Chapter 4: Conceptualizing Smartness: Using Social and Cultural Capital to Explain Academic Achievement Among a Group of African Immigrant Girls

According to distinguished scholars of immigration, Ruben Rumbaut and Alejandros Portes (2001), the U.S. schools have historically been called upon to address societal changes stemming from the arrival of new cultural groups. Rumbaut and Portes (2001) further contend that the diversity of recent immigrants in the U.S. is unprecedented. The current wave of immigration began with the passage of the Immigration Act by the U.S. Congress in 1965 and includes immigrants from Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (Rumbaut & Portes, 2001). This large-scale immigration has had implications in all aspects of American society, including education. Nearly one in five students in K–12 schooling are children of immigrants (Capps, Fix, Herwantoro, Murray, Ost, & Passel, 2005). Statistics show that while the number of immigrant children has been increasing at a rapid rate at the K–12 level, the highest proportion is enrolled in the upper grades. This trend, add Capps et al. (2005), suggests that high schools face the greatest challenges in educating immigrant children. As a result, numerous studies have been conducted in an attempt to understand the challenges facing immigrant children in school (Conchas, 2006; Qin, 2001; Rumbaut & Portes, 2001).