Working-Class Minority Students' Routes to Higher Education 9781136255076, 9780415806725

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Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

Routledge Research in Education

52 From Testing to Productive Student Learning Implementing Formative Assessment in Confucian-Heritage Settings David Carless 53 Changing Schools in an Era of Globalization Edited by John Chi-Kin Lee and Brian J. Caldwell 54 Boys and Their Schooling The Experience of Becoming Someone Else John Whelen 55 Education and Sustainability Learning Across the Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Divide Seonaigh MacPherson 56 International Case Studies of Dyslexia Edited by Peggy L. Anderson and Regine Meier-Hedde 57 Schooling and the Making of Citizens in the Long Nineteenth Century Comparative Visions Edited by Daniel Tröhler, Thomas S. Popkewitz and David F. Labaree

58 Islamic Education and Indoctrination The Case in Indonesia Charlene Tan 59 Beyond Binaries in Education Research Edited by Warren Midgley, Mark A. Tyler, Patrick Alan Danaher and Alison Mander 60 Picturebooks, Pedagogy and Philosophy Joanna Haynes and Karin Murris 61 Personal Epistemology and Teacher Education Edited by Jo Brownlee, Gregory Schraw and Donna Berthelsen 62 Teacher Learning that Matters International Perspectives Edited by Mary Kooy and Klaas van Veen 63 Pedagogy of Multiliteracies Rewriting Goldilocks Heather Lotherington 64 Intersectionality and “Race” in Education Edited by Kalwant Bhopal and John Preston 65 The Politics of Education Challenging Multiculturalism Edited by Christos Kassimeris and Marios Vryonides

66 Whiteness and Teacher Education Edie White 67 Multidisciplinary Approaches to Educational Research Case Studies from Europe and the Developing World Edited by Sadaf Rizvi 68 Postcolonial Perspectives on Global Citizenship Education Edited by Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti and Lynn Mario T. M. De Souza 69 Education in the Black Diaspora Perspectives, Challenges, and Prospects Edited by Kassie Freeman and Ethan Johnson 70 Gender, Race, and the Politics of Role Modelling The Influence of Male Teachers Wayne Martino and Goli RezaiRashti 71 Educating for Diversity and Social Justice Amanda Keddie 72 Considering Trilingual Education Kathryn Henn-Reinke 73 Commitment, Character, and Citizenship Religious Education in Liberal Democracy Edited by Hanan A. Alexander and Ayman K. Agbaria 74 Adolescent Literacies in a Multicultural Context Edited by Alister Cumming

75 Participation, Facilitation, and Mediation Children and Young People in Their Social Contexts Edited by Claudio Baraldi and Vittorio Iervese 76 The Politics of Knowledge in Education Elizabeth Rata 77 Neoliberalism, Pedagogy and Human Development Exploring Time, Mediation and Collectivity in Contemporary Schools Michalis Kontopodis 78 Resourcing Early Learners New Networks, New Actors Sue Nichols, Jennifer Rowsell, Helen Nixon and Sophia Rainbird 79 Educating for Peace in a Time of “Permanent War” Are Schools Part of the Solution or the Problem? Edited by Paul R. Carr and Brad J. Porfilio 80 The Politics of Teacher Professional Development Policy, Research and Practice Ian Hardy 81 Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education Roberta Espinoza

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education Roberta Espinoza

NEW YORK

LONDON

First published 2012 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2012 Taylor & Francis The right of Roberta Espinoza to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Espinoza, Roberta. Working-class minority students’ routes to higher education / Roberta Espinoza. p. cm. — (Routledge research in education ; 81) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Minorities—Education (Higher)—United States. 2. Working class—Education (Higher)—United States. 3. Universities and colleges—United States—Admission. 4. Educational equalization— United States. I. Title. LC3727.E87 2012 378.1'9820973—dc23 2012003713 ISBN: 978-0-415-80672-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-10576-4 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by IBT Global.

This book is dedicated to my family: Frank Espinoza, Elfriede Rodler, and Frances Espinoza. Thank you for supporting my educational endeavors.

Contents

List of Tables Acknowledgments

xi xiii

1

Introduction

2

Theoretical Foundation: Educational Social and Cultural Capital

14

3

Pivotal Moments that Produce Habitus Change

37

4

Educational Outcomes of a Hybrid Working-/Middle-Class Habitus

57

5

The Transformative Power of Educators

74

6

Educator-Student Relationships that Shape College Aspirations and Academic Success

100

Conclusion

122

References Index

135 145

7

1

Tables

1.1 1.2 3.1 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 5.1 5.2

Data Sources Background Characteristics of Survey Respondents Pivotal Moment Timing and Doctoral Studies Adjustment Background Characteristics of College Student Survey Respondents Pivotal Moment Rates by Educational Level, Gender, and Minority Status Academic Outcomes by Minority Status and Pivotal Moment Timing Minority Student Educational Social and Cultural Capital by Pivotal Moment Timing Academic Outcomes by Minority Status, Educational Social Capital, and Help-Seeking Behaviors Background Characteristics of Academic Outreach Professional Survey Respondents Transmission of Academic Knowledge and Skills by Academic Outreach Professionals

10 11 40 64 66 67 69 71 95 96

Acknowledgments

I am greatly indebted to the dedicated academic mentors that have continuously supported my scholarship: Arlie Hochschild, Barrie Thorne, Danny Solórzano, and Daryl Smith. I also want to thank the many scholars who have encouraged my research over the years: Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Jerome Karabel, Neil Fligstein, Sam Lucas, Annette Lareau, Hugh Mehan, Jeannie Oaks, Patricia Gándara, Gary Orfield, Rachel Moran, Ray Buriel, Gilda Ochoa, Jill Grigsby, Lynn Rapaport, Deb Smith, Jim Smith, Jose Calderon, Miguel Tinker-Salas, Eva Valle, Mike Soldatenko, Maria Soldatenko, Frances Contreras, Robert Ream, Sal Oropesa, Michael Perez, Eileen Walsh, Dana Collins, Pedro Noguera, William Tierney, Jamie Merisotis, and Linda Perkins. A special thanks to my wonderful research assistants who provided help at various stages of this research: Cynthia Alcantar, Monica de la Cruz, and Dora Armenta. I am extraordinarily thankful to Will Perez for his unwavering support and encouragement throughout the writing of this book. I am also grateful to my sister, Frances Espinoza, for paving my path to higher education as the fi rst person in our family to attend college. My great appreciation goes to the teachers, counselors, academic outreach professionals, professors, and students who graciously allowed me to visit their classrooms, witness their work with students, and interview them. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to share your experiences that inform the fi ndings in this book. I would like to acknowledge the fi nancial support I received from the University of California, Berkeley; the American Sociological Association Minority Fellowship Program; the University of California All Campus Consortium on Research for Diversity (UC ACCORD); the California State University, Fullerton; and the Haynes Foundation. Lastly, thank you to my editor, Max Novick, for giving this manuscript a home at Routledge. It is an honor to have my work published in the “Routledge Research in Education” series.

1

Introduction “When you come from a community where nobody even goes to college—let alone anything beyond that—you don’t even know it exists as a possibility.” Karina, Latina Doctoral Student

Karina is a 30-year-old Latina from a working-class background. Her parents are factory workers and have less than an eighth grade education. As a fi rst-generation student, Karina’s route to higher education has not been easy or clear. She attended a low-performing high school that sends very few students to college and which steers those who do to the local two-year junior college. Consistent with these expectations, Karina started taking courses at the community college right after high school. Although her goal was to transfer in two years, she never received proper advisement on what courses she needed to take to accomplish that goal. After six years in community college, she fi nally transferred to a public four-year university for her bachelor’s degree. It was at this institution where, for the fi rst time, an educator reached out to Karina and provided the support and guidance that put her on the path to doctoral studies. Her professor made an effort to develop a trusting relationship, and then began talking to her about her future plans while encouraging her to think about graduate school. He connected her to an academic outreach program that helped her gain research experience under his mentorship and learn about the process of applying to graduate school. Her professor’s academic intervention was pivotal in her successfully completing a bachelor’s degree and gaining acceptance to a doctoral program. Now in her fifth year of doctoral studies, Karina faces many challenges in navigating her graduate program and often feels that fi nding supportive people and helpful information is difficult. In contrast, Rosie, a 28-year-old Latina also from a working-class background, experienced a very different route to higher education. Her parents work in the service industry and have less than a high school education. As a fi rst-generation student, Rosie’s path to higher education has been more linear than Karina’s. In junior high, she connected with two educators who helped her apply for a scholarship to attend a private preparatory high school which profoundly impacted her educational path. Rosie’s two teachers helped her through every part of the application process, including writing a personal statement, studying for the entrance exam, and preparing for and driving her to the interview. After attending the private high school that expected all their students to go to prestigious postsecondary

2

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

institutions, she attended a highly selective private liberal arts college where she graduated with honors. Three years after earning a bachelor’s degree, she entered a doctoral program. Since starting graduate school, Rosie has been very strategic about fi nding the people and resources she needs to effectively and successfully navigate her program. Why did Karina and Rosie have such different paths and educational experiences? Was Rosie’s path more linear because she was simply more motivated or smarter than Karina? How did they both end up in prestigious doctoral programs despite the fact that most students who share their socioeconomic and racial or ethnic background do not even graduate from high school? This book attempts to answer these questions by examining how academic interventions I call “Pivotal Moments” transformed their educational trajectories and placed them on a path to the doctorate. I argue that students like Rosie fare better in higher education because they experience an early Pivotal Moment (in junior high school or high school) whereas students like Karina, who experience a late Pivotal Moment (in community college), face more difficulties and challenges. As Karina’s and Rosie’s stories illustrate, the routes working-class minority students take to higher education can vary tremendously, as do the types of schools they attend—some start at two-year community colleges while others fi nd their way to highly selective four-year institutions. The path students are placed on significantly impacts their likelihood of completion, career aspirations, and ultimately, the place they take in society as adults. Unlike middle-class children who grow up in homes where attending college is expected and the route is clear, children from working-class homes do not start with the same expectations and need someone to open up that sense of possibility. For working-class minority students, the path to higher education must be learned from a supportive college-educated adult who can guide the way and make getting to college a reality.

HIGHER EDUCATION AND SOCIAL STRATIFICATION In their recent book Crossing the Finish Line (published in August 2009), William Bowen (former president of Princeton University), Matthew Chingos, and Michael McPherson (former president of Macalester College) argue that the 44% college dropout rate is cause for national concern. They warn that despite billions of dollars in fi nancial aid and scores of government and private efforts, the college graduation rate for low-income Americans who are the fi rst in their families to go to college has been falling. Their research fi nds distressing signs that demographic factors such as gender, race, and parental education play large roles in determining a student’s fate—no matter how smart or hardworking the particular student. Those from families with below average earnings or with parents who did not fi nish college, as well as African-Americans, Hispanics, and males, are failing

Introduction

3

college at disproportionate rates, even when compared with students with similar grades and test scores. Failing to open educational opportunities to all students will endanger “the long-term health of our country,” the authors warn. Sadly, their fi ndings are not new. A longitudinal study by Fox, Connolly, and Snyder (2005) that followed students for 12 years starting in eighth grade and continuing through college also found that low-income students are most likely not to complete college, despite doing well in eighth grade. It is a much different story for students from high-income families. Whereas only 3% of students from low-income families and with low eighth grade math performance completed college, 30% of students with the same math performance but from high-income families finished college. What’s worse, the study found that most low-income students who had the highest math performance in eighth grade also did not complete college. The college completion rate for low-income, high-scoring math students was actually lower than for highincome, low-scoring math students. Thus, being from a low-income family hinders college completion even for top performing students. An important question that arises from these trends is: How do the students who are fi rst in their family to attend college manage to make their way to higher education? According to mainstream media outlets, workingclass minority students who are able to “beat the odds” and become highly successful students do it on their own. For example, on August 4, 2011, Fox News Latino featured an article about a high-achieving Latino student named Jose Limon, one of four siblings in a low-income immigrant family from the working-class neighborhood of East Los Angeles, who overcame poverty and gangs to win a $100,000 scholarship and gain admissions to Yale University. To explain his rise in the education system, the article highlighted his “individual drive and determination” to succeed in school. It also alluded to his innate abilities and “God-given intelligence.” Upholding the ever so prevalent American achievement ideology, the article asserted that Jose did well in school primarily due to his own individual effort. As a sociologist, I question if there is another part of his story that was missing. Did he receive any help figuring out how to apply for scholarships and navigate the college application process? Did anyone advise or mentor him throughout his schooling? Will he fare as well as his middle- and upperclass schoolmates at an elite university like Yale? A closer examination of Jose’s success story reveals that although it is incomplete, it still manages to perpetuate the notion that individuals achieve educational success solely by virtue of their own initiative. Jose’s graduation from Yale in four years will undoubtedly confi rm his ultimate success, but in the meantime, there is a need to fi ll in the part of his story that was left out in the news article. In this book, I outline a theoretical framework to explain exactly how and why working-class minority students like Jose successfully progress through the educational system to gain access to institutions of higher education. My analysis of the trajectories of low-income and minority students

4

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

suggests that educational success is hardly an individual affair, but rather the result of the formal and informal interventions by educators that ensure their academic accomplishments and advancement. Decades of research suggests that the newspaper story about Jose is not unusual. It is quite common to fi nd stories like his in various television shows, magazine articles, and broadcast news features. The stories all follow a similar formula: the life accomplishments of a person are presented as the result of individual qualities. Typically, positive outcomes are connected to individual effort and talent such as being a hard worker or showing leadership potential (Hochschild, 1995; Hochschild & Scovronick, 2003; Oakes, 1990). Indeed, Americans are much more comfortable recognizing the power of individual initiative than recognizing the power of social class, race/ethnicity, or gender in shaping people’s lives. Studies show that less than 20% of Americans see class, race, gender, or even religion as having an impact on one’s life opportunities (Ladd, 1993). Americans, both rich and poor, continue to believe in the American Dream—if you work hard and play by the rules, you will go as far as your given ability and initiative take you. There is no question that society is stratified along the lines of social class as a result of the unequal distribution of wealth throughout society (Hout, 1988; Mishel, Bernstein, & Schmitt, 1999). Although the educational system offers everyone a chance to achieve upward mobility, the reality is that only 25% of working-class students are able to move up the socioeconomic ladder by becoming college educated (Aronowitz, 2004) and full-fledged members of the middle class. The vast majority of working-class students remains working class, and ultimately so will their children. American society is characterized by substantial inequality, which highlights the big question sociologists have long studied: Why does social stratification persist, and what role does the educational system play in the stratification process?

SOCIAL CLASS AND STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT All children require substantial investment in order to grow, develop normally, and become productive members of society. They need good nutrition, health care to address medical needs, a safe place to live, and nurturing families and communities to develop cognitive skills, healthy self-concepts, and a desire to do well in school. Most middle-class children arrive at school already having been heavily invested in by their families. Their nutrition is adequate, they visit doctors regularly to attend to any health problems, and if they develop vision problems, they are promptly corrected. Middle-class children are also more likely to have safe areas to play, educational toys to play with, and skilled caregivers who introduce them to the fundamentals of literacy and numeracy.

Introduction

5

In contrast, low-income students receive less investment in their development, aside from the care that their families are able to provide with very limited resources. They may have inadequate nutrition and lack medical, dental, or vision care. As a result, they might come to school hungry and may not be able to see the board at the front of the class or the writing on the paper in front of them. They might also have medical problems such as toothaches or ear infections that interrupt their ability to attend to lessons. In addition, the toys low-income students play with are not likely to be the sort that will prepare them to succeed in school and their stressed parents may turn instead to television as an affordable babysitter that occupies them for an average of four hours a day or more, time not spent reading (Fetler, 1984; Rideout, Roberts, & Foehr, 2005). Poor children are less likely than their middle-class peers to have many books in their homes, and are less likely to be read to by parents or caregivers, or to observe those adults reading for enjoyment (Heath, 1983). For this reason, children from low-income families are dependent on schools and society to invest in them in areas where their parents simply cannot. Parents’ social class backgrounds have profound implications for their children’s educational achievement. One of the best predictors of whether a child will one day graduate from college is whether his or her parents are college graduates (U.S. Department of Education, 1995). Even before kindergarten, children of highly educated parents are much more likely to exhibit “educational readiness” skills such as knowing their letters, identifying colors, counting up to 20, and being able to write their fi rst names (Entwisle, Karl, Alexander, & Olson, 1997). In particular, children of highly educated mothers continue to outperform children of less educated mothers throughout their school careers. By the time they take the SAT for admission to college, the gap is dramatic, averaging 150 point disparity between children of parents who are high school dropouts compared to those with parents who have a graduate degree (Jencks & Phillips, 1998). These fi ndings suggest that the great contradiction of education in the modern era is that it is both an avenue for upward mobility, as well as the main social institution in which socioeconomic status is reproduced from one generation to the next (Jencks et al., 1979; Kingston, 2000). Success or failure in school is determined largely by social class and race, but cloaked in the language of meritocracy, where academic performance is characterized as the result of individual ability by high and low achievers alike. Some theorists argue that schools require cultural resources (cultural capital) with which only middle-class students are endowed. Pierre Bourdieu’s (1986) theory of cultural reproduction posits that only the culture of the dominant class is rewarded by the educational system. Although schools require that students possess these cultural resources, they do not provide them. As a result, students from the lower classes are unable to access the academic rewards which depend on the cultural capital that belongs to members of the upper classes, and is found much less frequently

6

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

among the lower classes, leaving them with little hope of achieving upward educational mobility. This creates a system in which disadvantaged students blame themselves for failure, whereas their wealthier counterparts take their cultural capital for granted and accept full credit for their accomplishments and success. Despite these trends, research on social class differences has not focused on how that position shapes students’ educational experiences and outcomes. An important aspect of formal education is the cultural capital (knowing how to navigate societal institutions) and social capital (having access to important social networks) that are acquired while earning a diploma or a college degree (Bourdieu, 1986). This knowledge and access to information helps students succeed academically. Working-class parents, with their relatively low levels of formal education, have far fewer of these important assets to pass on to their children. In addition, these youths have few adults in their community who exemplify educational, occupational, and social success, and also have few peers who are supportive of educational achievement. An important form of cultural capital is instrumental educational knowledge, such as knowing the factual and procedural information on how to enter and succeed in higher education, by negotiating the bureaucratic structures, approaching professors, and gaining access to resources such as fi nancial aid. Scholarly work has emphasized the role of parents in providing this instrumental knowledge to their children (Oakes, 1985; Rendón, 1992; Skemp, 1978). It is not surprising, therefore, that most students who succeed in higher education come from households where one or both parents attended college and provide instrumental knowledge, social support, and fi nancial assistance. Parents with resources often seek counseling outside the public school system by hiring private counselors that cost thousands of dollars to shepherd their children through the college application process, including preparation for taking college admissions tests (McDonough, 1997). For Latino students, nearly 40% come from homes where parents have not completed even a high school diploma, compared to 4% of White students. Similarly, whereas almost 4 in 10 White students can count on the higher education experiences of their parents to help guide them through college, this is true for only 1 in 10 Latinos (Gándara & Contreras, 2009). The overwhelming majority of Latino students, who are from immigrant and low-income homes, have parents with few fi nancial resources and little knowledge of the education system. Parental expectations and definitions of success also vary with social status to mediate student aspirations. Low-socioeconomic status (SES) parents are more likely to view a high school diploma as the norm for their children compared to high-SES parents to whom a bachelor’s or advanced degree is considered the norm (Halle, 1984; Lareau, 1987; MacLeod, 1987; Rubin, 1976; Sennett & Cobb, 1973; Willis, 1977). Also, low-SES parents are more likely to define success as securing a full-time job after graduating from high

Introduction

7

school, whereas college attendance is not an expectation and often means enrolling in a community college or technical school when it does occur. For high-SES parents, the definition of success for their children is linked to four years of college attendance, particularly attendance at a selective college (McDonough, 1997; McDonough, Korn, & Yamasaki, 1997). There are, of course, low-SES students who attend college after graduating from high school, and their enrollment in postsecondary education represents success in overcoming numerous social and economic obstacles. In the four-year period following high school, however, they are less likely to persist to a bachelor’s degree or to have graduate degree aspirations (Bowen & Bok, 1998; Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Brint & Karabel, 1989; Karabel, 1972; Karen, 1991). With only limited sources of support, less than 43% of Latino high school students are qualified to enroll in four-year institutions annually. In 2000, the percentage of 25- to 29-year-olds completing a bachelor’s degree or higher was 10% for Latinos, 18% for Blacks, and 34% for Whites. Not surprisingly, Latinos and Blacks lag behind in the pursuit of graduate and professional level degrees. The small pool of prospective minority graduate students is affected by factors such as low grades at the undergraduate level, low GRE scores, and lack of information regarding educational funding. In 2001, only 5% of students who earned a graduate or professional degree were Latino. Among doctoral recipients in 2002, 5% were Latino, 5% were Black, 20% were Asian, and 61% were White (Gándara & Contreras, 2009). If working-class minority students are less likely to have parents that provide them with the type of school readiness that their middle-class counterparts receive, who can they turn to? Who, if anyone, reaches out to them?

EDUCATOR-STUDENT RELATIONSHIPS Recent educational research has shown that for working-class minority students, success in school depends on opportunities to develop supportive relationships with key school agents. Gándara and Contreras (2009) note the high degree of institutional attention that low-income students require in order to excel academically. They fi nd that working-class students who “beat the odds” and make it into four-year colleges usually encounter a college-educated adult that takes the initiative to provide ongoing encouragement and critical academic guidance to make it happen. The intervening adult is often a teacher, counselor, clergyperson, family friend, or someone associated with an academic support program. The counselors in their study, for example, gave out their home phone numbers and students called them regularly during evenings and weekends. They also often held parent and student meetings in the late hours of the day, and planned college-access activities for weekends and after school. Their informal counselor roles continued to expand as students left school

8

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

or went off to college because students continued to call on them for advice and support. Without this high level of intervention from school-based, college-educated adults, the working-class students in their study would not have achieved the success they ultimately attained. These fi ndings highlight the fact that educators do far more than fulfill their formal roles to teach, enforce discipline, and organize class schedules. They also develop meaningful relationships with students that can be far more complex. In fact, educators frequently fi nd themselves acting as co-parents, mentors, advocates, and informal psychologists. For working-class minority youth, the advocate/mentor role educators can play holds considerable transformative power. When relations between a school-based adult and a student become genuinely supportive, they carry the potential to alter a student’s educational trajectory and eventual life chances in extremely positive and enduring ways. Stanton-Salazar’s (2001) work highlights how students develop close relations with school personnel that often extend over several years. In his study, he found that between 25–50% of students identified supportive ties with educators that were multifaceted, entailing high levels of interaction and trust. Female students, in particular, reported higher rates of strong relationships with educators compared to their male counterparts. These previous fi ndings suggest that there is a need to create more opportunities for working-class minority students to develop these important multidimensional relationships with educators to nurture academic success and higher education access.

PIVOTAL MOMENTS AND HIGHER EDUCATION ACCESS Much of the research on higher education access focuses on what formal institutions such as schools and families are doing wrong, but few studies explore the informal yet very significant sources of support that help working-class minority students excel and eventually enroll in higher education. In this book, I examine working-class minority students who receive the necessary support that buffers them from the worst effects of class, race, and gender oppression and paves the way to higher education by introducing a framework I call “Pivotal Moments” to understand how informal academic interventions by school-based, college-educated adults alters their academic paths. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s (1986) concepts of social and cultural capital, my framework explains how the occurrence, timing, and duration of pivotal moments impact students’ educational trajectories by creating a change in their social and psychological orientations toward schooling and academic achievement. I posit that these educator-student relationships help students accumulate college procedural knowledge (cultural capital) and significant relationships (social capital) as a result of the transformation triggered by the academic intervention. The fi ndings suggest that students who experience earlier Pivotal

Introduction

9

Moments demonstrate higher academic success compared to their counterparts with no or late Pivotal Moments. By examining the educational experiences of students at various points of the educational pipeline, I explore how educator-student relationships help working-class minority students get on the path to higher education.

THE STUDY This book is based on extensive fieldwork, in-depth interviews, and survey data with students and educators at the middle school, high school, undergraduate, and graduate level. The perspectives from students and educators from various public and private schools provide a broad array of data. Over the course of 12 months, approximately 100 hours of participant observation were conducted at high schools (counseling offices and classrooms), academic outreach programs (weekend activities and summer programs), and higher education events (college fairs for students and conferences for academic outreach professionals). Observational data provided important insights about the interactional process between educators and their students in transmitting information about college. The fieldwork also included countless informal interviews with students and educators. In addition to the ethnographic data, in-depth interviews were conducted with 140 high school, community college, university, and graduate students, and 90 middle school, high school, and higher education educators, including teachers, counselors, administrators, academic outreach coordinators, and professors. Table 1.1 provides an overview of all the data sources. To complement the ethnographic and interview data, surveys were conducted with a sample of 105 high school students, 1,265 undergraduate students, and 60 graduate students. Two-year longitudinal survey data was also collected on 416 community college and university undergraduate students and recent college graduates. To supplement the educator interviews, an online survey was also conducted with 250 secondary and higher education academic outreach professionals. Table 1.2 provides basic demographic information on all five survey samples that included a diverse group of students based on gender, race/ethnicity, educational level, and parental education. Students and educators were recruited for interviews through personal contacts and participant-driven sampling. Survey recruitment was conducted via email announcements and flyers. In recruitment, the research was described as a study about the services and information available to students about attending college and experiences upon arrival. Both student and educator survey and interview samples were ethnically and socioeconomically diverse. Student interview and survey participants were asked a series of questions regarding their family background (experiences growing up), early

10

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

Table 1.1

Data Sources Participant In-depth Interviews Observation Hours Participants

Middle school

5

Teachers

2

Counselors

3

Academic outreach coordinators

2

High school

50

Administrators

4

Teachers

15

Counselors

20

Academic outreach coordinators

30

College/university

Survey Participants

103

45

Professors Two-year public

3

Four-year public

6

Four-year private

2

Academic outreach coordinators

3

147

Students High school

40

105

College

40

1,265

Graduate school

60

60

College graduates not in graduate school Total

50 100

230

1,730

education experiences (elementary, junior high school, and high school), and experiences in higher education (college and graduate school). Participants were asked about different aspects of their educational experiences, including relationships with school personnel and peers (friendships). Educator interview and survey participants were asked to respond to various questions about their demographic and socioeconomic background, professional work history, extent to which they interacted with students and parents, and their views about college access. Survey questions included both Likert-type and open-ended questions. Interview questions were open-ended to encourage participants to talk about their most salient personal and educational experiences. Each interview was tape-recorded,

Introduction

11

Table 1.2 Background Characteristics of Survey Respondents High School Student Survey (N = 105)

College Student Survey (N = 1,265)

Doctoral Student Survey (N = 60)

College Academic Student 2-year Outreach Longitudinal Professionals Survey Survey (N = 416) (N = 250)

Female

49

68

100

77

81

Male

51

32

0

23

19

White

0

46

27

46

54

Latino

100

30

39

14

25

Black

0

3

14

1

13

Asian

0

11

12

10

3

26

35

0

0

N/A

2 year

37

23

2

32

NA

3rd year

16

17

0

29

NA

Gender (%)

Race/ethnicity (%)

Educational level (%) 1st year nd

th

4 year

18

25

12

21

NA

5th year

NA

NA

20

NA

NA

th

6 year

NA

NA

25

NA

NA

BA

NA

NA

100

18

26

MA

NA

NA

NA

NA

62

JD/PhD/MD

NA

NA

37

NA

11

NA

28

NA

6

NA

Mother has high school degree or less

82

32

44

18

49

Father has high school degree or less

91

32

38

17

45

Neither parent has a BA

79

41

35

24

59

Student type (%) Community college Parental education (%)

12

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

transcribed, coded, and analyzed. Analytic themes were identified through close readings and re-readings of the transcripts in an iterative process involving detailed examination of the data. All participants have been assigned a pseudonym to protect their identity. The survey and interview data analyses were approached with the following guiding questions: What are the educational experiences of working-class minority students that facilitate their path to higher education? What is the role of educators in that process? Do differences exist based on race, ethnicity, and/or gender?

ORGANIZATION OF THE BOOK This book closely examines the diverse routes working-class minority students take to higher education by highlighting the importance of students developing supportive relationships with educators. Chapter 2 describes the guiding theoretical framework of social and cultural capital used in the study. It details Bourdieu’s theory of cultural reproduction and his concepts of social capital, cultural capital, and habitus in understanding success or failure in school. Chapter 3 discusses how the timing and duration of Pivotal Moments impact students’ long-term educational trajectories. Results suggest that Pivotal Moment interventions that occur early (before or during high school) are more beneficial than those that occur later (after high school). Early Pivotal Moments provide students with the opportunity to acquire and accumulate the educational social and cultural capital that contributes to their subsequent school success and advancement. Early Pivotal Moments also trigger the start of a habitus change toward one more compatible with middle-class educational institutions. Chapter 4 explores how experiencing a Pivotal Moment during elementary school, middle school, high school, or even college helps low-income minority students increase their educational capital that ultimately alters their working-class habitus. It shows the benefits and consequences of a hybrid working-/middle-class habitus by analyzing various academic outcomes. Chapter 5 explains the transformative power of educators who interrupt the sorting process of schools for working-class minority students compared to those who reproduce class, race, and gender inequality. By working to earn students’ trust, providing mentorship and advocacy, and transmitting valuable social and academic capital, Pivotal Moment educators make the school system a comfortable and familiar place where academic success is possible. Chapter 6 profi les educator-student Pivotal Moment pairs to gain insight into the complex dynamic of academic interventions that shape students’ college aspirations and success. It illustrates how school-based, college-educated adults are critical in transforming a students’ college-going habitus and putting them on a path to college.

Introduction

13

Chapter 7 discusses the contribution of the Pivotal Moment framework in understanding how educators can disrupt the sorting process of schools for working-class minority students and help them gain access to higher education. Pivotal Moments highlight the transmission process by which low-income and minority students learn the educational social and academic capital that is needed for high levels of academic achievement. The fi ndings suggest the potential for educator-student relationships to curve the dismal educational trends for disadvantaged and underrepresented students.

2

Theoretical Foundation Educational Social and Cultural Capital

Educational research consistently shows that middle-class students who come from homes with college-educated parents are more likely to attain higher levels of education than working-class students whose parents have low levels of educational attainment. Scholars assert that middle-class children have more educationally valuable social and cultural capital that allows them to excel academically and outperform their working-class peers. According to this assumption, working-class minority students enter the educational system at a distinct disadvantage that must be overcome to achieve high levels of academic success. This chapter provides a theoretical foundation to understand the educational experiences of academically successful students from working-class minority backgrounds—like those profi led in this study—who circumvent the sorting process of schools. Despite coming from non-college educated homes, the research on social and cultural capital theory highlights how some low-income and minority students are able to gain the academic capital needed to excel in school and successfully navigate educational institutions.

SOCIAL STRATIFICATION AND REPRODUCTION THEORY The prevailing belief in the U.S. is that individuals carve out their own life paths through hard work and talent. For this reason, Americans generally assert that responsibility for their accomplishments rests on their individual efforts. This view lends itself well to the assumption that everyone has equal life chances and opportunities for success, and that society is, in fundamental ways, open (Lareau, 2003). So, when we see disparities in children’s educational outcomes, it is often explained as the result of differences in raw talent, innate ability, and individual initiative. This perspective, however, is in direct conflict with the sociological thesis that the social structural location of the family systematically shapes children’s life experiences and outcomes. There is no question that society is stratified along social class lines. The possession of highly valued resources such as wealth, a prestigious job, a good education, and home ownership are not evenly distributed throughout

Theoretical Foundation 15 society (Lareau, 2003). These resources are then passed on from one generation to the next, giving each subsequent generation an accumulation of them. In fact, the richest 10% of families in our society owns almost 80% of all real estate (other than family homes), more than 90% of all securities (stocks and bonds) and approximately 60% of all the money in bank accounts (Kingston, 2000). One widely used indicator of inequality in income is the high child poverty rate. There are many more poor children in the U.S. than in most Western European countries. In the U.S., one-fifth of all children live below the poverty level, and the figure is approximately twice as high for Black children (Mishel, Bernstein, & Schmitt, 1999). The distribution of income and wealth has become even more concentrated in the hands of a few during the last decades of the twentieth century (Mishel, Bernstein, & Schmitt, 1999). As such, parents’ social structural location has profound implications for their children’s life chances and opportunities. Rosksa, Godsky, Arum, and Gamoran (2007) find that individuals whose parents graduated from college have approximately five times the odds of entering both baccalaureate and elite baccalaureate institutions as individuals whose parents graduated from high school, all else being equal. Even after controlling for high school achievement, the children of college-educated parents have a higher likelihood of 2.5 times (any four-year college) to 4 times (elite college) of attending college than children of parents with only high school educations. Researchers have tried to better understand social stratification by uncovering how social status or class position is transmitted in various societal institutions, including families and schools. As they explore how social relations in society are reproduced, they invariably are led to one site: the school. Reproduction theorists, for example, fi nd that schools actually reinforce social inequality while assuming to do the opposite. They argue that the view of schools as the great equalizer, where the low and mighty compete on an equal basis, overlooks and naturalizes social inequality. Pierre Bourdieu (1986), a prominent reproduction theorist, sought to explain how social inequality is perpetuated and why this process of social reproduction is readily accepted by the exploiter and the exploited alike. Using the concept of habitus, he shows that the mechanisms of cultural and social reproduction remain hidden and invisible because the social practices that safeguard the political and economic interests of the dominant classes go unrecognized as anything other than the only natural or rational ones. In his framework, schooling is seen as crucial to the reproduction and legitimation of social inequality.

