Achieving Success for the “Resistant” Student

Abstract

oncern is growing about the education of the students regarded as least likely to succeed in school. Labeled reluctant, risk, disadvantaged, alienated, resistant, educationally deprived, or what Rose (1995) calls educationally underprepared, these students come disproportionately from low SES (socioeconomic status) families and from ethnic and linguistic minority backgrounds. Unfortunately, far too many of these resistant students are not succeeding in our schools. Kaufman, Klein, and Frase (1999) report that in 1997 the dropout rates were 25.3 percent for Hispanic youths, 13.4 percent for black, and 7.6 percent for white students (iii), and these figures only hint at the numbers of these students who might graduate from high school but leave without really having experienced much or any success at all. In fact, as Smith and Wilhelm (2002) detail in their recent study of literacy in the lives of young men, Reading Don't Fix No Chevy's, most of the boys in their study did not have positive, successful experiences with literate activities in school (30).