Cultivating a college-going culture: How schools can activate the cultural capital of Latino students

Abstract

Research indicates Latinos are likely to attend schools that are not successful in implementing school policies and practices that promote a college going culture. As such, schools can play an important role in redistributing cultural capital to Latino students and their families that nurture college aspirations. Using Data from the Transcript Evaluation Service (TES) and MPR and Associates, an external evaluator commissioned by the University of California Office of the President to study how schools utilize TES data, this quantitative study investigates how students' cultural capital can be activated through a school-wide, pre-college counseling intervention and its relationship with college knowledge, motivation to pursue higher education, and the successful completion of entrance requirements to California public universities for Latino students at one large, urban high school in Los Angeles County.

Findings of the statistical analysis confirm that Latino students significantly increase their college knowledge and motivation to pursue higher education after participating in a pre-college, counseling intervention. The findings also suggest that Latino students who participated in a school-wide, pre-college counseling intervention were significantly more likely by the end of twelfth grade to complete UC/CSU college entrance requirements than those from a comparable group who did not participate in the intervention. Implications of the findings for future policy and practice to improve Latino college eligibility are discussed and recommendations for future research are provided.