For Latinx, by Latinx: Race-conscious leadership in policy implementation

Abstract

Policy implementation research tends to document the failures of reform, describing the myriad ways implementers miss the mark in translating intent into impact; or in the words of Derrick Bell, policy scholars are left with examining the “unfilled hopes of racial reform” (2004, p. 185). In contrast, this article presents an intrinsic case study where campus leaders took a race-conscious approach to implementing a state-wide reform known as the Student Equity Policy. I constructed the TrenzaPolicy Implementation Framework to center the experience, knowledge, and assets of Latinx leaders in community college that oversee and implement policy reform. The framework highlights the raced-gendered perspectives of Latinx leaders in community college to understand their motivations to implement policy in race-conscious ways (Delgado Bernal, 2002). I conducted in-depth and sustained fieldwork to learn how implementers understood and responded to state-level reform in race-conscious ways and used the policy to target and address one of the most pressing issues in higher education, the inequitable rates of transfer for Latinx students. I share how the salience of racialized-gendered identity, cultural intuition, social context, and enacting agency allowed leaders to envision more race-conscious possibilities for policy reform and its implementation on campus.

Constructing a Monolith: State Policy, Institutional DEI Plans, and the Flattening of Latinx Identity at Hispanic-Serving Institutions

“…Across these state-level DEI policy contexts, the racialized nature of organizations speaks to the way that White normed best practices are advanced under the moniker racial equity. These documents capture the collective narrative of individual policy actors (Felix, 2021) as they work to articulate and enact policy that grapples with what it means to serve an intersectional considerations of Latinx student. As such, this work responds to calls from de Jesus Gonzalez et al ( 2021) that critiques higher education scholarships' limited consideration of policy implementation.…”

An overview of equity‐driven and social justice‐oriented leadership in community colleges

“…Examples of such challenges may include: students overcoming instances of racial/ethnic and/or linguistic discrimination (Cuellar & Johnson‐Ahorlu, 2016), unhelpful or non‐existent support from institutional agents (Whitehead, 2019), and challenges throughout the transfer process to 4‐year institutions (Crisp et al., 2020; Del Real Viramontes, 2021), among others. As such, there are several forms of misalignment between the mission of community colleges and what actually happens in practice; these events are the result of multiple systematic forces, including institutional practices, policies, and procedures, that do not include an intentional focus on and support for marginalized students (Felix, 2021). Additionally, accountability metrics and standards by which community colleges are held by do not account and provide for the multiple missions that community colleges seek to serve and must respond to (Dougherty & Townsend, 2006; Ewell, 2011), which include but are not limited to addressing the needs of students (Burmicky & Duran, 2022).…”

“Whenever I see those little rainbow stickers, I know that there is a place you can go”: Visibility and sense of belonging for queer and/or trans community college students.

“…In California, the largest community college system in the nation, they enroll 1.9 million students across 116 colleges with most students being from minoritized backgrounds (California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, 2024; Felix, 2021; Reddy & Siqueiros, 2021). While this demographic reality calls for greater equity efforts, QT students at community colleges continue to be left out of these conversations and strategies given the lack of data collection metrics in place and the paucity in empirical research (Á.…”