Note that Mr. Handlon does not say that the teachers are biased against his daughter or that they do not like her. Rather, he frames his concern in terms of the failure of trained educators to meet their professional obligation.
The middle-class youths’ parents had been to college themselves. They had more extensive experience with the higher education system as well as access to an array of information through their informal networks with friends, relatives, and co-workers who had also been to college. Ms. Tallinger reported a tip she learned from “a very good friend” who worked in an Ivy League admissions office:
One of the things I did know was that the more competitive colleges look at what is available in a high school, and if you’re not taking the most rigorous of what’s available, that’s a strike against you in terms of their evaluating your transcript. And so I wanted Garrett . . . to take the most rigorous that [he’s] possibly capable of taking.
She also noted that other parents sometimes supplied helpful information:
And then [I was] talking to some other parents that had taken their daughter on a tour of Yale and Duke. He told a funny story of visiting Duke and [a] question to the person guiding the admissions discussions. The question from the student was “Well, is it better to take Honors Calculus and get a B? Or take regular calculus and get an A?” He says, “It’s better to take Honors Calculus and get an A.”
Still, U.S. high schools offer a bewildering array of courses and hazy and incomplete information about higher education. They encourage parent involvement, but rather than rewarding parents who defer to professionals (as many working-class and poor parents do), schools legitimate and reward parents who aggressively monitor and intervene in their children’s schooling (as many middle-class parents do). Consider the following actions Ms. Tallinger described to me during her interview. Armed with the information about honors calculus and understanding her role as a parent to involve intervening in school when her child’s interests were at stake, she talked to the school counselors about Garrett taking honors courses. Moreover, when it appeared that a scheduling conflict would eliminate Garrett’s access to an advanced course, Ms. Tallinger went to the school and “fought” with educators, insisting that AP calculus and AP literature not be offered during the same period, thus ensuring that her son (and other high-achievers) would not be prevented from “maximizing their opportunities.” When Garrett applied to college, he had AP classes in three fields and honors classes in two other areas.
Middle-class parents’ knowledge of the higher education system, including courses, grades, and financial aid, combined with their own real-world experiences as degree-holders, also affected the guidance they gave their children. The Marshalls, for instance, knew that Stacey longed to go to an Ivy League college where she had been recruited by the basketball coach. Still, they said no when the school accepted her. Ms. Marshall explained the decision as an effort to help her daughter avoid accumulating debt at a young age. Stacey planned to be a doctor, so her education would necessarily include medical school, a huge expense. Why add undergraduate costs to that burden, her parents reasoned, when a well-regarded public university was offering Stacey a full scholarship? The Marshalls were “happy” with Stacey’s decision to attend University of Maryland; its academic program was strong and the women’s basketball team had a solid reputation. As Ms. Marshall said, “It is a challenging school; she is being challenged.” She also confided that she was very worried when Stacey received two C’s in biology during her freshman year (“I feel that she has a tough road ahead of her”). This concern indicates that she knew that such grades could impede Stacey’s acceptance to medical school. Hence, in guiding her daughter’s educational career, Ms. Marshall drew on extensive informal information about the financial aid systems at the undergraduate and graduate level, academic challenges at different kinds of colleges, colleges’ national rankings, and admissions criteria for medical school.39 Public high schools provide only part of this information to parents and students. The middle-class parents were able to supplement the school-supplied information with their own experience, the knowledge of people in their social network, and knowledge they acquired by aggressively collecting it through interactions with educators.40
Like their parents, the middle-class youth had very detailed information about higher education institutions. For example, Garrett knew that despite his high GPA, he would not get into Stanford without being recruited by the basketball team; Alexander understood the intricacies of the early-decision application process; and Stacey knew what expenses her financial aid package covered and what amount remained that her parents would need to pay. By contrast, although Wendy aspired to attend college, she seemed to have trouble keeping the names of various colleges straight; she also did not know the name of her learning disability. (She said, “It is L.D. [for] learning disability.”) Nor could the working-class and poor youth rattle off their SAT scores (if they had ever taken them) and GPAs with the speed and ease of the middle-class youth.
Informal Knowledge: Working-Class and Poor Families
Parents in working-class and poor families saw themselves as having an active role in their children’s school careers. In addition, the mothers of young people in the study who dropped out of high school were deeply upset and agitated by their children’s actions. Thus, there was a superficial similarity across families in the parents’ concern about school and “involvement” in schooling. But the follow-up study also revealed that the working-class and middle-class parents appeared to have different visions of what it means to be “informed” and “helpful.” For many working-class and poor youth, including Billy, Katie, Harold, and others, going to college was never a serious consideration. Their focus was on graduating from high school (or earning a GED). Among those who did pursue higher education, informal knowledge about schooling options was limited. Working-class parents and youth, for example, used the term “college” to include both proprietary vocational training programs and research universities. Unlike middle-class parents and kids, these families had a vague understanding of the complexities of higher-education systems. Among educators, a GED is widely seen as inferior to a high school diploma, particularly in a competitive labor market; some consider it more of a certificate than a diploma. Similarly, a bachelor’s degree is accorded much higher status than a high school degree. The working-class and poor families did not have this kind of hierarchical notion of the value of a diploma. For them, all diplomas were equal. Mr. Yanelli had been disappointed when his son dropped out of high school, but the arrival of Billy’s GED was met with tears of joy. Ms. Yanelli recalled:
The day that diploma came in the mail he was [at the beach]. I called his cell phone like five times. I was like, “Please call me. You got your diploma. We’re so proud.” Oh my God, we were so proud. Big Billy, tears came out of his eyes and everything. We were so proud. Nobody in my family has ever been educated, has ever graduated.
In his interview, Mr. Yanelli noted that he had wanted Billy to go to college, but he was very proud that his son had “graduated.” The difference between a GED and a college diploma seemed relatively modest to Mr. Yanelli. The important fact was that Billy had a diploma.
With less detailed knowledge of educational institutions, working-class and poor parents were then unaware of what sorts of questions to pose or what criteria to use to sort and prioritize colleges that might be a good “fit” for their children. Furthermore, these parents (many of whom had not finished high school) turned over responsibility for education to the school, and to their children as they became adolescents. The less privileged parents did not assertively manage core aspects of their children’s school experience. Nor did they seem attuned to the gradations of academic status among the many public high schools in their urban district. For example, Ms. Brindle was concerned about her daughter’s physical safety and wanted her to stay close to home. She did not want Katie to go to a school 20 minutes away, in a different neighborhood. This school had a higher academic rank than the schools that Ms. Brindle directed her daughter to choose between. As Katie explained,