Upward Bound examined

The effective schools literature holds that all students can learn. It stresses that fostering an effective learning environment critical to their success requires the manipulation of a school's organization and culture. This literature groups all students as one under the category of learners. Consequentially, many intervention strategies designed to help increase high school graduation and post secondary school enrollment rates have assumed all students to be one as well. However, a recent evaluation of Upward Bound by Mathematica Policy Research raised questions over the similarities of African American and Latino participants. This dissertation investigates why African American and Latino participants in Upward Bound experience different outcomes from the program. To understand the discrete contexts influencing each group, a case study of three Upward Bound programs in northern California was undertaken with fifty-nine entering seniors. Students were followed and surveyed during their summer Upward Bound session, and 29 participated in hour-long interviews. The goals of this project were: (1) to look at how African American and Latino UB participants perceived their relationship with Upward Bound, as a way to understand how they perceived their relationship with education; and (2) to investigate whether non-school variables were affecting how and why they formed these differences. Study findings suggest that environmental issues such as how students construct their parent's roles, their family narratives, and their racial and ethnic constructs affect how each group formed their academic identity. This dissertation explains those various mitigating variables.