Educational Opportunity in an Urban American High School: A Cultural Analysis

Patrick James McQuillan

nov 1997 · State University of New York Press

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This five-year ethnographic study examines issues of educational opportunity at Russell High, a multiethnic school in the city of Eastown. Focusing on the beliefs and values of students, teachers, and administrators, this study reveals how prevailing cultural beliefs, the collective nature of the student population, and the structure of the school system worked in concert, albeit unintentionally, to foster inequality. To make such an argument, this study draws on American cultural conceptions of individualism and adolescence--exploring how these beliefs were manifested in classrooms, in the efforts of two reform initiatives, in a protest-turned-riot by African American students in spring 1969, in school assemblies, and in local media--and thereby reveals how and why Russell students experienced educational opportunity in similar ways, for similar reasons, and with similar outcomes. Beyond exploring the cultural taken-for-granted at Russell High, this study considers the implications of such understanding for promoting educational opportunity more equitably.

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Patrick James McQuillan is Assistant Professor in the School of Education, University of Colorado. His previous work includes Reform and Resistance in Schools and Classrooms: An Ethnographic View of the Coalition of Essential Schools.