BOURDIEU’S THEORY OF CULTURAL REPRODUCTION Cultural reproduction theories propose that success or failure in school is determined largely by social class. Cloaked in the language of meritocracy, academic performance is viewed as the result of individual ability by both

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Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

high and low achievers. School-mediated exclusion implants in those it marginalizes a belief that leads them to see themselves as the causal agents of a process that is actually institutionally determined. Bourdieu argues that schooling entrenches social inequality by reproducing class privilege and simultaneously sanctifying the resulting differences. He posits that the culture of the dominant class is transmitted and rewarded by the educational system. To acquire cultural capital, a student must have the ability to receive and internalize it. Although schools require that students have this ability, they do not provide it for them. Moreover, the acquisition of cultural capital and consequent access to academic rewards depend on the cultural capital passed down by the family, which in turn, is largely dependent on social class. Cultural capital, then, is comprised of “linguistic and cultural competence” and a broad knowledge of culture that belongs to members of the upper classes and is found much less frequently among the lower classes. Differences in cultural capital are reinforced by an educational system that prefers these styles, leaving most members of the lower classes with little hope of achieving social mobility. Bourdieu further argues that schools require cultural resources with which only middle- and upper-class students are endowed. For example, in her research on the educational ramifications of divergent linguistic patterns among children of different social strata, Heath (1983) fi nds that Black working-class children are not socialized to develop the language patterns used in school, and as a result, fall into a pattern of academic failure. The mismatch between language used at home and the language demanded by the school is a significant obstacle for working-class and minority students. Like many of the mechanisms of social reproduction, linguistic socialization is an invisible impediment that goes unacknowledged, but is a product of family upbringing. Another proposition of cultural reproduction theorists is that cultural training in the home is awarded unequal value in educational institutions because of the close compatibility between the standards of child rearing in middle- and upper-class homes and the (arbitrary) standards proposed by these institutions (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). As a result, individuals act as if the dominant culture is universal and legitimate, not recognizing its concealed arbitrariness (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). Language becomes an instrument of symbolic violence through which dominant groups enforce their own specific dialects over and against subordinate groups. The “losers” in this game are the students from the dominated classes who lack the cultural capital to translate academic discourse into their own language code. According to Bourdieu, dominated groups have not received the decoding skills necessary to interpret cultural events (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). He notes that the educational system demands uniformity of all its students that they should have what it does not give. He also argues that those in positions of dominance have various ways of evading scholastic verdicts and that the effects of social capital (a helping hand, “string

Theoretical Foundation 17 pulling,” the “old boy network,” and other shortcuts to information and advice) tend to correct the effect of academic sanctions. There are four main points in Bourdieu’s theory. First, distinctive cultural capital is transmitted by each social class. Second, the school systematically valorizes upper-class cultural capital and devalues the cultural capital of the lower classes. Third, differential academic achievement is translated into economic wealth—the job market remunerates the superior academic credentials earned mainly by the upper classes. Finally, the school legitimates this process “by making social hierarchies and the reproduction of those hierarchies appear to be based upon the hierarchy of gifts, merits, or skills established and ratified by its sanctions, in other words, by converting social hierarchies into academic hierarchies” (MacLeod, 1987). In Bourdieu’s model, economic capital is passed on directly to the next generation. He argues that children’s academic performance is more strongly related to parents’ educational history than to their occupational status and contends that class-based differences in cultural capital tend to have a decreasing importance as one ascends the educational ladder. Schools are symbolic institutions that reproduce existing power relations subtly via the production and distribution of a dominant culture that tacitly confi rms what it means to be educated rather than directly imposing docility and oppression. Bourdieu’s concepts of field and habitus help to explain the function of capital and educational attainment (Harker, Mahar, & Wilkes, 1990).

Field and Strategy Bourdieu brings together his central concepts of field, strategy, capital, and habitus in a relational framework to illustrate how the social reproduction function of education is achieved. Education is conceptualized as a sorting machine that selects students according to an implicit social classification and reproduces the same students according to an explicit academic classification (Bourdieu, 1996). He described the ways in which they structure academic judgments to determine what is classified as “academic” and counts as valid criteria for entry and success in higher education as “academic taxonomies” (Bourdieu, 1996). Bourdieu’s empirical studies reveal that academic taxonomies are in fact organized according to qualities commonly ascribed to the upper class (Bourdieu, 1988, 1996). The education system designates those endowed with cultural capital, which is generally inherited as a result of social origin, as “academically talented.” In this way, higher education establishes a close correspondence between the social classification at entry and the social classification at exit without explicitly recognizing, and in most cases denying, the link between social properties dependent on social class origin and academic selection and evaluation. Field is the contextual environment in which people exist and go about their daily lives, the complexity of which is magnified by the dynamic

18 Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education interaction of social structures such as institutions, rules, and practices (Webb, Schirato, & Danaher, 2002). The field is structured hierarchically in the sense that people and institutions occupy dominant and subordinate positions. These positions depend on the amount of specific resources that are possessed in relation to others. Bourdieu refers to these field-specific resources as capital. Capital may be viewed as the specific cultural or social (rather than economic) assets that are valuable in the field and, when possessed, enables membership to the field (Bourdieu, 1986). Capital is a key concept in Bourdieu’s framework. Anything that is afforded, however tacitly, an exchange value in a given field, and that thereby serves both as a resource for action and as a “good” to be sought after and accumulated counts as capital. Forms of capital, therefore, are multiple but each field defi nes its own species of capital. According to Bourdieu (1986), forms of capital can be converted within and across fields. Success in many fields may be converted into cash, for example, and, by the same token, fi nancial capital can be an important asset in most fields. In addition to fi nancial capital, the main forms of capital are symbolic capital (i.e., status), social capital (i.e., useful contacts and networks), and cultural capital (i.e., educational qualifications and the possession of highly regarded artifacts and goods). Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992) describe the school system as a field. Doing schoolwork and attempting to get good grades are types of practices in this field. Within the educational field, the most valuable form of capital is cultural capital. As Bourdieu states, “academic success is directly dependent upon cultural capital and on the inclination to invest in the academic market” (Bourdieu, 1977). Within the dominant classes, teachers have the most cultural capital, they value it, and tend to reward students who possess it (Bourdieu, 1988; DiMaggio & Useem, 1978). Children who have more cultural capital because they been exposed to it from birth in their middle- and upper-class families feel more comfortable in school, communicate easily with teachers, and are therefore more likely to do well in school (De Graaf, De Graaf, & Kraaykamp 2000). Lower-class students, on the other hand, fi nd the school environment different from their home environment and lack the capital necessary to fit in. Even lower-class students who manage to accumulate cultural capital in school and advance successfully through the school system are easy to distinguish from their upper-class peers because their cultural capital is more “academic” than that of those who were exposed to a wider variety of cultural resources in their homes (Bourdieu, 1988). The type of capital operating in the field of university education is an institutionalized form of cultural capital that has generally been termed “academic capital,” defi ned as prior educational achievement, a “disposition” to be academic (seen, e.g., in manner of speech and writing), and especially in designated competencies (Bourdieu, 1988, 1996). Bourdieu also develops an understanding of the practices in higher education by the use of the concept “strategy” which is a specific type of

Theoretical Foundation 19 practice. Strategy in Bourdieu’s theory is dependent on habitus, which as a result of socialization, engenders in individuals a disposition, below the level of consciousness, to act or think in certain ways. The habitus accounts for the dispositions and competence that both generate and shape action. The concepts of field and capital help to describe the context of action, and the resources available to the actor that shape action within that context.

Habitus Bourdieu’s work provides a context for examining the impact of social class position. He argues that individuals of different social locations are socialized differently. This socialization provides children, and later adults, with a sense of what is comfortable or what is natural, which he terms habitus. He defi nes habitus as, “A system of lasting, transposable dispositions which, integrating past experiences, functions at every moment as a matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and actions” (Bourdieu, 1977). In other words, the habitus is shaped by the attitudes, beliefs, and experiences of those we interact with on a daily basis. Habitus is also manifested in our physical demeanor, such as the way we walk or carry ourselves. The habitus, as the word implies, is that which one has acquired, but which has become durably incorporated in the form of permanent dispositions. It refers to experiences and processes linked to individual history. Moreover, the habitus is a form of capital, but one which because it is embodied, appears innate. Bourdieu designates the family as the central site for the most profound inculcation of the habitus, as it provides the child’s first definitive framework for the systematic inculcation of the group’s values and ideologies. A child brought up in an art-loving family, for example, is far more likely to develop her own “love of art” and will acquire the dispositions and know-how for “true” appreciation and criticism (Bourdieu & Darbel, 1991). These incorporated habits dispose the individual to continue with particular forms of practice. When the child reaches school age, the educational system takes over, both sharing and contending with the family in the refining and entrenchment of the habitus. Finally, encircling and defining the pedagogical work of both the family and the educational system, lies the force of social class which inscribes the linguistic codes, cultural predispositions, and relations to authority typical of that social class group (e.g., working-class or middleclass). The net effect of the triple networks of family, educational system, and social class is a deeply entrenched set of codes for thinking and acting which shape, “a subjective but not individual system of internalized structures, schemes of perception, conception, and action common to all members of the same group or class” (Bourdieu, 1977). In Bourdieu’s scheme, habitus functions as a regulator between individuals and their external world, between human agency and social structure. It is the mediating link between individuals and their social world. As a conceptual bridge between subjective, inner consciousness

20 Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education and the objective, external constraints of the material world, habitus disposes individuals to think and act in certain ways. Bourdieu believes that people absorb from their social environment values and beliefs that guide their actions. People do not stop and think about their actions, nor can they explain why they undertook them. They learn to act and react not from explicit teaching but from experience, from countless events in their lives, and from subtle cues in their environment. The power of the habitus derives from the thoughtlessness of habit and habituation rather than consciously learned rules and principles. “Effective” social actions are produced as a matter of routine, without explicit reference to codified knowledge, and without individuals necessarily knowing what they are doing (Jenkins, 1992). Habitus’ dual quality as both collective and individualized offers a conception of human action or practice that accounts for its regularity, coherence, and order without ignoring its negotiated and strategic nature (Charlesworth, 2000; Nash, 2002). Capital interweaves with the habitus in a number of ways. Because habitus is generated by one’s place in the social structure, by internalizing the social structure and one’s place in it, one comes to determine what is possible and what is not possible in life and develops aspirations and practices accordingly. Habitus structures the way in which people carry out daily living activities and interact with capital in its variety of forms. These background experiences also shape the amount and forms of resources (capital) individuals inherit and acquire to draw upon in various institutional settings (fields). Bourdieu suggests that capital assets largely defi ne one’s social position, which in turn determines the conditions that shape one’s life experiences and thus habitus. Forms of capital, to a degree, are valuable because we agree that they are valuable. Habitus is important in this respect because such agreements are so deeply rooted in habit that they are seldom identified as agreements at all. The habitus is shaped by information absorbed through daily interactions and leads individuals to act within a set of unstated rules without questioning why it is they behave a certain way or value one object, action, or interaction more than another (Bourdieu, 1986). Habitus, Gender, Race, and Ethnicity. One of the most distinctive yet unremarked features of Bourdieu’s theoretical framework is that the most widely studied forms of domination and exclusion in social research such as racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, or disablism only enter as incidental modifiers, if at all (Sayer, 2005). Gender is subsumed throughout much of Bourdieu’s writing under his primary focus on social class, and he makes no mention of the way in which habitus is differentiated by race. In his later writings, Bourdieu (2001) does modify his earlier position (Bourdieu, 1988) where the gendered character of social actions is contingent on class habitus, to a view of gender divisions as an independent force structuring the habitus (Weininger, 2004).

Theoretical Foundation 21 Research on habitus has only briefly focused on the ways in which the socially advantaged and disadvantaged play out attitudes of cultural superiority and inferiority ingrained in their habitus. Because research on habitus is primarily focused on analyzing the dominance of dominant groups in society and the domination of subordinate groups, it can easily be applied to the analysis of gender or racial and ethnic disadvantage as well. As McClelland (1990) notes, the habitus is influenced by gender and race as well as social class. Recently, some scholars have begun to theorize about how habitus is shaped by both gender and race. For example, Cicourel (1993) has argued that the concept of habitus can be useful in exploring how gender and racial differences are linked to circumstances that can occur in smaller contexts such as classrooms, staff rooms, and playgrounds as well as within and across cultures and social classes or ethnic groups within larger nation-states. The concept of habitus has also been used to examine how class, race, and gender are embodied, played out not only in individual actions and attitudes, but also in a whole range of bodily gestures (Reay, 1995a, 1995b, 1997, 1998; Connolly, 1998). Reay (1997) conceptualizes class as encompassing complex social and psychological dispositions that interact with gender and race to inform and influence everyday behaviors. Bourdieu posits that the practical knowledge of the social world internalized in the habitus as generative of historical schemes of perception and appreciation which are the product of the objective division into social groups (age group, gender, social class), and function below the level of consciousness and discourse (Bourdieu, 1988). Few, however, have examined the situation of people, both male and female, from different ethnic groupings through his framework. Female habitus can be surmised as a complex interlacing of the dispositions, which are the consequences of gender oppression, with those that are the product of varying levels of social privilege. Similarly, recognition of racial oppression would inform understandings of racialized habitus. Prejudices and racial stereotypes ingrained in the habitus of members of dominant groups can affect the life chances of any group who are clearly different in some way. As Griffin (1996) points out, the denial of class status, just as much as denial of gender and race, is an effect of power relations in operation. Even when race, class, and gender are not overt and articulated in people’s decoding of the social world, it is still there as part of the implicit, taken-for-granted understandings they bring to their relationships with others. Regardless of whether people see themselves in terms of race and gender, it shapes what individuals become. Habitus and Schooling. The habitus defi nes an individual’s general attitude toward schooling. Students’ decisions to invest in their education, study hard, and go to college depend on their place in the class system and their expectations of whether people from that class tend to be successful academically (Swartz, 1997). The structure of schooling, with its high regard for the cultural capital of the upper classes, promotes a belief

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Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

among working-class students that they are unlikely to achieve academic success. Bourdieu (1977) argued that one’s habitus develops in relation to how much cultural capital one has, a person from the lower class is aware that people from that class tend to have little “upper class” cultural capital and that without it they are unlikely to succeed educationally. Thus, there is a correlation between objective probabilities and subjective aspirations as well as between institutional structures and cultural practices. Aspirations reflect an individual’s view of his or her own chances for getting ahead and are an internalization of objective probabilities. Aspirations are not the product of a rational analysis but rather are acquired in the habitus of the individual. A lower-class child growing up in an environment where success is rare is much less likely to develop strong ambitions like a middleclass child growing up in a social world where people have “made it” and the connection between effort and reward is visible. Habitus produces action, but because it is confi ned by what is perceived as possible for the social group the individual belongs to, much of the time those actions tend to be reproductive rather than transformative. Dispositions are inevitably reflective of the social context in which they were acquired. Therefore, lower-class students may self-select themselves out of the college-going track on the basis of their views of what is possible and what is not. On the other hand, successful students from the lower class may see the accumulation of cultural capital as a way to overcome the obstacles that are typical for those in their class position. Unlike their middle-class counterparts, the educational process of working-class students is fraught with dilemmas and contradictions (Lynch & O’Neill, 1994). Those who succeed in the educational system may have to abandon certain features of their original class habitus (Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977). As a result, what constitutes a rational choice about secondary schooling differs according to social class status. When working-class individuals make the transition through education out of the working class, the juxtaposition of working-class habitus and middle-class field produces not only discordance, but can generate alarm, fear, and panic. For example, Reay (1997) described the experiences of Christine, a young woman from a workingclass background, who despite attending college, struggled with the remnants of her working-class history that continued to influence her in a range of ways she was not able to control. Although she did not wish to own a class identity, it still generated negative feelings in her relationship to teachers and the degree of confidence with which she approached the issue of higher education. For many adolescents in the U.S., the postsecondary transition goal to attend college after high school is an unquestioned assumption. Part of the habitus of the dominant American culture is the pursuit of higher education. Adolescents commonly articulate this goal regardless of the academic struggles they face or the fi nancial constraints of living in poverty (Trainor, 2005). Working-class students, however, experience a fundamental

Theoretical Foundation 23 discontinuity between the values of their working-class habitus and their middle-class goals and destinations. It is not simply a function of workingclass students having had less access to upper-class, highbrow aesthetic culture, but more importantly, as not possessing the “right” middle-class attitudes, linguistic skills, attire, networks, and social skills or in other words, the “right habitus” (Aries & Seider, 2005; Kingston, 2001; Lareau & Weininger, 2003). For instance, Lambert, Zeman, Allen, and Bussiere (2004) identify “lack of fit” as the most important reason why students leave postsecondary education prior to completion. For working-class students at a university, this may well indicate a mix of perceived middle-class cultural capital deficiency and habitus discontinuity. Low-socioeconomic (SES) students’ ability to convert their college education and experience into social and economic profits may be greater than that of their low-SES peers who did not attend college, but it is lower than their high-SES college peers. This outcome may be due to a different habitus which led them to use different conversion strategies, such as working full-time after college instead of attending graduate school. Such strategies are not as successful in converting academic and cultural capital into economic and social profits. Converting the capital accumulated in college into graduate school attendance and high degree aspirations displays a habitus that views graduate education as a reinvestment toward further capital accumulation. Such a reinvestment has been found in a high-status habitus, although low-SES students who attend graduate school learn to make a similar conversion and may have acquired this element of habitus in their college environment. Low-SES students can learn elements of a highSES habitus through contact with faculty or student groups. They have a distinct capital investment pattern that may indicate a unique habitus for socially mobile people, or it may indicate that elements of a high-SES habitus are learned by low-SES students through contact with faculty and other individuals in higher education settings. Habitus Change. Although the concept of habitus has been subject to widespread criticism, mainly on the basis of its perceived latent determinism, this perspective fails to consider Bourdieu’s rationale for developing the concept. He argues that habitus is central to his methodology of structuralist constructivism that attempts to transcend dualisms of agency-structure, objective-subjective, and the micro-macro (Bourdieu, 1985b). Throughout his career, Bourdieu (1999) continued to challenge the view of habitus as a form of determinism. Although the habitus allows for individual agency, it also predisposes individuals toward certain ways of behaving. However, despite this implicit tendency to behave in ways that are expected of “people like us,” for Bourdieu there are no explicit rules or principles that dictate behavior, rather “the habitus goes hand-in-hand with vagueness and indeterminacy” (Bourdieu, 1990b). He writes in terms of the generation of a wide repertoire of possible actions, simultaneously enabling the individual

24

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

to draw on transformative and constraining courses of action. The practical logic which defi nes habitus is not one of the predictable regularity of modes of behavior, but instead, “that of vagueness, of the more-or-less, which defi nes one’s ordinary relation to the world” (Bourdieu, 1990b). Habitus, therefore, is a compilation of collective and individual trajectories. Bourdieu conceives of habitus as a multi-layered concept, with more general notions of habitus at the societal level and more complex, differentiated notions at the individual level. A person’s individual history along with the whole collective history of family and class to which that person belongs constitutes the habitus. Bourdieu suggests both a degree of uniformity as well as differences and diversity in the individual habitus of members of the same cultural groups. Habitus, within, as well as between, social groups, differs to the extent that the details of individuals’ social trajectories diverge from one another. Just as no two individual histories are identical, so no two individual habitus’ are identical (Bourdieu, 1990a). However, because there are classes of experience there are also habitus of classes. A collective understanding of habitus is necessary in order to recognize that individuals contain within themselves their past and present position in the social structure, “at all times and in all places” (Bourdieu, 1990b). Individual histories are vital to understanding the concept of habitus. Habitus is “the product of social conditionings, and thus of a history” (Bourdieu, 1990b). It is a complex interplay between past and present. It is permeable and responsive to what is going on around the individual. Current circumstances are not just there to be acted upon, but are internalized and become yet another layer added to those from earlier socializations. Although the habitus is a product of early childhood experience and socialization within the family, it is continually re-structured by individuals’ encounters with the social and physical worlds (DiMaggio, 1979). Thus, although habitus reflects the social position in which it was constructed, it also carries within it the genesis of new creative responses that are capable of transcending the social conditions in which it was produced. The range of possibilities inscribed in a habitus can be viewed as a continuum. At one end, habitus can be replicated by a field that reproduces its dispositions. At the other end of the continuum, habitus can be transformed through a process that either raises or lowers an individual’s expectations. Implicit in the concept is the possibility of a social trajectory that enables conditions of living that are very different from initial ones due to the acquisition of cultural skills, social connections, educational practices, and other cultural resources, which are translated into different forms of value (i.e., capital). Bourdieu does suggest that although it is possible to adopt new habits later in life, these late acquired dispositions may lack the comfortable (natural) feel associated with those learned in childhood. When habitus encounters a social world of which it is the product, it is like a “‘fish in water,’ it does not feel the weight of the water and it takes the world about itself for granted” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). However,

Theoretical Foundation 25 when habitus encounters a field with which it is not familiar, the resulting disjuncture can generate change and transformation (McNay, 2000). In his later work, Bourdieu placed an increasing emphasis on moments of misalignment and tension between habitus and field that could give rise to social change (McNay, 2001). He describes the movement of habitus across a new unfamiliar field resulting in a habitus in constant negotiation with itself and its ambivalences (Bourdieu, 1999). Habitus operates at an unconscious level unless individuals confront events that cause self-questioning, whereupon habitus begins to operate at the level of consciousness and the person develops new facets of the self. Such disjuncture between habitus and field occur for Bourdieu when individuals with a well-developed habitus fi nd themselves in different fields or different parts of the same social field. Disjuncture and the resulting striving, resistance and/or new awareness can occur during the formation of habitus, and indeed can be constitutive of the habitus (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). Schooling and Habitus Change. Habitus is constituted at the level of the family and factors such as race or ethnicity, educational history, peer associations, neighborhood social ecology, and demographic characteristics (e.g., geographical mobility, duration of tenancy in public housing, sibling order, and family size) are all constitutive of the habitus. The habitus acquired in the family underlies the structuring of school experiences, and the habitus transformed by schooling, in turn, underlies the structuring of all subsequent experiences (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). When understood along these lines, the concept of habitus becomes flexible enough to accommodate the interactions among ethnicity, family, schooling, work experiences, and peer associations. The actual habitus of working-class and minority students may be even more complex than Bourdieu and Passeron suggest. Their assumption about the correspondence between aspirations and opportunity cannot fully explain the high ambitions working-class and minority students often reference in the educational research literature. This may be due, in part, because the theory underestimates the American achievement ideology’s capacity to mystify structural constraints and encourage high aspirations. In describing the experiences of working-class girls who were in the same college-going courses as middle-class students, Bettie (2003) notes that the girls not only consciously tried to pass as middle-class, but also at another level, the girls were actually in the process of acquiring middleclass cultural capital and habitus. These upwardly mobile, working-class girls were not only passing as middle-class, but the experience of a collegeprep curriculum gave them academic skills that helped them refashion a class identity and enable their mobility. In short, they displayed a bicultural class identity and also lived in a state of longing—longing for both class mobility and a return to the familiar comfort of their class “home.” That home is, of course, experienced differently across race/ethnicity, as it is also

26

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

an ethnic home. Bettie (2003) notes that these girls are the “exception to the rule,” and that there were a variety of individual contingencies that resulted in their mobility; any of these contingencies that were in play for these girls would not have been sufficient if these subjects had not also met with opportunity. These fi ndings suggest that the habitus is adaptive and that educational institutions can instill certain dispositions that do not trace back to early family socializations. To date, this dynamic and adaptive character of the habitus has not been fully explored empirically. How are fi rst-generation students able to persist and successfully complete college? Is their story one of habitus transformation? Do their educational experiences reshape how they conceive of themselves, their dispositions, and ultimately their habitus? Are these students “making it by faking it” (Granfield, 1991)? Can fi rst-generation students from working-class backgrounds affi rm their working-class identities with pride and use them as a source of strength in educational settings (Aries & Seider, 2005)?

Cultural Capital Cultural capital is widely recognized as one of Bourdieu’s signature concepts. The concept of capital has enabled researchers to view culture as a resource, one that provides access to scarce rewards, is subject to monopolization, and under certain conditions, may be transmitted from one generation to the next. As a result, emphasis on cultural capital has enabled researchers to place culture and cultural processes at the center of analyses of various aspects of stratification. According to Bourdieu, cultural capital refers to linguistic, stylistic, and knowledge attributes which can enhance one’s social position. It also refers to knowledge of the norms, styles, conventions, and tastes that pervade specific social settings and allow individuals to navigate them in ways that increase their odds of success. This concept originated in the theoretical writings of Max Weber but gained special prominence in the work of Bourdieu (1977), who argued that cultural information passed on informally from one generation to the next helps to perpetuate social stratification (Swidler, 1986; MacLeod, 1987). Attitudes, tastes, and dispositions develop over generations and result from exposure to particular cultural experiences that are unique to class categories; consequently, the more generations that a family belongs to the middle class, the more middle-class cultural capital they are able to accumulate. Due to generational accumulation, wealthy children inherit a substantially different body of cultural knowledge compared with working-class children, especially when the latter are members of a racial or ethnic minority group. School systems are organized such that the cultural knowledge of middle-class Whites is valued and systematically rewarded, whereas the cultural capital possessed by lower-class minorities is not. As MacLeod (1987)

Theoretical Foundation 27 asserts, “by embodying class interests and ideologies, schools reward the cultural capital of the dominant classes and systematically devalue that of the lower classes. Upper-class students, by virtue of a certain linguistic and cultural competence acquired through family upbringing, are provided with the means of appropriation for success in school.” Thus, children who read books, visit museums, attend concerts, and go to the theater and cinema (or simply grow up in families where these practices are prevalent) acquire a familiarity with the dominant culture that the educational system implicitly requires of students for academic attainment (MacLeod, 1987). Similarly, Giroux (1983) contends, “students whose families have a tenuous connection to forms of cultural capital highly valued by the dominant society are at a decided disadvantage.” Hence, schools serve as the trading post where socially valued cultural capital is parlayed into superior academic performance. Academic performance is then turned back into economic capital by the acquisition of superior jobs. The educational system, therefore, reproduces social inequality and by dealing in the currency of academic credentials legitimates the entire process. Academia, in particular, is a rarefied social context with its own customs, traditions, and expectations. Exposure to and prior knowledge of the social conventions of academia can be critical in preparing students for achieving success in a school environment (Farkas, 1996). This knowledge may be quite practical such as knowing why, when, where, and how to study, or it may be more diff use and loosely related to educational achievement such as how to behave in certain social situations, familiarity with certain cultural symbols, knowledge of certain types of music, food, and dress. The latter are shared understandings that enable students to “fit in,” be comfortable, and feel like they “belong.” DiMaggio and Ostrower (1990) found significant Black/White differences in knowledge of Euro-American high culture, which generally permeate the academic milieu of selective colleges and universities. Alienation from these cultural forms might very well undermine the confidence, and hence, the achievement of minority students from poor and working-class backgrounds. Capital, both figurative and actual, can be directly exchanged for goods or services that raise the likelihood of academic goal attainment (Bourdieu, 1986). Paying for the services of an SAT tutor (using economic capital), for example, may contribute to the goal of obtaining a sufficient score on the university entrance exam. Cultural capital embodies cultural goods that contribute to the reification of status and power on the basis of accumulated capital that is highly valued in the larger society. In the example above, SAT practice tests or other similar testing experiences accessed in general education and advanced-placement classrooms constitute cultural capital that contributes to students’ ability to perform well on such assessments. Because social capital is comprised of networks of people and relationships that contribute to the garnering of capital in its other forms, a student’s relationship with a guidance counselor has the potential to increase awareness

28 Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education of the SAT registration due dates, tutorial workshops, financial assistance with testing fees, accommodations for students with disabilities, and so forth that may increase access to cultural capital (testing experience), and/ or economic capital (test fee waivers). The accumulation of capital over time helps secure privilege, status, and power (Bourdieu, 1986). According to Swartz (1997), Bourdieu’s examinations of the French higher education system showed that for lower- and middle-class students, even long-term experience in higher education did not allow them to significantly increase their lower amounts of cultural capital. For Bourdieu, the linguistic and cultural understandings and skills that individuals bring to schools on the basis of their class location is a significant type of cultural capital. Accordingly, students who possess certain forms of knowledge and enact particular norms corresponding to the school’s dominant culture experience the advantages of their social, economic, and cultural locations (Berger, 2000; MacLeod, 1987; McDonough, 1997). Because schooling in the U.S. is predominantly shaped by White, middleand upper-class values, a child from an upper-class family is more likely to have cultural understandings and characteristics consistent with a university’s culture than a child from a lower- or working-class background. In this way, cultural capital theorists argue that educational institutions reproduce existing power relations by giving cultural advantages to students from middle- and upper-class backgrounds. Bourdieu considered cultural capital and ‘‘ability’’ or ‘‘technical’’ skills to be irrevocably fused. He wrote that studies by human capital theorists on the relationship between academic ability and academic investment show that they are unaware that ability or talent is itself the product of an investment of time and cultural capital. He maintains that to attempt to differentiate the effects of factors linked to status from those linked to a pure ‘‘technical competence’’ is to ‘‘fall into [a] trap’’ (Bourdieu, 1986). He insists that claims of technical competence act as a strategic resource, by means of which individuals may seek to legitimate their position in a status hierarchy. Secondly, he asserts that evaluations of technical competence are inevitably influenced by the status of the person being assessed. Individuals from the dominant class always tend to impose the skills they have mastered as necessary and legitimate and to include in their defi nition of excellence the practices at which they excel (Bourdieu, 1977). Thirdly, and more broadly, he maintains that actors themselves continuously distinguish between the ‘‘technical and the symbolic,’’ or between attributes of ‘‘skill’’ and attributes of status. The impetus for the distinction that they draw between these two forms of ‘‘competence’’ lies in their strategic interests that vary according to their labor market position; what is ascribed to skill and to dignity, to doing and to being, to the technical and the symbolic, varies greatly according to the hierarchical position of title and jobs to which they give access (Bourdieu, 1977). Consequently, the boundary separating ‘‘technical’’ from ‘‘social’’ competence is at least partly a social construct, it

Theoretical Foundation 29 is a result of conflicts between actors pursuing opposing interests. Thus, for Bourdieu, to attempt to partition the different dimensions of competence on analytic grounds is to lose sight of this contestation. For McDonough (1997), cultural capital comprises the ‘‘fi rst-hand’’ knowledge that parents have of the college admission process, particularly knowledge that they do not get from schools (e.g., a detailed understanding of the significance of SAT scores, the possibility of raising SAT scores through tutoring, and the availability of private college counselors to tutor children and guide them through the college admission process, as well as the initiative to secure private tutors) (Cookson & Persell, 1985). McDonough argues that the postsecondary decisions of low-income minority high school students are constrained due to their lack of middle-class cultural capital. Specifically, she fi nds that low-income and underrepresented students do not possess sufficient knowledge about college—the diversity of institutions, the admissions process, the graduation rates of different types of institutions, and the conversion capacity of various degrees (McDonough, Korn, & Yamasaki, 1997).

Social Capital Bourdieu (1986) defined social capital as resources, both tangible and symbolic, that are derived from a person’s connectedness to society via social networks. Social capital, along with capital in other forms (i.e., cultural capital and economic capital), contributes to a person’s symbolic and material wealth, status, and power. People gain access to social capital through membership in networks and institutions and then convert it into other forms of capital such as education to improve or maintain their position in society. When children are connected through ties of kinship or friendship to people who can help them prepare for college—socially, psychologically, culturally, and academically—then those ties constitute a source of social capital. Middle-class and ethnic majority students and their parents simply know more about educational opportunities, what kinds exist and where and how to access them. They tend to know more about which classes prepare one for college and which do not, which teachers are the better instructors, and what kinds of extracurricular activities will provide an advantage in school and beyond. They also know how to approach school authorities to extract the most resources from the institution and are more likely to exercise influence with these authorities. In contrast, working-class minority students do not have the social capital needed for effectively accessing school resources. Ceja (2004), for example, in his study of Chicana high school seniors, found that their social support networks within the schools were insufficient in helping them to navigate the college planning and decision-making processes. Recent work by Valenzuela (1999) and Stanton-Salazar (1997) suggests that students with limited social capital benefit from the development of

30

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

relationships and social connections with caring, educated adults such as teachers, counselors, and school officials. According to Valenzuela (1999), positive social relations at school are highly productive because they allow for the accumulation of social capital that can then be converted into socially valued resources or opportunities (e.g., good grades, a high school diploma, access to privileged academic information). Stanton-Salazar (1997) emphasized those forms of support that cultivate the ability to manage “stressful borders and institutional barriers.” Connections with caring adults within the school environment lead many low-status youth to academically succeed in school and apply to college because these adults act as bridges (Stanton-Salazar, 1997). In addition, these social connections, participation in activities, and involvement foster the development of a pro-school orientation. It is through access to these social networks that students not only acquire the skills and knowledge to qualify for and consider college, but also begin to develop a college-going identity. Gonzalez, Stoner, and Jovel (2003) fi nd that students who attended an elite university accumulated high volumes of social capital beginning in elementary school and continuing through their high school careers. In other words, the accrual of social capital in elementary school had reifying and expanding affects. Conversely, those students who did not acquire high volumes of social capital during their K–12 schooling experiences were often neglected in the college planning and preparation process. In college, interaction with faculty members can furnish students with both cultural and social capital. Faculty members may be able to provide knowledge regarding graduate school and the admission process, both of which are academic capital. The social capital accumulated while spending time with a faculty member may be valuable for a letter of recommendation. Interactions with other students in clubs or groups, volunteer associations or athletic teams can also provide opportunities for accumulating social and cultural capital. In graduate school, social capital takes on additional importance. Students’ interactions with other students in the graduate program are found to relate positively to academic achievement and career development (Blackwell, 1987; Hartnett, 1976). Mentoring may be the most important variable related to academic and career success for graduate students. Graduate research assistants who have intense professional interactions with supervisors exhibit greater research productivity (Malaney, 1988). Graduate students who report having a number of faculty as “colleagues” make better progress toward their degree (Berg & Ferber, 1983; Girves & Wemmerus, 1988). On the other hand, students who do not fi nish their dissertation describe poor working relationships with their advisors or committee as one of the two most frequent reasons for terminating their graduate schooling (Jacks, Chubin, Porter, & Connolly, 1983). As fi rst-generation college students make the transition from high school to college, a reconfiguration of relationships and constructive social ties transpires—a process that is still not well understood. Specifically, we do

Theoretical Foundation 31 not know how much social capital students need to improve their opportunity for and knowledge of attending college. We also do not know if there are particular sources of social capital that are more important than others in helping students with navigating higher education, or in what ways underrepresented students acquire the types of social capital that improve their chances for college completion.

