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Schools are increasingly implementing policies not only to educate children, but to deliver programs that meet the non-academic needs of students including health and mental health conditions, low levels of social competence, and prevention of risky behaviors. This chapter reviews the empirical evidence on programmatic efforts to meet an array of non-academic needs in school settings. Evidence reveals, for example, usually limited effects in programs for the prevention of risky behaviors The most successful programs are those delivered by well trained staff using cognitive-behavioral techniques in schools with high levels of academic achievement and strong administrative leadership. As a general policy orientation, the chapter suggests that rather than expanding supplementary programs, resources might be better invested in promoting schools with student-centered high-quality instruction and administrative leadership, which are the necessary and often sufficient conditions for meeting the non-academic needs of many students.

This chapter examines the way in which racialized tracking creates racial distinctions among students that lead to the interpretation of academic achievement as acting white. It begins with a short discussion of two topics: the meaning and use of the broad concept of acting white among African Americans; and the issue of racial disparities in elementary school gifted programs and race talk among pre-adolescents. The chapter then looks at the experiences of high-achieving black adolescents at nineteen public high schools in North Carolina. Finally, it investigates why some high-achieving black youth are targeted with the acting white slur while many others, including peers at the same school, are not.

This chapter examines the importance of assessing the language abilities of DHH students in order to understand their potential for achievement in mathematics and science. It considers the Cattell–Horn–Carroll (CHC) theory, a three-stratum hierarchical framework of cognitive abilities that postulates a general factor (g) and ten broad factors: crystallized intelligence (Gc), fluid reasoning (Gf ), auditory processing (Ga), visual processing (Gv), short-term memory (Gsm), long-term retrieval (Glr), processing speed (Gs), reaction time (Gt), literacy (Grw), and quantitative abilities (Gq). These ten broad abilities subsume over seventy narrow-stratum abilities. It argues that using CHC theory will aid in understanding the cognitive processes underlying language and literacy weaknesses that are unusual even within the deaf population.

The topic of acting white has received a great deal of scholarly attention, but the process by which the link between race and academic achievement has developed among contemporary black youth remains very much under-examined. This chapter provides a theoretical outline of the formation of this association. It argues that students' tendency to link achievement with whiteness emerged after desegregation and is a consequence of racialized tracking. The dominant perspective regarding black students' attitudes toward school and achievement frames the issue as largely about culture and values: black youth learn to disparage school learning and academic success because they grow up in communities where a cultural orientation in opposition to mainstream (white) culture is widespread. This chapter examines the strengths and weaknesses of this popular idea. In explaining the limitations of the cultural explanation, it shows the advantages of focusing on students' in-school experiences as the most important source of their actions and ideas regarding academic achievement.

This chapter addresses high-achieving adolescents' vulnerability to peer cultures that are oppositional to the norms and values of schools. These include youth subcultures in which students are ridiculed for achievement-related behaviors in both racialized and non-racialized ways. Whereas the previous chapter considered where and when taunts of acting white for achievement-related behaviors occur, the present chapter investigates why some high-achieving black adolescents succumb to pressure to conform to oppositional aspects of the peer environment at their schools while others are able to resist and reject such pressures. It demonstrates that there are conditions (both internal and external) that help high-achieving adolescents resist, reject, or ignore this type of negative peer pressure. These include, for example, a strong sense of identity (who they are and are not) and clear post-high school goals and aspirations. The chapter also shows that the age at which adolescents develop the characteristics and goals that keep them focused on academic achievement varies.

The Supreme Court's decision in the 1954 case Brown v. Board of Education was supposed to eliminate school segregation. Brown promised more than desegregation; the decision also promised integration. More than five decades after the decision, however, black students and white students throughout much of the United States still experience separate and unequal schooling. Black-white racial segregation in public schools produced through tracking (and through gifted and magnet programs) remains a problem. Americans simply assume that academic placements reflect students' ability and their (and their parents') choices and attitudes toward school. Linking achievement with whiteness is one consequence of racialized tracking, but there are others that also shape academic achievement and interracial relations. This book takes a look at how institutional practices such as tracking affect black and other students' schooling experiences. Drawing on the narratives and school experiences of some of the more than 200 students studied in twenty-eight schools, it shows how racialized tracking and the messages it conveys affect students' daily life at school, their academic self-perceptions, school-based decisions and actions, and their relationships with peers.

This chapter examines how and why segregation remains in high school classrooms even as students in the post-Brown era are able to select their own program of study. It describes the placement processes of six North Carolina high schools and recounts how a racially mixed group of sixty-one students attending those schools went about choosing their courses. The analysis shows how students make sense of the messages about race and academic achievement that are communicated through institutional practices such as racialized tracking and gifted identification and placement. The chapter also assesses the consequences of this meaning-making for students' developing sense of self, their friendship networks, and their school-based decisions. The findings reveal how schools' early sorting of students helps steer them toward particular programs of study, which also helps shape their friendship networks. Students, in turn, base their course decisions on a combination of subjective criteria: their interpretation of the meaning of their prior placement and achievement experiences, and their understanding of where they fit within both the intellectual pecking order and the social networks of their school.

This chapter provides some reflections on how the peer cultures of students may change, as they grow older; and on the cultural and structural influences on second-generation academic achievement. Many behaviors in school that are detrimental to academic achievement do not in fact stem from disinterest in academic achievement or a rejection of mainstream institutions and norms, but the quest for peer status. The low achievement among some children of immigrants leads to the requirement of different policies for improving academic achievement. Some key policy recommendations for improving academic achievement among children of immigrants include that schooling should help students' balancing acts between their peer social worlds and academic achievement via code-switching and decision-making skills, and that schools should engage youth cultures.

