Chapter 8: Resilience as a Factor in Overcoming Obstacles to High Academic Achievement

A primary mission of public schools is to produce students who are intellectively competent, prepared for postsecondary education, and able to respond to the increasingly competitive demands of citizenship and the workforce. However, differences in educational outcomes of students indicate that the impact of our current public school system is, for many students, limited. For instance, one of the most urgent concerns among education stakeholders today is the underrepresentation of African American, Latino, and Native American students among academically high-achieving students. Twenty years after the release of the report “A Nation at Risk,” new efforts continue to emerge promising to eliminate the ubiquitous academic disparity and to ensure that “no child [is] left behind.” Stakeholders have been working relentlessly to ameliorate educational disparities and to respond to the unprecedented challenge of educating students who, increasingly, come from multicultural, multilingual, and disadvantaged backgrounds. Although the hard work has resulted in signs of progress, more work is necessary to continue to improve student performance.