Today the achievement gap is hotly debated among pundits, politicians, and educators. In particular this conversation often focuses on the two fastest-growing demographic groups in the United States: Asian Americans and Latinos. In Academic Profiling, Gilda L. Ochoa addresses this so-called gap by going directly to the source. At one California public high school where the controversy is lived every day, Ochoa turns to the students, teachers, and parents to learn about the very real disparities—in opportunity, status, treatment, and assumptions—that lead to more than just gaps in achievement.

In candid and at times heart-wrenching detail, the students tell stories of encouragement and neglect on their paths to graduation. Separated by unequal middle schools and curriculum tracking, they are divided by race, class, and gender. While those channeled into an International Baccalaureate Program boast about Socratic classes and stress-release sessions, students left out of such programs commonly describe uninspired teaching and inaccessible counseling. Students unequally labeled encounter differential policing and assumptions based on their abilities—disparities compounded by the growth in the private tutoring industry that favors the already economically privileged.

Despite the entrenched inequality in today’s schools, Academic Profiling finds hope in the many ways students and teachers are affirming identities, creating alternative spaces, and fostering critical consciousness. When Ochoa shares the results of her research with the high school, we see the new possibilities—and limits—of change.

Gilda L. Ochoa is professor of sociology and Chicana/o-Latina/o studies at Pomona College. She is the author of Becoming Neighbors in a Mexican American Community and Learning from Latino Teachers and coeditor of Latino Los Angeles.

"By centering students’ experiences, in Academic Profiling Ochoa exposes the many faults in our educational system and the ways that students and our communities are hurt."—Pomona College News

"A valuable and long overdue piece of research on the achievement gap."—Sociological Inquiry

"An ambitious ethnographic study of a single racially diverse high school in southern California. This book stands out because it moves beyond the conventional black/white comparison and instead systematically compares Latino and Asian American students, an important contribution because of the increasingly diverse racial makeup of the United States."—American Journal of Sociology

"Powerful and purposeful in both argument and research, Gilda L. Ochoa unapologetically calls attention to the ways in which lived disparities of Latinos and Asian Americans in school lead to more than just gaps in achievement."—Latino Studies

"Some of the strengths of Academic Profiling lie in its rich data, its ability to turn the rhetoric of equal opportunity on its head, and Ochoa’s awareness of her influence as a Latina researcher. Her work clearly shows that while teachers emphasize freedom of choice, students are not all equally free."—Anthropology Education Quarterly