No matter what the academic measure, many native-born and immigrant minority school-children underachieve, drop out, and fail to pursue higher education. A critical determinant of academic achievement is students' academic orientation, the student's perception that education is or is not a path to success. Previous research has concentrated on why native minority students tend to adopt an adversarial academic orientation, while immigrant students incline toward a positive academic orientation. Some children within each native and immigrant minority group, however, manage to adopt a positive academic orientation and pursue educational success while others do not.

The research objective of this project is to determine the complex of factors that promotes a positive academic orientation among some minority children and influences others to simply "get by" or totally reject education. The project has three components: 1. the impact of social capital on academic orientation is examined through intensive participant observation in the schools, households, and community; 2. we address the effects of school policies and practices through intensive interviewing of school administrators, teachers, and parents, along with our participant observation; and, 3. by linking our qualitative data to quantitative data, we incorporate the influences of contextual variables and individual characteristics.

As new immigrants increasingly concentrate in native-born minority neighborhoods, interaction among different ethnic groups becomes both more frequent and more important. This is especially the case among children who associate daily in the school setting. Why do some immigrant children assimilate to the academic and cultural orientation of African American and Hispanic/Latino American minorities? Is there a reciprocal influence? Why do some African American and Hispanic/Latino children dissociate from the academic orientation of most of their peers?

Miami-Dade County, Florida constitutes a strategic research site for addressing these questions. Hispanics/Latinos and Blacks compose a majority of the population for both the County and its schools. Miami-Dade County has both Hispanic/Latino and Black immigrants. It has minorities living in the inner-city, in the suburbs, and in rural communities. And, it has minorities from all groups who have achieved academic success and others who have not. An analysis of academic orientation among Miami-Dade County’s school-children will provide insight to similar processes occurring in other cities with large concentrations of native and immigrant minority school-children. Adolescents from Miami-Dade County’s primary ethnic groups — African Americans, Cubans, Haitians, other Caribbean Blacks, Nicaraguans, and Mexicans — constitute the research population. We conducted the project in four neighborhoods that contain different mixes of these groups and that vary on critical social and economic variables. One neighborhood is urban inner-city Black, one is suburban Hispanic/Latino, one is suburban Black and the fourth rural Black and Hispanic/Latino.

Using primarily qualitative research methods of direct participant-observation and intensive interviewing, our multi-disciplinary team followed a sample of adolescents for three years through their school days, onto the streets of their respective communities and into their households. We also compare our qualitative results to survey results from a comparable sample of second generation immigrants in South Florida.

The results of this project are yielding an enlarged and deepened understanding of the academic orientations of native-born and immigrant minorities. It is also helping to lay the foundation for recommendations for improvements in educational policy and programs to help prepare these youth for the next century. Finally, it has served as a training project for graduate students, some of whom are minorities themselves, preparing for careers involving multiculturalism, immigration, and inter-ethnic relations.

Students develop differing academic orientations for complex reasons. Some researchers emphasize contextual variables that affect native-born and immigrant minorities. Others focus on individual variation and the impact of social forces and institutional pressures. As the nation's students become more diverse, increasingly composed of native-born and immigrant minorities, understanding what influences a positive academic orientation becomes ever more important.

More than two million immigrant students entered U.S. schools in the 1980s (McDonnell and Hill 1993:iii. see also First and Carrerra 1988). By age fifteen, substantial numbers of immigrant and native-born youth are at risk of reaching adulthood unable to adequately meet the requirements of the workplace, the commitments of relationships in families and with friends, and the responsibilities of participation in a democratic society. These youth are among the estimated seven million young people — one in four adolescents — who are extraordinarily vulnerable to school failure and multiple high-risk behaviors. Another seven million may be at moderate risk and remain a cause for serious concern (Carnegie 1992:8).

This qualitative, multi-year research project attempts to illuminate the root causes of the academic orientations of African American, Haitian, other Caribbean Black, Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Mexican students in Miami-Dade County, Florida. The study examines overall academic orientation of these minorities and goes on to concentrate on variation within minorities, what factors distinguish individual students who are ethnically the same but express different orientations toward school?

Academic Orientation & Minority Status

The literature addressing the academic orientations of native-born and immigrant minorities categorizes minorities by group and attempts to explain group differences, typically emphasizing either contextual variables or individual characteristics. However, relatively little work addresses either the variation of individuals within a native-born or immigrant minority or examines the effects on academic orientation of interactions between groups.

In a series of critical works, Ogbu (1978, 1982, 1983, 1987a, 1987b) maintains that native-born and immigrant minorities can be categorized into three types — autonomous, immigrant and castelike — each of which has a different cultural and academic orientation. Ogbu (1987a) argues that "castelike minorities," such as African Americans, have created a style of cultural inversion that repudiates derogatory images projected onto them by the dominant white populations. In addition to African Americans (Ogbu 1987b), other castelike minority groups that have been studied and who academically perform below the norms of the majority population include: Koyukon Athabascans of the Alaskan interior (Scollon and Scollon 1981), native American Utes (Kramer 1991), West Indians in Great Britain (Tomlinson 1983, 1989), Crucians in St. Croix (Gibson 1991), Turkish "guest workers" in West Germany, Finnish students in Sweden (Castles 1984, Paulston in Gibson 1993, Skutnabb-Kangas 1981), Maoris in New Zealand (Penfold in Ogbu 1993), Koreans in Japan (Lee 1991), and formerly Burakumin in Japan (Shimahara 1991).

