Ability Profiling and School Failure: One Child's Struggle to be Seen as Competent.

ABILITY PROFILING AND SCHOOL FAILURE: One Child's Struggle To Be Seen As Competent. Kathleen M. Collins. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2003. 232 pp. $24.50. This interesting study dramatically illustrates Kathleen Collins's artistry in research and storytelling. She used 18 months of observation and over 700 hours of data collection to build her story of Jay, a 5th-grade, African American male, and his struggle to learn in a predominantly European American community school. Collins, a respected researcher, presents strong, factual research information in every chapter to support the conclusions drawn from her observations. This excellent book offers the viewpoints of students, teachers, and researchers about what defines competence.

Jay, a feisty, energetic young man, is consistently excluded from class participation or separated from his peers and the core curriculum by virtue of both his ability and disability. He is able to think quickly and, on many occasions, shouts out his ideas with excitement, but also without consideration for others. The classroom environment provides no intrinsic rewards to motivate Jay into controlling his enthusiasm. When opportunities to learn are ignored by his teacher, or cruelly stolen by his peers, he is left extremely frustrated and with a sense of raw rebellion.

The book allows readers to cultivate a deeper understanding not only of the teacher, but also of teaching. Laura, Jay's teacher, is convinced that Jay is "emotionally impaired," and by virtue of his ethnicity, social status, and lack of parental guidance, he is ill-prepared to grasp the social and intellectual protocols of the learning environment. She builds a classroom culture firmly rooted in her own values and expectations. As Collins observes, "One way of trying to understand how Laura's perceptions and expectations for these students influenced their social positioning and academic achievement is looking at the classroom as a community with its own culture" (p. 130).

The second chapter presents a clear picture of why today's schools are failing, describing two teachers holding a parent conference with Jay's grandparents. The dialogue is saturated with negative stereotypes, random disrespect, and "holier-than-thou" academic attitudes. Collins makes the consequences of bias within academic settings clear: failing schools, certainly, but also, and even more painful, failed students who lose their eagerness to learn. Reviewed by Neil Mercurius, Jurupa Unified School District, Riverside, CA