Closing the Gap: Enacting Care and Facilitating Black Students' Educational Access in the Creation of a High School College-Going Culture

Abstract

Research clearly shows the importance of obtaining a postsecondary education in terms of accessing job opportunities, higher salaries, and improved benefits for a better quality of life in the United States. Bringing together the literature on school-based caring for Black students and the literature on college preparation, I utilize notions of institutional and interpersonal caring to analyze Black students' perspectives and the complexities of caring embedded within (a) the academic expectations of minihouses, (b) the distributive counseling structure of learning centers, and (c) students' participation in cocurricular activities. The findings provide insight into the ways high school educators, administrators, teachers, and counselors, can create and sustain a college going school culture focusing on the nature, quality, and alignment of institutional and interpersonal structures of care that improve Black students' educational experiences and college access.