“It’s Like Giving Us a Car, Without the Wheels”: Early College High Schools as a Social Justice Policy Intervention

• In Event: Roundtable Session 84
  In Roundtable Session: Examining Latino Student Populations

Abstract

The Early College High School (ECHS), as a social justice policy intervention, is designed to serve traditionally marginalized students. A goal of the ECHS is to increase educational opportunity for such students, and thereby their presence on college campuses. This qualitative inquiry aimed to understand the ways one ECHS attempted to increase educational opportunity for Latina students, a target population. The conceptual frameworks of freedoms to achieve, unfreedoms, and deformed choices were employed to inform and understand the data. Findings suggest the Latina students understood their ECHS provided many resources to increase their educational opportunity. However, students often confronted constraints which disallowed access to the resources. Therefore, the ECHS as a policy intervention may not effectively serve its target populations.

Authors

• Leslie Ann Locke, University of Southern Mississippi

• Kathryn Bell McKenzie, California State University - Stanislaus