The role of gender in academic achievement

Abstract

This article focuses on findings from a study involving 30 highly successful, low‐income, African American public high school students. The students’ gender‐based experiences defy the traditional patterns of educational underachievement associated with this minority group. They challenge John Ogbu’s influential notions of ‘involuntary’ minority students as oppositional and resistant to schooling. Moreover, the strong gender‐based variation found among these students in terms of their college aspirations and strategies for attaining success raise questions about an undifferentiated treatment of the African American student population. School practices, peer interactions and students’ lived familial and community experiences are crucial factors in shaping educational outcomes. The intertwining of school, family and community cultures constructs gendered attitudes and beliefs. Even when students share a racial and class identity, gender may strongly mediate their perceptions and behavior, in and out of school.

Notes

1. Some of Ogbu’s most important and most recent contributions to this literature include: Ogbu, J. (2003) Black American students in an affluent suburb (Mahwah, NJ, Lawrence Erlbaum; Ogbu, J. (1995) Cultural problems in minority education: their interpretations and consequences – part one: theoretical background, Urban Review, 27(3), 189–203; Ogbu, J. (1994) Racial stratification and education in the U.S.: why inequality persists, Teachers College Record, 96(2), 264–298.

2. In 2001, in the 16–24‐year‐old group, about 7.3% of Whites compared to 10.9% of African Americans dropped out of school (US Department of Commerce and US Department of Education, 2002d).

3. Black women also outperform their male peers in attaining advanced degrees. In the 2000–01 academic year, 6.7% of all students who received a Ph.D., EdD. or other degree at the doctoral level were Black women, compared to 3.5% who were Black men (US Department of Education, 2002c).

4. Pseudonyms are used for all names of schools and individuals.

5. The larger project involved case studies of 8 of the 17 high schools in the San Diego Unified School District that were piloting AVID programs. We concluded that AVID was a significant and powerful educational intervention. The program sustained a very low dropout rate, and a very large majority of participants who remained in the program for three or more years enrolled in college (Mehan et al., 1996; Hubbard, 1999).

6. In many cases, however, the students’ admission into AVID was the result of a recommendation from a teacher who did perceive the student’s potential for success, if given sufficient academic support.

7. Although all of the students told me that they were going to college I learned from their AVID teachers that one of the African American males went into military service when he did not receive the sports scholarship he had hoped for.