STRATIFICATION AND HIGHER EDUCATION Although it is true that increasing numbers of students from all walks of life are engaging in higher education, as college costs rise and many institutions become more selective, low-income minority students are becoming increasingly channeled into two-year and lower-prestige four-year institutions. Their more affluent and better prepared peers, meanwhile, are able to solidify their hold on more selective, higher-quality colleges and universities that better ensure opportunities for upward mobility and, ultimately, control over the very institutions that can preserve these class differences. Zemsky (1997) described higher education institutions in an array across a continuum from elite institutions to open access institutions. Through this segmentation scheme, he shows a remarkable pattern of consistent advantages enjoyed by students attending more selective institutions. The advantages of attending elite institutions include higher earnings and a greater likelihood of enrollment in post-graduate education. Attending America’s most prestigious colleges and universities requires spending economic capital (Kingston & Lewis, 1990a, 1990b). Prestigeconferring institutions are those with the highest tuition and fee prices. This cost is generally considered to be a good long-term investment by the dominant classes because of their considerable and varied returns. The degree from a prestigious school is a form of scholastic capital and attending such a school can result in potentially valuable social contacts, and thus an accumulation of social capital (Useem & Karabel, 1990). Bourdieu and Boltanski (1978) assert that the advantages of attending an elite school are both material and symbolic, and that, “Being educated at a ‘grand ecole’ confers, under the title of ‘old boy,’ a sort of certificate of credit-worthiness or letter of credit giving the right to all sorts of material and symbolic advantages in the eyes of all agents endowed with the same characteristics.” There has been a great deal of research demonstrating labor market advantage associated with graduation from higher prestige undergraduate institutions (Brewer & Ehrenberg, 1996; Thomas, 2000, 2003). Other studies have looked at the payoff of a prestigious undergraduate degree in terms of the likelihood of enrolling in graduate school and the quality of that graduate school. Eide, Brewer, and Ehrenberg (1998) fi nd that students from elite private institutions are more likely to go to graduate school and to attend a research institution when they do so. More recently, Zhang (2005)

32

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

found that graduates from higher prestige institutions were more likely to enter doctoral programs directly, to enroll at more prestigious universities for that doctoral work, and were more likely to fi nish their doctoral work within five years of entry. Thus, not only are students from more selective institutions more likely to fi nish their bachelor’s degrees and earn higher wages in the labor market, they are also more likely to accrue even further human capital by attending and completing more prestigious graduate programs. This, in turn, is connected to greater opportunities for social mobility. There are, of course, low-SES students who attend college after graduating from high school, and their enrollment in postsecondary education represents success in overcoming many obstacles. However, researchers have found that low-SES students are less likely to attend college and more likely to attend less selective institutions (Astin, 1975, 1993; Hearn, 1984, 1990; Hossler, Schmit, & Vesper, 1999; Karabel, 1972; McDonough, 1997; Paulsen & St. John, 2002; Tinto, 1993). Furthermore, low-SES students are also less likely to persist and attend graduate school. In the cultural reproduction framework, colleges and universities are institutions in which students obtain academic credentials, or academic capital, and may obtain other cultural, social, or economic capital, which are important for their conversion potential. Scholars have shown that educational decisions and choices are made within the context of one’s habitus in an attempt to accumulate capital that can be converted at a future date in pursuit of educational and occupational gains (Horvat, 2000; Lareau, 1987, 1999; MacLeod, 1987; McDonough, 1994, 1997). Research has also shown the effects of cultural and social capital as well as habitus on aspirations, persistence, and attainment at multiple locations in the educational system (DiMaggio, 1982; DiMaggio & Mohr, 1985; Gaskell, 1985; Horvat, 2000; MacLeod, 1987; Lareau, 1987, 1999; McDonough, 1994, 1997; McDonough, Korn, & Yamasaki, 1997; Valadez, 1996; Weis, 1990; Zweigenhaft, 1993). These studies provide evidence that family background, social and cultural capital, and habitus have a significant impact on educational aspirations, persistence, and attainment from the earliest schooling experiences, through high school, college, and beyond.

Navigating the Educational System Several researchers have emphasized the importance of cultural capital to students’ educational success (Oakes, 1985; Rendón, 1992; Skemp, 1978). For students to succeed, academic capital in the form of instrumental knowledge, or “know-how” is essential, especially as they attend higher education, where a large portion of what students accomplish includes negotiating the bureaucratic structures necessary to design courses of study, approach professors, and gain access to resources such as the library, computer labs, and fi nancial aid. Scholarly work has emphasized the role of parents in providing instrumental knowledge to their children so they

Theoretical Foundation 33 can do well in higher education. Most students who succeed in higher education come from households where one or both parents attended college. The instrumental knowledge provided by educated parents leads to other kinds of resources such as social support as well as fi nancial help. Overall, educated parents are best equipped to instruct, support, and otherwise encourage their children to succeed in higher education. Parents who themselves possess large quantities of the various forms of capital are in a better position to supervise and manage its acquisition by others (Farkas, 1996; Lareau, 1989; Steinberg, 1996). College-educated parents are more likely than others to read to their children and provide intellectual stimulation within the home. They understand the process of schooling better, are less deferential to teachers and school authorities, and take a more active role in monitoring how their children are being taught and managing their education (Lareau, 1989). Additionally, parents with resources who have a fi rm goal of college for their children often seek counseling outside the public school system, hiring private counselors that cost thousands of dollars to shepherd their children through the college application process, including preparation for taking college admissions tests. These parents may also enroll their children in private high schools where the student-counselor ratio is much lower than in public schools. In contrast, the overwhelming majority of low-income students have parents with little knowledge of the education system. These students do not come to the attention of the few counselors in their school as “college material” because their test scores and academic performance do not compare well with those of their more advantaged peers, and issues of poverty and social advantage place inordinate hurdles in their path to academic success.

Connections to Educators Gándara and Contreras (2009) note that a common denominator among virtually all low-income Latino students who they studied that “beat the odds,” is that a college-educated adult steps forward in their lives to encourage and guide them. Beating the odds requires that someone who possesses social and cultural capital take over that role. Bettie (2003) fi nds that for working-class Mexican American girls in the college-prep track, older siblings who were the fi rst in the family to go to college turned out to be important sources of insider information already known to students whose parents were college educated, providing cultural capital and social capital not available from parents. Seldom in the public arena do we seriously explore the possibility that teachers and guidance counselors do far more than teach and organize class schedules. In fact, they are often key participants in the social networks of low-status children and adolescents, and play a determining role in either reproducing or interfering with the reproduction of class, race, and gender

34

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

inequality. Conventional thinking defi nes the various roles assumed by school personnel (i.e., teachers and counselors) in terms of a narrow range of formal and professional duties; yet a good deal of research in schools strongly suggests that the multiple roles assumed by school agents, as well as the relations between agents and students, are far more intricate. A teacher’s explicit professional responsibilities are fairly straightforward: to develop students’ literacy, provide academic support, enforce discipline, and develop talent. Educators, however, operate far beyond their function as pedagogues. They frequently find themselves acting as co-parents, mentors, and advocates. Yet the established social order of the school system also obligates them to act as purveyors of unequally distributed rewards and punishments, as gatekeepers and controllers of scarce resources, as self-interested and self-advocating members of unions, and as representatives, and often unwilling “representatives,” of a classist, sexist, and racialized social order. In schools where educators interact with working-class and minority youth, the advocate/mentor role is one of considerable transformative power. Given the low structural position of these adolescents in the principal hierarchies in society, relations between educator and student, when they become genuinely supportive, carry the potential to transform a student’s life chances in very positive and lasting ways. Genuinely supportive educators provide students with personal, emotional, and informational support (Stanton-Salazar, 2001). They have a fluid and expansive conception of their role as educators and often exhibit loving parental behaviors toward their students. These educators frequently monitor students’ academic progress, become their advocate, encourage and support them, and give them personal advice and even money. They join them in casual recreational activities while at the same time providing academic support. As a result of these efforts, they are viewed as approachable and a reliable source of support (Stanton-Salazar, 2001). Through these transformative relationships, Stanton-Salazar (1997, 2001) argues that students begin to exercise control over their lives, as well as increase their ability to influence the decision making of school personnel, resulting in increased school-based social capital. Students who participate in sports report strong relationships with their coaches who often provide academic advice and guidance on school matters, counsel, emotional support, or occasional rides home. Sometimes support occurs not as a result of student help-seeking initiatives, but rather as byproducts of routine interactions between coaches and athletes. Not surprisingly, multilayered relations tend to be enjoyed by students who are involved in school organizations, extracurricular activities, or special academic programs. Teachers and counselors do play a fundamental role as caretakers in the lives of working-class minority adolescents. These adolescents sometimes receive emotional support and intimate counsel from middle-class educators

Theoretical Foundation 35 who also possessed the capacity to transmit highly significant forms of institutional support. The emergence of caring relationships between educator and student establish the conditions that permit not only the potential flow of institutional support, but also a high degree of receptivity to such support. Trusting and caring relations create the necessary conditions for its effective transfer, but given the differential degrees of power and maturity between educators and students, it can only occur if initiated by educators (Stanton-Salazar, 1997, 2001). For a good number of students, disappointing or alienating encounters with counselors turn into justification for avoiding them at all costs, but such withdrawal entails a high price, their detachment from an individual that can potentially provide key forms of institutional support. For working-class students, particularly those of racial or ethnic minority status, avoidance of educators is often a consequence of past and ongoing negative institutional treatment, as well as a loss for their adult social network. Less than half of students identify supportive ties with educators that have an above average level of interaction and some significant foundation of trust where the adult is a source of multiple forms of support, for different problems and across different situations. In general, females report higher rates of these multiplex relationships (Stanton-Salazar, 1997, 2001; Stanton-Salazar & Dornbusch, 1995). Laureau and Horvat (1999) credit Bourdieu for always remaining attuned to “the strategies and actions that individuals follow in their daily lives.” Nevertheless, they state, “he has not always been sufficiently aware of variations in the ways in which institutional actors legitimate or rebuff efforts by individuals to activate their resources, and the difficulties entailed in obtaining social support from significant others or in getting gatekeepers and institutional agents to ‘hand over the goods.’”

CONCLUSION Cultural reproduction theories propose that success or failure in school is determined largely by social class. Bourdieu argues that the educational system ingrains social inequality by transmitting and rewarding the cultural practices of the dominant class. Bourdieu’s work provides a context for examining the impact of social class position. He argues that individuals of different social locations are socialized differently. This socialization provides children, and later adults, with a sense of what is comfortable or what is natural, which he terms habitus. The habitus is shaped by the attitudes, beliefs, and experiences of those we interact with on a daily basis and defi nes our attitudes toward schooling. Students’ decisions to invest in their education, study hard, and go to college depend on their location in the class system and their expectations of whether people from their class tend to be successful academically (Swartz 1997).

36

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

Educational institutions, with their high regard for the cultural capital of the upper classes, promote a belief among working-class students that they are unlikely to achieve academic success. However, Bettie (2003) notes that working-class students in college prep courses acquire middle-class cultural capital and habitus. The experience of a college-prep curriculum gives them academic skills that helped them refashion a class identity that enabled their mobility. These fi ndings suggest that the habitus is adaptive and that educational institutions can instill certain dispositions that do not trace back to early family socializations. This dynamic and adaptive character of the habitus has not been fully explored empirically but fi ndings can be useful in understanding how working-class minority students are able to persist and successfully complete a college degree. It is quite possible that they undergo a habitus transformation because their educational experiences reshape how they conceive of themselves, their dispositions, and reconfigure their relationships and constructive social ties. Gándara and Contreras (2009) fi nd that working-class Latino students who beat the odds always have an educator who has the necessary social and cultural capital and who encourage and guide them. These genuinely supportive educators provide students with personal, emotional, and informational support, and have a fluid and expansive conception of their role as educators, often exhibiting loving parental behaviors toward their students (Stanton-Salazar, 2001; Stanton-Salazar & Spina, 2000, 2003). These findings suggest that the advocate/mentor role is one of considerable transformative power. Given the low structural position of these students in society, genuinely supportive relations with educators carry the potential to transform their educational trajectories and life chances in positive and lasting ways. In the next chapter, I lay out a framework that attends to those processes that allow working-class minority adolescents to experience the necessary supports to excel academically and access higher education.

3

Pivotal Moments that Produce Habitus Change

The perennial question in the field of sociology of education is this: why do most working-class children end up as working-class adults generation after generation? Social reproduction researchers have been trying to fi nd an answer to this important question for decades. Theorists such as Bowles and Gintis (1976), Bourdieu (1977), Bernstein (1977), Willis (1977), Heath (1983), Giroux (1983), and MacLeod (1987) have long argued that processes within educational systems perpetuate the class structure from one generation to the next. They posit that school personnel often act as “gatekeepers” that sort and classify students according to arbitrary notions of intellectual ability. For this reason, schools are characterized as “factories” that determine the paths students take through the educational system. In this scenario, school personnel are thought to perpetuate the already existing social class, race, and gender inequalities. At the same time, however, they also have the potential to interrupt those processes. The often overlooked informal roles that teachers and counselors frequently play in the lives of students often alter the way in which they are sorted and tracked (Stanton-Salazar, 2001). School personnel can informally guide and support students in various and meaningful ways that can enhance their overall academic achievement. In fact, it is often the tacit and invisible processes in schools, such as students’ informal exchanges with educators, that become central to students’ academic success, and have the most enduring impact on the educational trajectories of students from disadvantaged, low-socioeconomic, and racial or ethnic minority backgrounds. The theoretical framework proposed in this chapter attempts to bring these invisible variables into the spotlight to unpack how working-class minority students circumvent the sorting process of schools to gain access to higher education. It illuminates a school trend that is the opposite of the usual “achievement gap” pattern—low-income minority students who receive key support and guidance from educators that buffer them from the worst effects of class, race, and gender oppression and paves the way for a significant degree of educational advancement. Having instrumental knowledge on how to effectively navigate the school system to both enter and succeed in higher education is extremely important

38 Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education (Oakes, 1985; Rendón, 1992; Skemp, 1978). Educated parents are generally more equipped to instruct, support, and encourage their children to succeed academically at all education levels, and as a result, their children tend to be more successful in school (Farkas, 1996; Lareau, 1989, 2003; Steinberg, 1996). Although low-income minority students are those who most desperately need counseling and guidance, they are the least likely to receive it, making it very difficult to successfully navigate the school system. Those who excel despite the obstacles they face usually have an educator who intervened in their lives to encourage them and provide guidance (Gándara & Contreras, 2009). Although most working-class parents are encouraging and supportive of their child’s educational advancement, they do not have the social and cultural capital to guide them in the way middle-class parents do for their children. Thus, beating the odds requires that someone who does have the educational social and cultural capital to assume that important role. For working-class minority students, the only individuals in their immediate social environment who possess these resources are teachers, counselors, coaches, and other college-educated school personnel. Although conventional thinking defi nes the various roles assumed by educators (i.e., teachers and counselors) in terms of a narrow range of formal and professional duties, research strongly suggests that the multiple roles assumed by school-based adults, as well as the relations between educators and students, are far more complex. Educators can be key participants in the social networks of low-income income and minority students, and can play a critical role in either reproducing or disrupting class, race, and gender inequality. Trusting and caring relations with educators can create the necessary conditions for the effective transfer of academic knowledge and skills to students (Stanton-Salazar, 2001). Ultimately, these types of educator-student relationships interrupt the reproduction of inequality in schools by allowing students to acquire the necessary social and cultural capital that can transform their working-class habitus to achieve school success. As detailed in the previous chapter, having a middle-class habitus is more compatible with educational institutions as it is similar to the habitus of the middle-class educators who run them (Bourdieu, 1977).

EDUCATIONAL PIVOTAL MOMENTS The educational Pivotal Moment framework emerged from my previous research that examined the educational experiences of minority female doctoral students from working-class backgrounds attending highly selective universities (Espinoza, 2007, 2010). I wanted to learn from their experiences how, despite the odds, they reached the top of the educational ladder. As they shared the details of their academic pathways to graduate school, a distinct pattern emerged. Each had experienced at least one academic

Pivotal Moments that Produce Habitus Change 39 intervention that set her on the path to higher education. In interview after interview, I kept hearing that they had connected with an educator in a significant way that resulted in a turnaround moment that altered their educational trajectory. These academic interventions, which I call educational “Pivotal Moments,” had a lasting impact by transforming their social and psychological orientations toward academic achievement. Thus, not only did the intervention help them gain access to college, it also helped them acquire the social and academic capital necessary to succeed and advance in school. In mapping out the various types of academic interventions or Pivotal Moments these women experienced, I discovered that those who had an earlier Pivotal Moment (before or during high school) were better adjusted to doctoral studies than those who had a later Pivotal Moment (after high school). I posited, therefore, that the timing of Pivotal Moments, whether they occur early or late in a student’s educational career, had significant implications for social and cultural capital accumulation, and ultimately long-term academic achievement and success. As Table 3.1 illustrates, the timing of the Pivotal Moment significantly impacted her eventual graduate school experience and academic outcomes. The data reveal that female doctoral students from working-class backgrounds who experienced early interventions had more positive adjustment to graduate school, felt more integrated, reported higher institutional support, and had broader and more diverse social support networks. Early Pivotal Moment students were also characterized by a reconfigured habitus and exhibited more help-seeking behaviors which enable them to access institutional resources such as fellowships, grants, conference, and publishing opportunities. In contrast, those from the same social class and minority backgrounds, but who experienced late academic interventions were less adjusted to graduate school, did not feel as integrated and supported, and had smaller and more homogenous social support networks. They also did not exhibit strong help-seeking behaviors and were less able to secure fellowships, grants, conference, and publishing opportunities. Additionally, women who experienced late Pivotal Moments tended to have more people from outside the university (family and friends) in their social support networks in graduate school. Because they had fewer and weaker social connections to faculty and colleagues in their departments, these students received less academic capital such as professional socialization. They also reported more negative and discriminatory experiences such as feeling like an “outsider,” or feeling like their academic or research abilities were questioned. Of the 60 female doctoral participants I interviewed, 23 were from working-class backgrounds (15 Latina and 8 African American) and 37 were from middle-class families. Women were categorized as “workingclass” when both parents had less than a high school diploma and as “middle-class” when both parents had at least a bachelor’s degree. Of the 23 .

40 Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education Table 3.1

Pivotal Moment Timing and Doctoral Studies Adjustment Pivotal Moment Timing Early

Late

Graduate school adjustment

Good adjustment to graduate Difficult adjustment to graduate school; reports more positive school; reports more negative experiences; does not always experiences; feels well supfeel well supported. ported.

Navigating graduate school

Exhibits elaborate help-seeking Exhibits constrained help-seekbehaviors; feels confident ask- ing behaviors; feels bothering faculty for help. some asking faculty for help.

Interactions Participates in various depart- Avoids most department activiwith department ment activities and social func- ties and social functions; feels tions; feels well integrated. isolated and marginalized. Social support networks

Support networks are broad Support networks are small and diverse, including strong and homogeneous, including ties to faculty and colleagues. mostly family and friends.

Academic High academic success; accomplishments multiple fellowship awards, research grants, publications, and conference presentations.

Limited academic success; few fellowship awards, research grants, publications, and conference presentations.

working-class women, 16 had early Pivotal Moments and 7 had late Pivotal Moments. The fi ndings revealed that women from working-class minority backgrounds who experienced an early intervention had better academic outcomes in graduate school than those who had later ones. On average, early Pivotal Moment women had slightly more fellowship awards, research grants, and significantly more conference presentations and publications than women who had a late Pivotal Moment. In fact, the women that had an early Pivotal Moment had comparable academic outcomes to their middle-class colleagues who come to graduate school with more educational social and academic capital. The data indicates that early academic interventions for working-class Latina and African American women are more beneficial to later success in graduate education. In my Pivotal Moment framework, I argue that the knowledge and skills gained from the academic intervention have a cumulative effect. The habitus transformation and accompanying stocks of social and academic capital allow students to accumulate more over time in an exponential fashion (Bourdieu, 1977). This is a significant trend because by the time workingclass minority students enter the highest levels of education (i.e., doctoral programs), those that experience early Pivotal Moments will have much higher stocks of social and academic cultural capital compared to their late Pivotal Moment counterparts. Because social and academic capital are important for success in higher education, students who have a higher amount are more likely to exhibit behaviors that are more compatible with

Pivotal Moments that Produce Habitus Change 41 a middle-class habitus. Thus, Pivotal Moment timing has an impact on academic opportunities and outcomes. The following section provides a detailed analysis of the impact Pivotal Moments have on long-term educational trajectories. It describes how resources accessed during the academic intervention begin to change a student’s habitus as demonstrated by students’ educational expectations and schooling behaviors. The case studies highlight how the timing of Pivotal Moments is related to better adjustment and success in higher education. The four case studies were chosen from the sample of 60 female participants.

Early Pivotal Moments Early Pivotal Moments experienced by working-class minority doctoral women were initiated by various educators ranging from teachers, counselors, and academic outreach coordinators. Most interventions lasted over a substantial amount of time and were characterized by caring and trusting relationships that included mentoring, advocacy, and the transmission of knowledge. Rocio’s and Shawna’s Pivotal Moments highlight how academic interventions occur and the specific actions educators took to create them. Rocio. Rocio, a 27-year-old working-class Latina in her sixth year of doctoral study at a highly selective public university, experienced an early educational Pivotal Moment. She grew up in a household with her mother, father, and three younger siblings. Her mother worked as a sales clerk, and her father worked as a painter. Neither of her parents graduated from high school. Rocio experienced her Pivotal Moment in high school through the intervention of three teachers. During tenth grade, her English teacher took her aside one day and insisted she enroll in Honors-level English and “wouldn’t leave her alone” until she took the entrance exam for the class. Her teacher not only encouraged her to take the exam but counseled her through the testing process, building her academic confidence along the way. As Rocio recalled, this was the fi rst time she felt like a good student: Until then, none of my teachers had indicated that they thought I was exceptional. I did well in my courses but no one said that they felt I wasn’t being challenged enough so her insistence that I could do Honors-level coursework really had an impact on me. Until that point, I hadn’t even considered trying to place into Honors-level courses. Her comments and support began to change the way that I saw myself as a student, and the way that I perceived my intellectual abilities. Thanks to her, I took that placement exam and got into Honors English. In addition to receiving a boost of confidence about her academic abilities, the Honors English course had an additional effect on Rocio’s college planning and aspirations because “a significant component of the course

42

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

entailed preparing us for college applications.” The academic intervention Rocio’s English teacher initiated had profound long-term consequences on her educational trajectory. As a result, she figured out how to get into other academically rigorous courses that would help her prepare for college. She recounted, “Once I figured out how things work, I asked my counselor to sign me up for Honors Chemistry and AP Government. Once on that track, I didn’t think twice about taking Honors and AP coursework my senior year.” The effort Rocio’s English teacher made to connect with her at this critical time in her education placed her on the path to seeing higher education as a possibility after high school. Rocio’s biology teacher was also key in her early Pivotal Moment experience during high school. Her teacher not only counseled her academically on what courses to take to be competitive for college admissions, but also connected with her on a personal level by establishing a trusting and caring relationship. Rocio explained many of the roles her teacher played: I developed a very close relationship with my biology teacher when I took her biology course as a sophomore. She then requested that I be her AP Biology teaching assistant my junior and senior years in high school. Not only did she support and advise me academically, and encourage me to consider a number of colleges, but she was there for me when things with my father were rocky, and when we didn’t have money to do things that she felt were a crucial experience for high school kids like going to prom and buying a yearbook. She bought my prom dress so I could go, and talked to my parents when they adamantly refused to let me go on the senior class trip to Yosemite. She provided me with emotional and moral support. At a critical time during Rocio’s senior year, her biology teacher even enlisted the support of her humanities teacher to ensure she would receive the guidance she needed to get into college. She explained: Both my humanities and biology teacher encouraged me to apply to colleges and universities instead of community college. They really pushed me to aspire to more rather than feel limited by my parents’ fi nancial situation. My biology teacher played an instrumental role in advising me on my decision and helping me break the news to my parents. Her support was very important to me. I’m not sure that I would’ve had the courage to go against my parents’ wishes if she hadn’t reassured me that it was OK to want to go 100 miles away for college. It is not surprising, therefore, that Rocio “strongly agreed” to the following statements about her teachers in high school: “My teachers gave me the moral and emotional support I needed to do well in school,” “I relied on my teachers for advice and guidance in making important school-related

Pivotal Moments that Produce Habitus Change 43 decisions,” “My teachers were good at helping me solve school-related or academic problems,” and “I had a friendly and trusting relationship with a number of teachers.” These transformative interventions that took place over the course of approximately two and half years began to transform Rocio’s habitus, provided her with important educational social and academic capital, and had an enduring impact on her academic success and transition to higher education. For this reason, Rocio did very well in college; she was on the Dean’s List, received multiple academic fellowships, and achieved honors on her senior thesis. She also participated in an academic outreach program during college that allowed her to develop a strong relationship with a professor in her department who served as her research mentor. Rocio’s professor got her excited about research and graduate school, and advised her through the application process. Her professor was instrumental in her successfully gaining acceptance to a highly ranked doctoral program. Now in graduate school, Rocio has made an excellent adjustment to her doctoral program. As a result of her early Pivotal Moment, she accumulated the social and academic capital necessary to navigate new educational environments. She noted: Nothing about graduate school has been terribly hard, per se. I think I’ve managed my time well and have mapped my progress through the program pretty well. I’ve also found really supportive people in my department who are invested in not just me doing well in the program, but eventually getting a job. Since starting her program, Rocio was good at fi nding supportive people in her doctoral program who were invested in her success. She became an expert not only in seeking out academic resources to get through the hurdles of graduate school, but also connecting with colleagues and faculty in her department. At the forefront of her supportive relationships was the one she developed with her main advisor, “I have had a really strong relationship with my advisor. She’s always been really supportive. If I have trouble with something I go to her to get her advice. She always has answers and strategies to help.” Rocio’s comfort in asking for help when she needs it, especially from her advisor, exemplifies her well-developed help-seeking behaviors. She also got very involved in her department as a graduate student. During her fi rst two years, she made a concerted effort to volunteer for various activities, as she explained: The fi rst few years I tried to do things in the department. I was an editor for the department journal for two years. I also coordinated events like picnics or the holiday party. For three years, I was one of the graduate students who coordinated visiting days for prospective students.

44

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

Rocio’s efforts helped her become more integrated into her graduate school community. Her seamless adjustment to graduate school was reflective of the social and academic capital she began to accumulate when she fi rst experienced her Pivotal Moment in high school. Her early Pivotal Moment has resulted in various positive academic outcomes and has given her an orientation toward schooling to actively seek out resources and develop connections with key school agents. Shawna. Like Rocio, Shawna is a 27-year-old working-class African American woman in her third year of a doctoral program at a highly selective private university. She was raised in a city she describes as “predominantly Black and poor” by her godmother (a woman not biologically related to her) until she was seven years old. Shawna’s godmother was a single parent raising both Shawna and her own two biological children. Shawna described growing up in poverty: “I just remember it [the apartment] being dirty and with roaches . . . I also remember being hungry. I remember that because we would get food stamps at the beginning of the month, and then the food would only last for so long and so the last week and a half or so we were really hungry!” At age seven, Shawna went to go live with her father and new stepmother. When she found out about her new living situation, she was distraught because her father’s new family treated her very badly by making jokes and always pointing out how poor she was. She recounted, “They would take my clothes out of my bag and be like, ‘Look at these clothes— they are so raggedy!’ So they would talk about them in front of me, like I should be embarrassed about these things . . . I just remember feeling really ashamed.” Shawna moved from a very loving home with her godmother to a very abusive environment with her stepmother, who was “very physically abusive, verbally abusive, emotionally abusive to all of us—but mostly to me!” Shawna had a lot of household responsibilities growing up. She was the oldest child, and her parents, who worked full-time, counted on her to care for the house and her younger siblings. She was responsible for making sure all the chores were done in the evenings before her parents got home. In addition to family responsibilities, Shawna was expected to do well in school: “They [her parents] expected us to do well, even though they didn’t help us with homework. They were just like, ‘You better not come home with less than B pluses.’” Doing well in school, however, was never a problem because Shawna saw it as an “outlet to get away from my crazy, abusive stepmother.” In fact, she said she was an avid reader growing up because it helped her momentarily escape the reality of her harsh home life. Shawna has experienced numerous academic interventions that have allowed her to get on the path to graduate school. She experienced her fi rst educational Pivotal Moment at the end of junior high school. Shawna developed a good relationship with her Spanish teacher who took an active

Pivotal Moments that Produce Habitus Change 45 role in trying to get her into a private high school in the city where she grew up. In this intervention, her teacher went beyond her formal role to nurture Shawna’s academic talents and shape her future educational path. Shawna recounted how her teacher served as her educational advocate: Señora Barrera said, “You’re so good at this [Spanish language].” She realized that I was a really smart student and felt that I needed to go to a better high school. So she thought she should try to get me into either a Catholic school or a private school, something that would be more challenging. She took it upon herself and drove me around to all these private schools. She would just walk up to the admissions office and be like, “I have this student and she’s very smart, and you need to have her as a student at your school!” Shawna’s teacher also set up times for her to visit the schools she wanted her to attend. “Sidwell Friends is the school that she thought I should go to . . . so she took me there, and I visited classes and met the teachers.” This was the fi rst time Shawna had an educator reach out to her and advocate to provide her with an opportunity to advance her education. Even though Shawna’s parents expressed concern about the idea of her applying to private high schools due to the high cost, her teacher continued to encourage and guide Shawna through the application process, knowing that she would be competitive for full fi nancial aid. Over the course of a few months, Shawna’s teacher advised her on every part of the application, from writing her personal statement to preparing for the entrance exam and, in the process, exposed her to the educational social and academic capital needed to succeed in school. Although Shawna was accepted to her fi rst-choice private high school, her stepmother prevented her from attending by refusing to fill out the fi nancial aid paperwork. Both Shawna and her teacher tried to get her stepmother to complete the forms, but she would not comply, and eventually, the opportunity was lost. Her teacher’s last resort in this intervention was to make sure Shawna at least attended a public high school that had an accelerated program to challenge her academically, a school Shawna did attend. Shawna’s initial Pivotal Moment taught her important information about navigating school processes to reach an educational goal, ultimately altering her habitus, and setting the stage for additional Pivotal Moments as she made her way through the educational system. Shawna’s second Pivotal Moment took place in high school when her politics teacher encouraged her to apply for a scholarship to study abroad in Mexico. The scholarship was a very prestigious award that only a few students received each year. Shawna recalled hearing about the study abroad opportunity from her teacher, who insisted she apply. “She [the politics teacher] said, ‘I think you should apply for this fellowship to go to Mexico. I mean, you’re really good at languages, at Spanish, and that does seem to

46

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

be your favorite language—you have a knack for it. I really think that this would be a great opportunity for you to study abroad.’” Her teacher even assisted Shawna with properly fi lling out the application, and she wrote her a letter of support. Her teacher was so adamant Shawna go to Mexico that, after she officially received the award, she met with Shawna’s parents. “My teacher had to come to my house and sort of convince my parents that this was a phenomenal opportunity, that I couldn’t pass it up—it was a scholarship, and the school was paying for it.” As a result, Shawna’s father realized the immense opportunity for his daughter and stopped her stepmother from trying to block it. With her dad’s support, Shawna was able to take full advantage of the scholarship and study abroad in Mexico, an event she describes as “one of the best experiences of my life.” Shawna had another distinct Pivotal Moment in high school when her academic counselor assisted her with researching and applying to college. During the process, her counselor insisted she apply to Middlebury College, a highly selective liberal arts school that specializes in foreign languages. Shawna recalled the conversation with her counselor when she introduced her to the idea: “‘I’m going to Middlebury?’ I didn’t make that choice on my own. My school counselor insisted, ‘You’re going to Middlebury!’ I said, ‘All right.’ Because I knew I wanted to go to college, but I didn’t know anything about the process.” Her counselor even guided Shawna through applying to Middlebury for early admission. As a result of her counselor walking her through every step of the application process, Shawna was successfully admitted, a forecast of her future educational opportunities. Now in graduate school, Shawna has adjusted to her doctoral program very well. As a result of multiple educational Pivotal Moments, she has accumulated a large stock of educational social and academic capital that she employs in educational contexts to succeed. Shawna has well-developed help-seeking behaviors and is an expert at fi nding academic resources to successfully navigate her program. She stated, “I feel like doing well in graduate school is all about fi nding the right resources, both people and information, and I know I can do that.” She is very strategic about identifying key faculty, staff, and peers who can support and guide her academic pursuits. For example, she felt the advisor she was paired with her fi rst year was not investing in her professional development so she took the initiative to fi nd someone else. In an effort to fi nd a new advisor, Shawna strategically took a class from an African American professor in her department to develop a relationship with her so that she could ask her to advise her research. She explained: So I decided last year, I need to fi nd a new research advisor so I took a class with Sheila, an African American woman in my department. She was so warm and so . . . I feel like I could just talk to her and be normal, you know? And she was just so nurturing and she was very smart and she is ecstatic about my project. So I made her my advisor.

Pivotal Moments that Produce Habitus Change 47 In September I went to my fi rst-year advisor and I said, “Thank you for all of your help and I made Sheila my advisor.” And I’m so happy now because she is so supportive. Shawna also developed a close relationship with two additional faculty members in her department showing she was very adept at fi nding key institutional agents that can support her academic pursuits. Her seamless adjustment to graduate school was reflective of the social and academic capital she began to accumulate when she fi rst experienced her Pivotal Moment in junior high school. These transformative interventions she experienced at different points in her education began to transform her habitus toward schooling. Rocio’s and Shawna’s graduate school experiences were typical of the working-class female students I interviewed who experienced early academic interventions in their schooling. Early Pivotal Moment students were well-adjusted and exhibited better academic outcomes than the late Pivotal Moment students described in the following section.

