The lack of academic success of Latino students in California middle school mathematics is of concern to lawmakers and educators because math acts as a gatekeeper for students as they progress through their educational trajectory. The math achievement of middle schools students influences their academic futures, for it has a direct impact on the development of foundational math skills and determines high school math placement.

Researchers and educators remained puzzled about why some children overcame their personal circumstance and experienced success in school and others did not, even when they all faced similar risk factors. The study of resilience—how children overcome adversity to achieve positive developmental outcomes—arose when researchers recognized that some children flourished in the midst of adversity. Resilience is generally understood as a set of personal characteristics or factors that assist the individual in overcoming hardships.

The psycho-educational literature that focuses on resilience has given rise in the larger world of business to the concept of organizational resilience: the ability for organizations to bounce back from adversity and move forward stronger than before. The organizations of learning, the schools themselves, can support the resilience of its at-risk students. Because individual resilience is often enhanced and supported by a resilient organization, schools that act as resilient organizations can support at-risk students and can help activate their resilience by providing a trusting, collaborative environment. As educational leaders, the adults in the resilient school can teach the students to be resilient. Developing the resilience of Latino middle schoolers as the interplay between the individual characteristics of individual students and their educational environment merits greater understanding. As a resilient learning organization, a resilient school is able to assist at-risk students in achieving academic success through bolstering their academic resilience.

This study identified how resilient middle schools serving largely poor, Latino student populations bolstered student resilience as evidenced by consistent high levels of eighth grade achievement in Algebra 1.