Introduces this theme issue on ethnicity and school performance. Provides an overview of five international case studies from the Netherlands, France, Britain, Israel, and Canada that examine the variability in school performance of ethnic-minority youth in their respective countries. The voluntary/involuntary minority framework proposed by J.…

Presents five approaches to multi-cultural education: education of the culturally different or benevolent multi-culturalism; education about cultural differences or cultural understanding; education for cultural pluralism; bicultural education; and, multi-cultural education as the normal human experience. (Author/JM)

The Punjabi Education Project was a collaborative research effort involving a Sikh community in California, a school district, a community organization, and an educational anthropologist. The project aimed to improve relations between the ethnic and mainstream groups at a local high school and simultaneously to improve educational performance…

Working class immigrant youth are frequently more successful in school than nonimmigrant students of similar background if they receive all their schooling in their new homeland. This article explores the forces that allow the children of Punjabi Sikh farm families to succeed academically in spite of severe handicaps. (VM)

Analyzes the interrelation of ethnicity, sex role, peer group, and social class, and discusses the effect of these variables on school performance. Drawing upon fieldwork in St. Croix (Virgin Islands), examines the value of a cultural compatibility-incompatibility framework for explaining school success. (Author/GC)