Major and Classification
Sociology
Faculty Mentor
- Mari Luna De La Rosa, Ph.D.
Department
- Education
McNair Project
Intervention Programs: Increasing Access to College or Creating Gaps?
Twenty-first-century urban high schools within the Los Angeles Unified School District face unique challenges in providing a quality education to minority and low-income students. Due to the low number of ethnic and low-income college goers, the LAUSD has implemented new and innovative intervention programs in order to increase the minority educational pipeline. Such innovative programs are designed to assist traditionally underserved students and feature a strong component of professional developments for counselors and teachers. In spite of the effort, the programs individualize and specialize their services to meet the needs of specific students, thus only targeting a small student population, resulting in an even greater disparity between the students labeled “high-achievers” and the “low-achievers”. This research paper discusses the experience of urban youth as well as some of the realities that Latino students face in inner-city public education, and it describes the need for school counselors and college advisors. The purpose of this research is to investigate and determine how low-income and minority students at all achieving levels (low, medium and high) understand college access and financial aid in order to improve educational equity and access into institutions of higher education.