The academic orientation of many new immigrants appears to be the opposite of castelike minorities. While all immigrant school children confront problems of adjustment, those most likely to succeed are first-generation immigrants. Frequently, they have been in their newly adopted country long enough to learn the language well, but they maintain a cultural orientation that conceives of education as a primary pathway to success. Matute-Bianchi (1986) discovered that Mexican immigrants perform much better than ethnic Mexican Americans (also see Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco 1995). Similarly, Central American students were found to succeed in spite of tremendous personal and family traumas in their home countries (Suárez-Orozco 1987a, 1989a, 1989b). Gibson (1989) determined that immigrant Sikh school children face tremendous discrimination, but those who identify with their cultural background do better academically. Indochinese school children succeed in school precisely because their parents pass on cultural values that encourage achievement (Caplan et al, 1989 and 1992; Gold 1992). And, Portes and Rumbaut (1993), determined that in San Diego, California and Miami, Florida those students who immigrated more recently tend to have higher GPAs than those born in the United States. East Asians and Asian Indians in Britain (Ogbu 1978, Tomlinson 1989, Gibson 1993), Polynesians in New Zealand (Penfold in Ogbu 1993), "down islanders" in St. Croix (Gibson 1993), and Turks and Finns in Australia (Inglis and Manderson 1991, Troike in Gibson 1993) all academically achieve higher than comparable native minorities.

Nevertheless, not all minority groups are alike. Cubans and Mexicans in the U.S. may both be Hispanic/Latino, but pre-1980 Cuban immigrants came from higher class backgrounds than most Mexican immigrants and they appear to succeed more academically (Portes and Bach 1984, Portes and Rumbaut 1993, Suárez-Orozco 1987d, Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco 1994). Korean immigrants to the U.S. come from a higher socioeconomic class than Koreans in Japan and similarly perform better academically(Kim 1987). Similarly, Cubans and Haitians both have migrated to and settled in Miami. The federal and local governments, however, have received them dramatically differently, conferring many benefits on Cubans that are withheld from Haitians (Portes and Stepick 1993).

For immigrant adolescents who look like native-born "castelike" minorities, i.e., "black" and "brown" immigrants, the tension between maintaining an immigrant cultural orientation with an associated positive academic orientation and assimilating to a native-born minority adversarial academic orientation can be difficult and perplexing. Bryce-LaPorte (1994), Foner (1985, 1987), Kasinitz (1992), Portes and Stepick (1993), Waters (1994) and Woldemikael (1989) all find Black immigrants experience conflict over identifying with their native culture versus that of African Americans.

Numerous researchers warn that categorizing students into castelike, immigrant, or majority American does not fully explain individuals’ academic orientations. Ogbu and Matute-Bianchi caution strongly against identifying individuals in broad cultural terms, for fear of restricting expectations of academic performance to a generalized analytical category (1986:131; emphasis in original). Trueba (1989:30) notes these taxonomies do not allow sufficiently for either individual or collective change in status, and therefore tend to stereotype entire ethnic groups (see also D'Amato 1993, Gallimore 1989, Jacob and Jordan 1993). Some African American students manage to maintain a positive academic orientation in spite of their castelike status and strong peer pressure to embrace an adversarial orientation. One study found that successful African American students had become "raceless" in their self-identity through the development of strategies that avoided being identified as either a "traitor" to their African American peers or conversely as a member of the Black underclass (Fordham 1988).

By concentrating on the context of minority groups' incorporation into the broader society, whether they are castelike or immigrants, previous research has established a foundation for understanding the academic orientations of minorities. However, we do not adequately understand the causes of variation either between or within minority groups. Why do some immigrant groups tend to adopt a more positive academic orientation and achieve greater human capital than others? Why do some individuals within a particular group maintain a positive academic orientation, while others do not? This research attempts to answer these two fundamental questions.

Academic Achievement and Academic Orientation

Academic achievement reflects actual accomplishments, while academic orientation reflects aspirations and effort. It is possible that students who perceive education as important when they enter school do not achieve for a variety of reasons, such as peer pressure that devalues education or cultural incongruities (Trueba, Jacobs and Kirton 1990), i.e. the failure of the school as an institution to adequately address their peculiar needs and problems. Students may try to excel but fail because of language difficulties or lack of experience with formal education. We expect that a positive academic orientation is critical, but not always sufficient for academic achievement.

Different groups tend to have different cultural orientations. While many immigrants live in the same neighborhoods as castelike minorities, they view education as worthwhile because they maintain a dual frame of reference (Ogbu 1991; Suárez-Orozco 1989a, 1989b, 1991). Rather than emphasizing the prejudice and discrimination they encounter, they compare the opportunities in the U.S. to the less developed economies in their homelands. The immigrants interpret economic, political and social barriers as temporary problems that they will overcome with hard work and education (Ogbu 1991:10). While maintaining an immigrant cultural orientation can be interpreted as resistance to assimilation, it appears to promote the attainment of human capital (Light 1972, Hurh and Kim 1984, Waldinger 1989, Portes and Zhou 1992, Zhou 1992).

Adolescent peers often recognize and treat others according to a child’s cultural orientation. For native and immigrant minorities in the U.S., constructing a cultural orientation and associated identity typically entails conflict. Adolescents commonly oppose their parents and other adults. They may clash with mainstream American society in the schools or on the streets. Native minority and immigrant adolescents may also battle over cultural orientation. Native minorities, for example, may claim immigrants are ignorant of American ways, while immigrant adolescents assert that native minorities do not appreciate the educational and economic opportunities in the U.S. Academic orientation is embedded in this larger contest over cultural orientation and individual identity. One of the outcomes of this contest is cultural capital, the aspects of cultural orientation that contribute to or obstruct the attainment of education and human capital.

For our purposes, we conceive of adolescents’ academic and associated cultural orientation as a meaning system that stipulates goals (D'Andrade 1984:97-8), a loose consensus about values and norms reflected in such outwardly obvious and sometimes symbolic areas as language use and dress. Frequently more internalized or less self-conscious are values and attitudes toward such things as education, authority, the broader society, and one’s co-ethnic group. Rather than reflecting discrete social groups, academic orientations express cultural conceptions of academic achievement and the formal educational system. Indeed, most students are likely to identify fully with neither the positive nor adversarial relationship (Eisenhart and Graue 1993, Eckert 1989). Similarly, academic orientations vary within minority groups. Clearly, not all African Americans assert an adversarial academic orientation, nor do all immigrants claim a positive one.

