JOURNAL OF EDUCATION FOR STUDENTS PLACED AT RISK, 6(1&2), Copyright (D
2001, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Guest Editors' Introduction:
When Diversity Works:
Bridging Families, Peers, Schools
and Communities at CREDE
Catherine Cooper
University of California, Santa Cruz
Department of Psychology and Department of Education
Patricia Gandara
University of California, Davis
Division of Education
In industrialized countries, students' pathways through school to work have been described as an
"academic pipeline." Democracies hold an ideal of access to educational opportunities by choice
and advancement by merit, but in reality, as students move through primary and secondary
school to college, the numbers of ethnic minority and low-income youth in the academic pipeline
shrink. The seven studies in this volume, all conducted through the Center for Research on
Education, Diversity, and Excellence (CREDE), address the academic pipeline problem by
focusing on three key themes: (a) involving all families in their children's schooling; (b)
identifying ways the academic pipeline can be kept open for diverse students; and (c) helping
students bridge their worlds of families, peers, schools, and communities.
The approaches found in these seven studies illuminate students' social worlds with multilevel,
developmental perspectives on students, their relationships, institutional settings, and cultural
communities. Rather than seeing diversity as a liability or deficit from the mainstream, this new
"cultural bridges" research reveals both resources and challenges by mapping the
factors-personal, relational, institutional, and cultural-that help students navigate across their
worlds and stay in the academic pipeline. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches are used
by these researchers, often in the same study. We envision this volume contributing to both
policy and practice in local, state, and national settings where concerns for making diversity
work are at the top of schools' and youth organizations' agendas.
In the articles by Adger and by Collignon, Men, and Tan, the authors map the terrain of
community-based organizations (CBOs) that work with diverse communities and elucidate how
one such organization serving Southeast Asian immigrants helps bridge mainstream and
immigrant cultural forms and structures. These articles add richly to a meager literature on
community-based organizations and their contributions as cultural brokers and critical support
systems. Adger surveyed 3 1 organizations and conducted site visits at 17 to provide descriptive
analyses of (a) the types of CBOs that partner with schools; (b) the nature of the partnerships that
are forged; (c) the kinds of work that they do; and (d) the factors that contribute to success and
failure in these relationships. Adger finds that relationships between partnerships and schools
vary from integrated to complementary. Partnerships ran alternative schools, full-service schools,
and programs complementing schools' academic programs. The work that partnerships do varies
across students' age and grade. At preschool through middle school, partnerships often focus on
parent and family involvement in children's education and provide social services to ensure
children are prepared for and supported through school by family and community. At the
secondary level, partnerships provide tutoring, school-to-work internships, and programs
promoting leadership skills and higher education goals; they also discourage pregnancy and
drugs that mitigate educational success for these students.
Collignon and her colleagues focus on Cambodian, Laotian, Hmong, and Vietnamese students
in Rhode Island schools. Students from these communities are at risk of educational failure
because of differences between the expectations of the schools and students' languages, cultural
practices, socioeconomic status, and other legacies of war in their families' homelands. The study
examines (a) factors in the multiple cultures-home, school and community-of Southeast Asian
students in Rhode Island which prevent or promote their academic achievement; and (b) features
of collaborations between community- and school-based programs, which impact school
achievement. The work of the CBO is based on a belief that, by working together, these entities
can provide value-added services to students and families in the target population. Their joint
activities broker understanding of effective educational practices across generations, languages,
and cultures. To focus on student achievement and benefits from these relationships, the project
initially sought data about Southeast Asian populations. Finding little, the project generated its
own, thereby building a foundation for both understanding and evaluating the community's needs
and the effectiveness of the organization in meeting those needs. To make transparent how such
an organization promotes its goals, the article describes a specific activity setting for studying
features of productive partnerships supporting student success: the Southeast Asian Summer
Academy of the Socio-Economic Development Center for Southeast Asians (SEDC) in the
Providence School District.
The articles by Azmitia and Cooper and by Gandara, Gutierrez, and O'Hara focus on European
American and Latino adolescents as they journey through adolescence in middle and high
schools. Both articles take a developmental perspective, analyzing students' attitudes,
relationships, and achievement over time. These articles trace how families, peers, communities,
and schools interact with these students to both support and impede their academic progress and
aspirations. Azmitia and Cooper put the question succinctly: Are peers good or bad for the
academic outcomes of Latino and European American youth? They find that the answer to this
question is that they are both-good and bad. Their critical contribution is in describing how peers
affect the academic trajectories of their fellow students and in suggesting what schools and
programs can do to tip the balance in favor of good. Azmitia and Cooper describe the increasing
solidarity that students in special academic programs come to feel with other students who have
shared the same experiences over time. Shared experiences and shared goals can provide the
basis for supportive and affirming peer relations that lead to successful postsecondary outcomes.
Gandara and her colleagues investigate the differences in the ways that Latino and European
American youth experience schooling, peers, and relationships with parents over the critical
identity-forming years of high school in a rural and an urban high school. The authors find that
the context of schooling-rural or urban-exerts a significant influence on the formation of
postsecondary aspirations, independent of ethnicity. Thus, on some dimensions, the fact that a
student is Latino or White is less important than that she goes to school in a rural environment.
