Replicating and Extending Engberg and Gilbert's Typology of Counseling Opportunity Structures

• In Event: Understanding Critical Sources of College Counseling and Guidance

Abstract

Too few first-generation, low-income, and students of color enroll in college relative to their
peers. One cause of this gap is a lack of access to college-going resources and norms within
secondary schools. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to replicate and extend Engberg and
Gilbert’s (2014) counseling opportunity structure framework utilizing more recent data from the
High School Longitudinal Study:2009 and the three-step approach to latent class analysis. We
find a similar class structure with a class of schools that are ‘resource-rich’, a second class that is
‘norm-driven’, and a third class that is ‘divergent’. The schools in these classes serve
significantly different students, and help predict student high school and postsecondary
outcomes.

Authors

• Virginia W. Snodgrass Rangel, University of Houston

• Tracy Arámbula Ballysingh, University of Vermont