Our goal is to determine the most important factors affecting the acquisition and maintenance of cultural capital, cultural orientation and associated academic orientation. We follow others in conceiving of these cultural factors as embedded in a cultural ecological process (Dehyle 1987; Delgado-Gaitan and Trueba 1991; Gibson 1987; Suárez-Orozco 1987a, 1987b, 1989a; DeVos and Suárez-Orozco 1990; Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco 1994; Trueba 1987a; Trueba, Spindler and Spindler 1989; Trueba, Jacobs and Kirton 1994:4).

The project has three components: 1. through intensive participant observation in the schools, households, and community we examine the impact of social capital on academic orientation; 2. through intensive interviewing of school administrators, teachers, and parents, along with our participant observation, we address the effects of school policies and practices; and 3. by linking our qualitative data to quantitative data, we incorporate the influences of contextual variables and individual characteristics. Figure I provides a schematic summary of these categories. We caution that in real life the particular variables on which we intend to focus overlap and do not always easily fit into the general categories we have constructed for discussion purposes.
 

Component I: Social Capital

We emphasize social capital because we believe it plays a critical role in the development of cultural and academic orientations and that they have been understudied. For immigrants and some native-born minorities, ties with one’s co-ethnic group can provide social and cultural resources, what some have labeled social capital (Coleman 1988, Portes 1995, ), that assist one’s adaptation. We specifically examine family, community organizations, peer relations, inter-group relations, and gender.

Family

For most people, family ties are the primary vehicle for transmitting cultural orientation and ultimately self-identity from one generation to the next. Immigrant families imbue their children with a positive academic orientation by holding children responsible for academic achievement (Gibson 1991:372, Inglis and Manderson 1991:101, Ogbu 1987a, 1987b, 1991:29). In both the U.S. and Europe, minority commitment to family has been interpreted as promoting educational success (Delgado-Gaitan 1989; Delgado Gaitan 1993; Delgado-Gaitan and Trueba 1991; Suárez-Orozco 1987a, 1987b, 1987c, 1987d, 1989; Valenzuela and Dornbusch 1994). For some, success accrues to families more than to the individuals within them. Among Ute Native Americans success rests upon a family’s standing within the community (Kramer 1991:298), while immigrant Chinese families' standing depends significantly upon their children's academic achievements (Zhou 1994).

All families possess social capital. Nee and Sanders (1994) and others (inter alia Borjas 1990, Portes and Zhou 1992, Zhou 1992, Fernandez-Kelly and Garcia 1990) assert that among many immigrant families social capital within families produces high rates of business entrepreneurship. Fernandez-Kelly (1995) argues that African American families have social capital embedded in tight social networks, but they have few resources to share through these networks. There has been little empirical work, however, relating family conditions to children's academic orientations (Delgado-Gaitan 1993, Cochran and Woolever 1983).

Outside the school setting we have spent significant time in individual households exploring the family's influence on students' academic orientations. Among the factors that mediate the transmission of cultural and academic orientation are the family's organization and its sense of coherence and hardiness (Lewis and Looney 1984 in McCubbin et al 1995:20). Family hardiness specifically refers to the internal strengths and sense of durability of the family unit. It is characterized by a sense of control over both the boons and hardships of life (McCubbin 1989 in McCubbin, et al 1995:20).

We examine family’s resources and coping strategies, i.e., what the family has and what the family does. The goal is to compose a profile of each family’s convictions and values that serve as a framework through which family experiences are interpreted (Martin and Halverson 1981, Segal 1988, McCubbin, et al 1993 in McCubbin et al 1995:22). We examine the role of family structure—the impacts on academic orientation of nuclear, extended, or single-parent families. Intact nuclear families are defined as those in which both mother and father have been resident for most of the child's life. We say "most" because immigration frequently sunders families that may or may not reunite later. The impact of having stepparents is also examined, since many immigrant and native-born families include stepparents. Extended families we define as including minor children, unmarried grown children, married children, grandchildren, and collateral and fictive kin. We expect that denser social ties, i.e., the closer family members live to each other and the more social interaction among them, will more likely imbue the child with the family's cultural framework. We also hypothesize that students are more likely to have a positive academic orientation if family members participate in school activities (e.g., parent organizations, parent conferences, attend sports or drama events) (Phelan, Davidson and Yu 1993:83).

Community Organizations

The community beyond the family can reinforce a cultural orientation (Ogbu 1991:29). The British Sikh community in Great Britain, for example, mitigated sufficiently against peer pressure demeaning academic achievement to further academic diligence amongst Sikh youth (Gibson 1991:80). Community organizations in New York’s Chinatown have successfully steered many youth away from gangs and encouraged a positive academic orientation (Zhou 1994). In other native and immigrant minority communities churches often play this role. Over 60 percent of Haitians in Miami, for example, attend church at least once a week (Stepick and Portes 1986) and the Haitian Catholic Center is the single most important community institution in Little Haiti (Stepick 1992a).

There are also other community and political organizations which though less likely to directly integrate youth, may have an indirect effect on them through their parents’ and other community members' participation. Based upon research among Chinese immigrants in New York, Zhou (1994) argues that communities with multiple, overlapping strands of social networks, such as are likely to exist in immigrant communities, provide informal enforcement and effective social control. If these dense ties do exist and they are oriented toward the youth, then we expect that community will advance positive academic orientations by honoring those who achieve academic success and sanctioning those who, for example, become involved in the juvenile justice system.