Late Pivotal Moments Late Pivotal Moments were usually initiated by a university or community college professor. A significant trend among women who experienced later academic interventions was that their access to higher education was through the community college system. As Martha’s Pivotal Moment illuminates, later interventions have the same general characteristics; they last a substantial amount of time and are characterized by caring and trusting relationships that included mentoring, advocacy, and the transmission of educational capital. Martha. Martha is a 25-year-old working-class Latina in her third year of a doctoral program at a top private research university. She is the second oldest of four siblings and the daughter of immigrant parents from Latin America. Martha grew up with her mother, father, and four brothers until her parents divorced when she was nine years old. Afterward, she was raised by her mother and stepfather. She described her childhood as “fi nancially difficult” because her mother was always working to “put food on the table and pay the family bills.” Growing up in a fairly large, single-parent household, Martha recounted her mother’s insistence she take care of most household chores like cleaning and cooking because “she was the girl.” From an early age, she resisted that role. Martha felt that if her brothers did not have to help out around the house, she should not be required either. Also, if her brothers were allowed to curse, then she felt that she should too. She recalled, “Everything they did, I was going to do it worse.” A role she willingly embraced was caring for her youngest brother when her mother was working. She recounted, “I’m six years older than he is, so he was like my baby because he was about

48 Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education two or three years old when my parents got divorced. Then my mom had to work to support us, so when he was a little baby, he would sleep in bed with me and I did everything for him.” When Martha was in high school, she had a poor academic record and discipline problems. She described her high school experience as “crazy and unstable” and said she does not recall any educators with whom she connected. In fact, Martha “strongly disagreed” to the following statements about her teachers in high school: “My teachers gave me the moral and emotional support I needed to do well in school,” “I relied on my teachers for advice and guidance in making important school-related decisions,” “My teachers were good at helping me solve school-related or academic problems,” and “I had a friendly and trusting relationship with a number of teachers.” Her primary goal in high school was “just to graduate and get my diploma.” After graduation, she remembered, “I was so happy and proud, and I thought, ‘I’m never going to go to school again!’” She graduated from high school with a low 2.0 GPA, and like most of the students at her high school, enrolled at a community college. During her turbulent high school years, no one ever thought Martha would go to college, including herself. As it turned out, her serendipitous decision to go to community college became a turning point in her life. Martha’s Pivotal Moment occurred after she enrolled in community college and a professor took an interest in her educational development and started talking to her about the “next steps” in her education. For the first time in her education, she had an educator reach out to her and assist her with her academic development and educational planning. As a result, Martha developed a strong relationship with her professor, who eventually became her academic counselor and mentor. In fact, she helped Martha transfer from the community college to a highly selective public university to earn her bachelor’s degree. She described her relationship with her professor: She was my instructor for two courses, my academic counselor, and the director of a program for underrepresented students I participated in called the Transfer Incentive Program. In these three roles she became my primary provider of academic information. I really had no idea what college was or how it worked. She spent two and a half years explaining it to me. Some of the things that she helped me with was picking my classes, helping me choose a major, making sure I was on track to transfer, taught me the differences between higher education institutions like community college, public universities, private colleges, explained the difference between degrees such as the AA, BA, MA, PhD, and helped me learn about the resources available at the community college and at four-year institutions. Before meeting the community college professor, Martha had no one in her social networks who could explain the schooling process to assist her with

Pivotal Moments that Produce Habitus Change 49 knowing how to navigate higher education. In a hands-on way, her professor not only provided the academic capital she lacked, but also provided constant encouragement that helped her realize she was capable of succeeding in college: In addition to the academic information she provided, she was also the person who made me really believe that I should and could pursue a college degree. Up until I met her, I did not think I was academically, fi nancially, or socially capable of going to college. I also did not see the importance of a college education and the impact that it could have on my life. She really encouraged me to pursue an education and shared a lot of her personal experiences to show me how she had done it. She believed in me so much and was willing to invest so much time on me that I started thinking that maybe I was “college material.” Martha found it particularly useful that her professor shared a lot of her own personal experiences in school as a fi rst-generation Latina college student. Being a Latina who grew up in a similar socioeconomic background, Martha felt her professor “truly” understood her struggles. For Martha, a key factor in the mentoring relationship, and critical for her Pivotal Moment, was the fact that she could identify with her professor based on their shared racial or ethnic, gender, and social class background. Even after Martha transferred from the community college, she remained in close contact with her professor who continued to provide support as she adjusted to life at the university, and encouraged her to think about graduate school. Through her professor, Martha had access to a source of social and academic capital which helped her transfer from community college to a prestigious four-year university and get on the path to doctoral studies. Her late Pivotal Moment, however, limited the amount of social and academic capital she could accumulate before entering her PhD program, and thus, had a substantial impact on her educational adjustment. Initially, Martha felt overwhelmed in graduate school and began to question her academic abilities. She struggled to make important connections with faculty and fellow graduate students, and eventually adopted a defensive strategy of rejecting people she met to keep from feeling alienated. She explained, “I’ve had a really hard time making relationships with other students here. At the very beginning, I was rejecting everybody. I was like ‘I’m not telling anybody anything and everybody’s out to get me.’” When Martha arrived on campus, she did not feel a sense of belonging. She recalled, “I felt, ‘This place is not for somebody like me, and nobody gets me.’ That was really hard for me to deal with. I guess I was just naïve.” In addition to not being able to fi nd a supportive community in graduate school, Martha also had some negative experiences with her colleagues that compounded her sense of isolation. She described an exchange she had with another student during a class discussion about the merits of affi rmative

50 Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education action in university admissions that disturbed her: “He patted me on the shoulder and said, ‘Well, I’m sure you would’ve gotten in without affi rmative action anyway.’ And I thought to myself, ‘Yeah motherfucker, I had a 4.0 GPA when I transferred, you don’t have to be telling me shit.’ It was really patronizing.” Martha was deeply offended by her classmate’s condescending remarks and his assumptions about her academic abilities. That incident made her become even more guarded about sharing her personal experiences and discussing her research ideas with colleagues, as she explained: “It’s been hard because I feel like all the other students are working together and they’re feeding ideas off one another and I can’t really get any real feedback from people because all they’re doing is questioning why I want to do what I want to do.” For this reason, Martha dreads attending informal social events at school. After attending a few, she concluded that these interactions made her feel too uncomfortable, so she stopped going altogether. She felt students who attend these events were superficial and focused too much on trying to impress professors. She said: So they have these big parties. I would try to go to those social events but everyone just kisses ass and I can’t stand it. I couldn’t bear standing around looking for a person to have a normal conversation with. I would end up leaving 15 minutes later. That was during the fi rst year. Now I don’t go to those events anymore. Martha’s absence from these social events prevents her from connecting with faculty and fellow graduate students, and importantly, acquiring the social and academic capital needed to succeed in graduate school. In fact, her negative experiences forced her to seriously consider dropping out of her program, which she came close to doing during her fi rst year. Martha’s late Pivotal Moment greatly affected her less than optimal adjustment to graduate school, and her inability to access all the educational resources she needs to successfully navigate her doctoral program.

Middle-Class Habitus To highlight the critical role of Pivotal Moments for working-class students, this section presents a case study of a middle-class Latina who grew up in a home with college-educated parents. Her educational history suggests that she did not require the type of intervention described by the women from working-class backgrounds to reach higher education because she received ongoing guidance and support from her college-educated parents and relatives growing up. Most middle-class female doctoral students I interviewed did not report distinct Pivotal Moment interventions from an educator in their educational careers. They did, however, feel they had

Pivotal Moments that Produce Habitus Change 51 positive relationships with educators throughout their schooling. There did not seem to be a need for an external academic intervention to introduce them to academic and social capital to reach doctoral studies because they had progressively accumulated it growing up through their personal and family networks. Sonia. In contrast to the working-class Latinas, Sonia, a 31-year-old middle-class Latina in her second year of doctoral studies at a prestigious private university, was born into a small, middle-class family. She grew up with both of her parents and a younger sister. Her mother was employed for many years as a public school teacher before becoming a school principal, and her father was an attorney who worked for a public agency. Unlike the working-class doctoral students, Sonia recalls her mother’s fi rst educational intervention in second grade when she decided to enroll her in a Catholic school because she felt that the public school was not meeting her educational needs. Sonia recounted, “She pulled me out of public school after second grade because it was not meeting my needs. I hadn’t learned anything in two years and she was very concerned. She put me in a private school and I spent the rest of my education in Catholic school.” Throughout Sonia’s formal education, her mother communicated to her the importance of doing well in school and making every effort to attain the best education possible. She recalled how she developed aspirations to go to college during elementary school due to her mother’s influence: “My mother pushed me to do well in school and communicated that this should be a priority for me. In other words, it was my job to get good grades so that I could one day attend college.” Whereas most working-class students do not begin planning for college until they reach high school or experience an academic intervention, Sonia remembered that she was always preparing for college growing up: My mom talked to me about college since from as far back as I can remember. Attending and graduating from college was always the end goal. The most distinct memory I have regarding my educational trajectory occurred in second grade. I read an article in Time magazine or US News & World Report about the top ranked U.S. universities, and Stanford was ranked at #1. So I decided that I wanted to go to Stanford because it was the best. It’s funny to think back about this now because I did not really have a true understanding of what college was at that age, I just knew that I was expected to go to college, and thought I should go to the best. I’m not really sure if my mom had pointed out the article to me or if I had just picked up one of the many magazines lying around on our coffee table, but it’s amazing how images and words can make such a lasting impression at such an early age. I visited Stanford with my family for the fi rst time when I was in seventh grade which confi rmed for me that I indeed wanted to go to this institution.

52 Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education Growing up Sonia always received concrete guidance, encouragement, and support from her parents. Her parents, especially her mother, had explicit expectations for doing well in school. She explained: My mother constantly pushed me to do well in school. I hated middle school but she still insisted that I do well in school. I recall her saying something like, “As are good, Bs are acceptable, and Cs need to be explained.” There was really not a choice, but more of an expectation to achieve academically. Education was incredibly important in my family. As a result of her mother’s ongoing efforts, Sonia amassed a strong base of academic and social capital from which she drew on at each education level. Her mother not only used her intimate knowledge of the educational system to guide Sonia, but also her fi nancial resources to hire additional support when needed. In high school, for example, she hired a tutor for Sonia when she was struggling academically: “In high school my mother did everything possible to make sure I had the academic support I needed to do well and get good grades such as fi nding me a Calculus tutor for AP Calculus my senior year. There was no way I would have gotten an ‘A’ without that tutor.” Unlike students from low-income families who do not have the fi nancial resources to pay for outside tutor assistance, they are readily available for middle-class students like Sonia, and result in high levels of educational success and advancement. The resources Sonia has been drawing on her entire life has no doubt allowed her to excel academically in college and gain access to graduate school where she is now making an excellent adjustment. She navigates the environment she views as “very individualistic and competitive” exceptionally well, even when she feels ambivalent about networking with her colleagues: “We’re a cohort and we hang out and we do forced bonding. I just don’t feel it. I make myself do it because politically I think I should. I know it’s going to make my life harder if I don’t do that kind of thing.” Although Sonia dislikes the “forced bonding” with her classmates, she recognizes its “political” importance. She is well acquainted with the “rules of the game” in social networking in graduate school and has no problem rising to the task when she knows it will benefit her career. In contrast to late Pivotal Moment students who took a self-protective stance and avoided faculty and colleagues, Sonia continued to immerse herself in the culture of her academic department. Although she felt ambivalent about her academic environment, she still managed to fi nd information, support, and other resources necessary for her academic success. She continued to access and expand the academic and social capital reserves that she has been developing from an early age, as demonstrated by her approach to fi nding support in graduate school: “I am seeking out people

Pivotal Moments that Produce Habitus Change 53 in a planned way and purposefully. I am trying to make connections with professors who I think will be there for me and be supportive of me.” Her comments illustrate the concerted strategies she employed to develop and maintain important social connections that assisted her in reaching her educational goal of earning a PhD. Sonia’s seamless adjustment to graduate school is reflective of the social and cultural capital she accumulated during her childhood growing up in a house with parents who held advanced educational degrees.

UNDERSTANDING THE IMPACT OF PIVOTAL MOMENTS ON HABITUS My Pivotal Moment framework asserts that the process by which workingclass minority students experience habitus change and acquire social and academic capital to ascend to higher education despite formidable odds is a result of significant interventions by educators. An educational Pivotal Moment is a “transformative event” in which a student’s educational trajectory is reset and results in subsequent success and advancement in the educational system. Students gain both academic and social capital through this intervention. As a result of a transformed habitus, they continue to acquire and utilize their gained academic and social capital throughout their schooling. The concept of Pivotal Moments offers a unique approach to understanding exactly how working-class minority students are able to overcome social class and racial or ethnic disadvantage in the educational system. Students use the social and academic capital they acquire through these interventions to become proactive in using the educational system to attain social mobility. An educational Pivotal Moment initially occurs when a teacher, counselor, academic outreach professional or any other college-educated schoolbased adult, by her or his own volition, and either in an informal or official role, makes a concerted effort to support and mentor a working-class minority student. In these transformative interventions, educators go above and beyond their official duties to connect with students and transmit academic capital critical for their long-term educational success. Through these interventions, working-class students gain hands-on knowledge about navigating the educational system, and for the fi rst time are introduced to the necessary social and academic capital to launch them in a trajectory of educational success. In contrast, middle-class students usually do not require such interventions due to the ongoing guidance and support they receive from their college-educated parents who are familiar with the educational system and are already strategic in securing resources to ensure their children’s academic success. For working-class students, Pivotal Moments are characterized by a deep and trusting relationship with an educator that provides guidance, information, advice, and/or emotional support.

54

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

Pivotal Moment educators play significant roles in the lives of low-income minority students and employ various actions during academic interventions. They are mentors for students by showing them behaviors associated with effective participation in educational institutions, strategic navigation of school processes, and resilient coping with stratification forces that hinder school success. They are advisors in helping students make decisions or plans about academic-related matters such as course selection or college choices. They also advise students on building and managing relationships with other educators as well as coach them on communication strategies and approaches. At times, they also counsel students on personal and family matters. They are students’ advocates in all school-related matters to ensure that students’ academic progress and advancement are always considered and prioritized. They even develop relationships with important and influential school personnel to further advocate for students. Finally, they are unrelenting supporters of students in providing emotional and moral support as well as constant encouragement of all students’ academic pursuits. A central premise of the Pivotal Moment framework is that educators have the potential to transmit to working-class students the necessary forms of social and academic capital that they would otherwise be lacking to effectively navigate the education system. Pivotal Moment educators transmit important academic capital by teaching students school-sanctioned ways of using language and communicating, academic task-specific knowledge, how school bureaucracies operate, study/test-taking/time-management skills, and how to integrate their cultural capital in order to solve schoolrelated problems. They can also help students develop important social networking skills such as knowing how to negotiate with various gatekeepers/ educators, building supportive/cooperative ties with peers highly invested in school success, and seeking out instrumental connections with informal mentors outside of school. The efforts of Pivotal Moment educators can help transform a workingclass students’ habitus through the provision of economic, social, and cultural capital to make the educational system a comfortable and familiar place in which success is possible. By facilitating this process, educators structure an educational trajectory that enables a positive academic experience that may not have occurred without their intervention. One of the results of the habitus transformation from a Pivotal Moment is a psychological disposition toward help-seeking behaviors. Students learn to seek support by mobilizing their relationships with individuals in educational settings. In higher education, students activate these behaviors when they need to get information about funding opportunities such as scholarships or figuring out how to navigate a particular school process such as contesting a low grade. Another result of the habitus transformation is confidence setting concrete educational goals and actively participating in activities that help accomplish those goals. Students begin to envision multiple possible selves,

Pivotal Moments that Produce Habitus Change 55 or aspirations of what they could become or would like to become. A Pivotal Moment crystallizes a self in the future and highlights educational achievement as a way to get there. For many working-class minority students, it is not until after an intense academic intervention that they begin setting concrete aspirations with the guidance of an educator, or someone who from experience has intimate knowledge of the educational system. As a result of the intervention, students begin to develop a self-image and identity of being “college material.” Finally, Pivotal Moments also change students’ habitus by influencing their desire for academic rewards. Over time, they become driven to be rewarded by the educational system and work toward those extrinsic rewards. These rewards can entail winning a writing or poetry contest in elementary school, or the accomplishment of applying to and being accepted into a highly selective college or university. As a result of Pivotal Moments, the habitus of working-class minority students begins to change over time, and assumes various characteristics of a middle-class habitus, especially as they continue further in their education and spend additional time in an institutional context that expects and assumes a middle-class habitus. Thus, the moment at which individuals begin the process of developing a middle-class habitus to do well in school is important to pinpoint.

CONCLUSION This chapter provided an expanded discussion and empirical basis for my educational Pivotal Moment framework. I conceptualize a Pivotal Moment as a significant academic intervention by a college-educated school-based adult. As a result of this intervention, students begin to develop a new orientation toward schooling along with expanded skills, including the accumulation of social and academic capital that ensures their school success. The access to educational capital they receive from an early intervention provides a more extensive length of time to accumulate important educational resources allowing them to restructure their working-class habitus into a hybrid working-/middle-class habitus. As Bourdieu (1977, 1986) asserts, the habitus of middle-class students is that which gets most valued by schools, thus making school’s teachings and organization easier for middle-class students to grasp than students from the working-class. The results highlight the importance of the timing of Pivotal Moments in the accumulation of social and academic capital. They suggest that early Pivotal Moments have a deeper educational impact than later ones for working-class students. Early Pivotal Moments provide students with additional time to acquire and accumulate social and academic capital that subsequently contributes to their educational success. The chapter also demonstrated how and why working-class students who experienced early Pivotal Moments adjust to higher education more successfully than those

56

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

who had late Pivotal Moments. Unlike the working-class students who traced their educational trajectory to doctoral studies to a Pivotal Moment triggered by an educator, the path to doctoral studies for middle-class students I interviewed was not structured by an external intervention. Rather, it was structured by their college-educated parents and relatives, and the high levels of social and academic capital available in their households as they were growing up. These fi ndings raise some important questions about exactly how working-class students from minority backgrounds circumvent the sorting process of schools via intense academic interventions: Are the Pivotal Moment experiences reported by minority doctoral female students common among others from similar social class and racial or ethnic backgrounds? How frequently do educators make academic interventions? What prompts Pivotal Moments from both the educators and students perspectives? How are working-class minority students who have Pivotal Moments different than those who come from the same backgrounds but do not experience them? Do Pivotal Moments have an enduring effect on students’ educational adjustment and success in higher education?

4

Educational Outcomes of a Hybrid Working-/Middle-Class Habitus

As part of my ethnographic work, I attended a four-day regional conference for academic outreach professionals. One afternoon, I was invited to attend a special luncheon event to honor individuals for their contributions and accomplishments. One of the award recipients was a high school senior named Oscar who was being honored for his academic achievements. He was ranked third in his senior class, had a 4.5 GPA, and would be attending Cornell University, an Ivy-league institution. As I was listening to him give his acceptance speech, I was particularly struck by one of his remarks: “Being a fi rst-generation student has been a challenge, but thanks to this program, I was given the tools to pursue my college dreams.” Oscar’s well-articulated speech fully illuminated how he was able to beat the odds and gain access to higher education as a Latino male from a working-class background. He credited not only the academic outreach program he participated in throughout high school, but also the program staff that had become “like family” to him. He specifi cally mentioned his academic advisor—who had nominated him for the award—for her dedication, motivation, and accessibility at all hours of the day. Essentially, Oscar’s speech was describing the role of his Pivotal Moment intervention in providing him with the “tools,” or academic capital, to get to college. This chapter details the experiences of working-class minority students at different points along the educational pipeline to provide a detailed analysis of the academic capital they acquire and habitus change they experience as a result of Pivotal Moment interventions. The data suggest that without Pivotal Moments, the road to higher education for these students is long, arduous, and highly uncertain. Without a comprehensive academic intervention, countless promising low-income and minority students face virtually insurmountable obstacles both inside and outside of school that ultimately result in educational failure. Ramon, who you will be introduced to in this chapter, is one of these tragic stories.

58

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

WHY WORKING-CLASS MINORITY STUDENTS NEED PIVOTAL MOMENTS Working-class minority students face challenges in their daily lives that continually interfere with their academic performance as well as their ability to prepare for college. From an early age, they often assume household chores and take care of younger siblings because their parents work long hours in low-wage, physically demanding jobs. Such students can experience frequent fi nancial hardships and live in poor housing conditions. Their low-income communities are often ridden with crime and violence, forcing them to worry constantly about their safety. They attend low-performing schools with limited resources, are taught by undercredentialed teachers, and are surrounded by negative peer influences. Those from immigrant backgrounds face the additional struggle of learning English proficiently at school and accessing the necessary courses to qualify for college admissions. Without any significant form of support and guidance, most students do not live up to their full potential and their educational achievement takes a downward trajectory over time. Even for high-achieving students, the process is often fraught with uncertainty and an almost complete lack of academic capital, unlike their middle-class peers, who enter the school system with access to various educational resources imbedded in their familial and extended social networks, as well as the parental socialization that has given them the tools to excel in school. Without a Pivotal Moment that prompts a habitus change, a large proportion of working-class minority students end up dropping out before graduating from high school, particularly males. Ramon was one of those students.

The Consequences of Not Experiencing a Pivotal Moment Ramon, an 18-year-old Latino male, might have been as academically successful as Oscar, the young man described at the beginning of the chapter, but instead, he was expelled from high school in the tenth grade, and tragically, never returned. When I interviewed him, he was two months away from his eighteenth birthday. Ramon and his older sister had been raised solely by their mother, as his biological father left the family when Ramon was a year old. Although his mother remarried and had three additional daughters with his stepfather, the relationship ended within a few years, leaving Ramon’s mother as a single parent raising five children on her own. His family always struggled fi nancially. To make ends meet, his mother rents one of the rooms in their two-bedroom apartment to a friend or family member. During his childhood, Ramon never had his own bedroom, “I always shared with my sister cause pretty much all my life I lived with someone like an aunt or uncle who rented one of the rooms.”

Educational Outcomes of a Hybrid Working-/Middle-Class Habitus

59

As the oldest male in his family, Ramon started working to help his family when he was very young. He recalled, “My fi rst job, I was eight. I had three houses that I had to cut the grass and water the plants.” Since then, he worked various jobs throughout middle and high school. He worked for three years with his mother doing janitorial work. When his aunt closed her bakery, he helped her bake cakes out of her home, frequently staying up all night baking. He also worked with his uncle who drove a commercial truck to different cities to pick up donated clothes. The socioeconomic challenges Ramon faced during his childhood were typical of most students I interviewed from low-income backgrounds. In fact, some students described even more extreme economic and personal hardships. Despite these barriers, many students are now well on their way to becoming college graduates, and in the case of the doctoral students, soon to be newly minted PhDs. Why was Ramon not able to follow a similar trajectory like Oscar who also started working when he was 7 years old and flunked his math class in middle school? Although various factors shaped Ramon’s educational path, what stood out to me was the lack of an educational Pivotal Moment or significant academic intervention from an educator. Although Ramon is currently struggling to figure out his future, it was not always so uncertain. He fondly remembered his kindergarten teacher with whom he connected: “She was the best teacher I ever had. I just felt safe with her. Even through the years, I would still go back and help her class. I worked with the little kids, checking their work and stuff.” In elementary school, before various circumstances interfered with his educational advancement, Ramon was a diligent student: “I was a teacher’s pet, a nerd. I would get mad at myself if I didn’t get student of the month. I would be like, ‘Damn, I didn’t get that student of the month!’ I didn’t have many problems, classes were easy.” In second grade, tragedy struck Ramon’s family when his sister was diagnosed with cancer. Although he received mostly As during fi rst grade and the fi rst half of second grade, he had to repeat second grade because he missed too many days of school. The reason he was absent so frequently was because his mother had to take his sister to the hospital every day for treatment that required them to be there all day long. Because she did not have anyone to take Ramon and his sisters to and from school, she was forced to bring them all to the hospital with her. Despite this setback, Ramon tried to be a dedicated student. In fi fth grade, he was selected by his school to attend a week-long science camp due to his high academic achievement. In the latter part of sixth grade, Ramon’s education took a critical turn for the worse. For a while, it appeared he was on a path to experience a Pivotal Moment when he developed a close connection with his sixth grade history teacher, Ms. Corey. He recalled their relationship:

60

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education We would talk a lot. She would talk about her family with me, about her daughters, and I would talk about my mom and my sisters. She knew my mom and sometimes they would talk after school when I would get in trouble. She would tell me to keep on doing good in sixth grade, my fuck up year. Excuse my language, but that’s when I really started going downhill.

Although Ramon trusted Ms. Corey and she encouraged him to do well, she did not seize the opportunity to advocate for or provide him with guidance and academic capital. Additionally, she did not make a concerted effort to encourage and assist him to do well in school. Her relationship with Ramon fell short of becoming a true Pivotal Moment—it was not consistent and intentional enough to transform his orientation toward schooling. Without a significant disruption, Ramon’s downward spiral in school continued unabated. Before middle school, Ramon had only been suspended from school once for jumping over a fence to take a shortcut home because he had to get home early at his mother’s request. With his mom working longhours to provide for the family, he did not have anyone to change the downward educational path he embarked on in sixth grade, as he explained: “That’s when I started doing drugs. I would hang around the wrong crowd and that’s when I started fighting, drinking, going to parties, and coming home drunk. From then on, it started escalating. I started getting suspended often.” Ramon explained that he began hanging out with the “wrong crowd” in part because he felt they shared many similarities. He said, “They were pot-smoking taggers. We all had been through the same thing; from single-parents and we really didn’t have any role models.” As the influence of his new peer group began to grow, his schooling took a precipitous dive: “That’s when I stopped liking school. I stopped paying attention. I stopped doing my homework. I was a ‘fuck it’ guy. Something happened, ‘fuck it.’” This was also the time when he joined a gang in his neighborhood. When I asked him why he joined the gang he stated, “I felt comfort because at that time my mom worked a lot. She was never there. I’m not blaming her. It was my dumb decision.” It was at the tender age of 12 that Ramon’s impoverished social circumstances fi nally got the best of him and he completely disengaged from school. As he started to slip away, no one was there to intervene and pull him back on course. After my interview with Ramon, I kept wondering if his educational trajectory would be different if an educator had intervened in a Pivotal Moment way. Would it have been possible to halt his downward spiral in school? Aside from his sixth grade history teacher, Ms. Corey, his only real connection to an educator was his kindergarten teacher at his old elementary school, but by that time Ramon had moved on to middle school. Although he used to visit Ms. Corey regularly even after he moved on to

Educational Outcomes of a Hybrid Working-/Middle-Class Habitus

61

middle school, he stopped going to see her during sixth grade and never talked to her again. He said it was because, “I didn’t really want her to see me like that.” Although a few educators tried to intervene later, Ramon felt that by that time, it was simply too late. When I asked him if anyone ever reached out to him during those “fuck up” years, he responded: “When I started, not really, that’s why it escalated. There was no one there to prevent it. When people fi nally started talking to me, it was too late. I was too deep in the game already.” Perhaps if Ramon had formed connections to educators early on, he would have felt the sense of belonging he went looking for outside of school with his new peer group. By tenth grade, Ramon’s discipline record fi nally caught up with him. Although he described having a good relationship with a few educators in high school who advised him to stay out of trouble, their efforts never reached a Pivotal Moment level of intervention. Rather than work with him intensely to nurture an academic self-concept and build his academic skills, the educators he interacted with in high school seemed complicit in maintaining his self-image as a trouble-maker: I had a good relationship with the assistant principal and my counselor. I was always straight up with them, and they were always straight up with me. When I got caught, they knew I was the one that was tagging so I admitted it. I wasn’t going to lie. Why bullshit? Why waste their time? I told them to give me detention if they wanted. They respected me more for being like that ‘cause I didn’t lie. Although the assistant principal, Mr. Hill, occasionally gave him advice about conducting himself at school, it was superficial at best. Ramon explained: He was always straight with me, and he cared about me too. He’d tell me every time I would go to his office, “Damn Porky,” that’s my nickname, “Don’t fuck up that much. I ain’t telling you to get out of the streets right away, just chill for a little bit. At least get your high school diploma. Ramon could not recall any additional interactions he had with Mr. Hill. Similar to his sixth grade teacher, Mr. Hill did not make a concerted effort to develop a strong trusting relationship with him that could have had the potential to impact his education. Once again, the intervention fell short of reaching a Pivotal Moment level. Another educator Ramon connected with in high school who could have intervened on his behalf was his counselor, Ms. Sanchez. Ramon trusted her because she made an effort to earn his respect by sharing personal stories of growing up poor in similar circumstances to his own. He even recounted instances where she went out of her way to assist him with transportation and meals:

62 Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education I respect that lady. I would go to this program in downtown and sometimes she would pay our bus tickets. She would use her own money for four screw-up kids to get there and back. She didn’t have to give us money. One time she drove us all the way over there, picked us up at 8 o’clock and took us out to eat. She was nice to my mom too. She would tell me, “What are you doing? Think about your family.” I respect her because she came up like me. She grew up in the streets. She knows what’s up. Although Ms. Sanchez established a strong social connection with Ramon, she unfortunately did not take advantage of the opportunity to transmit the academic skills and behaviors he needed to achieve school success. Students like Ramon, who do not come from homes with college-educated parents that can pass on educational instrumental knowledge, are dependent on school educators to provide it. Despite his past educational experiences, Ramon continues to look for ways to earn his GED. With few academic skills and little knowledge about navigating the school system to sort through his available options, he continues to struggle. He enrolled at a local community college to earn a GED, but was recently terminated from the program. When he fi rst started, he was very optimistic and exhibited some of the same student qualities he described when he was in elementary school: They would give us a lot of homework. Essays due every day, book reports, and everything had to be researched and typed. I got As and Bs. When I got my fi rst progress report, I was like, “Damn, I’m going to hang this on my refrigerator!” No lie. Cause I had two As and a B. They were my best grades since eighth grade. I was pretty happy. In my tests I would get As, like 93s. I was doing pretty good. Ramon’s academic turnaround in this program seemed promising. Although he did not own a computer to type all his assignments as required, he was resourceful and borrowed his friend’s laptop when he had deadlines for papers. Despite his notable academic performance, Ramon told me that he was eventually expelled from the program for being disruptive in class: I’d do my homework and still goof around . . . Until fi nally one day she [the teacher] just decided to kick me out cause I was a class clown. But everybody was like me. They all were expelled from their school, they came from continuation, everybody would mess around . . . I had a month left and I was doing good. My mom was proud of me and she would even brag about it to her friends and everything. He was so disappointed with the situation that he even tried to get assistance from his former high school educators, Mr. Hill and Ms. Sanchez, to

Educational Outcomes of a Hybrid Working-/Middle-Class Habitus

63

help him appeal the decision. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, they were not able to help him. Lacking a high school diploma, Ramon’s occupational options are extremely limited, and he is acutely aware of it. He explained: “When I got kicked out of the community college it opened my eyes. My doors are closing. I at least have to get my GED or high school diploma.” His remaining ray of hope is acceptance into Job Corps, a program that his high school counselor, Ms. Sanchez, suggested he look into after he was expelled from the GED program. Ramon does not know for sure if he will be accepted into Job Corps. In the meantime, he’s looking for employment and fi nding ways to keep from being bored: “I’m trying to fi nd a job. I’ve been putting in applications in stores just waiting to see if they will call me from a job, or from Job Corps.” When he’s not looking for jobs, he “sits on the curb in front of the apartments or I walk to the store to buy some cigarettes, kick it, walk down to the river, go to the mall, to a park, anything not to be bored.” Despite all the educational setbacks Ramon has experienced, he remained hopeful about his future, “I actually want Job Corps to call me back because they have culinary arts. I don’t know why but I love cooking. I like baking the cakes. I want to be a pastry chef. I want to have my own restaurant.” As a result of not experiencing an educational Pivotal Moment, Ramon was not able to overcome the overwhelming obstacles he faced as a Latino male from a low-income, non- college-educated family. Despite his promising potential early on, he slipped through the many cracks of the educational system and there was no one to prevent it. Unlike all the students I surveyed and interviewed from similar backgrounds that experienced a Pivotal Moment, he did not receive the necessary support and guidance to alter his educational trajectory to set him on a path toward higher education. Ramon’s experiences highlight why it is so critical that students like him experience a Pivotal Moment to get on the path to college.

PIVOTAL MOMENTS AND HIGHER EDUCATION In addition to ethnographic and qualitative data, I also conducted a survey of 1,265 college students to better understand the relationship between educational interventions and academic outcomes. Table 4.1 provides demographic information on the respondents. Overall, 68% were female, 33% were members of an ethnic minority group (Latino or Black), 35% were fi rst-year students and 25% were fourth-year students, 28% were enrolled at a community college, and 41% reported that both parents had less than a college degree. To explain the relationship between pre-college educational experiences, social and academic capital accumulation, and college educational outcomes among working-class minority students, the following section presents various analyses conducted with data from the

64 Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education Table 4.1

Background Characteristics of College Student Survey Respondents Percent (N = 1,265)

Gender Female

68

Male

32

Race/ethnicity White

46

Latino

30

Black

3

Asian

11

Educational level 1st year nd

35

2 year

23

3rd year

17

th

4 year

25

Student type Community college

28

Parental education Mother has high school degree or less

32

Father has high school degree or less

32

Neither parent has a BA

41

survey participants that indicated they were members of an ethnic minority group and whose parents did not have a college education. The fi rst analysis examined the frequency and timing of Pivotal Moments among the subsample of 418 students that reported parental educational levels that were less than a college degree, which I will refer to as “working-class.” Table 4.2 provides a summary of Pivotal Moment rates by educational level, gender, and minority status. On the survey, students were asked to identify a person that they thought had a big impact on them during elementary school, middle school, high school and college, and to briefly describe how exactly that person impacted them. A response was coded as a Pivotal Moment if it met two criteria: (1) listed an actual educator and (2) described an intervention that included the transmission of academic capital such as educational knowledge and skills. Overall, Pivotal Moment rates were low. Working-class male and female respondents did not differ in their rates of Pivotal Moments in elementary school (12% for both) or middle school (14% and 15% respectively). Working-class female students reported significantly higher Pivotal Moment rates in high school (14%) compared to working-class male students

Educational Outcomes of a Hybrid Working-/Middle-Class Habitus

65

(9%). Working-class males and females also did not differ in college Pivotal Moment rates (15% and 16% respectively). Working-class minority students reported significantly lower Pivotal Moment rates in high school (8%) compared to working-class White students (18%). Working-class White students also reported higher Pivotal Moment rates in college (20%) than working-class minority students (14%). Among working-class minority students, females reported significantly higher Pivotal Moment rates (10%) in high school than males (5%). Working-class White male students had significantly higher Pivotal Moment rates in high school (16%) than working-class minority male students (5%). Working-class White female students also had higher Pivotal Moment rates in high school (19%) than working-class minority female students (10%). Overall, 24% of working-class minority students and 31% of working-class White students experienced a Pivotal Moment sometime during their K–12 schooling years. Including college years raised the Pivotal Moment rates to 32% for working-class minority students and 38% for working-class White students. Among all groups, working-class White males had the highest Pivotal Moment rates (44%) during K–16 schooling years, whereas workingclass minority males had the lowest (28%). Of all working-class students, 34% experienced a Pivotal Moment during their K–16 schooling. The next analysis examined high school and college academic outcomes by minority status and Pivotal Moment timing. Eight academic outcomes were examined: high school academic awards, high school graduation honors, high school GPA, full-time college enrollment, community college enrollment, selectivity of four-year college institution attended, college academic awards, and college GPA (see Table 4.3). High school academic award scores were calculated by adding the number of academic recognitions received. Students were presented with a list of awards and asked to indicate all those they had received in high school. The academic award options included: student of the month award, honor roll, attendance award, spelling bee/writing/poetry contest award, subject award (e.g., a science award), school sports award, band/music/choir award, community service award, citizenship award for good behavior, or student of the year award. The number of awards marked was counted and summed to create a total awards score. Table 4.3 indicates that working-class minority students who had a Pivotal Moment in middle school, high school, and college received more academic awards in high school than students who did not report a Pivotal Moment. For the high school graduation honors variable, students were grouped into two categories: (1) those that graduated as valedictorian, salutatorian, top 5%, or top 10% and (2) those that did not. Working-class minority students that had a Pivotal Moment in high school were more likely to graduate with honors. The GPA variable was calculated by asking students to report their overall high school GPA on a standard 4.0 scale. Previous research has found

K–8

M

15

31

College

K–16

36

16

29

14

22

15

12

32

14

24

8

21

14

13

38

20

31

18

22

16

11

28

13

20

5

18

12

10

35

14

27

10

22

15

14

44

24

36

16

24

24

16

35

19

29

19

21

13

9

28

13

20

5

18

12

10

44

24

36

16

24

24

16

Bold indicates statistically significant differences between category column figures at p < .05 level using Chi-square statistic. PM = Pivotal Moment; M = male, F = female; Min = minority student, Wh = White student

24

K–12

9

14

19

Middle school

High school

12

Elementary school

PM timing

Wh

F

35

14

27

10

22

15

14

35

19

29

19

21

13

9

34

15

27

11

21

15

12

M F Min Wh M F M F Min Wh Min Wh Total (n = 148)(n = 270)(n = 287) (n = 93) (n = 108)(n = 179) (n = 25) (n = 98) (n = 108) (n = 25) (n = 179) (n = 68) N = 418

Min

Table 4.2 Pivotal Moment Rates by Educational Level, Gender, and Minority Status

66 Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

3.31

1.06 3.04

College academic awards

College GPA

2.98

.65

1.73

40

64

3.24

47

2.47

No (n = 272)

3.00

.97

1.82

33

78

3.33

56

3.46

Yes (n = 44)

2.98

.66

1.72

27

63

3.23

46

2.44

No (n = 266)

Middle School Pivotal Moment

3.30

1.50

3.14

27

—

3.73

86

5.09

Yes (n = 27)

2.94

.64

1.62

28

65

3.19

45

2.37

No (n = 283)

High School Pivotal Moment

Bold indicates statistically significant differences between category column figures at p < .05 level using Chi-square statistic.

