Forming Academic Identities: Accommodation without Assimilation among Involuntary Minorities

Abstract

Institutional mechanisms influence students' ideology, which in turn has a positive influence on their academic performance. Latino and African American students who have participated in an untracking program for their high school careers develop a critical consciousness about their educational and occupational futures. The Latino and African American students in this untracking program become academically successful without losing their ethnic identity. They adopt the strategy of “accommodating without assimilating,” a pattern that Gibson associates with voluntary minorities but not involuntary minorities.