Peer and Inter-Group Relations

Peer relations are commonly perceived to be of paramount influence on adolescents (e.g., Valerde 1987). They can either support a positive academic orientation (Yu in Ogbu 1991:29; Trueba 1987b) or an adversarial one (Birman and Natriello 1978, Eckert 1989, Everhart 1983, Fordham 1988, Gibson 1991, Sedlack et. al. 1986, Suárez Orozco and Suárez Orozco 1993, Willis 1981). New immigrants who have just arrived are those most likely to experience prejudice and discrimination from peers (Gibson 1989, Stepick et al 1991). Simultaneously, they are also most closely tied to the immigrant cultural orientation.

Research on the educational experiences of immigrants generally concentrates on their relationship to the mainstream American society and culture. As new immigrants, however, increasingly concentrate in native minority neighborhoods, interaction among different ethnic groups becomes both more frequent and more important. This is especially the case among children who associate daily in the school setting. Portes and Zhou (1993), for example, hypothesize that the presence of a native-born minority in an inner city influences immigrants who live in the same neighborhoods or nearby to develop a negative academic orientation. In Great Britain, for example, white working class youth and their negative academic orientation influence immigrant Sikh adolescents (Gibson 1991:80). Similarly, in the U.S., West Indians frequently live in neighborhoods and attend school with African Americans (Bryce-Laporte 1993, Fordham 1988, Portes and Stepick 1993). The majority population may come to view these black newcomers as similar to native-born African Americans and extend their prejudices against the immigrants. In response, immigrant adolescents may assimilate to the native minority's adversarial academic orientation, rather than maintain an immigrant positive academic orientation. Our preliminary research (Stepick and Dutton Stepick 1994; Stepick et. al. 1991) similarly suggests that inter-group relations are important. Haitians are undoubtedly affected by living in the same community and attending the same schools as African-Americans. Previous research also suggests that inter-ethnic conflict is less likely in rural areas (Bach 1993; Stull, Broadway, and Erickson 1992).

We examine both mainstream–minority interactions along with native minority– immigrant minority interactions. Residence in a neighborhood and attending schools dominated by native minorities may influence immigrant minorities to adopt the cultural and academic orientations of the native minority. These interactions are likely to occur both inside and outside the school setting. The questions for our research are: with whom does an individual spend most of his or her time? In what contexts? What community and cultural orientation do the reference groups represent? How do they develop, express, explain and rationalize their attitudes toward education? Are there examples of neighborhood-based peers being supportive of academic objectives? If so, can this neighborhood peer support successfully counter a school peer group that has a negative orientation? Or perhaps, such discontinuities between neighborhood and school influences may only serve to further discourage adolescents who may already be experiencing serious cultural and linguistic stresses.

Gender

Girls receive less attention from teachers and often are not encouraged to pursue higher level mathematics and science courses (AAUW 1992). African American girls have higher self-esteem than African American boys, while Hispanic/Latina girls have lower self-esteem than anyone else (Orenstein 1993). White working-class females are likely to form orientations that stress their nonconformity and belittle the importance of academic achievement (Griffin 1985, Wulff 1988, Lesko 1988). Adults may present gender roles that adolescents consider outdated, irrelevant, and even threatening, provoking inter-generational conflict (Heath and McLaughlin 1993:32). Little research, however, has explored how immigrants may respond differently to gender stereotypes and expectations.

We address whether immigrant boys and girls are subjected to the same forces and if they respond in the same way as native-born minorities. We hypothesize that because of the positive context of Cubans in Miami, Cuban females will not have the same low self esteem reported for other Hispanic/Latina females (AAUW 1992). In immigrant households, parental expectations, especially concerning, for example, dating or sexual behavior for girls, are likely to restrict and create conflict for females. We expect that immigrant females will experience greater conflict than either female native minorities or male immigrants over appropriate gender roles and behavior. We hypothesize that females will respond in either of two ways: those doing well academically are more likely to have high self-esteem and maintain a positive academic orientation. On the other hand, those doing poorly academically are likely to develop both an adversarial academic orientation and to reject the values of their parents.

In summary, addressing the impact of social capital on academic orientation is the cornerstone of this project. The Social Capital component of this project builds upon and goes beyond the previous research that emphasizes contextual and individual variables. Examining the determinants of variation in academic orientation within groups should allow us to go beyond general characterizations of minorities that commonly result in stereotypes. Understanding Social Capital together with School Policies and Practices of Component II and Contextual and Individual Variables of Component III provide a comprehensive analysis of the determinants of academic orientation among minorities.

Component II: School Policies and Practices

Schools have traditionally played a strong role in the assimilation of previous immigrant groups into American society (Tyack 1974). While teachers and administrators optimistically hope to educate and integrate these young people into American society, their efforts are largely ad hoc, not based upon firm understanding or consistent policies (McDonnell and Hill 1993:iii). Precisely because schools represent the strongest influence to the socialization of new immigrants, educational policies and practices must be based on a better understanding of the differing cultural and academic orientations of its diverse students. Outside the family, schools are the most intensive, prolonged and programmatically continuous social institution for adolescents, almost all of whom spend six to seven hours a day, nine months a year in schools. Schools not only provide formal learning, but for many adolescents what they encounter during the school day structures their peer relations, leisure activities and extracurricular learning (National Commission on Children 1991).

Over the last two decades, scholars have explored the nature and intensity of school variables that have an impact on student achievement (Goodlad 1984, Rutter 1983, Edmonds 1979 and Murnane 1983), but there has been little parallel research relating school variables to academic orientation and even less examination of the specific differences between native minority and immigrant populations. To capture the scope of how schooling might influence the development of academic orientation, we distinguish three areas: school-community relationships; the institutional characteristics of the school and the policies and programs offered in the schools.

