As the largest and fastest growing racial/ethnic group in the country, Latinos' educational success is a national priority. In the Los Angeles Unified School district, the country's largest, high school graduating rates for Latinos hover at near 40%. Examining this institutional and societal tragedy through the school-to-prison pipeline…

This article asserts that schools have tremendous positive power over the lives of students--the power to teach them academics; the power to socialize them to be engaged citizens; the power to transform their lives in positive ways--but schools also have negative power: the power to mark a student with a discipline record; the power to force a…

Through combining the methodology of portraiture with the epistemological stance of youth participatory action research, this article positions Latino/a youth as experts with their encounters with the school-to-prison pipeline. This article examines what it's like to live within the tight and probational spaces of criminal justice-based…

This essay discusses white innocence as a mechanism that may contribute to perceptions of Mexican Americans as perpetrators. These perceptions are crucial to ways teachers and administrators respond to student actions as the initial steps in the school-to-prison pipeline. Specifically, this work reviews the rhetoric of white innocence in a high…

Many sex education programs do not conceptualize adolescent sexuality as a normative process of development, thus sexuality is not part of a holistic picture of health education.The current project examines the multiple determinants of adolescent boys' sexual behaviors in the context of developing sex education. Limited research has examined…

This article builds upon a community cultural wealth framework (Yosso, 2005) to discuss how strategies for school persistence are articulated, cultivated and employed through individual aspirations and practices. The analysis draws from testimonios of six Latina/o young adults between the ages of 18 and 20 living in California's 9-County…

The problem of low academic attainment for Latino/a students may be a result of the situation at the K-12 levels, a situation that is beyond the control of students or their families (Martinez, 2003). Analyses of school success must take into account the social and political hierarchies in schools, school systems, and communities, as well as the…

This article is practitioner based and focuses on how high school counselors can facilitate the development of Latina/o youth and parents who on a daily basis face psychological and social issues that confront their lives. My work with Latina/o troubled youth and parents, over a 33 year period, has led me to propose five concepts that can serve…

The Advanced Placement (AP) program was initiated during the early 1950's in response to growing concerns regarding the educational needs of high ability secondary school students. The Advanced Placement "Status Quo" (AP Status Quo) framework suggests that there has been an emphasis on preparing a few students while excluding the majority of…