1.77

27

Began at community college (%)

College selectivity

75

3.26

50

Full-time college enrollment (%)

High school GPA

High school graduation honors (%)

Yes (n = 38)

Elementary School Pivotal Moment

Academic Outcomes by Minority Status and Pivotal Moment Timing

High school academic awards

Table 4.3

3.11

1.26

2.10

33

64

3.27

49

3.72

Yes (n = 43)

2.96

.62

1.68

27

65

3.24

48

2.40

No (n = 267)

College Pivotal Moment

Educational Outcomes of a Hybrid Working-/Middle-Class Habitus 67

68

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

a strong correlation (.76) between self-reported grades and official grades (Dornbusch, Ritter, Leiderman, Roberts, & Fraleigh, 1987). Working-class minority students who had a Pivotal Moment in high school had significantly higher high school GPAs than those that did not. A comparison of students that were enrolled either part-time or full-time in college indicated that students that had Pivotal Moments were more likely to be enrolled full-time but the differences were not statistically significant. Similarly, a comparison of students that began college either at a community college or a four-year institution also showed that students who had Pivotal Moments did not differ in their four-year institution enrollment rates from those that did not have Pivotal Moments. College selectivity was determined using the categories developed by the U.S. News and World Report in their college rankings. College selectivity was rated as highly selective, selective, less selective, or open-access. Working-class minority students that had Pivotal Moments in high school and college attended more selective colleges and received more academic awards in college than students that did not have Pivotal Moments in high school or college. Similarly, working-class minority students that had Pivotal Moments in high school had significantly higher college GPAs than those that did not have Pivotal Moments. The third set of analyses examined the relationship between Pivotal Moments and the accumulation of social and academic capital as measured by six different variables: high school help-seeking behaviors, high school educational social capital, college help-seeking behaviors, college educational social capital, influence of prestige on college choice, time and effort spent researching colleges including use of additional resources for college applications (see Table 4.4). The high school help-seeking behaviors variable was a composite of seven questions that asked students how often they go to teachers and other educators for assistance with academic matters. Sample items include: “When I didn’t understand class material I talked to the teacher after school” and “When I had difficulties writing a paper I went to tutoring.” No differences were found between students that had Pivotal Moments and those that did not. High school educational social capital was measured by combining student responses to 16 survey questions/prompts that asked about their relationship with educators. Sample items include: “How much influence did teachers have on your educational experiences in high school?,” “I relied on my teachers for advice and guidance making education-related decisions in high school,” and “I had a friendly and trusting relationship with at least one of the school counselors.” Results indicate that working-class minority students that had a Pivotal Moment in middle school or high school had significantly higher educational social capital in high school compared to those that did not have a Pivotal Moment. The college help-seeking behaviors variable was composed of 11 items that measured the extent to which students sought academic support and

3.07 11.31

3.29

3.02

47.07

3.14

38.26

No (n = 272)

13.52

3.35

3.11

47.46

3.42

39.95

Yes (n = 44)

11.09

3.24

3.01

46.71

3.11

37.86

No (n = 266)

Middle School Pivotal Moment

17.45

3.43

3.18

46.23

3.40

40.50

Yes (n = 27)

10.84

3.24

3.01

46.90

3.13

37.98

No (n = 283)

High School Pivotal Moment

Bold indicates statistically significant differences between category column figures at p < .05 level using Chi-square statistic.

12.48

Influence of prestige on college choice

College research efforts

3.04

45.47

3.26

38.17

College educational social capital

College help-seeking behaviors

High school educational social capital

Yes (n = 38)

Elementary School Pivotal Moment

Minority Student Educational Social and Cultural Capital by Pivotal Moment Timing

High school help-seeking behaviors

Table 4.4

14.82

3.53

3.52

48.92

3.06

37.86

Yes (n = 43)

10.82

3.21

2.93

46.43

3.18

38.32

No (n = 267)

College Pivotal Moment

Educational Outcomes of a Hybrid Working-/Middle-Class Habitus 69

70 Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education guidance during college. Sample items include: “When I’m getting a low grade in a class I talk to the professor during office hours” and “If I’m looking for an internship I go to the career center.” Working-class minority students who had a Pivotal Moment in college had significantly higher help-seeking behaviors in college than those that did not have a Pivotal Moment. College educational social capital was measured using 15 items that asked students to indicate the types of social connections they had with college educators. Sample items include: “A professor influenced my educational experiences in college” and “I had a friendly and trusting relationship with my faculty advisor.” Working-class minority students that had a Pivotal Moment in college had significantly higher educational social capital levels than those that did not have a Pivotal Moment. The next variable, influence of prestige on college choice, was composed of four prompts that asked participants to indicate how much institutional reputation influenced their decision to apply to the college they were enrolled. Sample items include, “I chose this school because it has a good academic reputation” and “I chose this school because its graduates go to top graduate schools.” Working-class minority students that had a Pivotal Moment in college took institutional prestige into account when they applied to college at higher rates than students that did not have a Pivotal Moment. College research efforts was measured by four items that asked students to indicate how much time and effort they spent researching colleges and universities in high school before they applied. Sample items include: “How much time overall did you spend using researching colleges/universities before applying?” and “How many colleges and universities did you visit before making your decision?” Working-class minority students that had Pivotal Moments in middle school, high school, and college reported higher college research efforts than those that did not have Pivotal Moments. The fi nal set of analyses examined the relationship between educational social and cultural capital and academic outcomes. Based on four social and academic capital variables—high school educational social capital, high school help-seeking behaviors, college educational capital, and college help-seeking behaviors—respondents were split into two groups: high or low (see Table 4.5). Working-class minority students that had high educational social capital in high school had higher academic awards in high school, graduated from high school with honors at higher rates, had higher high school GPAs, were more likely to be enrolled full-time in college, and were more likely to begin higher education at a four-year institution than their counterparts that had low educational social capital in high school. Similarly, working-class minority students that had high levels of helpseeking behaviors in high school reported a higher number of academic awards in high school, graduated from high school at the top of their class, had higher high school GPAs, were more likely to initially enroll in a fouryear college, and had higher college GPAs than students that reported low levels of help-seeking behaviors in high school.

2.38

2.98

.79

1.88

44

54

3.09

3.07

.84

2.04

20

63

3.38

69

3.97

High (n = 122)

2.90

.84

1.83

43

63

3.14

44

2.21

Low (n = 107)

High School HelpSeeking Behaviors

3.11

1.02

2.11

32

72

3.32

62

3.46

High (n = 127)

2.85

.53

1.65

24

57

3.16

51

2.67

Low (n = 136)

College Educational Social Capital

Bold indicates statistically significant differences between category column figures at p < .05 level using Chi-square statistic.

2.98

.75

College GPA

1.87

College academic honors

15

BA institution selectivity

73

Began at community college (%)

3.35

45

3.66 66

Full-time college enrollment (%)

High school GPA

High school graduation honors

Low (n = 212)

High (n = 140)

High School Educational Social Capital

Academic Outcomes by Minority Status, Educational Social Capital, and Help-Seeking Behaviors

High school academic awards

Table 4.5

3.09

.82

1.98

24

60

3.32

65

3.62

High (n = 131)

2.89

.72

1.76

33

65

3.16

49

2.50

Low (n = 132)

College Help-Seeking Behaviors

Educational Outcomes of a Hybrid Working-/Middle-Class Habitus 71

72 Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education Working-class minority students with high educational social capital in college received a higher number of academic awards in high school, were more likely to have graduated from high school at the top of their class, had higher high school GPAs, were more likely to be enrolled full-time in college, attended more selective colleges, received more academic awards in college, and had higher college GPAs than students with low levels of educational social capital in college. Finally, students with high help-seeking behaviors in college received more academic awards in high school, were more likely to graduate from high school at the top of their class, and had higher high school and college GPAs than students with low levels of helpseeking behaviors in college.

CONCLUSION This chapter detailed the experiences of working-class minority students at different points along the educational pipeline. At each level, I examined the relationship between Pivotal Moments and academic outcomes, and although we cannot assume causality, we know they are significantly correlated. The results indicate that social class, minority status, and gender all impact a students’ likelihood of experiencing a Pivotal Moment intervention. At the high school level, working-class female students are more likely than working-class males to have a Pivotal Moment. In both high school and college, working-class White students have higher Pivotal Moment rates than working-class minority students. Thus, being female and/or White increases your chances of having a Pivotal Moment intervention compared to being male and/or minority. Only one-fourth (24%) of working-class minority students have a Pivotal Moment during their K–12 schooling years which might explain the current low college-going rates for this population. Having an early Pivotal Moment was also associated with several important academic outcomes for working-class minority students. Students who had a Pivotal Moment in high school were more likely to receive academic awards, graduate with honors, and have a higher high school GPA. They also attended more selective colleges, spent more time researching colleges, took institutional prestige into account when deciding where to apply, as well as received more academic awards and had higher GPAs in college. Working-class minority students that had higher educational social capital and help-seeking behaviors in high school and college, as a result of a Pivotal Moment intervention, also had better academic outcomes, including more academic awards, graduating with honors, higher GPAs, and were more likely to attend a four-year university full-time. The quantitative data reveals that having a Pivotal Moment intervention made a critical difference between college-bound students and high school dropouts like Ramon. Experiencing a Pivotal Moment during elementary

Educational Outcomes of a Hybrid Working-/Middle-Class Habitus

73

school, middle school, high school, or even college helps working-class minority students increase their educational social and cultural capital over time, ultimately changing their working-class habitus. Although there are more advantages to having an early Pivotal Moment intervention, having a later one is still beneficial in many ways. Pivotal Moment interventions clearly affect students’ acquisition and accumulation of social and academic capital that helps them gain access to higher education as well as adjust and succeed once they arrive. In the next chapter, I highlight the characteristics and behaviors of educators—teachers, counselors, and academic outreach coordinators—who work closely with working-class minority students to initiate Pivotal Moment interventions.

5

The Transformative Power of Educators

After interviewing Mr. Soto, a counselor at a large public high school located in a low-income suburban community, he invited me to come back the next day to observe an activity he coordinated for students called “Senior Mock Interviews.” The purpose of the event was to give seniors with a 3.0 GPA or above an opportunity to be interviewed and get feedback so they were prepared when applying for the district-wide scholarship competition. When I arrived the next morning, they were short on volunteer interviewers, so Mr. Soto asked me to fi ll in. Basically, students who participated were interviewed by a panel of three individuals for 30 minutes total. As interviewers, we were given sample questions to ask the students and told to interview them for 20 minutes and give them feedback for 10 minutes. Each student being interviewed had put together a senior portfolio that included a professional resume, a personal statement, and a form that included information about their family background, extracurricular activities, test scores, and where they had applied to college. We were asked to review each student’s portfolio before we called him or her in for the interview. In doing this, I noticed right away that students with high GPAs and test scores (many of whom had participated in an academic outreach program) had not applied to top-ranked colleges, although they would have been competitive applicants based on their academic profi les. Students, for example, that had 3.8–4.0 GPAs had only applied to less selective colleges such as California state universities. Only a few students had applied to private schools, none of which were top tier institutions. I immediately wondered why these students, who had stellar academic records and outstanding extracurricular participation, had not been encouraged to apply to more selective schools. As the interviews progressed throughout the morning, it became evident that the students had not been prepped well for them. Students were wearing unprofessional clothing in most cases and could not clearly articulate their accomplishments and future career goals. There were numerous instances where students could not answer the questions they were asked, such as “Where do you see yourself professionally in 10 years?” Sadly, none of the students could make a strong case for why they were qualified

The Transformative Power of Educators

75

to receive an academic scholarship. Even the “top performing” students did not exhibit a college-going habitus. Although it was clear that Mr. Soto was well-intentioned in organizing the event, it was not as effective as it could have been had he prepared students with the information and skills necessary to be successful beforehand. I also attended a “College Day” event at a public high school located in a low-income urban neighborhood where the students were mostly African American (67%) and Latino (32%). The purpose of the event was to motivate and inform students about college. When I initially saw an advertisement for the event, I was happy to see that the school (which has a low rate of students going to college) was making an effort to create a college-going culture on their campus. When I contacted the organizer to ask if I could observe the event, she asked if I could conduct a session on preparing for college, which I agreed to do. Upon my arrival, it quickly became clear that the event was extremely unorganized and a little chaotic. There was no central place for information for either the students or presenters. Most of the sessions, as well as my own, were taking place in different classrooms all over the campus, while the quad area had tables representing different schools, most of which were not top-ranked colleges and universities. When I arrived to the classroom of my assigned presentation, I was greeted by the teacher and her 15 students. I noticed that the classroom had a lot of college paraphernalia on the walls, including notebooks, T-shirts, and bags from USC, Occidental College, UCLA, and a few other universities. Before my presentation, students had just heard from representatives from the University of Maryland. When it was my turn to present, I started off asking students, “How many of you plan to attend college?” I was shocked when only two of the 15 students raised their hands. During my presentation, I talked to them about what they needed to start planning for college, such as courses (A–G requirements), extracurricular activities, and admissions exams (SATs). I tried to cover as much as I could, but the 30-minute timeframe I had only allowed for a brief overview. At the end of my presentation, I asked each student to repeat the following statement and fill-in the blank with a college name, “I am going to college, and I plan to attend _____.” Most students mentioned the local universities such as USC and UCLA, but a few others picked schools they had just heard about like University of Maryland. After attending the event, I realized it was another well-intentioned effort that was poorly implemented. I doubted it had served its purpose to impact students’ knowledge about college. I also found out later in the day that although the event was geared toward ninth graders, not all ninth grade classes had been given a presentation. Additionally, all the presentations were completely different; some were about planning for college like mine, but others were about careers in a specific discipline, like engineering, for example. Not all ninth graders, therefore, were exposed to the same college information, which I found highly problematic in trying to create a

76 Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education college-going culture. As I was walking to my car, I wondered: Are educators doing enough to ensure that low-income minority students get to college? Are students getting the proper information and guidance? What needs to happen to make sure all students get put on the path to higher education? The school visits and college events that were a part of my fieldwork for this research provided valuable insights into the varied college preparation experiences of working-class minority students and how they differed from their White middle-class counterparts. We know that the social and cultural capital needed to excel in school gets transmitted to children in middle-class homes by their college-educated parents and family members, but for working-class children, the knowledge needed to do well in school can only be learned after entering school and coming in to contact with caring educators. The extent to which educator-student relationships actually lead to the transmission of academic capital for working-class students, however, remains understudied. Although schools have been described as one of the primary sites for class, race, and gender reproduction, few have theorized about the role educators can play in interrupting that process. Educators have tremendous transformative power to change working-class minority students’ educational pathways. This chapter examines the practices of those educators who disrupt the sorting process of schools for students and compares their efforts to their counterparts who tend to reproduce inequality. It highlights the key characteristics of teachers, counselors, academic outreach professionals, and professors who work closely with students in a sustained and comprehensive way that positively impacts their educational success and advancement.

EDUCATORS WHO INTERRUPT SCHOOL INEQUALITY After interviewing 23 counselors, 17 teachers, 34 academic outreach professionals (who work for government-funded programs), and 11 college professors, I concluded that only a small percentage initiate Pivotal Moment interventions with their students. The educators who interrupt school inequality for low-income minority students do so in three critical ways: by building trust, serving as a mentor and advocate, and most importantly, transmitting valuable social and academic capital. The following section highlights the strategies of the educators I interviewed.

Building Trust The fi rst step Pivotal Moment educators took to effectively work with students was to earn their trust. Building a trusting relationship was often a process that was nurtured over a consistent and extended period of time. Educators built trust with students in various ways, including showing care, asking them about their personal/family lives, providing a comfortable/safe

The Transformative Power of Educators

77

space, sharing information about their own struggles as a fi rst-generation student, being accessible, and building a sense of family/belonging. Usually, the specific position of the educator—as a counselor, teacher, academic outreach professional, or professor—influenced the strategies she employed when working with students. As a former teacher, Ms. Johnson, who is now the head counselor at a public high school, learned that in order to help students, she must fi rst earn their trust: I used to teach and I noticed that a lot of my kids had no rapport with adults, had no one they could trust to give them information that was beneficial to them. You can talk to them all day, but the trust factor is big. Every student that I have that connection with, I feel the opportunity is there to provide them information that they can use at that time, and it works because they trust what I have to say and they come back for more. Ms. Johnson believes that connecting with students builds the trust needed for them to be receptive to her assistance and advice. For academic outreach professionals, trust is foundational to providing various support services to fi rst-generation minority students. Ms. Barnes, a program coordinator, highlighted the importance of building trust with students to maximize the impact she has on their academic success: “I think the kids have to trust you enough to know you care about them. They have to know there’s trust and that you care about their futures, and that equates to a loving relationship.” She felt that establishing a strong relationship with students was important for learning details about their lives which impacts their school success. Ms. Smith, another program coordinator, also stated: “I think trust is important because they feel like you have a special interest in them to show you really care about them. I think that they need to understand that somebody’s out there to help them and they really have an interest in them doing well.” For Mr. Montes, a science teacher at a predominantly low-income and Latino high school, building trust means fi nding ways to connect with students to show them you care: “If you don’t connect with them, forget it. They’ll be here just to pass the class and to get a D or a C and they won’t care about your class. They won’t care about you because you don’t care about them and so it won’t work.” Asking students about their personal and families lives was an effective strategy used by Pivotal Moment educators to build trust with students. Ms. Reyes, a high school counselor, explained her approach: “I want the kids to know I’m a safe person to talk to so I ask them a lot of questions, and sometimes they don’t answer because they’re not ready to trust me yet, and that’s OK because trust takes a while to build with the kids.”Although Ms. Reyes recognizes that it takes time before students warm up to her, she knows that her consistent efforts will eventually pay off. Ms. Pineda,

78

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

another high school counselor, makes an effort to help fi rst-generation students feel comfortable around her knowing that is a critical part of building a strong relationship. She believes that providing a “comfortable space” for students makes them more willing to come to her when they need support. Educators also shared information about their own educational histories to build trust with their students. Ms. Reyes tells her students stories of her struggles as a fi rst-generation college graduate: “My fi rst year in college I was on academic probation. I tell them I’m not perfect. I made a lot of mistakes.” Similarly, Ms. Barnes stated: “They know a lot about my life story, as far as anything related to college, how I got there, and the obstacles I had to overcome to get there, I feel it’s important to share.” Mr. Salas, an academic advisor, further elaborated that sharing his story helps students “buy in to the whole idea of, ‘If he did it, then I can do it too.’” He felt that his story makes the notion of attending college more real for students because someone like them has done it. Personalizing students’ experiences was a strategy that allowed educators to build a sense of community or “family.” Academic outreach professionals often did this during the summer residential programs when they hosted new students. Ms. Torres, a program coordinator, used the word “family” when describing her program: “I always tell the students this program is like your family that went to college.” Ms. Aguilar, another program coordinator, said: “It’s important to build camaraderie and sense of family within the group to show them that this is the family that they belong to now.” She felt that creating a sense of family allowed students to develop a sense of belonging and an attachment to the staff and other students. Being accessible and staying in frequent contact with students was another important trust-building component for educators. Mr. Chang, a high school counselor, felt that his ability to build trusting relationships with students depended on their perception of his availability. For this reason, he made an effort to always have his door open and work after regular school hours to be accessible to students. Outreach staff also made themselves available beyond the normal nine-to-five work day and through various modes of communication, such as texting and Facebook. Ms. Cruz, an academic advisor, felt that always being accessible gave students a sense of security that someone is always there to support them. She explained: “I think it’s important for them to have that security to say, ‘She’s going to pick up the phone or she’s going to take my text if I need something from her.’ I believe it’s more of that they know that I will stand by them and be there at all given times.” Pivotal Moment educators at the college level built trust with their fi rstgeneration minority students in similar ways. Professor Ruiz, a faculty member at a highly selective liberal arts college, tries to provide students with a “safe space” when they come to her office to earn their trust. She noted: “I think I’m helpful in being a listener. I also try to provide a space for students to share with me how they are doing.” Professor Martinez,

The Transformative Power of Educators

79

also a faculty member at a prestigious liberal arts college, felt that sharing his working-class background helps him connect with students who needed support, “My father was a gardener, so with this one student, we talked about growing up and helping our dads gardening. We connected through shared personal experiences.”

Providing Mentorship and Advocacy Establishing trust facilitates an educators’ ability to provide students with personal support and encourage their academic potential. Pivotal Moment educators mentor and advocate for students to get them on the path to higher education. They understand that working-class minority students lack critical college-going information, so they make a concerted effort to ensure they receive it. In the process, they provide emotional/moral support, encouragement/motivation, academic guidance with high expectations, and advocacy to promote students’ interests. Developing a caring relationship with students makes students more likely to seek out educators for assistance when students are facing a personal or educational problem. Once students trust her, Ms. Torres assumes multiple roles with students as a co-parent, confidante, and psychologist, and knows she must be prepared to provide emotional support for a wide array of personal issues. She explained: “All the students come to me with friend, boyfriend, and girlfriend problems, so you deal with other stuff that is not always academic. You just have to always be prepared for that, like family stuff, when parents lose their job and students feel scared about going to college and putting that fi nancial burden on them.” Ms. Romero, a college-level outreach professional, felt that providing fi rst-generation minority college students with emotional support needs to go hand-in-hand with academic support: “You can’t just provide the academic support. You also need to provide the emotional support too.” The emotional support she provides includes helping students cope with low academic performance and reducing the stigma they often face in college. In addition to providing emotional and moral support, Pivotal Moment educators encouraged and motivated students about college. They understand that most students from poor and working-class backgrounds are not instilled with the aspirations to pursue higher education and must be encouraged to envision that possibility. According to Mr. Chang, you fi rst need to convince students they are “college material” and then provide constant encouragement and guidance along the way. He observed that sometimes students just need a sense of belief and hope because they do not even think that they can get into four-year colleges. But, that is when he tells them, “Yes, you can do it. Just stay focused and I can guide you.” Ms. Reyes also said that students need to be motivated throughout high school to build their confidence: “It’s more than just talking to the kids about college. You’re reinforcing their self-esteem and motivation, telling them, ‘You

80 Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education can do this!’ A lot of it is just getting them to feel sure about themselves going to college.” Mr. Montes constantly talks to his students about college in his science classes to motivate them. As a result, he has begun to see a change in the college-going rates at his high school. He said that when he fi rst started at his school, most of the top-ranked students were only going to community colleges, even though they were eligible to attend four-year universities. Mr. Montes believed his efforts to encourage students to apply to college is changing that trend: “What I think I’ve accomplished over the years is that the more I talk to them, I see fewer students that are ranked in the top 30 of their graduating class going to community colleges. They’re now more committed to going to a four-year university.” In addition to motivation, Mr. Salas emphasized the importance of also praising students: “Motivation is so huge, rewarding them, praising them when needed, and reminding them frequently of how proud we are. We are much more than a counselor, we become family for them.” After students develop a desire to attend college, Pivotal Moment educators dedicated time to advising students to help them feel confident about reaching their goal. Although most educators think that providing the necessary information is enough for fi rst-generation students, these educators recognized that it is not always that simple. Mrs. Johnson understands that even the most high-achieving students who you might assume know what they are doing struggle, and so she intentionally intervenes. She explained how she assesses what students know (or do not know) and then works with them according to their needs: I’ve had meetings where they have no clue, and they may be sitting there with a 3.8 GPA and haven’t done anything, haven’t applied, haven’t thought about applying, don’t know the steps to take because they’re fi rst-generation students. Those are the students that I actually sit down and have a longer discussion with. It could be an hour, it could be two hours. In those exchanges, Ms. Johnson realizes that students not only need college information but also a lot of encouragement and constant reminders about their potential to gain acceptance to and succeed in college. Ms. Reyes explained that feeling overwhelmed by the college application process sometimes prompts students to doubt their abilities. She said that is when her encouragement is critical: “When they start the application process, it can sometimes be overwhelming and they start to think, ‘Maybe this isn’t something that I really need to do. Maybe I shouldn’t be applying to all these schools.’ I tell them, ‘No, you need to be doing all of it.’ That’s when I push them sometimes.” Ms. Reyes doesn’t just push the stellar students, she also pushes the students that other teachers might not consider college material: “I see the potential. If I see kids that

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have Cs and maybe two Ds, I still tell them that they’re going to go to college and that they should apply.” She constantly works to raise students’ expectations about academic success and college attendance because she knows they are not exposed to it in their families and communities. Ms. Gallardo, a high school English teacher, affi rmed that academic encouragement must also come with high academic expectations for students. She believes that “if you set high expectations for students, they rise to the challenge, so she pushes them.” In addition to guidance and mentorship, Pivotal Moment educators actively advocate for students with other school personnel. As an academic counselor, Ms. Johnson’s advocacy is particularly valuable for her firstgeneration minority students, like Keith: Keith is first-generation to go to college. Mom didn’t graduate high school, and she’s not really able to support him. He wants to study performing arts in college, so last year I told his dance teacher, “You need to help him create the portfolio. He’s college bound, could you help him?” As head counselor, I have that ability to talk to teachers on that level and they respect the fact that I’m emailing them saying, “Do this!” Ms. Johnson regularly advocates for students to get the necessary support from teachers to help them accomplish their educational goals. She thinks one of the biggest problems is that most teachers have low expectations for their students. She explained: “My biggest challenge is getting the staff to understand that all kids can learn. I have teachers that write kids off before they even set foot in their class. They automatically say, ‘These kids aren’t performing because they’re from here, and that’s just the way it is, they don’t ever go anywhere.’” Academic outreach professionals also provide advocacy for students with administrators at the schools they attend. Ms. Smith recently had to advocate for one of her students when she was not assigned to a college prep course she needed: One of our students was not enrolled in Spanish because the school said she could take it later, but I said no because she needs to have two to three years of Spanish. I just walked right in the counselors’ office and told them that she had to have this class and she enrolled her right then. That happens a lot so we have to watch them. They have so many students that the counselor-to-student ratio is just unbelievable so we have to stay on top of it for our students. Ms. Gallardo viewed student advocacy and support as something that should be a group effort among multiple educators. She felt that developing connections with others educators can help students be more academically successful. She explained: “Getting kids to college isn’t something that can

82 Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education only be done by one person. I always ask, “Who can I have as an ally in the math department or in the science department? If my student is struggling in chemistry and I don’t know chemistry, who can I go to?” So I have resources in different areas.” She felt that supporting students is easier if she has other educators to count on for help. Educators like Mr. Montes advocate for students with parents who do not understand the demands and rigor of college prep courses. He explained the concerns his students often come to him with about their parents: “Some students tell me, ‘I got to do this homework and my mom doesn’t let me stay up after 10 o’clock.’ Parents have absolutely no idea what it takes to go to school because most of them are not educated.” For this reason, he meets with parents to allow them to express their concerns and advocate for students by explaining to their families the need for them to stay up so late doing homework. When students feel that their parents do not understand all the hard work they put to get ahead in school, Mr. Montes tries to reason with them to see things from their parents’ perspective: “So I tell them, “You know what? You can’t blame them because they don’t understand what you’re doing. They don’t know anything about it.” Mr. Chang also serves as an advocate for students with parents. He noted: “Sometimes students are telling me, ‘Life is just tough. I can’t keep up with my AP courses. My parents don’t understand why I want to go to certain colleges.’ So sometimes you have to counsel them and just reassure them. ‘Yes, everything will be OK. Do you want me to meet with your parents? No problem.’” In higher education, professors also served as mentors and advocates for fi rst-generation college students. Professor Lopez, a part-time faculty member at multiple community colleges, feels an obligation to constantly motivate students about transferring to a four-year school: “A lot of what I do is make them feel good about making that choice and at the same time try to empower them to continue. I tell them not to be afraid to apply to private schools because they might get a better fi nancial aid package than at a public university.” She takes on this role because she can relate to her students’ experiences: “I had no access to that kind of stuff. And I know that my students don’t have that kind of access. I think I would be remiss if I didn’t do that. My job is to take care of the students, to get them engaged, to get them enthusiastic, to empower them. It’s a role that I take seriously.” In fact, Professor Lopez has been highly successful in encouraging students to transfer and advocating on their behalf: I had two students who were just exemplary. They were stellar. And I was like, “You guys need to be on a path to go to USC,” and they were like, “I can’t do that, I work, I have kids,” and I was like, “Apply for this program. I will endorse you and recommend you,” and both of them ended up getting in. And one of them has since transferred and was accepted to USC.

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Similarly, Professor Martinez, a faculty member at a highly selective private college, actively advocates for students in the graduate school application process: I call professors on their behalf. I’ll say, “You know, I have this student that will be applying,” and generally they’re very receptive. I had a student who totally bombed the GRE, so I got a call from this professor at the graduate school asking, “What happened? The GREs are low, the letters of recommendation are good, the personal statement is good, the GPA is good, the classes are good.” I told him that I knew he would make it there. He’s a PhD now . . . So I try to connect them to schools and to people that are going to be supportive so they can thrive. Although he works with students that were very high achieving in high school, Professor Martinez has learned that they still need lots of encouragement and support: “They were making straight As in high school but when they get to college they’re making Bs and Cs and they start to wonder, ‘Should I be here?’ They come to see me quite a bit and talk about feeling stressed out.”

Transmitting Social and Academic Capital One of the most significant components of a Pivotal Moment intervention is the transmission of educational social and cultural capital. Educators use their trusting relationships with students to pass on important academic knowledge. They teach their students skills such as navigating school processes, social networking/communication strategies, utilizing educational resources, and effective problem solving and decision making. Pivotal Moment educators are intentional in transmitting information to students in both formal and informal ways. In working with students, educators walk students through various school processes while explaining the importance of each along the way. In these exchanges, students learn how to effectively navigating these processes to be successful in achieving educational goals. Course planning and college applications are two key examples. Unlike course selection, which is just picking courses to take in high school, course planning helps students choose specific courses with a clear explanation about why the levels and types of courses matter. When Mr. Chang meets with his students about course planning, he is very deliberate in telling them the educational outcomes they will achieve if they choose a regular course compared to an honors course: “I tell them to take rigorous courses to be able to apply to competitive colleges and universities.” Mr. Chang always ties his academic advising to college so that students start planning for it early in high school. Similarly, Ms. Pineda puts all her students on a course plan to attend college when they enter high school and begin meeting with her. Her philosophy is

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that all students, especially low-income minority students, should be told they are expected to go to college, and should start preparing for it through their academic coursework. During students’ senior year, Pivotal Moment educators guide students with all aspects of the college application process. Mr. Chang strongly believes that fi rst-generation college students should be coached through their college applications to be successful. After convincing one of his Latino students to apply to four-year universities, instead of going to the local community college as he had planned, Mr. Chang walked him through every part of the his college applications. He recounted: “There were times that he’d come in to ask me about the FAFSA, about scholarships, or to review applications. He had trouble filling out applications because he didn’t know certain things.” Mr. Chang held his student’s hand through both the application and fi nancial paperwork which ultimately got him admitted to a four-year university. When helping students with their applications, Ms. Reyes makes sure that all her students’ college applications are meticulously filled out: “I can’t tell you how many times I give it back and tell them, ‘You’re not turning this in like that. It has to be perfect.’ So I look over each and every one of them. If there is either a spelling, or some kind of grammar error, I say, ‘You got to do it again, and here’s how to do it correctly.’” As such, she mentors students through the completion of a successful college application. Ms. Reyes also helps students assemble a packet of information for letters of recommendation which includes a resume, personal statement, and a list the schools they are applying. The information she collects from students is very comprehensive: “I also have the kids fi ll out additional personal information and there’s also a questionnaire for the parents because I also like to get a sense of what the parents think about their child.” Through these two processes, Ms. Reyes is showing students the steps for how to be successful in reaching educational goals. Mr. Montes makes a concerted effort to explain the college application process to his students early so they are better prepared for the process when they are seniors. Once he starts working with a student, he identifies the information they are missing, and begins to fi ll in the relevant academic knowledge. He explained: “Year after year, I talk to them and they don’t know the difference between a community college, a state university, or a private university. They don’t know the costs. They don’t know what it takes to get there. There’s a lot of confusion.” Mr. Montes said that there are only a handful of teachers at his school who are willing to help students with questions about college, and he is one of them: “College is there, but it’s blurry, it’s full of questions, and they don’t know how other students got there. And the thing is that they probably don’t have many places where they can ask.” Academic outreach professionals like Ms. Smith coach students through the process of selecting what schools they should apply to for college.