School-Community Relationships

Research on school-community relations increasingly stresses the importance of continuities or discontinuities between a student's neighborhood geography and ethnic culture and those of the school (Coleman and Hoffer 1987, Crowson 1992, Epstein 1988). School catchment areas, particularly in school districts that have large schools such as Miami-Dade County, may vary considerably in ethnicity patterns from the neighborhood where a student lives (Herrington 1993). We know little about the clash of attitudes and values between school culture and cultures of different immigrant and ethnic minority communities.

Since 1988, Miami-Dade County Public Schools (MDCPS) have been engaged in a school-based management program that has been nationally recognized as one of the most promising school restructuring efforts in the country. This program, joined later by the state of Florida Blueprint 2000 legislation, established advisory councils in each school whose membership is to include educators, parents and representative members of the community. The council is responsible for needs assessments, school improvement plans and measuring progress over time of the attainment of the state's educational goals (similar in design and in reach to the national education goals). This effort to decentralize control and make schools more responsive to the communities they serve is still in the early stages of implementation and though formative evaluations and initial analyses have been positive (Cistone & Herrington, forthcoming; Phillips, 1993) much of the school-level dynamics remains unknown.

This project can address many questions relevant to these efforts at forging better ties between neighborhoods and schools, such as: Do school-based decision-making groups typically include and listen to persons from the immigrant groups? Do the immigrant or native-born minorities share the same concerns over the schools? This project can address the issues of community-school consonance from two perspectives — both within and outside the schools — since our researchers are in both the schools and in the community. More important, it will help determine if the efforts of the schools in reaching out to the communities make any difference in students' academic orientations.

School Characteristics

Another set of possible explanatory variables for differences in academic orientation are within-school characteristics, such as school size, staff and student ethnicity, student and staff turnover, and grade span as well as more subjective variables such as school leadership, professional educator norms regarding the relationship between ethnicity and student performance, and parental involvement policies. These potentially powerful variables have been widely identified conceptually, although isolating their individual, interactive and cumulative effects has remained elusive (Chubb and Moe 1990, Rutter, et al, Brookover et al 1979, Sizer 1984, Powell, Farrar and Cohen 1985).

Educational Policies and Practices

Finally, we investigate educational policies and practices and their impact on attitudes toward learning and academic orientation. Educational policy and programs are somewhat uniform throughout the school district and thus could affect all students equally. But we suspect that in practice implementing these policies varies according to local conditions, including the administrators and teachers in particular schools.

MDCPS has many programs designed specifically for native-born and immigrant minorities. All Limited English Proficient (LEP) students receive home language and academic placement test services, and English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) or native language instruction in basic subject areas. Students ten years old or older with limited or no prior school experience may be eligible to take part in Project New Beginning that attempts to bring them up to grade level using native speakers and culturally sensitive materials. The federally-funded Chapter I programs, whose eligibility is based upon income, provide small group instruction, special tutoring, and peer counseling, along with non-academic support services such as medical and dental care and transportation. MDCPS also has special programs for conflict resolution, peer mediation, dropout prevention, teenage parent programs, substance abuse, and separate alternative schools for those students in special academic, personal or disciplinary circumstances. Critical questions include: Does mainstreaming accelerate assimilation toward mainstream American culture or does it inhibit assimilation because the student does not yet have the language and other skills to work effectively? In what ways do the effects of either mainstreaming or conversely special programs depend upon the larger social context – the ethnicity of the student body, teachers, staff and community?

We also look at more general school-wide practices regarding curriculum, instruction and assessment. Policies regarding curriculum selection, tracking and assessment vary considerably by schools in practice and may have very deleterious impacts on minority students (Oakes 1985, Darling-Hammond 1990). Similarly, school policy regarding student conduct including student discipline, suspension and expulsion policies and parental notification also vary considerably in practice from school to school (Emmer and Aussiker 1989).

A last set of policies to examine are school-based or school-linked non-educational services. These may include health clinics, family and parenting centers, campus-based outreach offices of social service agencies, child care, and intergenerational literacy programs. Such programs represent a recent but growing programmatic strategy to provide access to public health and social services programs through the local system of schools. As far as they overlap with community ethnic organizations, they may reinforce immigrant or native-born minority values and orientations. But, if school based or linked, they may more likely reflect mainstream American values and/or stereotypes which could conflict with those of the immigrant or native-born minority community.

In summary, this component focuses on School Policies and Practices directly relevant to minority students' academic orientation. MDCPS has many programs for native and immigrant minority students, yet no one knows the effects these programs have on students' academic orientation. Do ESOL and LEP classes ease the transition for immigrant minorities into mainstream classes or do they stigmatize and promote an adversarial academic orientation? Do multicultural programs produce positive academic orientations or do students view them as irrelevant? Do school advisory councils reflect the community's diversity? Does academic placement in lower tracks discourage a positive academic orientation? Our research in this area is not designed to provide a thorough evaluation of these programs. Rather, we will focus on the students' responses to these programs, i.e., the programs' impacts on students' academic orientation. By focusing on school policies and practices, a critical aspect of any school experience, we will have an important complement to our analyses of social capital of Component I and the linking of contextual variables and individual characteristics of Component III.

Component III: Linking Contextual Variables & Individual Characteristics

Previous research has emphasized and demonstrated the importance of contextual variables and individual characteristics in explaining academic orientation (e.g., Ogbu 1987a, Portes and Rumbaut 1990 and Portes and Zhou 1993). Component III links contextual and individual variables with the focus on social capital of Component I. For Component III we have administered to the students we study in Component I a survey previously used by Portes and Rumbaut for second generation immigrant children. This allows us to make two kinds of comparisons: 1. between the qualitative findings of Component I and the quantitative data that we administer to the same sample population; and 2.  between the quantitative data for our sample of native and immigrant students and Portes and Rumbaut's sample of 2,660 South Florida immigrant students.

