AJE Feature | College-going dilemmas for Black and Latino boys: Advocating for more precise PreK-12 school interventions By Roderick L. Carey

This is an AJE Spotlight Blog Post for the May 2019 issue of The American Journal of Education article “Am I Smart Enough? Will I Make Friends? And, Can I Even Afford It? Exploring the College Going Dilemmas of Black and Latino Adolescent Boys”.

High school students following traditional pathways to college are often excited about the prospects for a fun and rewarding campus experience, leading to a fulfilling career, economic stability, and a satisfying life. The scenario changes radically, however, when the students are Black and Latino high school adolescent boys from low-income, urban communities. 

Based on interviews with this demographic, and although these boys were excited about the coming experience, the college preparation process also elicited doubts, anxieties or what I call college-going dilemmas. I wrote about the internal and external factors influencing college-going dilemmas in my article “Am I Smart Enough? Will I Make Friends? And, Can I Even Afford It? Exploring the College Going Dilemmas of Black and Latino Adolescent Boys,” published in the American Journal of Education, May 2019. This article builds on previous work discussed in “‘What am I Gonna be Losing’: School Culture and the Family-Based College-Going Dilemmas of Black and Latino Adolescent Boys” published last year in Education and Urban Society.

I spent nearly an entire academic year in an urban community, studying the experiences of Black and Latino adolescent boys in one Mid-Atlantic charter high school, which I’ll call by the pseudonym Metropolitan Collegiate Public Charter School, or Metro. The school served mostly Black and Latinx students from low-income communities, providing a rigorous academic program and intense college-going culture. 

Metro educators supported 100% of graduating seniors in securing admission to a four-year college or university. To inspire college-going mindsets, students participated in annual college tours and were immersed in college-going messaging from college counselors, who made weekly announcements in class meetings. College signage, posters, pennants, and seniors’ acceptance notifications filled the hallways, and teachers wore t-shirts on Friday from their own college experience. 

Even with this ongoing support and encouragement, the anxiety was palpable. I asked questions like: “Do you feel academically prepared for college?”,“Do you feel socially prepared for college?”, and “How do you plan to pay for college?”. Their responses revealed how the school was missing the mark in addressing students’ deeper anxieties or dilemmas college-going posed. 

A number of these dilemmas were internal. Some boys wondered whether or not they were actually smart enough to attend college. Were they prepared for the perceived rigors of college-level work? A closer look through my observations revealed that some of Metro teachers’ subjective and harmful grading practices, which participants believed were informed by ethno/racial stereotypes, actually framed their own self-appraisals about making it as college material. Others were uneasy about being socially equipped to make friends and build a support network at college. These fears were grounded in self-assessments of perceived shyness, or their unlikelihood of building the types of close familial-like bonds with college peers that buffered them in high school from threats of neighborhood violence.

External dilemmas extended beyond the boys’ own self-perceptions, cognitive abilities, and personal strengths. They involved individuals, situations, or systems that could stand in the way of their ability to attend, find success within, or complete college. Concerns about the financial burden on their families in paying for college was the most prominent external dilemma. 

Importantly, every family encouraged their children to attend college, although most were unaware of the costs. One interviewee simply would not consider allowing his parents to shift familial resources from essentials like rent to his college tuition and was pessimistic about his family’s ability to finance a degree program.

In sum, my study revealed the boys’ perceptions of their present skills, perceived academic and social needs, and expected familial responsibilities contributed to their college-going dilemmas: those that were internal, “Am I smart enough?”, “Will I make friends?”, and external, “Can I even afford it?. 

Researchers taking up the college-going processes of boys of color must pay closer attention to not only cognitive factors, such as grade reports and SAT scores, that may predict success, but also to perceptions of non-cognitive factors, like socio-affective concerns and college-going dilemmas, they weigh in relation to college. These factors contribute to students’ feelings of confidence in believing themselves to be college material.

To make college a reality for more Black and Latino adolescent boys in urban contexts, policymakers, researchers, school service providers, and educators must enact more precise school-wide interventions.

Based on these findings, policymakers must advocate that school districts working with multiple first-generation prospective collegians offer ample and earlier supports. One popular approach is the implementation of college-going cultures in pre-K through 12th grade schools. Trips to campuses, collegiate posters and pennants in hallways and classrooms, and other supports and encouragements for gaining college access are all elements of a college-going culture. 

Yet to achieve greater precision in mitigating these students’ college-going dilemmas, educators must foster their help-seeking behaviors and teach them the skills to utilize on-campus resources when academic troubles arise. Educators also can mine and re-orient peer groups and cliques through purposeful group assignments, to urge students out of their comfort zones and foster the interpersonal skills needed to create on-campus peer networks. 

Administrators must ensure that teacher grading practices are equitable; these signal, particularly to ethnically and racially marginalized students, whether or not they see themselves as college material. No amount of college-going rhetoric (e.g. verbal urgings, signage, trips) can undo the impact of stereotyping due to inequitable school policies or practices faced by students.

To mitigate external dilemmas, educators must bring family members, not just parents, into the college-going process as early as possible to foster accurate understandings of college affordability and how their children’s college ambitions will impact their familial unit(s). College may require families’ status quo to be disrupted, and educators and counselors can do more to support students in determining appropriate next steps to ensure the viability of their family. Lastly, although counseling happens usually in one-on-one meetings, college counselors can determine ways to foster peer mentoring and group sessions. For instance, students should be supported in gathering and sharing common college-going dilemmas. In this way, they can support each other in determining the locus of control framing dilemmas and collectively develop solutions for mitigating commonly perceived barriers to college. To make college a reality for more Black and Latino adolescent boys in urban contexts, policymakers, researchers, school service providers, and educators must enact more precise school-wide interventions. With greater attention to the internal and external college-going dilemmas students grapple with, educational stakeholders across the pre-K to 12 spectrum will become even more impactful stewards of their futures. 

Roderick L. Carey, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Sciences at the University of Delaware.