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Similar to the advice most middle-class students receive from parents and counselors, she insists that students apply to top private schools so that they have more options. She explained: “They get four waivers for the public universities, so I make them fi ll out four applications for each. And then I always have them fill out private school applications too. They get waivers for it, so I tell them to apply because they’ll have a lot more options.” Ms. Smith feels it is important to give students a full range of college options and encourage them to explore them all so that they have better choices later. This strategy is similar to that of most middle-class students who tend to apply to a larger number of schools to increase their chances of getting into the most prestigious institutions. Pivotal Moment educators also transmit knowledge to students about social networking and communication strategies. Two academic outreach professionals provided examples of coaching students on how to effectively communicate with school officials. Ms. Torres explained her approach: First I explain it to them, because they’re the ones that have to go to the teachers and advocate for themselves. Sometimes they try and come back to me and say, “No, they wouldn’t do it.” So I ask, “When did you try talking to him?” “Oh, during class.” So I tell them, “Well, then ask before or after class, or when he’s not busy. Ask to set up an appointment to talk to him. He’ll see that you’re responsible by asking for an appointment.” She also described her strategy for encouraging students to develop relationships with educators to enlist their support to achieve their academic goals: I tell them that every week they should be meeting with their teachers and their counselors. One reason is to get their grades up and another reason is because senior year they’re going to need letters of recommendation for scholarships and for college. Sometimes they come to me when their grades are falling, and when they, do I ask them, “Did you go see the teacher? I need you to go talk to them first and then come to me.” Ms. Torres recognizes that her fi rst-generation students need to acquire the skills to know how to develop and nurture relationships with educators. Ms. Barnes believes that one of the keys to school success is for students to know how to negotiate relationships with instructors, so she helps them develop those skills while they are still in high school: “I really emphasize with them communicating with their instructors. I hold them accountable for having conversations with their teachers so a lot of times, even though I know they’re doing well in the class, I’ll make them get progress reports because I know that means that they have to go have a conversation with the instructor.” Ms. Barnes also gives them tips on how to initiate contact and possible conversation topics:

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Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education I tell them to start off with their name and say “Hi,” but always in a respectful way. I tell them to address them as, “Professor” and introduce themselves as, “Professor, my name is and I’m in your class.” If they’re not doing well in class, I tell them to say, “I’m really struggling to keep up.” I also tell them to let the professor know they enjoyed a class or that they are interested in doing research by telling the professor, “I loved the lecture today,” or, “I’m really good at some of this stuff, and I was wondering if maybe you could use some help?”

Ms. Barnes believes that learning how to connect with and develop relationships with educators should be imparted to students as early as possible to assist them with doing well in the school. Through their interactions with Pivotal Moment educators, students learn how to fi nd and utilize educational resources that ultimately develop their help-seeking behaviors. Many educators, like Ms. Smith, expressed that this was one of the most important skills students needed to get through the educational system: We really try to teach them about how to seek out resources—like if something is not going right how to take care of it, who to go to on campus. That’s key for success. I really work hard to teach them how to seek out the resources, because I think that it is critical in college to be able to figure out who to go to, or what you need to do to pass some classes, or if you’re struggling or having a problem with your roommate, you have to be able to figure it out. You can’t just give up. Although Ms. Smith models many of these behaviors herself when counseling her students, she also said it is important to explicitly point them out to fi rst-generation students. Similarly, Ms. Barnes uses college visits to emphasize to her students the importance of being resourceful in educational contexts: We try to schedule a presentation about student services, because I think being able to connect to student services on campus a lot of times will dictate how successful a student is because a student who doesn’t understand what student services does, quite honestly, is not very successful because they don’t understand who can help them when they run into problems once they get there. Mr. Barnes said that if students know where they can fi nd help, they will always look for support and assistance, particularly at the college level, when the stakes for success are high for fi rst-generation college students. A story Ms. Johnson told me about one of her Latino students named Raymond, who she counseled and helped get into college, captures the full range of academic capital transmission that can be transformative in altering a working-class minority students’ educational trajectory. Raymond was a

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promising young man who became homeless when his family was deported back to Mexico. Ms. Johnson’s educational intervention during his junior and senior years in high school completely changed the course of his life. In recounting the story, Ms. Johnson elaborated on the details of her relationship with Raymond and explained how she was able to pass on information to him. She first described how they met: “One day during his junior year he ends up in my office, and he says, ‘I want to graduate early.’ And I said, ‘OK, kid, whatever. Everybody wants to graduate early.’ He was really not giving me a lot of information, so I told him I needed to know why. He told me he was having problems at home. He was in honors classes, had all As. I spent the whole morning trying to get to know this bright, well-mannered kid that wanted to leave school early.” She described in great detail the afternoon she first got to know Raymond and learned about his family situation: It was a Thursday and I had to buy the counselors lunch, so he says, “I can get you a discount.” And I thought, “Whatever.” But he insisted, “No, I’m the nighttime manager there.” So I said, “You’re the manager of the Pizza Hut down the street?” So I called, put the order in, the driver showed up and gave me 25 percent off the pizzas. The pizza delivery guy, an older man in his sixties, goes, “Hey, Mr. Tito, is this your school?” and he shook his hand. He had so much respect for him [Raymond], and I was like, “This kid is a nighttime manager, good grades, straight As, all honors classes—what is going on?” So we had pizza and talked, and he told me that his mother was deported and his stepfather had kicked him out and he was living on the streets and actually sleeping on campus under the bleacher area. Most recently, he had been riding his skateboard from a nearby city, where he found a friend that would let him stay with him. He would ride his skateboard fi fteen miles when he couldn’t get bus money. After getting to know Raymond, Ms. Johnson knew that she needed to intervene and help this young man get to college, an option that he had not even considered. He was initially asking to graduate early so that he could join the workforce full-time to earn enough money to pay for his own living expenses. Ms. Johnson knew he had college potential, so she acted on it. For more than a year and a half, she advised him academically on fi nishing high school on schedule rather than early to increase his chances of getting into college. During his senior year, she guided him through the college application process, helping him every step of the way. She also taught him the value of social networking, which helped him get strong letters of recommendation for his college applications. She recounted: I walked him through the college process, and showed him how to get in. I introduced him to Ms. Harrison, the principal. She fell in love with him. Ms. Harrison and I wrote letters of support, and we advocated for him with the president of the local public university and he ended

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Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education up giving him a full scholarship. He ended up graduating number six in his class, with a 4.6 GPA. He’s now a sophomore in college, straight As, and a math major. He’s a calculus tutor now on campus. He wants to come back here and teach math.

In the process of helping Raymond navigate both the rest of high school and the college application process, Ms. Johnson also showed him how to utilize all the school’s resources to get the support he needed to succeed academically and get accepted to college. College professors transmit academic capital to their fi rst-generation students in similar ways, particularly on how to navigate higher education once they have entered college. Professor Lopez often walks students through the process of transferring from a two-year community college to a four-year university. She fi rst provides the information about the transfer process and then supports students through the process of applying. In fact, her former students often come back to thank her: “Students have come back to tell me I really helped them, that they learned where to go, how to navigate the process, or who to get help from. It’s a good feeling because I want them to do well.” Similarly, Professor Martinez gives students various tips on how to be strategic when applying to graduate school. He explained how he advises his students in this process: “What I tell my students to do when they’re writing their personal statements is name drop. I tell them that I have colleagues at a lot of the major universities, so they should mention that they took a class with Professor Martinez, or they did this paper for Professor Martinez.” Professor Martinez provides students with effective strategies for getting into top graduate schools, something that he knows will be beneficial to their careers in academia. Professor Garcia constantly encourages her students to network and connect with their professors and instructors. She said: “I try to tell them to talk to the professors, to make relationships with the professors because it does matter.” Professor Solano, a faculty member at a public university with a large fi rst-generation minority population, provides students with concrete advice on the best way to build rapport with instructors they may want to work with in the future: A student was actually emailing some professors to ask them about their articles, and I told him that a lot of these are available online and that he probably shouldn’t email someone to ask for their articles if they’re available online. It was just a little thing, but I felt like it was part of the professionalization process. I told him that you don’t really want to approach somebody who you want to work with as a mentor until after you’ve read their work. College-level Pivotal Moment educators also taught students how to network and develop relationships that will give them access to additional resources

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that can provide support. For example, Professor Ruiz stated: “I think what I am good at is connecting the students with each other. I don’t have all of the information, I can’t do everything, so they need to have as many people looking out for them, as many ties to as many people as possible.”

EDUCATORS WHO REPRODUCE SCHOOL INEQUALITY Unfortunately, most of the educators interviewed employed practices of working with students that were in contrast to Pivotal Moment educators. Many counselors, for example, believed that helping students plan for college via a four-year course schedule should be sufficient to get them on the path to college, and if they did not make it, it was their own fault. In many ways, the actions of these educators served to reproduce educational inequality rather than disrupt it. Their way of working with students included a one-size-fits-all approach, low academic expectations, lack of empathy for students’ personal lives, and blaming parents for their children’s academic difficulties.

One-Size-Fits-All The one-size-fits-all approach of working with students that some educators employed was often generic and formulaic. It did not place importance on connecting with students and being available to work with students individually to accommodate their needs. For example, Mr. Carlson, a counselor at a large public high school, described his approach to working with students as not seeming accessible so they do not develop expectations that he will always be available to them. He explained: I’m not supposed to be available. Top-notch people in my profession have told me not to be available because then it looks like I’m not doing anything. I’ve been told not to do random acts of guidance.” He further stated: “I’m very unavailable as a freshman counselor. I always tell kids, ‘Hey, don’t walk in and expect me to be here for you because I’m not.’” In our interview, he even told me about recently having to “run a student off” who kept coming to his office after school to talk with him. Instead of seeing this as an opportunity to connect with the student, he viewed it as a nuisance. Similarly, Mr. Lewis, a counselor at a large public high school, did not feel he needed to make an effort to build rapport with all of his students due to his large caseload: To be candid, five hundred is too big of a caseload. Sometimes you start to get to know the frequent fliers, the bottom and top ends, very well. It’s that kid who does everything right and has a 2.7 to 3.3 grade point average

90 Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education that might get lost in the shuffle, because they don’t seem to need it as much. They don’t want or need my services. They’re low maintenance. With this approach, however, the likelihood of those kids in the middle experiencing an academic intervention is extremely low regardless of how much they actually need it. Mr. Lewis’s approach ignores the fact that school relationships can help integrate students into the school environment and help them to take advantage of the educational and social resources it has to offer. Mr. Lewis characterized his single approach to serving all students despite varying needs as “honesty.” He stated, “As far as the relationship, it’s being honest with the kids and being consistent with the communication and the message. I don’t deviate from that message. Prepare to be ready for a four-year college.” He reasoned, “If they choose the community college it’s because they want to, not because they have to.” Instead of insisting that students go to a four-year university and putting them on that path as Pivotal Moment educators do, Mr. Lewis lets students make that decision on their own. Additionally, he does not think educators should insist that students take college prep courses if they choose not to: “My recommendation is to take as much math as they can, but I cannot and will not force them. They’re big boys and girls now.” He felt that by merely providing information, making parents and students aware of the consequences of not taking all the necessary courses, and documenting his efforts that he had done his job: They ask the questions. I give them the answers. I point them to the resources. [I tell them,] ‘If you get stuck, give me a call, or come back and check with me.’ I try to set up all my kids on schedules so that they’re going to be in a four-year college. When they start to deviate from that, I’m on the phone with the parents, letting them know that if the student is not going to do a second year of a foreign language, he might not be able to go to a four-year college, but instead a community college. And that’s fi ne. I’ve told the kid, I’ve told the parent, and I’ve documented everything . . . You encourage everybody, and when they drop off, it’s of their own choosing. Mr. Lewis further stated that he thinks he should direct students to resources, but does not feel obligated to mentor them or be an advocate. In fact, he was quite critical of educators who go above and beyond for their students: “A lot of people in education still have the Jesus complex of, ‘I’m going to save everybody.’ You can’t!”

Low Academic Expectations Unlike Pivotal Moment educators, “Inequality Reproducers” had lower expectations of students, particularly those that struggled academically or

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those that experienced difficult emotional hardships. Mr. Lewis, for example, felt that students struggling in school were better off in a continuation school: “Some kids got so much going on at home that school is their last priority, and if you see them perpetually failing, sometimes you counsel them to attend a continuation or alternative learning setting that might be a little bit more conducive to their emotional needs.” Mr. Soto, another high school counselor, actively helps students transfer to alternative or adult schools if they are having difficulties rather than offer additional help and support or insist that students stay at the traditional high school so they can take the necessary courses to go to college. Interestingly, both Mr. Lewis and Mr. Soto characterized low academic achievement as a lack of effort on the part of the student. Another counselor, Mr. Carlson, who held low expectations of the lowincome minority students he worked with, discouraged students from highstatus career aspirations, such as becoming doctors. Instead, he steered them toward occupations that required less schooling, like nursing. He stated: There’s an amazing amount of kids that say they want be pediatricians, and then when you tell them, OK, so 4 years of high school and then like 11 years of college and graduate school after that, then they’re like, “Uh!” So I tell them that if they want to work with kids, nursing can be done in two years. And they’re like, “OK, I want to do that.” By doing this, Mr. Carlson was “cooling-off” students’ ambitious career and educational aspirations. His rationale for advising students this way is because he thinks that the push to get more students into four-year universities is misguided: A recent interest of mine has been to get kids to redefi ne college. Our district is all about creating a college-going culture and I hate that for so long we’ve made that to mean a four-year college. To me, if you go to the community college and you get a certificate in welding, you went to college and you completed something and you just empowered yourself to have a better life. You may have done better than the kid who went with no clue what they wanted to do and got four-year degree and racked up lots of students loans and came out with no skills that are marketable. So getting technical career information to kids and just validating that as a great pathway is an important thing. Several educators expressed the view that college is not for everyone despite overwhelming consensus to the contrary among educational researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. Similarly, Mr. Preciado, a high school teacher who, like several other educators I studied, felt that college was not for everybody, said: “I don’t know if we would really want everybody to be college material. Would that really work? Would that be a better society?

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The students make you think, and the answer is no. College is not necessarily the best thing for all students.” Sadly, their practices result in a lack of college and career counseling for low-income minority students. Some educators feel that students have inherent abilities to perform well in school that cannot be changed and believe that certain students are just not capable of performing in rigorous courses and going to college. Mr. Lewis expressed this belief when he described his frustration with the expanded Honors program at his school, which was intended to increase access to the more rigorous curriculum for all students: Part of our WASC [Western Association of Schools and Colleges] goals were to make it more inclusive, not to make it so hard to be in an Honors course, and we’ve had mixed results with that. When you have a third section of AP U.S. History, your talent pool isn’t as good as if you have one or two sections. In a true Honors program, you got about thirty-five kids that are truly gifted, maybe a few more, so two sections should be enough, but we have three to make it open to more people. The reality is some kids are there, they work hard, and they get their B. They’re hard workers, but in order to be a true Honors student, you have to have the intellect and industry. You have to have both. If we have too many kids that signed up for AP Physics you call those kids in your office, and you say, how about regular physics? It still counts. Sadly, educators like Mr. Lewis let their opinion that some students are just born gifted and more intelligent determine which students they let stay in the Honors courses versus those they counsel not to enroll. He does not work under the assumption that all students are capable of being in academically rigorous courses, even if they demonstrate the diligence and motivation to succeed. Other educators, such as Mr. Ortega, steer students in different directions after high school based on their parents’ educational backgrounds: “A lot of the parents I work with got their bachelor’s degrees back in the seventies and eighties. Back then, that’s all you needed to get a good job. Now it’s not. Now you really do have to get your master’s. So I’m pushing those [middle-class] kids to do that. And then my [working-class] kids, whose parents haven’t been to college, step one is to get them to the career college.” Instead of assessing students’ individual capabilities and goals, Mr. Ortega lets their family social class background dictate their future educational possibilities.

Lack of Empathy and Blaming the Parents Many Inequality Reproducers did not see empathy as part of their job in working with disadvantaged students. One example was Mr. Ortega,

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a high school counselor, who was not sympathetic to the situation of his low-income students. He stated, “If a student is on the free or reduced-price lunch list, they don’t want you to know that they’re on that list because you’re supposed to handle ‘those people’ with care because they’re embarrassed, which is ridiculous because you’re trying to give them free services. You’re trying to get their SAT for free, planning college for free, go to college for free.” Mr. Ortega was not at all sensitive to the stigma low-income students may feel being on the free and reduced-price lunch list at a school where only one-fifth of the student population is of low socioeconomic status. Unlike Pivotal Moment educators, Mr. Lewis also had experience working with students who were homeless or in foster care, but approached counseling them very differently. He explained how he worked with one of his students whose father had recently thrown him of his house: “I bought him a tank of gas, took him down to family services, got him set up with an apartment for a couple weeks, and said, ‘OK, you got a tank of gas, there’s no reason you can’t be coming to school for a while. If you need anything, come see me.’ That was the last time I saw him.” Mr. Lewis felt like he did what he could for this student and anything more would have been falling into the “Jesus complex of, ‘I’m going to save everybody.” Inequality Reproducers were generally less sympathetic toward students’ family situations, and as such, often placed the blame for students’ academic difficulties on the parents. In describing the challenges students face, and the decisions students make about alternative schools, Mr. Soto who was introduced at the beginning of this chapter faulted the parents, who in his eyes, are too unmotivated to get involved. He stated: When some students fi nd out their semester grades, they’ll come to me to ask about the alternative school. I give them the information and tell them to fill out an application and go from there. The students are the one’s making the decisions on what they’re gonna do regarding the alternative schools. I send letters home to come see me anytime, but I think that such unmotivated parents will go along with it. In Mr. Soto’s view, immigrant parents in particular are responsible for some of the poor decisions students make about their education because they lack proper parenting skills: “Recent immigrants are very uneducated about the high school process, and to the parental process. When I talk to them, there doesn’t seem to be many rules at home. I can just see it without getting into it.” Rather than attribute students’ academic struggles to their low socioeconomic status and living in poverty, they place the blame on families, demonstrating that they do not fully understand the lives and needs of their working-class minority students. It is unfortunate, therefore, that a majority of the educators I interviewed, observed, or surveyed fell in to the “Inequality Reproducers” category described in this section.

94 Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education ACHIEVEMENT GAP FILLERS During the opening session of a conference I attended for academic outreach professionals, the keynote speaker emphasized to the audience that they are “achievement gap fi llers.” In his address, he highlighted the high numbers of low-income and minority students who fall through the cracks of the educational pipeline to stress the urgency of getting them to college. He encouraged the outreach staff to fi nd ways to work with students’ strengths to “fill-in” the education gaps they face in getting to higher education. After interviewing 34 academic outreach professionals and logging numerous ethnographic hours observing their service delivery to students, I found that many do an amazing job building trust and providing advocacy. In fact, many outreach educators I interviewed are exemplary in their efforts to connect with students. I was continuously impressed with the creative strategies they developed to nurture relationships with both students and parents. Although some academic outreach professionals did an outstanding job transmitting academic capital to students, others did so only minimally. To better understand the Pivotal Moment practices of outreach staff, I conducted an online survey with a sample of 250 participants across the nation that worked in publicly funded academic outreach programs for fi rst-generation, low-income, and minority students. Table 5.1 indicates that a majority of academic outreach professionals are women (81%). About one-third (37%) were between the ages of 30–40 and another third (31%) were older than 51 years of age. The sample was racially diverse and included White (54%), Latino (25%), Black (13%), and Asian (3%) participants. Over half (62%) of the respondents held a master’s degree. About one-third (34%) had between 5 to 10 years of experience working as academic outreach professionals and another third (35%) had more than 10 years of experience. Almost half of the respondents (45%) worked for programs that target high school students, whereas the other half (55%) worked for programs that target college students. Approximately two-thirds (59%) were fi rst-generation college graduates and 17% were alumni of government-funded academic outreach programs. Findings from the survey of academic outreach professionals or “achievement gap fillers” reveal that few engaged in Pivotal Moment caliber student support. More specifically, when asked to indicate whether they spent more than 10 hours per week providing academic support and guidance to students, only 35% did so counseling students on academic issues, 13% advising students on navigating school bureaucracies, 11% helping students develop academic skills, 10% providing emotional/moral support, 9% supporting students to overcome educational obstacles, 4% assisting students manage relationships with other educators, 4% helping students develop appropriate communication skills, and 3% facilitating students’ contact with teachers. Although academic outreach professionals worked with students in both formal and informal settings, the low rates of time spent transmitting

The Transformative Power of Educators Table 5.1

95

Background Characteristics of Academic Outreach Professional Survey Respondents Percent (N = 250)

Gender Female

81

Male

19

Age Under 30 years old

18

Between 30–40 years old

37

Between 41–50 years old

19

51+ years old

31

Race/ethnicity White

54

Latino

25

Black

13

Asian

3

Educational attainment BA

26

MA

62

JD/PhD/MD

11

Years of experience Less than 5 years

26

5–10 years

34

10+ years

35

Target student population High school students

45

College students

55

Home educational attainment First-generation college graduate

59

Academic outreach program alumni Yes

17

information to students was similar to the low rate (only between 6% and 35%) of those that spent more than 30 minutes per week discussing the eight types of academic knowledge and skills listed on Table 5.2. In terms of overall contact, although most student-outreach staff contact was in person (as indicated by the 70% of respondents that had more than 10 hours per week of direct contact), other types of contact were also prevalent. For example, 47% reported spending at least one hour per week text

96 Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education Table 5.2

Transmission of Academic Knowledge and Skills by Academic Outreach Professionals

In the past six months how often did you: Provide advice about academic issues 1–3 times per week 4–7 times per week 8–10 times per week 10+ times per week Time spent providing academic advice 1–10 minutes 11–20 minutes 21–30 minutes 30+ minutes Setting for academic advice Formal settings Informal settings Both formal and informal settings Provide emotional/moral support 1–3 times per week 4–7 times per week 8–10 times per week 10+ times per week Time spent providing emotional/moral support 1–10 minutes 11–20 minutes 21–30 minutes 30+ minutes Setting for emotional/moral support Formal settings Informal settings Both formal and informal settings Help navigating school bureaucracies 1–3 times per week 4–7 times per week 8–10 times per week 10+ times per week Time spent helping student navigate school bureaucracies 1–10 minutes 11–20 minutes 21–30 minutes 30+ minutes Setting for help navigating school bureaucracies Formal settings Informal settings

Percent (N = 250)

26 22 18 35 8 36 35 22 38 9 53 51 31 8 10 11 25 29 35 36 21 44 45 29 13 13 26 37 27 11 53 10 (continued)

The Transformative Power of Educators Both formal and informal settings Help facilitating teacher contact 1–3 times per week 4–7 times per week 8–10 times per week 10+ times per week Time spent facilitating student contact with another teacher 1–10 minutes 11–20 minutes 21–30 minutes 30+ minutes Setting for help facilitating student contact with another teacher Formal settings Informal settings Both formal and informal settings Help managing relationships with educators 1–3 times per week 4–7 times per week 8–10 times per week 10+ times per week Time spent helping students manage relationships with educators 1–10 minutes 11–20 minutes 21–30 minutes 30+ minutes Setting for help managing relationships with educators Formal settings Informal settings Both formal and informal settings Help developing appropriate communication skills 1–3 times per week 4–7 times per week 8–10 times per week 10+ times per week Time spent helping develop appropriate communication skills 1–10 minutes 11–20 minutes 21–30 minutes 30+ minutes Setting for help developing appropriate communication skills Formal settings Informal settings Both formal and informal settings

97

38 71 21 6 3 37 40 15 9 63 13 23 68 23 5 4 39 36 20 6 53 8 39 67 22 7 4 43 32 18 7 57 10 33 (continued)

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Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

Table 5.2 (continuned) In the past six months how often did you: Help developing academic skills 1–3 times per week 4–7 times per week 8–10 times per week 10+ times per week Time spent helping student develop academic skills 1–10 minutes 11–20 minutes 21–30 minutes 30+ minutes Setting for help developing academic skills Formal settings Informal settings Both formal and informal settings Help overcoming educational obstacles 1–3 times per week 4–7 times per week 8–10 times per week 10+ times per week Time spent providing academic advice 1–10 minutes 11–20 minutes 21–30 minutes 30+ minutes Setting for providing academic advice Formal settings Informal settings Both formal and informal settings Student contact In person (10+ hours per week) Email (5+ hours per week) Phone (5+ hours per week) Text messaging (1+ hours per week) Facebook (1+ hours per week) Instant messaging (1+ hours per week) Skype (1+ hours per week)

Percent (N = 250)

46 32 12 11 17 31 30 22 68 5 27 47 31 13 9 17 33 31 19 49 9 43 70 24 9 47 41 11 7

messaging students, 41% interacted with students on Facebook at least one hour per week, 24% spent more than five hours per week emailing students, 11% used instant messaging with students at least one hour per week, 9% spent at least five hours per week communicating with students by phone, and 7% spent at least one hour per week with students via Skype.

The Transformative Power of Educators

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CONCLUSION This chapter highlights the key characteristics of Pivotal Moment educators whose practices interrupt the de facto sorting of students based on their social class, race, and gender by transmitting academic capital to help them do well academically and advance in school. These educators have a very personalized approach to working with their students that builds trust and rapport, places an emphasis on planning for college, and sets high expectations in preparation to attend a four-year university. They support students by walking them through important processes in a step-by-step manner that might otherwise create a significant obstacle in their school success. In fact, they are often criticized by their colleagues for spending too much time with students or “hand holding them too much.” By doing all these things, however, Pivotal Moment educators give working-class minority students the tools to circumvent the sorting process of schools and gain access to higher education. In contrast, the practices of “Inequality Reproducers” reinforced class, race, and gender inequality. Their approach to working with students tends to be more generic and formulaic with an emphasis placed on just getting through high school without significant discussions about planning for the future. They have lower expectations for their students and do not engender in students the possibility of attending a four-year college after high school. Unlike Pivotal Moment educators, Inequality Reproducers have a one-size-fits-all approach to working with students and lack empathy for students’ personal and family lives. They are not intentional during their interactions with students and, as a result, fail to pass on the academic capital working-class minority students need to successfully transition to higher education. The survey fi ndings of academic outreach professionals or “achievement gap fi llers” reveals that, similar to public school educators, very few engaged in Pivotal Moment caliber student support such as counseling students on academic issues, providing emotional/moral support, advising students on navigating the bureaucracies of school, facilitating student contact with teachers/administrators, encouraging students to develop relationships with other teachers, helping students develop appropriate ways to communicate with teachers, assisting students with developing academic prep skills, and ways to overcome obstacles to reach educational goals. The results suggest that few academic outreach professionals engage in the type of academic and social capital transmission necessary to help students excel academically and successfully transition to college. Although they have great potential to become Pivotal Moment educators, their behaviors are more like those of the Inequality Reproducers, and do not always effectively disrupt educational inequality for fi rst-generation, low-income minority students.

6

Educator-Student Relationships that Shape College Aspirations and Academic Success

During my fieldwork, I was hosted by an academic counselor, Ms. Mendez, at a public high school ranked among the top 100 best high schools in the nation by U.S. News and World Report in 2007. She had been at the school for three years and her advising load was 300 students, including 82 seniors. The school’s student population was 82% low income, 66% Latino, 17% Asian, and 14% White. Ms. Mendez described the school as “competitive with a strong college-going culture.” Despite the school’s excellent academic reputation, however, she told me that only a small percentage of their students go on to four-year universities. She explained that although many students are accepted to four-year schools, they ultimately choose to attend local community colleges due to financial concerns. I was skeptical how a school that was so highly ranked did not have high college-going rates. Toward the end of my visit, when I asked Ms. Mendez about her student “success stories” she helped get into college, she could not recall any to tell me about. As I conducted more interviews with educators, I began to realize that there is something special about those, who unlike Ms. Mendez, had stories for me of students they had put on the path to higher education. Research on the educational paths of working-class minority students highlight that those who make it to higher education are an exception to the rule. Most students who come from low-socioeconomic and racial/ethnic minority backgrounds (or both) do not make it through high school or fi nd their way to college. The reported statistics constantly call our attention to the fact that one-third of students who enter our nation’s high schools do not graduate. Of those who graduate, only 38% of low-income high school seniors go straight to college as compared to 81% of their highincome peers. Once enrolled in college, low-income students earn bachelor’s degrees at a rate less than half that of high-income students—21% compared to 45% (Bowen, Chingos, & McPherson, 2009). Generally, fi rst-generation and low-income students’ aspirations and plans for educational attainment are lower than those of non-fi rst-generation and higher income students (Pascarella, Pierson, Wolniak, & Terenzini, 2004). Most fi rst-generation students have low or no aspirations for going to college prior to interacting with someone who instills that sense of possibility. They do not think college is achievable because of the lack of

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college experience in their families and communities. Others do not think a college education is necessary to get a job or that going to college is feasible because they cannot get admitted or pay for it. It is important, therefore, for educators to connect with students in meaningful ways to raise their aspirations about higher education. Educators can serve as important role models for students to demonstrate academic success and the potential for improving their lives, the lives of others in their families, and their communities by getting a college degree. As we learned from the previous chapter, educators can also transmit to students critical educational social and academic capital that is useful in learning how to effectively navigating the school system. As with Ms. Mendez, at the end of each of my interviews, I asked educators to tell me about their success stories with working-class minority students and explain the role they played in getting them on the path to higher education. Educators often told me about students whom they motivated about college, assisted with college applications, and as a result, helped get into four-year colleges and universities. After interviewing the educator, I then contacted the student in their success story to get their side of the educational Pivotal Moment experience. This chapter profi les four educator-student pairs to examine the academic intervention from both the educator’s and the student’s perspectives. The findings highlight the characteristics of these relationships that shaped the college-going aspirations and academic success of the student it involved.

THE PIVOTAL MOMENT: EDUCATOR AND STUDENT PERSPECTIVES Student-educator perspectives on the same Pivotal Moment provide additional insight into the complex dynamic of academic interventions. The educators’ perspectives illuminate the various ways they reached out to students, consistently nurtured a relationship with them over an extended period of time, and advised them on navigating high school and the college application process. The students’ perspectives reveal that these educators made a strong impact because they were perceived as attentive, caring, and accessible to provide emotional support and academic guidance. In that process, educators transmitted academic capital to students that altered their educational trajectory and contributed to their academic success and advancement. Two of the student-educator pairs include high school counselors and two involve academic outreach professionals.

Mr. Chang and Brianna Mr. Chang, an Asian American, has been a public school educator for 14 years, the past three years as a high school counselor. At his school, 76% of students are on free and reduced-cost lunch, 66% are Latino, and 24%

102

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

are White. Although his advising caseload had increased in the past year from 425 to 560, including 110 seniors, he prides himself in knowing all his students by their fi rst name: “I feel like when students know that their counselor knows them by name, they feel special. They don’t feel like they are just a number.” One of the keys to Mr. Chang’s success in supporting students is earning their trust. He builds trust with students by telling them about his own struggles as a fi rst-generation student, “I share with them that high school was never easy for me. Being a fi rst-generation collegebound student myself makes me want to make sure they don’t have to go through what I went through in high school.” He also knows that his ability to build a trusting relationship with students depends on their perception of his availability: In counseling sometimes you feel that with a vast caseload of students you might not be able to focus so much on one individual student, but sometimes students need that and I wouldn’t want to close the door on a student and say, “Sorry, I don’t have time to see you,” because word gets around and that is not good when there’s a perception that counselors are not available to see you. So I try to make myself available. Mr. Chang strongly believes that making himself available to provide support and assistance sends a message to students that he wants to help them. One of Mr. Chang’s most recent success stories is Brianna, who was an 18-year-old college freshman at Worcester Polytechnic Institute when I interviewed her. Brianna was born in Mexico and came to the U.S. when she was two years old. She grew up with her mother, father, and two younger sisters. When she was young, her parents moved around a lot for work. Her father worked various jobs, ranging from loading oranges to washing highrise windows, and her mother worked part-time in multiple restaurants. Although her parents had low levels of education, they always emphasized the importance of her doing well in school. Brianna recalled her mother’s advice when she was young: “She always told me I had to get an education. She would say, ‘You don’t want to end up in a restaurant or in a job where they’re going to treat you bad or you don’t have your job guaranteed.’” Mr. Chang began to connect with Brianna when she fi rst went to see him at the end of her junior year. Although he is not her assigned counselor, he willingly assisted her and took the time to answer all her questions. She expressed to him that she was unsure about her plans after high school and did not know where to go to college. He quickly gave her several information resources to look over during the summer and told her to come back to see him at the beginning of the following academic year. When she returned to school her senior year, Brianna made an appointment to see Mr. Chang and that is when he started the academic intervention to put her on the path to college.

Educator-Student Relationships that Shape College Aspirations

103

Mr. Chang recounted that when Brianna came to see him, she was very excited about her college options but did not know where to begin. She mentioned to him that she had not heard of most of the private colleges he told her to read about. She also expressed concern about the high cost of tuition at many of the schools. At this point, Mr. Chang knew it was his job to provide the guidance and support Brianna needed to apply to prestigious private colleges. He stated, “When I see students that I know can do so much in life, like Brianna, that’s when I really feel like I’m going to go all-out to help them and give them all the support they need to get into college.” Mr. Chang is extremely attuned to the needs of the student population he works with and factors that in to the way he counsels them. He understands that many of his low-income minority students lack critical collegegoing information so he works to ensure they receive it. He explained: “The vast majority of our students’ parents don’t have a college education and that’s where I come in to guide them and let them know that there are a lot of great opportunities out there with fi nancial aid and scholarships.” Mr. Chang’s understanding that most of his students do not come from homes with college-educated parents who can pass on knowledge about higher education is the main reason he makes a concerted effort to reach out to them and provide that information. Mentoring and advocating for students is central to how Mr. Chang sees his role as an academic counselor. He stated, “A counselor should be a student’s greatest advocate and support system, not only motivating them, but treating them with respect and caring for them, letting them know you have high expectations for them.” He believes that without his advocacy many students would be lost in the college research and application process as he knew Brianna was the fi rst time she came to see him. For this reason, Mr. Chang began meeting with Brianna weekly to advise her on all aspects of her college applications, including admissions forms, personal statements, and letters of recommendation. Although Mr. Chang recalled that he met with Brianna once a week, she remembered that they met much more frequently, “at least three times a week.” In fact, she boldly stated, “If it weren’t for Mr. Chang, I don’t think I’d be at this college.” She recounted that intense time during her senior year when she was working on her college applications and said that Mr. Chang counseled her through every step in the process: He was one of the persons that told me about deadlines for colleges and how to apply for scholarships. He’s the one that told me about this college, that’s the only reason why I applied. He got in touch with some of the counselors here so that they were able to pay for me to visit the campus. He always asked, “How are you doing in classes?” or he would tell me, “You have to get these SAT scores” or “Here’s information on another scholarship, and this is what you need to apply.”