Portes and Rumbaut's earlier survey of second generation immigrants in South Florida contains data on each student's nationality, sex, age, parental education, length of U.S. residence, knowledge of English, daily hours of homework, family help with school work, aspirations, standardized test scores and grade point average. It also allows quantification of many contextual variables emphasized in previous research, such as family's socioeconomic class (Bach 1986), urban, suburban, and rural environments (Bach 1993), neighborhood's and school's predominant race & ethnicity (Ogbu 1991, Portes and Zhou 1993), economic opportunities (Hill 1993), and interaction with authorities (Stepick and Dutton Stepick 1990, Stepick 1992).

Analyzing the class background of a student's family is one example of how we link the qualitative data of Component I with the quantitative data of Component III. We define class with respect to both conditions in the U.S. and, for immigrants, those in the home country. As Ogbu (1991) and Suárez-Orozco (1989a, 1989b) have shown immigrants have a dual frame of reference, that in the home country and that of their host country. Immigrants of a relatively lower socioeconomic class in the U.S. can be from a relatively higher social class in their home country. Recent Haitian refugee adults in Miami, for example, with an average of about six years of education have a low educational attainment by U.S. standards, but are significantly above the average in Haiti (Stepick and Portes 1986). For immigrants, the effects of class on academic orientation, we believe, will be mediated by their comparison of their experiences and aspirations in both the U.S. and their homeland. Component III reflects this dual frame of reference by measuring an individual's class background in two separate ways. First in the standard sociological fashion of the U.S. SES scale, and second as a measure that is relative to what the individual's family had or would have in their home country. By observing how families conceive and communicate to their children their expectations, experiences, and the meanings of class, we can compare qualitative and quantitative definitions of social class. Most significantly, we explore the process by which these expectations, experiences, and meanings might affect the children's academic orientations.

In summary, we propose a project of three coordinated parts. Component I examines how social capital affects academic orientation. Component II explores those formal aspects of the school setting directed at and most likely to affect a minority students' academic orientation. Through Component III, we link individual level data from surveys to Components' I and II's analyses of the processes that form academic orientation.

Miami-Dade County, Florida and Miami-Dade County Public Schools

This project has been carried out in four communities in Miami-Dade County, Florida, location of Miami-Dade County Public Schools (MDCPS), the fourth largest school district in the nation. The specific configuration of Miami-Dade's minority groups and their experiences helps us understand which particular factors are most important in affecting adolescent adapation. Miami-Dade County has both Hispanic/Latino and Black immigrants. It has poor, middle class, and even elite immigrants. And, it has immigrants and native-born minorities in inner city, suburban, and rural neighborhoods. The profiles of the different communities offer comparison on several dimensions including different combinations of ethnic groups, different schools and feeder patterns, different socio-economic microcosms and different community and neighborhood cultural environments , physical conditions and community organizations.

The target population for this project consists of adolescents from six of Miami-Dade County’s principal native-born and immigrant minorities - African American, Cuban, Nicaraguan, Mexican, Haitian, and other Caribbean Blacks. We have selected adolescents because adolescence is a critical turning point for youth, especially in the development and expression of an academic orientation (Erickson 1950, Suárez Orozco and Suárez Orozco 1993, 1994). For many youth, early adolescence offers opportunities to choose a path toward a productive and fulfilling life.

At 45 percent, Miami-Dade County has the highest percentage of foreign-born residents of any major U.S. city. Of nearly 300,000 total public school students, over 100 different national origins are represented. MDCPS officials calculate that more than one-half of MDCPS students speak a language other than English at home. Over 75,000, more than 25 percent of the total student body, are foreign-born. Many community members suggest that even these are underestimates as first and second generation immigrants are frequently reluctant to acknowledge their immigrant origins or are simply not counted as immigrants.

Because of the presence of so many different minorities, Miami-Dade County is a strategic research site (Merton 1987) for understanding not only the academic orientation of its own students, but also those in other areas of the U.S. As in Miami-Dade County, the latest wave of immigration since the mid-1960s has already affected most major urban areas in the U.S. It is now beginning to filter to smaller cities and towns, too. What Miami-Dade County now confronts, either already or soon will challenge other cities.

Since the primary focus of this research is academic orientation, the population is high school-age and attending school. Nevertheless, because we hypothesize that the environment beyond the school is critically important, particularly that of peers, we do not limit our population or sample solely to those enrolled in school. We also follow dropouts, those in detention and high risk programs and those who may have completed schooling but who remain in contact with and influential to those still in school.

We also include in our population both first and second generation immigrants, that is those born in a foreign-country and those born in the U.S. to at least one foreign-born parent. We include second generation immigrants for reasons similar to those for including native-born minorities, viz. the increased likelihood of an adversarial academic orientation (Portes and Zhou 1993).

As in most U.S. large school districts, MDCPS has a majority minority population, i.e., more than half the students are from native or immigrant minority groups. Nearly 50 percent of MDCPS students are Hispanic/Latino and 34 percent are Black. Cubans are Miami's dominant immigrant minority. After Bahamians at the turn of the century, they were the first significant foreign immigrant group in the area beginning in the early 1960s, and are influential in the community's economic and political realm. In 1994, MDCPS counted nearly 12,000 Cuban-born students. Many more students, however, are second generation Cubans, more properly labeled Cuban Americans and are excluded from MDCPS calculations of Cubans. Nicaraguans whose numbers increased most during the late 1980s, are the second largest Hispanic/Latino immigrant group with over 100,000 living in Miami-Dade County. MDCPS also has more foreign-born Nicaraguan students (15,598 in 1992-93) than any other foreign-born nationality. Haitians receive the most national publicity because of their arrivals on boats and their home country's enduring political turmoil. Their overall number in Miami-Dade County rivals that of Nicaraguans, but because many are undocumented aliens (Stepick and Dutton Stepick 1992) most agree that they are severely undercounted both in the U.S. Census and MDCPS student figures which estimated 7,023 Haitian students in 1992-3. Mexicans are numerically the most important immigrant group nationally, concentrating primarily in the southwestern U.S. Miami-Dade County's Mexican community is relatively small, with 1,857 foreign-born Mexicans counted in MDCPS in 1993. Nevertheless, the Mexican student population is important because it is concentrated in one area that also has significant populations of both African Americans and Haitians. Other Caribbean Blacks include many Bahamians, Jamaicans, Trinidadians and others from the English-speaking West Indies, as well as some Dominicans and other non-English speakers. We primarily concentrate on these six groups because we do not want to spread our efforts too thinly and these groups reflect the most important groups locally and nationally.

