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P R E F A C E On a June afternoon while meeting with twenty seniors in a transitional English class, I asked them about their four years at Southern California High School (SCHS).1 At first, they joked about the school’s yearbook; complained about student “drama”; and moaned about homework, mean counselors, and teachers. However, their carefree tone changed quickly when Albert Perez pounded his fist on his desk, glared at his classmates, and scolded, “Hey, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but we’ve been together all four years. It’s almost like this is the Mexican class.”2 Students initially responded to Albert’s outburst with awkward silence and laughter. Slowly, they began discussing why they were confined to a non–college preparatory classroom removed from their largely Asian American schoolmates. First, Priscilla Mendoza whispered, “It’s because of the Chinos.” While Priscilla blamed Asian Americans, other classmates blamed themselves. They rationalized, “We’re different.” “We might be slow readers. We don’t read as well.” “We like to party and have more fun than the honors students.” “We don’t like to work as hard. We’re lazy.” Shifting from individual explanations to school factors, Sam Ruiz interjected , “They’ve given up on us. They pay more attention to the honors students than to the students who are not college prep like us. They get all the awards and all the attention.” I first met Richard, Priscilla, Sam, and their classmates in June 2001 when I was finishing Becoming Neighbors in a Mexican American Community (Ochoa 2004). I had been interviewing adults on Mexican American–Mexican immigrant relationships and participating in a xii PR EFAC E movement to save bilingual education in my community. In that project, schools were a crucial site influencing attitudes, relationships, and group boundaries long after high school. I wanted to learn how today’s students were experiencing schools and how the practices of the past such as de jure segregation, curriculum tracking, and Americanization that I described in Becoming Neighbors were shaping current student dynamics. My initial visits to SCHS were just months before President George W. Bush signed into law the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in January 2002. This act reauthorized the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act that sought to improve education for poor and working-class students. At the core of NCLB is accountability through strict standards and standardized testing. As part of the neoliberal policies of the ReaganBush era, NCLB and now Barack Obama’s Race to the Top (RTTT) have dramatically influenced the discourses and practices within schools. The language of the achievement gap, accountability, and standards are used to justify the movement for structured curriculum and high-stakes testing where test scores are used to evaluate and make important determinations on students, schools, and teachers. In this age of assessment, test preparation and test results are all consuming—often overshadowing the unequal practices that plague schools. It is within this context that I visited several high schools in 2001, including SCHS. I selected SCHS because of my familiarity with it and the surrounding communities. Raised and living in the area, my ties are strong, and for over a decade, I worked with my brother, Enrique Ochoa, to organize a mentoring and scholarship program at a neighboring middle school that eventually continued at SCHS. Given my commitment to the area, I approached the principal to discuss the possibilities of conducting research. Immediately, he directed my attention to the experiences of Asian Americans and Latinas/os—highlighting the academic disparities at the school. At the time, high-profile media accounts had been praising Asian Americans as so-called model minorities, while Latinas/os were being positioned as less committed to education. I knew that there was much more to the story than these facile characterizations, so I began my research by sitting in on various classrooms and listening to students. Senior transitional English was one of the first classes that I attended. Before I entered the room, the principal explained that fewer than 5 percent of the over 40 percent of all Latina/o students at SCHS were in the honors and advanced placement courses. However, standing in front of the class, I realized that Latinas/os were not just underrepresented in the most prestigious courses; at 96 percent they were simultaneously overrepresented in this non–college preparatory class. Latino males, in [3.15.5.183] Project MUSE...

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