Risks are also very different in these two environments. The urban environment offers all the
traditional risks that strike terror in the hearts of parents-drugs, alcohol, pressure for sexual
experimentation, and gang activity. But the somewhat more protected rural environment, in
which there are no anonymous students, offers its own kind of risks-ignorance of opportunity and
restricted visions of the "possible self." Ultimately, however, being a student of color adds
additional risks and limits academic opportunity. Gandara and her colleagues explore these risk
factors and describe ways students attempt to construct their academic identities through the eyes
of their peers, families, and communities.
The articles by Duran, Duran, Perry-Romero, and Sanchez and by Gonzalez, Andrade, Civil,
and Moll shift the focus from the school as the context of activity to the community. Each article
looks at structured activities in the community that have the potential to contribute, sometimes in
unexpected ways, to the academic competencies of Latino youth. Duran and his colleagues
describe a project centered on developing computer-based literacy and empowerment for
low-income Latino parents and their school children. Small groups of parents were invited to
participate and interact with their children on computers in an after-school setting. In addition to
documenting the process of helping parents learn skills to support their children's learning, the
project sought to evaluate the extent to which parents also learned practical computer skills.
Pre- and post-project assessments showed statistically significant gains in parents' knowledge of
computers. Embedded formative performance assessments, ethnographic data, field notes, and
video data were also used to trace processes through which parents and children worked together
to learn technology skills and apply them to publishing. As parents and children were guided
with planning, drafting, writing and editing computer-based texts in joint publication, the project
itself became a new community-based organization fostering literacy and bridging community,
homes, and schools. Thus, the Duran et al. article points the way to an innovative model for
involving parents in their children's education, while profiting the experience themselves in very
tangible ways.
Gonzalez and her colleagues offer an example of how community knowledge can be tapped to
strengthen the academic experiences of Latino youth. Drawing on the long-term study of "funds
of knowledge" in local communities, Gonzalez and her colleagues apply the model to an
investigation of the mathematical potential of Latino households. The authors describe ways
women participating in a sewing circle use and model sophisticated mathematical knowledge
that might otherwise be unacknowledged by schools and even by their own children. They find
that the same women who may be viewed as lacking the competency to help their children in the
study of mathematics in fact use mathematical concepts in their daily work. The authors note,
however, that, whereas other classroom knowledge domains such as literacy and language arts
may draw in a rather straightforward fashion from households, mathematical knowledge may not
be so easily incorporated. Thus, the article investigates the ways in which household
mathematical knowledge may be translated into practices that support children's academic
development. In so doing, this work contributes significantly to our understanding the potential
for families and communities to be involved in practical ways in supporting the educational
trajectories of diverse youth.
Finally, Henze focuses on broader themes of racial prejudice, segregation, and the potential for
schools to serve as allies in the quest for better inter-group relations. Henze poses the question
whether schools can serve such a function, given their history of social reproduction of
inequality, and notes that she is not alone in questioning whether this is a realistic possibility.
Nonetheless, she describes the experience of "Cornell" school, which deals simultaneously with
the need to provide language instruction for children who do not speak English sufficiently well
to access the core curriculum and the need to integrate children across ethnic groups to break
down tensions and suspicions fostered by segregation. Henze points out the real tensions
between competing goals and methods that have no easy resolution. However, she also describes
innovative classroom teaming and parent involvement classes that allow parents, as well as
students, the opportunity to come to know each other across ethnic lines. Her message is one of
realism, but also of hope. Henze suggests that by paying attention to the difficult task of bridging
families, schools, and communities we can, indeed, create a more equitable society, and that
schools may play a significant role in this enterprise.
In each of their commentaries on this special issue, Garcia and Epstein enrich our perspectives
by placing the seven studies in broader context of emerging coalitions among researchers,
policymakers, educators, and community members. Garcia juxtaposes examples of innovative
diversity policies and practices in corporate business with the studies of this volume to illuminate
the multidimensional "holographic" processes that build communities as full partnerships among
their stakeholders. Epstein's thoughtful analysis of designing bridges across home, school, and
community delineates some of the new structures, processes, and practices available from the
Center for Research on Education, Diversity, and Excellence, the National Network of
Partnership Schools, and other coalitions on behalf of diverse students, families, and
communities. We hope this volume stimulates the further growth of such coalitions.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported under the Education Research and Development Program, PR/Award
No. R306A6000 1, the Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence (CREDE), as
administered by the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI), National Institute
on the Education of At-Risk Students (NIEARS), U.S. Department of Education (USDoE).
We thank Courtney Cazden, Fred Erickson, and Evelyn Jacob for their guidance of the
program on Families, Peers, Schools, and Communication of CREDE, and Sam Stringfield,
Amanda Datnow, and Tiffany Meyers for their help with this volume
The contents, findings and opinions expressed here are those of the authors and do not
necessarily represent the positions or policies of OERI, NIEARS, or the USDoE.