Four Neighborhoods

No single neighborhood or school incorporates all these groups. Rather, because of informal residential segregation, Miami-Dade’s most important immigrant and ethnic groups are spread throughout the county. We have selected four geographic localities that together both contain these groups and contrast them on important dimensions. Moreover, they include mixes of minorities that allow us to concentrate on interactions and influences among minority groups. Table 1 provides a brief demographic summary of each neighborhood.

Liberty City, which contains the largest African American concentration in Miami-Dade County, is an inner-city area that contains some of Miami's poorest and most racially segregated neighborhoods. It borders Little Haiti which has the largest Haitian concentration. Nearly 85 percent of the population is Black with only 13 percent Hispanic/Latino, most recently arrived immigrants from Central America and the Dominican Republic. While a higher percentage of the population has completed ninth grade than in the rural community of Homestead, Liberty City-Little Haiti has the highest poverty rate by far of the three communities in our study — nearly 44 percent.

North Miami is an older suburban neighborhood to the east of Liberty City and to the north of Little Haiti. Through the 1970s it was overwhelmingly white, but beginning in the early 1980s Blacks, both American and Caribbean, along with Hispanics/Latinos increasingly settled in the area. This community has a larger middle class than Liberty City or Little Haiti and is the desired destination of many Haitians who have acquired the economic capital to move out of Little Haiti. Of the four neighborhoods, it has the lowest percentage of adults with less than a ninth grade education and nearly the lowest percentage of households below the poverty line. It also has a mix of both Blacks and Hispanics/Latinos along with both natives and immigrants. Preliminary research indicates that the minority youth tend to have positive academic orientations. Thus, the contrast between North Miami and Liberty City-Little Haiti can be especially instructive in determining the causes of variation in academic orientation within a native or immigrant minority group.

Sweetwater and Westchester, adjacent to each other in western Miami-Dade County, are primarily working class Hispanic/Latino communities, although Westchester has a considerable middle class Hispanic/Latino, especially Cuban, community. It is also an area where one can shop, socialize and seemingly conduct all of one's daily affairs exclusively in Spanish. Sweetwater is a primary Nicaraguan area of settlement in Miami, although it also contains many other Hispanics/Latinos, primarily Cubans. Over 85 percent of the community is Hispanic/Latino and nearly two-thirds were foreign-born. About one-fourth of the population has completed only ninth grade or less and just under 15 percent of the households are below the poverty line.

Homestead and adjacent Florida City is a semi-rural, ethnically diverse area distinctly separated from metropolitan Miami. Homestead-Florida City is the core of Miami-Dade County's important winter vegetable and tropical fruit industry. It is home to one of Miami-Dade County's highest proportions of residents born in the U.S., over 85 percent. In 1992 Hurricane Andrew also severely and negatively affected the economy and local housing stock. Nearly 30 percent of this population is Black, and 33 percent are Hispanic/Latino. The Homestead Police estimate that more than 50 percent of the Black population is of Haitian descent. It has a high proportion, over 45 percent, who have a ninth grade or less education and nearly 30 percent of the households are below the poverty line.
 

TABLE 1 COMMUNITY DEMOGRAPHICS
	Liberty City -Little Haiti	North Miami	Sweetwater- Westchester	Homestead - Florida City
Black	84.4%	32.1%	0.44%	29.0%
Hispanic/Latino	13.3%	23.8%	85.6%	33.1%
Foreign-Born	33.8%	37.1%	63.6%	13.4%
Less than 9th Grade Education	29.5%	11.2%	25.2%	45.3%
Below Poverty	43.8%	15.4%	14.8%	29.4%

 

METHODOLOGY

Samples

Social Capital: Component I

We draw our sample from the population of native-born minority and immigrant adolescents in four high schools, each serving one of our communities, Liberty City-Little Haiti, Sweetwater-Westchester, North Miami, and Homestead-Florida City. Because our methodology emphasizes qualitative, direct observation of natural settings, we have constructed a purposive sample. Deficiencies in the population count from both the U.S. Census and MDCPS statistics make it impossible to know how or if a representative sample can be obtained. Moreover, our research addresses complex qualitative issues in a natural setting in which many variables interact. Therefore, we have chosen a sampling procedure that permits control of the most important variables.

We sought students in each neighborhood and from each native-born or immigrant minority who exhibit the range from positive to adversarial academic orientations. Thus, we have three dimensions for our sample: 1. neighborhood of residence and school, 2. native-born versus immigrant minority status, and 3. academic orientation.

Anthropological fieldwork always contains a tension between in-depth concentration and representativeness. We resolved this tension by having a relatively large number of fieldworkers. For each native-born or immigrant minority group in each neighborhood, we have a subsample cohort thirty adolescents in our sample. Because we hypothesize gender to be a critical variable, we also sought an equal division of females and males for each subsample cohort of thirty. Table 2 details the sub-samples by neighborhoods and minority groups. Although we aimed to include as large a sample as possible, the key concern in sample selection was not size or representativeness of the overall population. Most important was the sample's reflection of the key variables of the research design and its ability to provide rich data relevant to our theoretical framework.
 

