|
|
|
Family (Dis)Advantage and the Educational Prospects of Better Off African American Youth: How Race Still Matters by Travis L. Gosa & Karl L. Alexander — 2007While the educational difficulties of poor black students are well documented and have been discussed extensively, the academic performance of well-off African American children has received much less attention. Even with economic and educational resources in the home, well-off African American youth are not achieving at the levels of their white peers. Why is this? A review of relevant literature identifies a set of social processes that pose formidable barriers to the academic and personal development of middle-class African American youth, the closing of the black-white achievement gap, and the preservation of African American family advantage across generations. Constituting a social ecology of African American family life, these processes emanate outward from the immediate home environment, through peers and friends, into neighborhoods and schools, and to society at large.To view the full-text for this article you must be signed-in with the appropropriate membership. Please review your options below:
|
|
|
- Travis Gosa
Johns Hopkins University
E-mail Author
TRAVIS L. GOSA is a doctoral candidate in sociology, Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University. His main fields of interest are race, education, and stratification. He is currently examining how middle class black parents manage their children’s schooling.
- Karl Alexander
Johns Hopkins University
E-mail Author
KARL L. ALEXANDER is John Dewey Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, Johns Hopkins University. His interests center on schools and their role in educational stratification. Since 1982 he and colleague Doris Entwisle have been directing the Baltimore-based Beginning School Study (BSS). The BSS is an on-going, long-term study of youth development with a particular interest in the lasting imprint of early home and schooling experiences. Two books are included among the project’s many publications: “Children Schools and Inequality” (with Linda Olson; Westview Press, 1997); “On the Success of Failure: A Reassessment of the Effects of Retention in the Primary Grades” (with Susan Dauber; Cambridge University Press, 1993, expanded and updated in 2003).
|
|
|
|
|
Executive Summary
Full Text in PDF Format
Email this article
Print this article
Post a Comment
