Centering Race, Gender, and Class in Postsecondary Planning

This practical resource describes key approaches to help educators, counselors, and administrators to revise their own practices to better support the college aspirations of today’s diverse students.

This book encourages educational practitioners to reimagine school-based, postsecondary preparatory opportunities to be more inclusive, cohesive, and supportive of students and their families. With specific attention paid to students who have been traditionally underrepresented in college-going and college-graduating populations, the authors use theory, research, and empirical evidence to intentionally center and elevate students who have been overlooked or marginalized in the postsecondary planning process.

Based on a college and career readiness program that supported the postsecondary aspirations of Black teenage girls, this book identifies how, where, and when school policies and practices create barriers to college and career planning. Within that program, traditional postsecondary practices were redesigned with specific consideration of the essential elements of time, care, cultural relevance, and lived experiences.

Book Features:

• Challenges school practitioners, administrators, and district leaders to reexamine the policies and practices they are using to prepare students for postsecondary lives.
• Demonstrates how to intentionally dismantle one-size-fits-all approaches to postsecondary preparation by centering the needs of diverse students.
• Includes insights and reflections from a three-year college and career readiness program in a public high school in partnership with a group of Black teenage girls.
• Provides intentional strategies for including race, class, and gender in postsecondary planning.

Nicole E. Holland is a professor at Northeastern Illinois University in the Educational Foundations Program and the African and African American Studies Program. Raquel Farmer-Hinton is a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee in the Educational Policy and Community Studies Department.

“Holland and Farmer-Hinton offer a rich, critical, timely analysis that deepens our insights into the high school’s role in postsecondary preparation and planning. This work challenges prevailing assumptions about school-based postsecondary prep models and illuminates their tendency to, despite good intention, reproduce historical patterns of race and class stratification in postsecondary planning and access. In addition to articulating a novel, compelling framework to envision and advance more equitable postsecondary planning for students, the book elevates the experiences of young Black women. Well done!”
—Lori Diane Hill, associate executive director and research scientist, American Educational Research Association

“This book seamlessly weaves ethnography, personal narrative, and policy advocacy to ‘disrupt crisis narratives’ surrounding Black girls’ education. Using an intersectional lens, the authors challenge assumptions about race, gender, and systemic inequities while reimagining college preparation and student well-being as acts of justice. A must-read for anyone committed to educational equity.”
—Venus E. Evans-Winters, professor, author, and clinical complex trauma therapist

“Educators consistently seek affordable and efficient strategies to promote college planning and preparation for their students. Centering Race, Gender, and Class in Postsecondary Planning offers a comprehensive model to help educators think critically and innovatively about opportunities for all students to access college. Using their college prep program as an exemplar, the authors illustrate how postsecondary programming benefitted Black adolescent girls. However, the results of this program and the research presented in this book, have far-reaching implications for all students. Simply put, this book is a must-read for educators truly committed to helping students achieve their college-going aspirations.”
—Lori Patton Davis, Heyman Endowed Chair and faculty director, Educational Leadership Program, UCLA School of Education & Information Studies