Common Purpose and Different Approaches to Support College-Going in Five Southwestern Districts

In a global technology-driven economy, postsecondary education is vital both for individuals and for the nation. Historically, a college degree has conferred increased earning capacity and other social benefits. Over their lifetimes, workers with bachelor's degrees can earn nearly twice as much as workers with high school diplomas Oulian & Kominski, 2011). Perna and Swail (2001) identified additional individual, societal, and economic benefits deriving from the higher productivity of a highly skilled workforce such as higher employment, higher lifetime earnings, and better health.Educators and policymakers have been concerned with increasing college access for decades, particularly for underrepresented groups such as students of color, low-income students, and first-generation college attendees. These concerns were part of the motivation for the Common Core Standards, which were designed to academically prepare all students for college and careers (Porter, McMaken, Hwang & Yang, 2011 ). Despite numerous efforts to prepare students for college, however, there has been little increase in postsecondary enrollment overall, especially for underrepresented groups (Nora & Crisp, 2009). The study reported in this article identified some of the approaches and resources school leaders used to support in their schools and explored how they defined a college-going culture.Review of LiteratureAspirations to attend college are strong in high school students of all backgrounds (e.g., McWhirter, Torres, Salgado, & Valdez, 2007). For example, in a subset of low-income secondary students, 73% planned to enter college after high school graduation (Berzin, 2010). In a 2009 survey of more than 3,700 11th-graders enrolled in 17 diverse public high schools in a southwestern city, 89% to 100% of students (by school) expressed interest in attending college. Percentages did not differ significantly across schools, regardless of school size, location, or student social economic status (Hurwitz, Bosworth, Rios-Aguilar, Deil-Amen, Hendricks, & Rubenstein-Avila, 2012).Because aspiration is the first step in the college-planning process, numerous programs have focused on raising student aspirations (Lozano, Watt, & Huerta, 2009). Research into access for underrepresented groups, has, however, uncovered several potential obstacles to the aspirations of those students. They may have limited knowledge of or access to the information that is needed to make informed choices about college and to navigate the process of actually attending college (McDonough & Calderone, 2006). Many college access programs have, therefore, focused on some of these issues such as financial aid, academic readiness, and college awareness (Martinez & Klopott, 2005). Moreover, students from underrepresented groups may be academically unprepared for the rigors of a college curriculum (Nunez & Oliva, 2009; Reid & Moore, 2008).School-Wide InterventionsCollege aspirations may be influenced by school leadership and structures, teacher characteristics, and academic offerings (Hill, 2008; Roderick, Coca, & Nagaoka, 2011), but most efforts to raise have addressed deficits in individual students that limit their college aspirations and attendance (Reid & Moore, 2008). There are, however, school-wide interven- tions to increase college attendance rates. Examples include school-university partnerships and collaboration among college and high school faculty (Matthews, 2009; Newton & Vogt, 2008; Nunez & Oliva, 2009) or explicit teaching of study skills, self-monitoring, and collegiate expectations for all students (Matthews, 2010).A College-Going CultureIn addition to School-wide interventions, a school culture conducive to can also promote postsecondary aspirations among students (Crow, 2011; Holland & Farmer-Hinton, 2009). Some research indicates that college-promoting structures and processes that are available to all students in a school may prove to be the most effective means of increasing college attendance rates among minority, urban, and low-income students (AmaroJimenez & Hungerford-Kresser, 2013). …