School Reform and College Readiness Expectancies: Technical, Normative, Political, and Social Context Considerations

• In Event: Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: College Readiness Along the K-Ph.D. Educational Pipeline in the Era of Anti-Affirmative Action

Abstract

The second panelist examines the issue of college readiness from the perspective of high school reform in a large diverse city on the West Coast. To date, research has noted low teachers’ expectations as one of the primary reasons for the high dropout/push out rate and lack of college access among future first-generation college students of color. The panelist looks specifically at the ways in which school leaders create conditions within the school to support students to attend college. The significance of this work comes at a time when our nation is undergoing reform initiatives to emphasize the importance of college and career readiness for high school students.

To this end, this paper examines a high school reform initiative designed to raise expectations to support future first generation college students of color to become college ready. Employing an ethnographic, case study method, the panelist examines the ways in which students are prepared for college through four dimensions of schooling: technical, normative, political, and social context (Cooper, Slavin, & Madden, 1997). The four dimensions of change, as referred to by Cooper and colleagues (1997), suggests that school leaders must pay attention to systems of relationships and influences that define the norms and operation of a school, and the conditions to which students learn through technical, normative, political, and social contexts of schooling.

The high school at the center of the study underwent small schools reform in an attempt to eliminate the college-going gap between Whites and students of color. For one-year, the panelist collected data from one learning academy through interviews with and observations of 36 high school students of diverse backgrounds and 12 teachers (most of whom were White). The panelist also gathered observational data from six classrooms as a method to compare different sources of evidence for accuracy in the analysis and final interpretation of the data.

For data analysis, coding was administered according to each dimension of change as a way to identify emerging themes. The inductive analysis helped to support the panelist to understand how research participants make sense of the reform process and college-related opportunities on multiple levels at the school. Together, multiple forms of data were triangulated for accuracy with additional efforts to verify information with project participants.

Research findings reveal the disjuncture between policy and practice that leads to the persistent problems of low expectations in the school system. Despite strong efforts by school leaders to transform the school into a college-going academy, many future first generation college students still experience low expectations in the classroom. The study reveals that one of the fundamental problems of low expectations was caused by race, class, and gender stereotypes of students. This includes assumptions about students’ lack of interest in college due to their parents’ educational attainment. Thus, the reform process was partly effective as students receive a wide range of exposures about college without the adequate academic preparation in the classroom to become college ready.

Author

• Daniel D Liou, Arizona State University