Smoke, Mirrors, and Education Practices: "Access" as Gatekeeping for Students and Communities of Color

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This session poses the question, “Is access enough?” when applied to issues of inequitable education practices and policies for students and communities of color in K-16 education. Authors utilize theory and embrace praxis to unearth and analyze how current traditional education practices, while providing access, do not justly provide fair methods of student support that lead to academic persistence, achievement, and overall social capital for upward mobility in future endeavors. This session argues that access is not enough, and problematizes empty promises given by access to education settings and calls to attention how students of color are suffering from the systematic practice of dropping out, pushing out, and being under qualified, even after diploma and degree completion.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 4: Social Context of Education Policy, Politics, and Praxis

Chair

• Adrienne D. Dixson, University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign

Papers

• "Direct Admits Versus Intending": How College Students of Color Are Systematically Pushed out of STEM - Ivory Marcel Berry, Wright State University

• "They'll Get Cs and Ds; That's Good Enough": Teachers Positioning Black Students as Academic Afterthoughts - Shameka Nija Powell, Tufts University

• Culturally Irrelevant, Exclusively White: Latina/o Student Experiences of Leadership Education and Opportunities in College - Cecilia Elizabeth Suarez, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• "It Isn't for Us!" African American Perspectives on the Charter School Authorization Process - Kevin Lawrence Henry, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Discussant

• Cory T. Brown, Murray State University