Education has been increasingly lauded as the path to achieving the American Dream, and in this book Martín Sánchez-Jankowski uses extensive ethnographic research to explore the dynamics of the interrelated barriers that low-income students must surpass in order to make transitions successfully from high school to college. With rigor and compassion, and engaging in participant observation to examine how individual students confront the education system, Potholes in the Road shows how obstacles related to issues of structure, culture, and agency make achieving the American Dream through education particularly challenging.
Martín Sánchez-Jankowski is Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Center for Ethnographic Research at the University of California, Berkeley.
ContentsLists of Figures and TablesPrefaceIntroduction1 • The Politics of Educational Management2 • The Interface of Family and School3 • School Organization and Its Challenges4 • The Impact of Cultural and Social Capital5 • Social Tracking In the Educational ProcessConclusionMethodological AppendixNotesBibliographyIndex