2006 University of Michigan Poverty Research Grants
Funded research
L'Heureux Lewis, Department of Sociology, University of Michigan
The Invisible Poor: Educational Inequality in an Affluent Setting
Abstract
The Black-White academic achievement gap remains an intransigent problem. The passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) has focused attention on educational inequality at the local, state, and federal levels. This dissertation examines the ways in which educational disadvantages are transmitted or not transmitted to racial and economic minorities in an affluent school setting.
Poor and minority students who attend schools in affluent areas lag far behind their affluent and White counterparts in academic performance and just surpass their inner-city counterparts.
I use ethnographic observations and extensive interviews with Black and White students, their guardians, and their classroom teachers from three fourth grade classrooms to explore three variables: relationship to resources, value of education, and opportunity to learn. I supplement these interviews with classroom observations and participant observation of out-of-school activities of Black and White boys.
Relationship to resources is defined as the degree to which students and parents are knowledgeable of and utilize available in-school and out-of-school resources for academics. Value of education is defined as the attitudes and actions that students and parents take towards formal schooling and their particular school.
Opportunity to learn is the exposure to curriculum and curriculum attainment that students receive. Though I will not test casual links, there is still significant room for contributions to our understanding of the operations of race and class in school.