This concluding chapter summarizes the book's findings and considers what the lack of true integration in American schools means for today's youth. Reflecting on the hardships created by classroom racial isolation, the chapter offers suggestions for ways that schools might address the most damaging aspects of racialized tracking and reduce, rather than reinforce, the conditions that encourage students' casting academic achievement as acting white. Lastly, it suggests new directions for future research on the topic of acting white and academic achievement. In addressing these core issues, the chapter looks at the relationship between race and achievement in American schools.

Drawing from a larger project that explores racial differences in student athletes' academic integration patterns on campus, this chapter ascertains the effect of specific forms of student athlete-faculty interaction on academic achievement. Specifically, it examines selected faculty interaction measures of academic achievement as well as high school grades (grade point average [GPA]), family income and education, the type of institution (public or private), among others. The chapter focuses on Black student athletes in the revenue-producing sports of men's basketball and football.

This chapter explores aspects of peer culture that are thought to conflict with academic achievement: attitudes and beliefs (about racism and discrimination, peer culture attitudes, and perceptions of opportunities) and behavioral scripts with respect to conflict. In terms of attitudes and beliefs, there is little evidence for oppositional peer cultures and no evidence that perceptions of discrimination lead to low aspirations. The few students who express oppositional attitudes cannot account for the overall low achievement rates, where only a minority of students leave qualified to start a university education. In terms of behavior, teens place much importance on defending self-pride and showing toughness when it comes to conflict with peers, which sometimes end in physical fighting. Engaging in peer conflicts serves two purposes: preventing real, physical violence, because in schools, appearing weak led to being bullied; and also, because it brought peer status by demonstrating self-pride and toughness. These conflicts do not signal defiance of school authorities or opposition to school norms, nor do they stem from a lack of interest in academic excellence. Rather, they are described by teens as inevitable and sometimes necessary responses to situations at school. As with consumption, gender is found to matter. For young men, masculinity is tied to toughness, defending self-pride, and being seen as hip. Pressures of masculinity lead boys to place more importance on maintaining self-pride among peers. This connection makes boys even more invested in peer status than their girl counterparts, for whom femininity is less likely to come into conflict with adult school culture.

Chapter seven present data to analyzes the impact of that pattern on student learning. It concludes that changes to the curriculum introduced with the goal of making learning more appealing to all students actually had the opposite effect in the middle schools: achievement-oriented pupils capitalized on the opportunities offered to them while their less motivated peers fell further behind. The chapter considers the effect that neoliberal reforms have had on molding Japan as a “gap society,” and the effect that such opportunity disparities between the rich and the poor have had on schools.

Research on student motivation has been a particularly robust area of study for examining student underachievement. Recent evidences show that African Americans as a group have continued to struggle with academic success over the last decades. The span of this problem is illustrated by findings that the underachievement of these students is equally problematic among urban and suburban students across the full spectrum of socioeconomic status. This chapter explores the relationship between the attitudes of these students towards school culture, academic motivation, and academic achievement. It also examines students' understanding of racism and racial inequity in schools and communities and how this undermines their value of educational success. This chapter also presents cultural mistrust and African Americans' experiences with racism and how these have created their skepticism toward institutions which reflect the dominant culture.

Academic intrinsic motivation forms the basis of the identification of motivational risk status. It is positively correlated to school competency. Greater academic intrinsic motivation relates to higher academic achievement, self-concept, and lower academic anxiety. This chapter examines motivation from school entry level through to early adulthood. The purpose of which is to provide evidence that low academic intrinsic motivation is a risk factor with regard to a broad array of academic outcomes over an extensive period of time. This chapter also illustrates how to identify early and intervene in such cases to maintain academic intrinsic motivation in the context of an extrinsically oriented school culture. In addition, the chapter presents possible proposals for structuring school culture to augment academic intrinsic motivation and thus reduce motivational risk.

Play and playful learning promote all aspects of early childhood psychological development and, in so doing, provide the springboard for successful academic and social adjustment to school. Early childhood programs that squeeze out spontaneous and guided play in favor of formalized academic training dampen children's enthusiasm and motivation to learn and fail to equip children with the full range of capacities they need to thrive at school. Furthermore, lifelong learners are not created through overly didactic curricula where children are passive recipients. Returning play to its evidence-based, rightful place in preschool education is a first step toward restoring developmentally appropriate play experiences to children's home lives, as parents look to educators for advice and models of development-enhancing learning activities. This chapter offers policies and practice recommendations directed to all those who are concerned with the well-being of children and who are charged with preparing our children to become competent, contributing, and contented members of the global world by focusing on their social development and its role in academic achievement.

This chapter highlights the multiple connections between culture and identity among a specific group of low-income African American and Latino students and their particular responses to a structural phenomenon. It presents evidence on the importance of culture on the academic achievement of minority students and provides another articulation of the meanings of “acting white”. It argues that a trinity of social forces, that include race, class, and gender, dictates much about how “acting black”, “acting Spanish”, and of “acting white” emerge as cultural phenomena and become integrated into the identities of minority students.

This chapter presents evidence that play and playful learning enhance academic, social, and emotional outcomes in preschool. Compared to drill-and-practice, playful learning engages and motivates children in ways that enhance development and lifelong learning. After defining play and playful learning, this chapter examines assumptions about how children learn and argues that the whole-child approach is no longer used in preschool education. The weight of the evidence, from random assignment to correlational to interventional studies, suggests that both free play and playful learning create optimal environments for academic achievement. In addition, children in developmentally appropriate classrooms often show less anxiety and stronger social skills. This chapter issues a call for developmentally appropriate preschool pedagogy and contends that playful learning combines the best of teacher-guided and developmentally appropriate pedagogy.