104

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

Brianna felt that her ability to successfully gain admissions to college was because Mr. Chang took the time to guide her through the entire process. According to Brianna, Mr. Chang played an extremely important role in her life during this crucial time in her education. When she reflected on her relationship with him during the interview, she compared it to that of a parent: Although my mom always pushed me, if they knew more they would help me more, but they couldn’t, so I was really relying on whatever information I could get on my own until Mr. Chang stepped in and was able to do all that for me. I feel like he’s part of my family because he played that parent role by encouraging me, always guiding me through the right path and letting me know what’s out there, and making me feel like there’s someone here that cares about my future. As Brianna noted, Mr. Chang had the academic capital that her parents lacked that was critical to guide her through completing her college applications. In the process of the intervention, Brianna also developed new educational aspirations and goals which ultimately altered her working-class habitus. Mr. Chang acknowledges that most students from poor and workingclass backgrounds are not instilled with high aspirations to go to college and must be encouraged to envision that possibility. He believes, therefore, that part of his work as a counselor is to motivate students to pursue college. He proudly said that he had convinced several of his current seniors that he thought would not want to go to college to apply and were accepted. Sometimes, he stated, “All students need is assurance and confidence in themselves. So I tell them, ‘Apply. Take your SATs. You have what it takes. College is going to open up all kinds of doors for you.’” As Brianna recalled, Mr. Chang was her main source of motivation: I knew I had someone who I could count on that cared about my education. He did a lot, not just for me but for a lot of students. He’s always helped out. He was really dedicated and I really liked that. He always made sure I was doing the right things. That made me feel confident about what I was doing. Whenever he talks, he makes students get so encouraged about college. Mr. Chang knows that sometimes students like Brianna need encouragement to build the sense of possibility about getting admitted to college. That’s when he tells them, “Yes, you can do it. Just stay focused and I can guide you.” Over the years, Mr. Chang has developed a reputation on campus as “the counselor” who goes out of his way to help students get into college. Students like Brianna who seek him out know they can trust his advice because they

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have heard positive things from numerous other students. In fact, Mr. Chang believes it is his excellent reputation with students on his campus that allows him to encourage them when they doubt their abilities: Some of them doubt themselves because of their grades or SAT scores. Others feel like they can’t go to college because nobody believes that they can. Sometimes it’s because they don’t know whether they can get there or how to get there. That’s when I got to show them the steps and guide them. Mr. Chang is so committed that he often works long hours helping students after school, “I’m always here, sometimes late in the evening until five or six answering questions, providing them with the guidance they need.” Although he often gets criticized by his colleagues for doing “too much for students,” he does not want to disappoint those who need him: There’s nothing worse than when you disappoint a kid that really wanted your help and support. I feel like I’ve let them down. Sometimes people say, “Why are you spending so much time with them? Let them do it on their own. Have them research it on their own,” and I say, “You don’t understand, they need help. They want your support. You can’t just turn a kid away after 10 or 15 minutes and tell them, ‘I don’t have time anymore. You have to do it on your own.’” This was the philosophy that prompted him to assist Brianna with her college applications in a comprehensive way. As she recounted, Mr. Chang hand-held her through the entire application process by fi rst helping her fi nd colleges that matched her career goals, then meeting with her weekly to help her fill-out applications, and giving her feedback on personal statements and scholarship essays. This undoubtedly is the type of support that allows working-class minority students to learn the academic capital that is needed to excel and advance in the educational system. In his interactions with students, Mr. Chang constantly transmits important academic capital to students. For example, he explains to students the importance of things such as course selection in gaining acceptance to highly selective schools: “I challenge them to take rigorous courses because nowadays academic rigor is so important for students that want to go to competitive colleges and universities.” He also reminds students to get involved in internships and other activities where they can develop their leadership skills which he communicates “are highly valued in the college admissions process.” He also steers students toward applying to the more selective private colleges because they provide better support for fi rst-generation students, more financial aid, and will increase their market value once they graduate.

106

Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education

In addition to academic advising, Mr. Chang also role models behaviors associated with effectively navigating educational institutions. As Brianna stated earlier, he contacted the admissions counselor at the school she was accepted to ask if they could pay for her to visit. In fact, he nurtures relationships with the admissions staff at all the schools his students apply to so they know him well enough to consider his requests. Mr. Chang also teaches students how to network and access resources to reach an educational goal. He explained: “In some cases, we call schools from my office on speaker phone and we talk with the admissions officer or the fi nancial aid officer, or whomever we need to deal with. I help with whatever they need, whether it’s a college application or additional documents that the college needs. It takes time but it’s worth it.” For Mr. Chang, no detail is too small for students to make the best impression. He advised two students on their college interviews: Even though I was not technically his counselor, this student came in to see me about how to prepare for a college interview for Harvard. I told him not to think of the interview as a make-or-break situation but to use it to learn more about the college. I told him the interview will be very casual. I reminded him to offer a fi rm handshake, make good eye contact, and just answer to the best of his ability. I told him some of the questions they’re going to ask. When I told him all that, he started feeling better. The young man he coached for the interview was accepted and now attends Harvard University. When another student had a college interview, he recalled the advice he gave her: “I gave her special bonded paper to print her resume. I tell the students to impress the interviewers with some good bonded paper. It makes a difference. Presentation is important.” Due in large part to Mr. Chang’s Pivotal Moment intervention, Brianna had adjusted very well to college as a fi rst-year student. She seemed to be applying all the academic capital she had begun to accumulate under his guidance to her new educational environment. She did well academically her fi rst semester despite enrolling in challenging courses such as calculus and chemistry, and stated: “I feel like I was really prepared for it.” When she struggled with course material she went to see the professor and to the tutoring center to get help demonstrating her effective help-seeking behaviors. Her fi rst semester, she joined a multicultural sorority that volunteers tutoring middle school students and the freshman orientation team. These activities helped her increase her social capital and become more integrated in the college community, “that’s how I made friends and that’s how I became more comfortable when I started college.” In her fi rst year, Brianna had already developed a close relationship with several professors. She explained, “I’m really close with my Spanish professor. I made a really cool connection with him. I also made another really good connection with

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my calculus professor because I went to get help from him a lot and I always went to his study sessions.” Mr. Chang’s Pivotal Moment intervention with Brianna was critical in putting her on the path to a prestigious private college. Their relationship provides compelling evidence of how academic interventions initiated by educators not only alter the academic paths of working-class minority students, but also their stocks of social and academic capital. It also illustrates the trust, mentoring, advocacy, and transmission of capital that is needed to change a students’ habitus.

Ms. Pineda and Norma Ms. Pineda, a Latina, is now in her second year as an academic counselor after spending 14 years as both a middle school teacher and counselor. She works at a large public high school where 85% of the students are on free and reduced-cost lunch and 98% are Latino. Her advising caseload of 340 students consists primarily of ninth and tenth graders. As a fi rst-generation college graduate, Ms. Pineda makes an effort to help students feel comfortable around her knowing this is an important part of building a strong relationship. She explained: We’re fi rst generation and we can relate to the challenges of the school system, and the intimidation factor, a lot of what we try to do from Day One is to set a very informal tone. We want to send the message that we’re here to assist and guide them and that we’re not here just to reprimand, discipline, or judge them. Whether it’s with the lowachieving kids or the high-achieving kids, it’s about creating that sense of comfort. Ms. Pineda believes that providing a comfortable space for students makes them more receptive to her assistance, especially when she is advising them on college. She also said you must be proactive with students: “You have to reach out to students and don’t wait for them to come to you.” As an academic counselor, Ms. Pineda feels that it is her responsibility to make sure all students know about college and start planning for it once they enter high school. She believes students need to be told they will be applying to college their senior year rather than presenting it to them as an option. She stated: “Don’t give them too many options because they’re always going to opt for the easiest and the less scary option because it is safe.” Ms. Pineda’s philosophy is that all students should be told they are on the path to college to build that sense of possibility: “It’s not our job to decide who’s ready for college and who’s not. For me, you send the message that it’s for everybody and try not to label kids. We should provide open access to whoever is willing.” She thinks this approach must be implemented with low-income minority students who lack college-going

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knowledge and need to receive it. She elaborated, “Sometimes their family tries to be supportive, but because they don’t know the process they can’t. They don’t know what they should be doing. They don’t know what they need. For academic support they need to fi nd somebody that understands, whether it’s a teacher, a counselor, or older students.” For Norma, Ms. Pineda was that somebody who understood her situation and was willing to provide the academic support she needed to get to college. When she was interviewed, Norma was a 17-year-old high school senior from a working-class background. She grew up in a single-parent household with her mother and four siblings. She described her childhood as fi nancially difficult because her family constantly struggled to make ends meet. Although Norma was born in the U.S., her family moved back to her mother’s hometown in Mexico when she was two and did not return to the U.S. until she was 12. For this reason, Norma had difficulty learning English, and was placed in ELD (English Language Development) classes her fi rst few years of high school. Like Mr. Chang, Ms. Pineda has a policy of never turning a student away, even if they are not assigned to her as their official counselor. In fact, this is how Ms. Pineda initially met Norma, her student success story. She recounted: When Norma and her mom came in without an appointment they weren’t turned away. Her mom explained to me what was going on at home, personal issues, and from that moment on, Norma and I just connected. She kept me informed about things at home. She has my cell phone number so she’ll call me on the weekends and give me updates on good things and not so good things that happen. I think it all stemmed from that practice of never turning people away because you never know who’s going to walk in the door, you may be turning away that opportunity to connect with somebody that really needs it. After meeting Norma, Ms. Pineda knew that their newly formed connection opened up an opportunity to initiate an academic intervention. Because Norma stayed in close contact with Ms. Pineda via phone and office visits, she was able to provide the emotional support and academic guidance Norma needed to ensure she was on the path to college. Norma had a similar recollection about how she first met Ms. Pineda. She remembered that her first meeting with her was very comfortable even though she and her mother disclosed personal information about their family: There were family problems and my mom and I went to talk to her and we told her everything. I was having problems in my pre-calculus class and sometimes I missed class. And then my grandfather died so I went to Mexico and I missed a week of school so I got an F in that class. I was really worried about that grade. So I started to talk to her a lot.

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Norma indicated that it was the supportive experience she initially had with Ms. Pineda as the reason she stayed in contact with her. She felt Ms. Pineda genuinely cared about her well being at home and at school. Also, Ms. Pineda helped her resolve the situation with her low pre-calculus course grade so that it did not hurt her chances of getting accepted to college. The social and emotional support Ms. Pineda provided Norma with was extremely important during her senior year. She stated: “Ms. Pineda was like my psychologist. I came to her and she helped me a lot with all the things that happened to me this year. In a way this has been the worst year of my life and in a way the best year. She has been there when I feel like I can’t continue.” Norma’s senior year was difficult personally and academically. She experienced many moments when she wanted to give up on school and college, but said it was Ms. Pineda’s support and encouragement that got her through. According to Norma, Ms. Pineda played a critical role in her life when she really doubted her ability to get in to college. Ms. Pineda knows that most fi rst-generation students like Norma need to have their confidence built about going to college. Thus, after building a strong rapport with students, she often spends a lot of time convincing them they are “college-material.” For example, she explained what one of her seniors recently told her: “One student that I’m working with said to me that he didn’t want to apply to Stanford because ‘only smart kids go to Stanford.’ He had a 4.3 GPA and was taking six AP courses as a senior.” Ms. Pineda also dedicates time addressing students’ fears about college before she feels they are ready to absorb information about applying, even though it is often perceived by her colleagues as doing too much hand-holding: Some people believe that it’s the student’s responsibility. If they really want it they’re going to do it. It’s not a matter of, “They don’t want to do it,” it’s a matter of fear. They don’t understand how the process works. So I really believe that hand-holding does not necessarily take away their responsibility, it helps them trust the system and the process. Acting on her philosophy, Ms. Pineda did everything within her means to help Norma get in to college. She spent over a year advising her on college applications and fi nancial aid forms. She explained: “She needed a lot of help. I actually sat with her and filled out the FAFSA. I walked her through every step of the way and same with scholarship applications—reading her essays, editing, making sure she submitted all the forms she needed, faxing things, and whatever else.” Throughout the process, Ms. Pineda was also transmitting to Norma the academic capital that will ultimately change her working-class habitus. Ms. Pineda recognizes that students from working-class minority backgrounds, like Norma, need concrete assistance when planning for college. So she likes to fi nd tangible ways of making it a real experience for them throughout high school:

110 Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education Plan A is prepare for postsecondary education. So let’s not just talk about the application but let’s fi ll out the application, even if it’s a sample, even if you’re doing it in 10th grade. Let’s not just talk about the SAT, let’s give sample questions from the SAT. Let’s not just look at the college online, let’s go visit a college. It’s not always easy to fi nd tangible ways of making it a real experience for them, but it’s possible. For many students, the process is so unfamiliar and intimidating that they do not always trust the resources available to them. In particular, Ms. Pineda described students’ apprehension about fi nancial aid: They still don’t believe us when we tell them financial aid is going to cover it. It’s such a vague notion and there’s no tangible way for us to prove to them that they really do get it. One student kept asking me, “Where’s the money? Who’s going to give me the money? I don’t see the money.” So it has nothing to do with how intelligent they are. It’s not having seen before that you really do get the money. They’ve never experienced it. They know it happens, but they’ve never actually seen it. The effort Ms. Pineda makes to expose students to concrete academic capital is important for working-class students to be able to effectively navigate educational institutions. As she eloquently stated: “Somebody needs to communicate to educators that it’s not about student ‘responsibility.’ It’s not just, ‘If they want it, they have to get it.’ It’s a little bit more complex than that.” Ms. Pineda’s assistance does not stop for most students after applications are submitted but continues throughout the decision-making process. When she found out Norma did not have the resources to go visit a University of California campus she had been accepted to, she gave her and another student a ride so that they did not miss out on the opportunity. Norma recounted: “It was far and I didn’t know how to get there. There was another kid from my school that wanted to go too so we were planning on going together but it took more than two and a half hours to get there by bus. So Mrs. Pineda decided to take us. She did us a big favor.” Ms. Pineda is also assisting Norma with fi nancial aid forms for summer school before staring college so that she has a place to live. She explained Norma’s situation: “The girl is homeless right now. She’s basically living wherever she can. She’s already been accepted to college. We’ve done all her paper work. . . . Right now we’re working on how we are going to get her fi nancial aid for summer school because she needs a place to live.” As Norma looks to the future and embarking on her college journey at the University of California, Irvine, she is confident and motivated to earn a bachelor’s degree to have a better life and help her family. Ms. Pineda’s Pivotal Moment intervention with Norma illustrates that a combination of both emotional and academic support is needed to effectively

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transform a students’ educational path. Their relationship demonstrates the trust that can facilitate an educator’s ability to mentor and advocate for her students. A caring relationship also opens up a venue for educators to transmit to working-class minority students the academic capital necessary to gain access to higher education.

Mr. Ochoa and Andrea Mr. Ochoa, a Latino, has been working as an academic outreach professional for three years since he graduated from a selective public university. Like the students he works with, he is the fi rst-generation in his family to go to college. Mr. Ochoa is an academic advisor for College Prep, a government-funded college access outreach program. Most of the students he works with are Latino, low-income, and fi rst-generation to attend college. Like Mr. Chang, Mr. Ochoa believes establishing trust with his students is essential to develop a strong relationship. He believes that getting involved in students’ lives allows him to build a strong bond with them: “I get involved with them, fi nd out what’s goes on, and it becomes a very close relationship.” He also shares his educational experiences with his students: “I use a lot of my personal experiences when I’m talking to a student about a class that I took, or a school that I went to. I remind them that I went to that high school as well.” Mr. Ochoa provides academic services to students at the same high school he attended that is in the same neighborhood where he grew up and currently resides. He said this really helps him relate to his students in a culturally-relevant way that resonates with them. One of Mr. Ochoa’s success stories is Andrea, who was a 17-year-old high school senior from a working-class background. She grew up in a household with her mother, father, and two older siblings. When she was growing up, her parents worked long hours, her mother in a garment factory and her father at a hotel, and did not come home until after 9 pm every night. As a child, Andrea’s parents made it very clear that she needed to focus on doing well in school. Despite her parent’s high expectations, however, she admits that she did not prioritize academics until after she joined College Prep at the end of tenth grade. She explained, “In 9th and 10th grade, school was not my priority and my grades were not good, so my mom went to talk to the counselor because she was worried and he told her, ‘You know, there is this program called College Prep, you might want to put her in it.’” Joining College Prep was a turning point in Andrea’s education because it exposed her to college: When I got into College Prep, they took me to a lot of colleges. I had never seen a college in my life. I thought, “Oh, my God, this is so cool, but I don’t even have the grades for it. What am I going to do?” So then in 11th grade I stepped it up and I was like, “I need to be well-rounded,

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Not only was Andrea introduced to college by going to visit university campuses, but it was the fi rst time the sense of possibility of attending college was presented to her. Visiting schools during the summer between her tenth and eleventh grades of high school made such an impression on Andrea that she developed college aspirations reflecting the beginning of her habitus transformation. She explained: If I wouldn’t have joined, I wouldn’t know about all the stuff I have to take to go to college. I wouldn’t even be interested in looking at colleges. I see other students and they’re not aware of everything that’s accessible to them. College Prep introduces you to all that. It makes every student understand what college is and it makes you want to have that experience. They would take us on all kinds of field trips and they would explain things to us in detail. I defi nitely needed that because I didn’t know anything about college. I was clueless. According to Andrea, the most significant part of the college visits was the relationship she began to develop with Mr. Ochoa. What she remembered most about Mr. Ochoa was how easy it was to talk to him because he was so friendly. Andrea said that throughout the various campus visits, Mr. Ochoa was constantly asking her questions about what she wanted to be in the future and was very encouraging about her potential career possibilities. She said Mr. Ochoa motivated her to envision herself in college and gave her the confidence to feel like she could accomplish it. She recounted: “He made me realize everything that I can actually do. He would tell me, ‘You know you can do this, right?’ And I’m like, ‘Really?’ And he’s like, ‘Yeah.’ He really motivated me to want to go to college.” Mr. Ochoa also recalled that fi rst summer Andrea participated in College Prep. He remembered that she was curious and engaged, but was unsure of her ability to get accepted to college. Like most fi rst-generation students, Mr. Ochoa knew that Andrea just needed to be encouraged and guided. He recounted his initial interactions with Andrea: “It was during the summer we took them on a tour of college campuses and we walked during the campus tour and she said, ‘I see myself here.’ She loved the dorms and I told her, ‘You can apply here.’” As he does with all of his new students, he uses summer activities like college visits to connect with students and start to build their confidence about higher education. Mr. Ochoa said that after he noticed that Andrea was excited about going to college, he knew it was now his responsibility to support and guide her in reaching that goal. For this reason, he spent the next year advising her on what she needed to do to be competitive for college, including course selection, extracurricular activities, GPA requirements, and SAT scores.

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As Andrea remembered, Mr. Ochoa was instrumental in motivating her to improve her grades to be eligible to apply to University of California and California State University schools. She stated: “He defi nitely played a role in helping me get my grades up. He motivated me so much because he was like, ‘You need this to be able to go to college.’” Because Andrea trusted Mr. Ochoa, she followed his advice, and with his guidance, raised her GPA: “My grades went from Cs, a D, and an F to all As and Bs. I knew that I had to have at least a 3.5 GPA, so I worked for it very hard and that’s why I started taking AP classes and I pushed myself until I got to that 3.5.” Importantly, Mr. Ochoa helped Andrea develop help-seeking behaviors that allowed her to actively improve her grades. In comparing her academic performance before participating in College Prep to after joining the program, she noted: I did really badly with math in the 9th and 10th grade. I would just write notes down during class. If I got it, I got it. If I didn’t, I didn’t. But in 11th and 12th grade, I started staying after school sometimes, asking my teacher, “How many points do I have” or “What does it take for me to be able to get a C or a B?” Or “I didn’t understand this problem. Can you show me again?” And my teacher was always willing to help me no matter what. I didn’t know that before. So I just started asking for help more. Mr. Ochoa’s support was critical in motivating Andrea to be more disciplined about studying to get the grades she needed for college admissions. Additionally, the program also provided the academic support such as tutoring that she often needed when she was struggling in a course. From this experience, Andrea learned how to access the support and resources to be more successful academically. Mr. Ochoa said that the reason he was able to guide Andrea, as well as other students like her, is because he understands the comprehensive support low-income minority students need to get to college. Although the outreach program he works for has specific types of services they provide (such as academic planning, tutoring, and college visits), Mr. Ochoa knows they must feel connected to him as the facilitator to be receptive to the assistance being offered. As such, he makes a concerted effort to connect with students and is always available to help them. In addition to meeting with students in person, he regularly communicates with students via texting. He explained: They have my cell phone number, they text me at random times in the day about different things. If there is a deadline coming up I take the opportunity to remind them in my reply text. I’ve had to adapt to that because this generation is into cell phones and electronics so I use that to my benefit too. Because of that they feel comfortable enough to

114 Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education come to me when there’s an issue with their application, fi nancial aid or whatever, and I can provide them that support pretty much 24 hours a day as opposed to just 8 am to 5 pm. Mr. Ochoa does not view his work with students within the confi nes of a typical eight-hour day, but rather as a continuous effort. This approach to working with students came in very helpful in providing Andrea with the emotional and moral support she needed throughout high school. She explained, “I have his phone number that I can call for every question that I have about school. He is just somebody that you can call and he’s always there to help you no matter what.” Another important aspect of Mr. Ochoa’s success with helping fi rstgeneration students is that he builds a relationship with their parents and families to also provide them with college information. Early in her participation, Mr. Ochoa enlisted Andrea’s mothers support in helping her daughter reach her college goals. Throughout the two years Andrea participated in College Prep, Mr. Ochoa actively informed her mother about her academic progress and future educational options. He said involving parents as partners in getting students to college is important because it holds them accountable for making sure they are supporting their children while addressing their concerns along the way. He recounted an instance when having a close relationship with Andrea’s mother allowed him to ease her concerns about how her daughter was going to pay for college: “When I spoke to her and her mom, the mom was just like, ‘How am I going to pay for college?’ Because I had developed a close relationship with her, I was able to explain how her daughter will be eligible for enough fi nancial aid to pay for college.” In addition to providing mentoring and advocacy, Mr. Ochoa also walked Andrea through the entire college application process. Filling out college applications can be a daunting and intimidating task for a fi rstgeneration student so having an adult who can provide guidance and support can be critical. Andrea recounted Mr. Ochoa’s support when she was applying to college: He helped me through every application. He took the time to explain exactly what I needed to do before I turned in each one. Even small things like I didn’t know that I could copy and paste information, and he was like, ‘OK, just do one and copy the rest.’ He just walked me through every step of the applications. Everything I could do by myself I would do by myself, but everything he could assist me with he would. Andrea felt that having Mr. Ochoa’s guidance during applications was crucial in her applying and successfully gaining acceptance to college. Mr. Ochoa is aware of the important role he plays for students like Andrea as a role model. In fact, Andrea commented: “He is a role-model

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because he’s been through the whole college experience. He’s been through everything and he tells us about all mistakes he made in college so we can learn from them.” As a testament to the impact he had on her, Andrea, expressed her deep gratitude for Mr. Ochoa’s life-changing support: I’m thankful to him for opening me up to a world of opportunity and for showing me that anything is possible. . . . From him, I learned there’s always an opportunity, a new opportunity where we can do whatever we want to do whenever we want. He just opened us up to that because there was so many . . . there were so many times I was so closed-minded and I was like, “I can’t do that,” or, “I don’t have the money to do that.” He’s like, “Yes, you can because you can do this, this, and this,” and there was always an option for me to choose.” Mr. Ochoa’s academic intervention with Andrea was critical in putting her on the path to college and transforming her educational trajectory. This particular story also highlights the importance of timing in academic interventions. Andrea’s fi rst choice school was University of California, Santa Barbara; however, because she had not done well academically in ninth and tenth grade, she was not accepted, and instead will be attending California State University, Northridge. Perhaps if her intervention had happened earlier, she would have developed the academic skills needed to perform better in high school.

Ms. Cruz and Oscar Ms. Cruz, a Latina, is an academic advisor for College Prep, a governmentfunded college access outreach program. She has been an academic outreach professional for two years. She described the students she works with as low-income, fi rst-generation, and academically high-risk, but who have an interest in going to college. Her role, therefore, is to provide students with the support and guidance they need to gain admissions to a four-year university. Ms. Cruz believes that to be an effective academic advisor students need to know that she is always available and their relationship will be respectful yet informal. Ms. Cruz felt that making herself available to students as early as possible strengthened her relationships with them. She believed that this type of support helps students feel that they have someone dependable in their lives so that if at any point they need urgent assistance, they can count on her to help them work it out: “Students need to feel that if at any given point I need something or if it’s an emergency that I need her to fax a transcript right away, she’s going to do it. So I believe it’s more of that they know I will stand by them and be there at all given times.” Ms. Cruz also makes an effort to minimize boundaries and formality with students to create a less hierarchical and more reciprocal relationship.

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When she fi rst meets a student, she insists they call her by her fi rst name. She explained: I don’t allow them to call me “Ms.” From the beginning I tell them, “My name is Sonia. Not Ms., not Ms. Cruz, just plain Sonia,” because I feel that the word in front of my name begins putting a wall from the beginning. So as soon as we meet up, I tell them, “Just like I call you by your fi rst name, you call me by my fi rst name.” I think that makes them feel more comfortable. Ms. Cruz said that using fi rst names helps break down the rigid educatorstudent boundaries and allows her to develop a more equal relationship with her students. This was certainly the case when she fi rst met Oscar, her student success story. Oscar was a 17-year-old high school senior from a working-class Latino family when I interviewed him. He grew up in a household with his mother, father, and younger brother, and lived in an impoverished neighborhood. He recounted that his family often lived check-to-check and shared a small house with 10 other people. As a result of his family’s fi nancial challenges, Oscar began working to help the family when he was only seven years old; he worked with his father at a factory cutting and putting elastic bands on clothing. Although he never got paid, his parents always expected him to contribute to the family in some way. As he got older, he was responsible for taking care of his younger brother because his parents worked long hours. He explained: Since I was 13, I’ve picked up my little brother from school. I have to pick him up right after school so they won’t take him to the police station or something. I take him home, I check his homework, make dinner for him, and make dinner for my parents because they don’t get home until about 8 or 8:30 pm, and then do the homework for all my classes. So it was hard. For this reason, Oscar was not an extremely diligent student during middle school. In sixth and seventh grade he received mostly Bs and Cs, and in seventh grade, he failed his algebra class. In eighth grade, he started to turn things around and his grades slowly began to improve. It was in high school that Oscar was nominated to participate in College Prep by his counselor. His acceptance into the program proved to be one of the most important moments in his education. According to Oscar, College Prep helped him plan for and get in to college: College Prep gave me everything. I came into high school knowing that I wanted to go to college but I didn’t know how. I didn’t know if I was supposed to volunteer or what classes I was supposed to take.

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When we met she would ask, “What classes are you taking? How are your grades?” They would tell me, “Now you need to do this, don’t procrastinate, you need to do your community service now, not your senior year.” They gave me a check list to do and they didn’t just give it to me, they would ask me if I was doing it. They were behind me the whole time. Although Oscar’s parents wanted him to go to college, he knew they could not advise him on how the application process works. Reflecting back on the interview Oscar had to go through to be accepted into the program, it was clear he lacked the academic capital needed to get to college on his own: I had never had an interview, so I went dressed in a plain shirt. I saw other people waiting for their interview and they were wearing dress shirts, and I thought, maybe I’m not prepared for this. I just went in and they asked me, “What are your goals? What do you want to do? How do you think this program is going to help you?” So I was just honest with them and told them I didn’t know how to get into college, but that I wanted to. Most working-class minority students like Oscar do not have the knowledge about getting to college so connections to educators like Ms. Cruz are very important. It was at this moment that Ms. Cruz knew her program could provide the guidance and encouragement Oscar needed to get on the path to higher education. As such, she accepted him into the program and spent the fi rst summer establishing a trusting relationship with him. Oscar still remembered the fi rst day he started the program because Ms. Cruz, who he quickly began to call Sonia, made him feel important: The fi rst day I came in to College Prep my counselor came up and said, “How are you doing Oscar?” And I was like, “You know my name? How do you know my name?” That was the fi rst time I felt a counselor actually knew me. That was a shock and that was impressive to me. Ms. Cruz did not waste any time connecting with Oscar. In fact, he highlighted her early and persistent efforts: “I have to credit her persistence because I usually push people away. Little by little, though I started getting comfortable and it was due to the fact that she kept trying and trying to connect with me. I really don’t like to talk about my life, but she gradually made me feel comfortable so she knows things about me.” Now, he stated they have a strong relationship: “She pretty much knows everything that is going on. I mean, she knows me personally more than other people. She’s like a friend but a counselor at the same time.” Ms. Cruz also remembers when Oscar fi rst started participating in College Prep. She said he stood out from the beginning because he was very

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respectful yet aloof so she made a concerted effort to reach out to him. She asked him if he wanted to volunteer in the College Prep office as a community service activity for college. He agreed, and from this point on, their relationship solidified: So from the beginning, Oscar was really one of those students that you told him to do something or you gave him a project to complete, he would do it to the best of his ability in a very mature way. So I started giving him little responsibilities here and there and that’s I believe how our relationship really started growing because he saw that I was really just allowing him to assist me, and in the process, I was assisting him with college advice. Oscar also reflected on his fi rst summer working for Ms. Cruz. During that time, he felt she made a genuine effort to see his true potential: Ms. Cruz believed in me because I was quiet when I fi rst met her. I was reserved. She saw that I wasn’t what I appeared to be, someone shy who didn’t really do much, kind of a nerd that’s just on his computer. The fact that she saw the potential and she believed in me, that meant a lot. It was after this that Ms. Cruz recognized it was her job to continually provide guidance and support to help Oscar reach his college goals. For this reason, Mr. Cruz spent the next two years advising Oscar on what he needed to do to be competitive for college admissions. As Oscar recounted, Ms. Cruz met with him frequently about course selection, college exams, extracurricular activities, and his overall academic progress. He said she was instrumental in motivating him to do well in school so that he could apply to top-ranked universities: “She made me strive for getting straight As throughout my whole high school career and I did. She also told me to apply to schools like Stanford, Harvard, and USC.” From this interaction, Oscar developed high college aspirations that reflected the beginning of his habitus transformation. Importantly, however, Ms. Cruz walked Oscar through the process of applying to college, which he admits he would have struggled with on his own. He stated: “Ms. Cruz kept me up to date with everything. She would remind me about everything I needed to do like application deadlines and when to send my exam scores.” Ms. Cruz understands that students like Oscar need a lot of hand-holding because they have not yet developed the knowledge needed to navigate the school processes. Thus, she elaborated: “I guide them through everything. Sometimes you have to do it for them because they’re not going to do it or they forget or they do it wrong, or they don’t really know what they’re filling out.” Ms. Cruz explained how intensively she worked with Oscar:

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So pretty much during the entire process, we talked about where he was at and discussed what he needed help with . . . I really tried my best to ensure that whatever he needed from me during that time, I was there and able to give it to him. I go, “Whatever you need, text me, call me, email me, whatever it is. If I can’t do it, I’ll tell you, but if I can, I’ll tell you when I can give it to you.” So I really made myself available to him. No matter the day, no matter the time, I was going to be there. Ms. Cruz believes it is important to always look for the most effective way to guide students and actively teaches them to be responsible for completing certain tasks so they can develop strong help-seeking behaviors. She explained: “I think it’s more about making them responsible for what they have to do. It’s more about giving them deadlines, reminding them not just once but two or three times, and also letting them know what they have to be doing.” In fact, by the time Oscar was actually applying to college, he was already demonstrating keen help-seeking behaviors that he had gained from her mentorship. She commented on how proactive he was with giving her updates and letting her know when he needed her assistance: Aside from me going to him periodically, he often came to me with updates or specific questions. When he would see me in the College Corner, he would come and say, “Hey Sonia, this is what I’ve done so far,” or “Here are these colleges that I’m applying for,” and so he would keep me informed on what he was doing. So later on I could follow up with him on the stuff he told me about, “So how many schools have you applied for?” “Which ones are you done with?” Ms. Cruz had transmitted academic capital to Oscar throughout their relationship that helped him navigate the college application process in a more efficient way than most students from a similar background. Oscar’s college admissions success is a testament to the positive impact Ms. Cruz’s academic intervention had on his overall educational trajectory. He credits his success in getting accepted to some of the best colleges and universities to the guidance and high expectations he received from Ms. Cruz and the College Prep program: Now I’m getting the acceptance letters. I thought it was going to be almost impossible to get into UC Berkeley, but I got an acceptance letter about two days ago, along with USC and UCLA. I thought, “I worked so hard for this letter but I got it because Ms. Cruz motivated me to go above and beyond what was expected, and that’s what I think got me in.” In the fall after I interviewed him, Oscar started college at Cornell University. When asked how college became a reality for him, he stated, “Hands

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down, it was College Prep! College Prep not only helped me out my last year, but they helped me throughout all my four years of high school and were there for me the entire time.” Ms. Cruz’s academic intervention with Oscar was an important part of his successful path to college. Oscar’s Pivotal Moment highlights the significant support and guidance he needed to reach his higher education goals. It illustrates that even when a student has a desire to go to college, they still need to be mentored through the process in a hands-on and concrete way. For minority students from low-income backgrounds, being connected to a college-educated adult who can provide that guidance is critical to gaining the academic capital to be successful in navigating educational institutions.

CONCLUSION The case studies in this chapter highlight the various ways educators initiate Pivotal Moment interventions with their students. The Pivotal Moment educators, depending on their position, approached working with lowincome minority students in unique ways. Counselors like Mr. Chang and Ms. Pineda personalized their interactions with students to build trust which allowed students to be receptive to their academic advice. They have high expectations for students and work under the assumption all students should be put on the path to college. Although they generally have less time with each of their students, they still managed to go above and beyond to reach out to all of them. Academic outreach professionals like Mr. Ochoa and Ms. Cruz tried to maximize connecting with students when they fi rst started participating in their programs. Because students often begin their program in the summer, they used the activities and concentrated time to establish a strong relationship with them. For the outreach staff, accessibility was also important in effectively working with students to help them develop college-going aspirations and goals. Regardless of how the Pivotal Moment unfolded, educators had to identify the point at which they knew their student needed an academic intervention and act on it. This required an assessment of their students’ needs and being intentional in guiding them. The process by which an academic intervention takes place is important to acknowledge because it entails the establishment and learning of education social and cultural capital. An intervention is only a “Pivotal Moment” when social capital (connections to individuals that facilitate the accomplishment of educational goals) gets developed opening a path for the transmission of cultural capital (academic knowledge and skills). Pivotal Moments start the process of accumulating educational social and cultural capital that is useful to have in school contexts.

