, at least with Chicano students.
         These subjects commented frequently on how their self-concept
was affected by knowing they could compete successfully against
students whom they viewed as models of achievement. Moreover, there
is considerable evidence that moving back and forth between the two
cultures of home and school provided important adaptive skills that
increased their chances of persisting in school.
          2. State and local policies should be reviewed with respect
to early identification of high-potential students.
         There is currently a great emphasis on early intervention with
youth "at risk." Such early intervention strategies often focus on
identifying high-potential students early in their school years in
order to provide them with special support to ensure their school
success. While this is no doubt helpful to the students who are
targeted, many of the subjects of this study, who passed the most
stringent criterion for being "high potential," would not have been
so identified early in their school careers. Ten percent would not
have been considered "college material" until their senior year of
high school or later. More than half of the sample reported doing
poorly in school at some point. For the women, this occurred early
in their schooling and was due to language factors. For the men,
however, many had uneven profiles of achievement, doing well during
one time, then poorly during another. Depending on when the
identification is done-- and there would have been no consistently
good time to do it with this sample-- up to half of these proven
achievers would have been missed in the screening.
         For students with stable social and economic backgrounds who
are not dealing with issues of development, discrimination, and
stereotyping, it may be statistically defensible to identify high
potential and nurture it early on. But for students with
backgrounds similar to those in this study it would be wiser to
assume that all have high potential and nurture all equally.
         3. There is a need for more analysis of the effects of
tracking. This issue is more complex than many educators have
acknowledged. Almost all of these subjects were eventually placed
in college preparatory tracks in which they were segregated from
their neighborhood peers. For them it worked to their advantage.
Had they not been so placed it is virtually certain that they would
not have been eligible for the educational opportunities they were
later offered. However, this provides further evidence of the
powerful effects of tracking. By being placed in these tracks,
students who came from backgrounds which should have been
predictive of academic failure were able to beat the odds; by being
labeled �smart� they came to believe that they were, and by being
grouped with other similarly labeled students they were exposed to
a curriculum and set of standards that made their college
educations possible. Also, by being placed in this track,
information and opportunities were made available to them by
college recruiters and others that most Chicano students never knew
existed. For the lucky few who make it into the college-bound
track, the rewards are considerable, but one has to wonder how many
were missed along the way.

         4. Schools should reduce their reliance on ability measures
in making educational placement decisions, and find ways to reward
persistence.
         By their own accounts, the study subjects were not the
"smartest" students, but they were among the hardest workers. Many
more students could be brought into the ranks of achievers if we
distributed opportunity (e.g., Gifted and Talented Education)
according to desire to learn and willingness to study, rather than
on the basis of a test score.
         Although the American educational system is no doubt the most
open in the world with respect to providing access, there is
something in the American ethos that precludes academic attainment
more powerfully than structural barriers. This is the belief,
however, unspoken, in the salience of ability over effort, hence
our willingness to turn over the futures of our children to the
assumed predictive ability of standardized tests.
         Twenty percent of the study subjects reported that they had
been placed in noncollege preparatory tracks at some time during
high school, usually on the basis of an ability or aptitude test
that they had been given. Another three subjects (6 percent)
recounted how they had to argue on their own behalf to be placed in
college-prep classes to which they were not originally scheduled.
Even in the face of high academic achievement, counselors continued
to place more faith in the test scores than they did in the
subjects' performance. The research suggests that these were not
isolated cases.

-------**********======================================**********--------
Gene V Glass                                         Glass@ASU.BITNET
College of Education                                 Glass@ASU.EDU
Arizona State University      602-965-2692           Tempe, AZ 85287-2411