TABLE 2 Neighborhoods, Minority Groups & Research Assistants
	Little Haiti Liberty City	Westchester Sweetwater	North Miami	Homestead
African Americans	n=30 1 RA		n=30 1 RA	n=30 1 RA
Haitians	n=30 1 RA		n=30 1 RA	n=30 1 RA
Other Caribbean Blacks			n=30 1 RA
Nicaraguans		n=30 1 RA
Cubans		n=30 1 RA
Mexicans				n=30  1 RA
TOTALS: n=270, RAs=9. Each n of 30 will be composed of 15 youth with a positive academic orientation and 15 with an adversarial academic orientation. Within each sub-sample there will also be roughly equal numbers of boys and girls.

 

School Policies and Practices: Component II

For Component II, we sampled administrators, teachers, students, and family members from the schools in the four neighborhoods, along with district level administrators who oversee and interpret policy to the schools in these neighborhoods.

Contextual Variables & Individual Characteristics: Component III

This component has two sub-samples. First, we have the survey data already collected by Portes and Rumbaut in two of the neighborhoods of this study, Liberty City-Little Haiti and Sweetwater-Westchester. Second, we have administered the same questionnaire to all the youth in our sample for Component I.

Data Collection

Component I: Social Capital

All groups and most individuals within them can articulate norms and expectations, but there is frequently a considerable inconsistency between normative statements and actual behavior. To determine if and how cultural orientations affect behavior, we must directly observe students in multiple settings — in the school environment, with family and among peers, teachers, administrators and community members. The qualitative approach of this component allows us to distinguish between orientation and achievement. Constructing and maintaining an academic orientation is a complex and sometimes shifting process that also requires us to observe students over a considerable length of time. Thus, we have employed not only intensive participant observation, but also a longitudinal approach of three years of fieldwork plus the establishment of a tracking mechanism to follow the students after the study through their expected graduation date from high school.

Because each minority group is ethnically different and because of the long-term intensity of careful participant observation, we believed it necessary to have a Research Assistant (RA) to work with each minority group at each research site. To obtain an adequate comparison among groups to test our hypotheses, we have used 11 RAs, one for each group in each school plus one who has focused on school policy issues. Moreover, our experience with the Ford Foundation Changing Relations Project, in which we had ten RAs and four co-investigators, has taught us how to coordinate a large anthropology project (Bach 1993; Lamphere 1992; Lamphere, Stepick, and Grenier 1994; Stepick et al 1991).

Once the RAs identified individual minority adolescents for our sample, we followed all the regulations for parental permission required by MDCPS designed to protect students and their families. As in previous work (Stepick, et. al. 1991; Stepick and Dutton Stepick 1994), teachers have permitted RAs to integrate themselves into the school by volunteering as teacher's aides. This has allowed them to be participant observers in the school setting in different classrooms, at extracurricular student activities and on the school grounds where extensive informal and unsupervised peer interaction occurs. As in our previous research, RAs with cooperative teachers also successfully conducted open-ended classroom discussions on matters relevant to the research without being disruptive to regular classroom learning activities.

The RAs also integrated themselves into the students' off-campus community with the goal of coming to know individuals and their families. We have also organized focus groups conducted by the RA and a co-investigator. The focus groups followed a standard protocol on themes relevant to the research. The RA or co-investigator led the discussion while other RAs served as observers. As with all interviews, the focus groups were tape-recorded and transcribed.

The RAs' fieldwork did not slacken during the summer months, when students are out of school and most likely to be interacting with peers, family, community organizations, and others in the neighborhood. During the summer, RAs "hungout" with the adolescents as much as possible. We also followed youth who dispersed into summer school, detention or other special programs, but with less intensity than in the school sites during the academic year.

The co-investigators' and RAs detailed research notes from participant observation, open-ended interviewing, and focus groups are the project's primary data. To ensure confidentiality of subjects and protect them from any potential harm, research assistants use pseudonyms in all their notes. Notes will be entered into IBM-compatible computers to be coded and analyzed using QSR-Nudist. Fieldnotes have also been reviewed weekly by the field research director and returned with comments and suggestions. To assure a maximum level of coordination and methodological consistency field experiences have been the topic of discussion and analysis by the full team at regular weekly meetings, and the PI was responsibile for maintaining theoretical cohesiveness throughout.

Component II: School Policies and Practices

Teachers, counselors, school and district administrators and school board members were interviewed on a one-to-one and small group basis by one co-investigator and a research assistant devoted particularly to the analysis of school policies and programs. This eleventh RA also did participant observation in each school’s main office, primarily with school counselors. In addition co-investigators have interviewed a wide range of service providers and church and community organization directors and staff concerning their perspectives and expectations of and experiences with youth and what influences them. Interviews have followed an open-ended semi-structured format and were conducted concurrent to the ethnographic field work with students. The interviews have incorporated insights or apparent trends gleaned from the ethnographic field work and reciprocally contribute to themes to be explored through participant observation by the RAs.

Component III: Contextual Variables & Individual Characteristics

The survey contains data on each student's nationality, sex, age, parental education, length of U.S. residence, knowledge of English, daily hours of homework, family help with school work, aspirations, standard test scores and grade point average. We have quantitative data from everyone in our own qualitative sample, plus quantitative data on a much larger sample. With the quantitative data, we can perform multiple regression analysis with aspirations, GPA, and standardized test scores as possible dependent variables. This linking provides insight into the processes of forming human capital and constructing an academic orientation. It also allows us to probe how representative our qualitative findings are of the broader population. As part of this component we will establish a mechanism to track the sample through their expected time of graduation or leaving school.

The IEI Working Papers that follow this one were written while RAs were still in the field and thus reflect preliminary findings. We hope the readers will contact individual authors or IEI with comments and suggestions. Still before us lies the challenge of linking all three components in a coherent, comprehensible theoretical framework.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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