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The Pivotal Moment educators described in this chapter illustrate the powerful influence they can have on working-class minority students’ routes to higher education. The trusting relationships students develop with teachers, counselors, and academic outreach professionals can profoundly shape their college aspirations and enhance their educational outcomes. As a result, students experience a habitus transformation from a workingclass to a hybrid working-/middle-class habitus that facilitates school success. Thus, the mentoring, advocacy, and knowledge transmission work that Pivotal Moment educators do in both formal and informal ways is extremely effective in getting low-income and minority students on the path to college.

7

Conclusion

This book attempts to broaden our understanding of the way in which academic interventions help working-class minority students succeed academically and gain access to higher education. By analyzing the accounts of students’ schooling experiences, I identified key moments that significantly changed the course of their educational trajectories by triggering the accumulation of social and academic capital that facilitated school success and advancement. The fi ndings highlight the critical role of educators when they make efforts to gain students’ trust, provide mentorship and advocacy, and transmit valuable educational capital. Using Bourdieu’s theory, this research explains the ways in which the acquisition and use of academic capital are mediated by social interaction between educators and students, which is an important step in understanding the sociocultural factors that affect postsecondary transition for working-class and minority youths (Horvat, Weininger, & Lareau, 2003; Lareau, 2002; Lareau & Horvat, 1999). The results indicate that Pivotal Moments can compensate for the social class and racial or ethnic disadvantages working-class minority students experience in school. Early Pivotal Moments are particularly critical because they help to develop the necessary psychological dispositions and high aspiration orientations needed for educational success. The timing of academic interventions are significant because those that experience them early have a much higher stock of social and academic capital, and develop a habitus more compatible with middle-class educational institutions. The Pivotal Moment framework offers a new understanding of how working-class minority students circumvent the sorting process of school through the support and guidance of caring educators. Previous research about practitioner influence on students has mostly focused on the importance of educator-student interactions without examining the transfer of concrete academic resources during those exchanges. In this book, I provide a deeper understanding of exactly how educator-student relationships develop, the ways they facilitate the transmission of academic information, and how newly acquired knowledge helps students overcome the disadvantages they encounter in the educational system.

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QUALITIES OF PIVOTAL MOMENT EDUCATORS Based on Bourdieu’s (1986) concepts of social and cultural capital, Lareau’s (2001) concept of concerted cultivation, and Stanton-Salazar’s (1997) sociological depiction of institutional agents, I set out to understand the ways in which educators help working-class minority students navigate the school system and get on the path to college. I found that through “authentically caring” (Valenzuela, 1999) relationships with students, educators can reduce informational and cultural barriers for students by providing encouragement that builds their academic confidence and aspirations for postsecondary education. Pivotal Moment educators who possess academic and social resources, and effectively uses those resources to enhance students’ educational success, makes these individuals extremely important. Pivotal Moment educators are characterized by several key attributes. First, their efforts to support students go above and beyond their formal job descriptions. They are readily available to spend time with students and are helpful in connecting them to academic and institutional resources. Second, Pivotal Moment educators provide students with information about opportunities or activities on and off campus because of their involvement in advising student clubs and organizations. They also have well-developed relationships with influential school personnel that they use to advocate for students. Third, these educators challenge and empower their students to promote personal growth. They push students to engage in activities or thinking beyond their comfort zone. They confer power on students to make their own decisions, affi rm their thoughtprocesses when doing so, and hold them accountable for their actions. Fourth, Pivotal Moment educators display a greater sense of sympathy and caring for students than other school personnel. They are perceived as being nonjudgmental of students’ thoughts and behaviors and exceptionally understanding of their needs. They display a sense of openness by allowing students to speak freely about their lives and are perceived as honest and trustworthy. Finally, these educators are valued for providing students with educational support and information related to academic, fi nancial, and personal matters. Academic matters include helping students with course planning and encouraging future aspirations; fi nancial matters include dealing with fi nancial aid and applying for scholarships; and personal matters include helping students develop appropriate behaviors on campus to improve their school success. The fi ndings suggest that teachers, counselors, and other school personnel need to be mindful of how they can serve as providers of social and academic capital for disadvantaged students. Because most working-class minority students in this study were unable to accumulate sufficient quantities of social and academic capital from their families, they were dependent on individual educators and academic outreach programs to acquire them.

124 Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education For many students, the accumulation of high volumes of educational capital from various individuals and programs expanded their opportunities for college.

EDUCATIONAL TRENDS FOR LOWINCOME AND MINORITY STUDENTS Low-income students who are potentially the fi rst in their family to attend college face a variety of challenges that limit their probability of obtaining a college degree. They lack models of educational success in their families and are often told in subtle and indirect ways that they are not “college material” (Pak, Bensimon, Malcolm, Marquez, & Park, 2006). It is no surprise, therefore, that few low-income minority students make it to college, and for those who do, their graduation rates compared to their high-income peers are grim. Whereas students from high-income, college-educated families have experienced an increase in college completion rates in the last three decades, alarmingly, the opposite is true for low-income, fi rst-generation students. For example, the college completion rate for students from high-income, college-educated families was 60% for those graduating high school in 1972, 61% for those graduating high school in 1982, and 68% for those graduating high school in 1992. For students from low-income families with parents that have less than a college education, the college completion rate was 12% for 1972 high school graduates, 11% for 1982 high school graduates, and 10% for 1992 high school graduates (Bowen, Chingos, & McPherson, 2009). Currently, 13% of 26-year-olds whose parents have no college education had a college degree, compared to 50% of those whose parents have at least a college education. Taking both income and parental education into account, 81% of students from high-income families and at least one degreed parent earned a bachelor’s degree by age 26, compared with just 47% of those from low-income families where neither parent had a college degree. The trend is also not encouraging for ethnic minority students, particularly males. Even after controlling for SAT scores, high school GPA, and family income, African American males are 6% less likely, and Latino males are 7% less likely to graduate in six years compared to White males (Bowen, Chingos, & McPherson, 2009).

College Selectivity and Undermatching An encouraging trend is that students attending more selective institutions graduate at higher rates and in shorter periods of time than do “observationally equivalent” students attending less selective institutions. The overall four-year graduation rate for fi rst-generation students was 69% at highly selective public universities compared to 33% at less selective public

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universities. The relative graduation rate advantage associated with going to a more selective university is even more pronounced for African American males at the lower end of the high school grade distribution than it is for students with better high school records. Latino students also graduate at higher rates if they attend more selective institutions. In fact, the positive association between graduation rates and institutional selectivity is even stronger for Latinos than it is for African Americans. In considering ways to increase the number of students from low-income families who earn bachelor’s degrees, these fi ndings highlight that in general, students are well advised to enroll at the most prestigious and challenging university that will accept them because low-income students do much better at highly selective private colleges and universities (Bowen, Chingos, McPherson, 2009). The Pivotal Moment educators I studied uniformly encouraged low-income minority students to attend more selective institutions. Higher graduation rates at more selective universities are driven by five broad sets of factors: peer effects, expectations, access to excellent educational resources, financial aid, and student work opportunities as well as other unobservable selection effects. Because students learn from each other, being surrounded by highly capable classmates improves the learning environment and promotes positive educational outcomes of all kinds, including timely graduation. The high overall graduation rates at the most selective public universities unquestionably create a climate in which graduating, and doing so with one’s incoming class, are compelling norms. Students feel a great pressure to keep pace with their classmates. Highly selective universities also have superior faculty and distinctly above-average library and laboratory resources. These factors improve learning environments for students because they are able to more easily identify stimulating faculty mentors, take graduate-level courses, and benefit from having exceptionally able graduate students as teaching assistants. In general, students at highly selective universities, especially those who are members of racial or ethnic minority groups, are likely to have access to more generous fi nancial aid than other students. Finally, there may be some modest association between enrollment at the most selective universities and unobservable characteristics of entering students, such as ambition and drive (Bowen, Chingos, & McPherson, 2009). An alarming trend among low-income and racial or ethnic minority students is that many well-qualified students ended up at institutions that are less selective than the ones for which they are qualified. Less than half of those from academically advanced programs end up enrolling in colleges that match their qualifications. In most cases, mismatches are due to lack of information and college planning. In a recent study, undermatching was 64% for students with parents who did not hold a bachelor’s degree, compared to 41% of students with parents that had at least a bachelor’s degree. Of the students who undermatched, 64% did not even apply to a matching school and 28% chose to attend a less-selective institution. The six-year

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graduation rate for the 66% of low-income students who undermatched was 66%, compared to 81% for those who attended a highly selective matching school (Bowen, Chingos, & McPherson, 2009). In another recent study of Chicago public schools, Latino students were significantly less likely than any other racial or ethnic groups to enroll in a college whose selectivity level matched or exceeded their level of qualifications. Overall, 44% of Latino students enrolled in colleges whose selectivity levels were far below match, compared with 28% for African American high school graduates. Even among students who worked hard throughout high school and earned the GPAs and ACT scores that gave them access to very selective colleges, fewer than 30% of Latino graduates enrolled in such a college, compared to 40% of African American and White or students of other ethnicities with similar qualifications. Factors that lead to so much undermatching among Latino students included financial concerns compounded by difficulty in completing complicated FAFSA forms and problems in the application process, including lack of information and proper guidance, failure to understand the importance of applying to more than one “match” school, and lack of a “college-going culture” at the students’ high school. The overall prevalence of undermatching among students from lowsocioeconomic status backgrounds is both disturbing and an opportunity for high schools, colleges, and nonprofit community-based organizations to collaborate to improve educational access to quality postsecondary institutions. They must both increase their capacity to facilitate the matching process and help students understand that “college does not mean just any college.” There is a considerable opportunity to increase social mobility and augment the nation’s human capital. The key is to fi nd more effective ways of informing high-achieving, low-income minority students and their parents of the educational opportunities that are open to them, and of the benefits they can derive from taking advantage of these opportunities. We need to fi nd better ways to help these students navigate the process of gaining access to the strongest academic programs possible.

UNDERSTANDING EDUCATIONAL INEQUALITY IN THE U.S. The U.S. educational system harbors large disparities in educational outcomes, especially as measured by graduation rates that are systematically related to race or ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and gender. Nationally, Latinos have the lowest college degree completion rates for 25- to 29-yearolds at 11%, compared to 17% for African Americans and 32% for Whites (Hurtado, Inkelas, Briggs, & Rhee, 1997). Moreover, these disparities appear to be growing every year rather than narrowing. This pattern is unacceptable because of its implications for social mobility and access to opportunity as well as because of what it says about our collective failure to take full advantage of pools of latent talent. The only way to substantially

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improve overall levels of educational attainment is by improving graduation rates for students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and underrepresented minority students, with Latino and African American males requiring special attention (Bowen, Chingos, & McPherson, 2009). Although there are a host of structural and fi nancial factors that produce inequalities in educational outcomes that merit attention, examining the ways in which the acquisition and use of academic capital are mediated by social interaction is an important step in understanding the contextual factors that affect educational success and postsecondary transition for low-income and minority students. It is well-documented that sociocultural factors such as race or ethnicity and socioeconomic characteristics of families and schools interact in the transmission of academic knowledge and skills (Horvat, Weininger, & Lareau, 2003; Lareau, 2002; Lareau & Horvat, 1999), but the role educators play in students’ educational outcomes is frequently overlooked in research. Instead, most research correlates academic success with students’ characteristics and their self-reported experiences, behaviors, and accomplishments. Rarely are educators—teachers, counselors, academic outreach personnel, and faculty—given attention in terms of how they may or may not contribute to student success (Bensimon, 2007). Thus, we must acknowledge they are an important part of the educational social context and can make a tremendous difference in closing the equity gap in higher education access.

Student Success Paradigm A major aspect of the dominant paradigm is the image of the ideal student as an autonomous and self-motivated individual who exemplifies commitment, engagement, self-regulation, and goal orientation (Astin, 1985; Kuh, Kinzie, Cruce, Shoup, & Gonyea, 2006; Kuh, Kinzie, Schuh, & Whitt, 2005; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991, 2005). A distinctive feature of this perspective is that success is understood as an outcome of individual efforts, assuming that all students are free to make independent choices about what college to attend, what goals to pursue, what activities to become involved in, and with whom to spend time. The underlying explanation of student success is that the greater the academic effort a student makes, the greater the likelihood of their school success (Rau & Durand, 2000). The common assumption characterizes the student as the agent of success, which is a matter of whether she exerts the effort to participate in educationally purposeful activities or engages in behaviors that represent commitment, self-discipline, and the integration of desirable academic values and norms (Kuh et al., 2006). Within the social world of school, the potential for success and reward is evaluated on the basis of whether the student can demonstrate and exercise the dominant discourse in society (i.e., White and middle-class) (Bourdieu, 1986; Stanton-Salazar, 1997). The greater the ability of a student to do so, the greater the probability that teachers and school personnel will communicate high academic expectations, assign good grades, and provide

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academic support and genuine encouragement. This pattern of socialization is aided by processes of academic identity formation in which students become deeply influenced by the perceptions and evaluation of both teachers and classroom peers (Sewell & Hauser, 1980). In time, such appraisals are internalized and become reflected in adolescents’ views of themselves as well as manifested in their corresponding educational aspirations. These internalized appraisals and aspirations—together with the academic encouragement provided by teachers—drive individual effort engagement and degree of investment in school, factors that in turn largely determine educational attainment (Sewell & Hauser, 1980). In higher education, practitioners as well as researchers assume that institutional support systems are already in place and that motivated students will take advantage of them (Stanton-Salazar, 2001). However, some students may not know how to become engaged or may not feel entitled to be engaged, particularly if it involves requests for help, and may shun activities that signify engagement to avoid failure or the risk of rejection. In predominantly White college campuses, minority students may consciously decide not to speak out in class or not attempt a conversation with a faculty member outside class for fear of being stereotyped (Peña, Bensimon, & Colyar, 2006; Steele, 1997). Research using racially conscious constructs such as “sense of belonging,” “validation,” and “stereotype threat” all point to the significance of practitioners in the educational outcomes of minority students (Hurtado & Carter, 1997; Nora, Barlow, & Crisp, 2005; Rendón, 1994; Steele, 1997). For example, Bensimon (2007) fi nds that institutional agents who give students a sense of belonging, validated their knowledge, experience, and hopes helped them muster the confidence and courage to transfer successfully to America’s most elite colleges and universities. Similarly, empirical studies of minority students in K–12 suggest that teacher-student relationships and teacher encouragement are critical resources for motivating African American and Latino students (Valenzuela, 1999). A recent survey of 7th–11th graders in 95 schools revealed that minority students, especially African Americans, identified teacher encouragement more frequently than did Whites as a “very important” reason for working “really hard” in school (Ferguson, 2002). Minority students’ perceptions of the quality of their relationship with faculty—whether helpful, understanding, and encouraging or discouraging, unsympathetic, and remote—have been found to be a strong predictor of learning for Asian/Pacific Islander, Native American, African American, and Latino students (Lundberg & Schreiner, 2004).

Nonparental Adults We know that low-income students receive less parental support in preparing for and gaining access to college compared to students that have collegeeducated parents (Terenzini, Springer, Yaeger, Pascarella, & Nora, 1996).

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In fact, low-income students are more likely to seek advice about schooling from peers because their parents, who lack college degrees, are not familiar with educational processes (Yazedjian, Purswell, Sevin, & Toews, 2007). Although the academic intensity and the quality of high school curriculum are crucial for academic success and a smooth transition to college, relationships to educators can also predict college adjustment and success (Adelman, 2002; Attinasi, 1989; Cabrera & La Nasa, 2000; Hossler, Schmit, & Vesper, 1999; Hurtado, 2007; Hurtado, Carter, & Spuler, 1996; Keup & Barefoot, 2005; Saunders & Serna, 2004; Tierney, Corwin, & Colyar, 2005; Tierney & Jun, 2001). For students from less well-educated, lowerincome families, the ability to know and talk to adults who are familiar with the higher education system can be essential. The vast majority of lower-income and less well-educated parents have high educational aspirations for their children, but they do not have enough in-depth practical knowledge about how the system works to give their children the best advice. In such cases, access to an attentive and knowledgeable guidance counselor, teacher, or outreach staff member can be crucial. We still know very little about the influence of nonparent adults in the lives of low-income and minority students. A recent study found that although 80% of 11th graders reported having a nonparent adult who played a “very important” role in their lives with only 7% of these adults being teachers (Beam, Chen, & Greenberger, 2002). Another study reported that 75% of respondents identified a nonparent adult that had made an important difference in their life during adolescence (DuBois & Silverthorn, 2005). The few studies that exist do not ask specifically about educators so the influences of nonparent adults are hidden in measures of “supportive adults” (Woolley & Bowen, 2007). Nevertheless, mounting evidence shows that those who identify an important nonparent adult in their lives tend to report better psychological well-being, academic success, and higher school completion (Bryant & Zimmerman, 2003; Bubois & Silverthorn, 2005; Greenberger, Chen, and Beam, 1998; McDonald, Erickson, Johnson, & Elder, 2007; Rhodes, Ebert, & Fischer, 1992; Zimmerman, Bingenheimer, & Notaro, 2002). Although nonparent adults can make positive contributions to youth development, they may not have the knowledge and skills to truly alter a low-income student’s social mobility. Low-income nonparent adults may inculcate particular aspirations, values, norms, and mores, but they may not have the capacity to guide educational processes and provide key social and academic capital (Gibson, Gándara, & Koyama, 2004; Ianni, 1989; Lareau, 2003). Based on what high school students and young adults report in previous research, there are many educators playing a remarkably positive role in motivating young people to go on to higher education. Many students from diverse racial or ethnic backgrounds report that they had a teacher who took an interest in them personally and encouraged them to go to college (Public Agenda, 2005). Most say that they had a teacher or coach who

130 Working-Class Minority Students’ Routes to Higher Education inspired and motivated them to do their best. Not only have these educators done a good job of encouraging young people to adopt college as a goal, but they have also convinced many working-class minority students that knowledge and know-how are valuable assets in today’s world (Johnson, Rochkind, Ott, & DuPont, 2010). Advisors at institutions of higher education show similar trends. Six in 10 students give their college advisors “good” or “excellent” ratings for helping them decide what classes to take. The numbers are somewhat less positive for helping them understand how to get loans and scholarships, roughly half of the respondents give their counselors “good” or “excellent” ratings in this area, whereas 4 in 10 rate them as “fair” or “poor” (Johnson, Rochkind, Ott, & DuPont, 2010).

POLICY IMPLICATIONS The long-term health of our country depends on the existence of social mobility and a widely shared confidence that students from racial or ethnic minority and poor families have a real opportunity to move ahead. As the composition of our nation’s school-age population becomes more racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse, we will see an increasing number of students who could be the fi rst generation in their families to enter higher education (Adelman, 2006; Pascarella, Pierson, Wolniak, & Terenzini, 2004). Thus, we must better understand how social class differences shape students’ educational experiences and produce disparities in academic outcomes (Astin, 1975, 1993; Hearn, 1984, 1990; Hossler, Schmit, & Vesper, 1999; Karabel, 1972; McDonough, 1997; Paulsen & St. John, 2002; Tinto, 1993). Understanding such differences can help to inform future education policies to support working-class minority youths. The fi ndings in this book have important policy implications. They highlight the importance of early academic interventions in the educational trajectories of students from disadvantaged social class and racial or ethnic backgrounds. My fi ndings suggest a need to develop policies and procedures that intervene and create Pivotal Moments for working-class minority students. The only way to continue the effort of narrowing the academic achievement gap and getting students to college is to give students chances for early interventions that give them the opportunity to learn the educational social and cultural capital needed for school success. It is also imperative that colleges and universities understand how to best support fi rst-generation college students and allocate resources accordingly. Results from this study can inform university policies to recruit and mentor fi rstgeneration students from minority backgrounds, particularly in developing and implementing programs to encourage faculty to provide mentoring, apprenticeship, and informal social interaction opportunities for students to acquire the skills needed to successfully complete their undergraduate studies, and increase their pursuit of graduate studies.

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Educational practitioners are often completely absent from discussions on policy to increase school success for low-income and minority students. In addition, when scholars attempt to translate their fi ndings into recommendations for action, practitioners are rarely the target of change or intervention, even though they are the most consistent point of contact with students (Bensimon, 2007). Research surveys typically ask only a few cursory questions regarding student relationships with educators. Although student success models place a great deal of emphasis on the benefit of educator-student interaction, there is still very little research on the value of informal communication in trusting relationships between educators and students (Martínez Alemán, 2007). School district policies should address the lack of specialized knowledge about racial and ethnic minorities from low-income backgrounds that prevent educators from understanding that behavior patterns that appear to be low motivation or indifference are often learned coping strategies. Consequently, when minority students do not perform well academically or exhibit the behaviors and attitudes of the archetypical student, practitioners who lack knowledge of students’ history and cultural lives are likely to attribute poor outcomes to lack of integration, involvement, engagement, and effort. When practitioners lack knowledge of their students’ cultural lives, they are severely limited in their capacity to adapt their actions and be responsive to their unique experiences (Polkinghorne, 2004). They may not realize, for example, that minority students sometimes may avoid desirable practices of academic engagement because of embarrassment, fear of being judged incompetent, or concern about reinforcing negative stereotypes (Cox, 2004; Peña, Bensimon, & Colyar, 2006). For fi rst-generation, poor, and minority students, engagement activities like raising their hand in class to ask a question or making an appointment to get extra help from an instructor can make them feel as if they are invisible and undeserving in their instructors’ eyes. Thus, Pivotal Moment educators play a significant role in the educational experiences of working-class minority students precisely because they have taken the time to understand their students’ backgrounds and applied that insight to help them succeed by providing access to the social and cultural capital typically found in the social networks of the middle and upper classes (Stanton-Salazar, 2001). As a result of their location in the stratification system, students and their parents enter the educational system with dispositional skills and knowledge that differentially facilitate or impede their ability to conform to institutionalized expectations. My fi ndings suggest that studies of social and academic capital in school settings must continue to document variations among students and parents in their ability to meet the standards held by schools. Moreover, although a consensus may well hold over the nature of the expectations at any given moment, students and parents are also differentially endowed with the knowledge and skills that enable them to influence the way that they are applied for evaluative purposes. These dynamics

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must be captured in social and cultural capital research. Although status signals form one element of the competencies that students and parents are able to leverage, they do not exhaust the issue. Academic skills should also be conceived as cultural capital and we must continue to study how they are constructed and legitimized as meritorious. Later in his career, Bourdieu came to believe that one of the main vectors of inequality reproduction in universities and secondary schools was the absence of explicit mediations between knowledge and learners, a process that Bernstein (1975) called an “invisible pedagogy,” accessible only to students and pupils from privileged social backgrounds. As an alternative, he proposed a continuous and systematic clarification of educational expectations, content, and methods, by teachers recruited and assessed on the basis of their technical competence, rather than their social attributes as a way of reducing the communication gap between teachers and working-class students and thereby limiting their disadvantage relative to their middleclass peers. In his own work, Bourdieu hinted at the need for a universal pedagogy taught to all students no matter what their social class origins. Although this book further advances Bourdieu’s observation, much work still remains to be done.

FINAL THOUGHTS If educators embrace the characteristics and attributes of Pivotal Moment educators, and schools incorporate them in to intentional professional development training programs for educators that have direct contact with students, they will then have the means for transmitting social and academic capital to fi rst-generation students. Schools cannot overlook the importance of academic capital in the information exchange between educators and their students. This is significant because academic capital is important for fi rst-generation students to acquire, but educators need to be more proactive in their transmission. Additionally, schools need to be more intentional in training educators on the importance of providing students with educational knowledge and skills in conjunction with other academic information such as career, fi nancial, and social connections. Although they may not be withholding educational knowledge from fi rst-generation students, educators need to be more purposeful in providing information and help to students in more deliberate ways to enhance their academic success. By utilizing the comprehensive approach used by Pivotal Moment educators to transmit academic and social capital to students, the function of reproducing inequality so often associated with schools can be significantly decreased. An emerging fi nding that should be explored in future studies is the referral of students to Pivotal Moment educators by their peers. Although it was mentioned on various occasions by both students and educators, this

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process was not explored extensively in this study. Generally, fi rst-generation ethnic minority students are more likely to go to peers, as opposed to educators, when they need educational support (Kenny & Stryker, 1996). The referral of peers to Pivotal Moment educators when they need further guidance highlights the role of peers in fi rst-generation student success by showing the importance of horizontal social networks. For some firstgeneration students, peer social networks may be what they use to initially identify their Pivotal Moment educator. Whether through the horizontal social networks of peers, or the vertical networks of social class, being an advisee or participating in an academic outreach program with a Pivotal Moment educator, fi rst-generation students became connected with a person at their school. The student then begins to develop a sense of trust with their educator and utilizes the educational information to produce some academic benefit. The fi rst-generation student, therefore, continues to return to their Pivotal Moment educator, who then eventually becomes deeply imbedded in their social network. In this book, I have explored how working-class minority students who do not have the privilege of starting the schooling process with high levels of social and academic capital are able to acquire them through relationships with Pivotal Moment educators. I learned why students are naturally drawn toward these educators and the role their characteristics play in the relationship building process. These educators seem to have special predispositions that motivate their advocacy and are directed by an inner ethical compass to use their expertise for the good of promising students who might otherwise be overlooked (Bensimon, 2007). The findings demonstrate that Pivotal Moment educators need to be identified and replicated in order to help disadvantaged students meet their educational goals. As we work to increase the number of ethnic minority and fi rst-generation students that enter higher education, parallel efforts need to be made to increase the number of Pivotal Moment educators that can provide students with the knowledge to maneuver through the educational system successfully. By doing this, we can increase the chances of all underrepresented students fi nding a caring educator who is invested in helping them get on the path to college.

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Index

A academic awards 40, 45–46, 57, 65, 67–68, 70–72 academic capital 12–14, 18, 30, 32, 39–40, 43–47, 49–50, 53–58, 60, 63–64, 68, 70, 73, 76, 83, 86, 88, 94, 99, 101, 104–7, 109–11, 117, 119–120, 122–23, 127, 129, 131–33 academic Intervention 1–2, 4, 8, 12, 39–45, 47, 50–51, 53–57, 59, 61, 63–64, 72–73, 76, 83, 87, 90, 101–2, 104, 106–8, 110, 115, 119–120, 122, 130–31 academic outreach professionals 9, 11, 53, 57, 76–78, 81, 84–85, 94–96, 99, 101, 111, 115, 120–21 academic outreach programs 1, 7, 9, 43, 57, 74, 94–95, 123, 133 academic performance 5, 15, 17, 27, 33, 58, 62, 79, 113 academic skills 25, 36, 61–62, 94, 98, 115, 132 achievement 3–6, 8, 13, 15, 17–18, 25, 27, 30, 37, 39, 55, 57–59, 91, 130 administrators 9–10, 81, 99 advisors 30, 43, 46–47, 54, 57, 70, 78, 111, 115, 130 advocate 8, 34, 36, 45, 54, 60, 76, 79, 81–83, 85, 87, 90, 103, 111, 123

B Blacks 7, 11, 15–16, 27, 44, 63–64, 94–95

C capital accumulation 23, 39, 63

college access 7, 10, 111, 115 college aspirations 12, 100–121 college completion 3, 31, 124 college graduate 5, 9–10, 59, 78, 94–95, 107 college graduation 2 college rankings 68 college selectivity 67–68, 124 college under-matching 124–26 community colleges 1–2, 7, 9, 42, 47–49, 62–65, 67–68, 71, 80, 82, 84, 88, 90–91, 100 counselors 6–7, 9–10, 27, 29–30, 33–35, 37–38, 41–42, 46, 48, 53, 61, 63, 68, 73–74, 76–78, 80–81, 85, 87, 89, 91, 93, 100–104, 106–8, 111, 116–17, 120–21, 123, 127, 129, 130 Cultural Capital 5–6, 8, 12, 14, 16–18, 21–23, 25–30, 32–33, 36, 38–40, 53–54, 69–70, 73, 76, 83, 120, 123, 130–32 cultural reproduction 5, 12, 15–16, 32, 35

E educational aspirations 6–7, 12, 20, 22–23, 25, 32, 41, 51, 55, 79, 91, 100–121, 123, 128–29 education policy 91, 130–31 educational success 3–4, 32, 52–53, 55, 76, 122–24, 127 educational system 3–5, 14, 16, 19, 22, 27, 32, 35, 37, 45, 52–55, 63, 86, 105, 122, 126, 131, 133 educator-student relationships 7–8, 13, 38, 76, 100–121, 122 elementary School 12, 30, 51, 55, 59–60, 62, 64, 66–67, 69

146

Index

emotional support 34, 42, 48, 53, 79, 101, 108–109 ethnicity 4, 9, 11–12, 20, 25, 64, 95, 126–27 extracurricular activities 29, 34, 74–75, 112, 118

F Family 3, 7, 9, 14–16, 19, 24–28, 32–33, 36, 39–40, 44, 47, 51–52, 54, 57–60, 62–63, 74, 76–80, 87, 92–93, 99, 104, 108, 110–11, 116, 124

L Latinos 3, 6–7, 11, 33, 36, 57–58, 63–64, 75, 77, 84, 86, 94–95, 100–101, 107, 111, 116, 124–28 low academic expectations 89–90 low income students 2–3, 5–7, 12–14, 29, 31, 33, 37–38, 52, 54, 57–59, 63, 74–77, 84, 92–94, 99–100,103, 107, 111, 113, 115, 120–21, 124–29, 131

M

gatekeepers 34–35, 37, 54 gender 2, 4, 8–9, 11–12, 19–21, 33, 37–38, 49, 64, 66, 72, 76, 95, 99, 126 GPA 48, 50, 57, 65, 67–68, 70–72, 74, 80, 83, 88, 109, 112–13, 124, 126 graduate school 1–2, 10, 23, 30–32, 38–40, 43–44, 46–47, 49–50, 52–53, 70, 83, 88, 91

mentor 1, 3, 8, 12, 30, 34, 36, 41, 43, 47, 48–49, 53–54, 76, 79, 81–82, 84, 88, 90, 103, 107, 111, 114, 119–122, 125, 130 meritocracy 5, 15 middle-class 2, 4–5, 7, 12, 14, 22–23, 25–26, 28–29, 34, 36, 38–41, 50–53, 55–58, 76, 85, 92, 121–22, 127 middle school 9–10, 12, 52, 59–60, 64–70, 73, 106–7, 116 minority students 7

H

N

Habitus 12, 15, 17, 19–26, 32, 35–41, 43, 45, 47, 50, 53–55, 57–58, 73, 75, 104, 107, 109, 112, 118, 121–22 help-seeking behaviors 34, 39, 40, 43, 46, 54, 68–72, 86, 106, 113, 119 higher education 1–3, 6, 8–10, 12–13, 17–18, 22–23, 28, 31–33, 36–37, 39–43, 47–50, 53–57, 63, 68, 70, 72–73, 76, 79, 82, 88, 94, 99–101, 103, 111–12, 117, 120–22, 127–130, 133 high school 1–2, 5–7, 9–12, 15, 22, 29–30, 32–33, 39, 41–42, 44–48, 51–52, 57–59, 61–75, 77–81, 83, 85, 87–89, 91–95, 99–102, 107–9, 111–12, 114– 16, 118, 120, 124–26, 129

networking 52, 54, 83, 85, 87

G

I inequality 4, 12, 15–16, 27, 34–35, 38, 76, 89–90, 92–93, 99, 126, 132 informal student-educator interactions 4, 7–9, 37, 50, 53–54, 83, 94–98, 107, 115, 121, 130–31

P parental education 2, 9, 11, 64, 124 parents 1–2, 5–8, 10, 14–15, 17, 29, 32–34, 38–39, 41–42, 44–48, 50–53, 56, 58, 60, 62–64, 76, 79, 82, 84–85, 89–90. 92–94, 102–4, 111, 114, 116–17, 124–26, 128–129, 131–32 peers 5–6, 10, 14, 18, 23, 25, 31, 33, 46, 54, 58, 60–61, 100, 124–25, 128–29, 132–33 Pivotal Moments 2, 8–9, 12–13, 37–50, 52–61, 63–70, 72–73, 76–81, 83–86, 88–90, 93–94, 99, 101, 106–7, 110, 120–23, 125, 130–33 Pivotal Moment educators 12, 54, 76–81, 83–86, 88–90, 93, 99, 101, 120–21, 123, 125, 131–33 prestigious schools 1–2, 31–32, 45, 49, 51, 79, 85, 103, 107, 125 professors 1, 6, 9–10, 32, 43, 46–50, 53, 70, 76–78, 82–83, 86, 88–89, 106–7

Index R race 2, 4–5, 8–9, 11–12, 20–21, 25–26, 33, 36–38, 47, 64, 76, 95, 99, 126–27 role models 60, 101, 106, 114

S SAT 5, 27–29, 75, 93, 103–5, 110, 112, 124 school agents 7, 34, 44 Social Capital 6, 8, 12, 16, 18, 27, 29–34, 51–53, 68–72, 99, 106, 120, 132 social class 4–6, 14–17, 19–22, 35, 37, 39, 49, 53, 56, 72, 92, 99, 122, 130, 132–33 socialization 16, 19, 24, 26, 35–36, 39, 58, 128 social networks 6, 29–30, 33, 35, 38, 48, 52, 58, 83, 131, 133 social status 6, 15

147

sorting process of schools 12–14, 37, 56, 76, 99 stratification 2, 14, 31 support networks 29, 39–40

T teachers 1, 7, 9–10, 18, 22, 29–30, 33–34, 37–38, 41–46, 48, 51, 53, 58–62, 68, 73, 75–77, 80–81, 84–85, 91, 94, 97, 99, 107–8, 113, 121, 123, 127–29, 132 trust 1, 8, 12, 35, 38, 41–43, 47–48, 53, 60–61, 68, 70, 76–79, 83, 94, 99, 102, 105, 107, 109–11, 113, 117, 120–23, 131, 133

U upper classes 5, 16–18, 21–23, 27–28, 36, 131 upward mobility 4–5, 31