How do educators reconcile the growing college-for-all norm—the notion that all students should pursue college—with the diverse needs of students in urban settings? What is the impact on Black students across social-class background? Using interviews and fieldwork with teachers, counselors, and diverse Black students in a large Californian high school, I examine college-counseling norms under a social capital framework. With high caseloads, I find that educators support mass outreach and vague encouragements for 4-year colleges. Ultimately, my findings problematize one-size-fits-all counseling norms and highlight the need for more targeted counseling for urban and working-class Black students.

A number of studies identify racial and class differences in disciplinary actions and teacher-student interactions; however, scholars place less emphasis on how race and class intersect to shape classifications of teacher-student relations. Using findings from an ethnographic study in a high school with significant racial and class stratification, I examine how teachers and black students of varying social-class backgrounds describe teacher-student relations and academic disparities. I show how middle-class and some working-class Honors black students shared their teachers’ discourse about urban poor disengagement and “black” misbehavior with teachers. Meanwhile, working-class (primarily non-Honors) black students called out teacher mistreatment in light of experiencing punitive relations and problems with teachers. Some of their peers and teachers interpreted such calls of racism as “making excuses” for disengagement. Using Bourdieu’s concepts of symbolic violence and misrecognition, I demonstrate the power of language about black student-teacher relations as school actors routinely legitimate race-class stereotypes in a diverse school.

Past work and college–access programs often treat college knowledge as discrete pieces of information and focus on the amount of available college information. I use ethnographic and multiwave interview data to compare college–aspiring working- and middle–class black 9th and 11th graders across almost two years in high school along with their post–high school updates. Respondents were exposed to college–going messages but faced racial constraints and unclear expectations for college preparation and help seeking. Working-class respondents drew on hopeful uncertainty—a repertoire of hope for college admissions but uncertainty in the specifics—and they waited for assistance. Twelfth-grade working–class respondents experienced the effects of counseling problems and frustrations near application time. Middle-class and some working–class respondents used a repertoire of competitive groundwork to improve their competitiveness for four–year admissions, targeting their help seeking to navigate impending deadlines and late–stage counseling problems. My findings point to the timing and process of activating repertoires of college knowledge within a high school counseling field, suggesting the need to reconceptualize college knowledge in research on racial and class inequality in college access.

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Background With college tuition and student loan debt rising, high school students and their families are increasingly concerned about “how to” pay for college. To address this, federal/state policy makers encourage individuals to financially prepare for college early in their child's life. Drawing from social reproduction theory, we anticipate wide inequalities in who engages in college financial preparations and savings and when they begin these activities. Purpose This study updates and extends the literature on how families financially prepare for college. Data High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 (HSLS:09), a nationally representative sample of 9th grade students who began high school in 2009. Research Design We use logistic and multinomial regression to estimate four different outcomes: (1) whether the family plans to help the student pay for college; (2) whether the family has financially prepared for college; (3) whether the family has opened a college savings account; and (4) when families financially prepare for college (kindergarten, elementary, or secondary school). Results Our results have implications for social reproduction theory as we find that socioeco-nomically privileged families have greater likelihoods of financially preparing their children for college before or soon after their children enter formal schooling. Conclusions Current policy efforts to encourage college financial preparation may disproportionately benefit already-privileged families and likely exacerbate educational inequalities.