Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Tracking Untracking
- 3 Does Untracking Work?
- 4 Background Characteristics and College Enrollment
- 5 The Social Scaffolding Supporting Academic Placement
- 6 Organizational Processes Influencing Untracking
- 7 Peer Group Influences Supporting Untracking
- 8 Parents' Contributions to Untracked Students' Careers
- 9 Implications for Educational Practice
- 10 Implications for Theories Explaining Educational Inequality
- References
- Index
1 - Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgments
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Tracking Untracking
- 3 Does Untracking Work?
- 4 Background Characteristics and College Enrollment
- 5 The Social Scaffolding Supporting Academic Placement
- 6 Organizational Processes Influencing Untracking
- 7 Peer Group Influences Supporting Untracking
- 8 Parents' Contributions to Untracked Students' Careers
- 9 Implications for Educational Practice
- 10 Implications for Theories Explaining Educational Inequality
- References
- Index
Summary
I am the youngest of a family of three – my mother and one sister twenty-two years older than I. My sister never lived with us. My mother, being a single parent, and working two jobs just to keep a roof over us, had little or no time to spend with me. I remember feeling an extreme sense of insecurity as I was growing up. Later, my mother remarried a wonderful man who I would grow to love and respect. He filled my life with all the love and warmth of a family.
After eight years of having a secure family, the effects of my parents' separation nearly destroyed my life. The world of love and security which they had built came tumbling down. I remembered in years back how it had felt to be homeless and I was terrified. I kept asking my mother, “Where are we going to live?”
All those feelings of insecurity and loneliness I had felt while growing up slowly started to come back. I then started eating large amounts of food. Although I did not know it at the time, my struggle with bulimia had begun. At fifteen my life was a disaster, and my grades during that time reflect it. My next regrettable move was dropping out of school. My mother, being too preoccupied with her problems, found it difficult to deal with mine.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Constructing School SuccessThe Consequences of Untracking Low Achieving Students, pp. 1 - 20Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996