From Learning to Earning: Schools' diverging approaches to postsecondary readiness in an urban district

Abstract

How do urban high schools prepare students for college, careers, and adult success? Drawing on114 in-depth interviews with students and educators across five public high schools in Philadelphia, I find the answer depends on the social composition of their student bodies. Selective schools, which are characterized by cultivated racial and socioeconomic diversity, channel postsecondary resources towards college readiness and organize the minds of students around long-term goals. Open access schools, which serve communities of concentrated disadvantage, try to accelerate students’ routes to upward mobility by exposing them to potential careers and presenting them with flexible, customizable pathways to the workforce that emphasize technical over academic training. I argue that school-based influences matter not only for whether first- generation, low-income (FGLI) students pursue college, but also for how they plan to engage higher education. The between-school variation that persists in Philadelphia and many similar urban districts is an underappreciated engine of educational stratification and an artifact of failed desegregation efforts that reshuffled but never dismantled the city’s two-tiered public system. My findings explain how social inequality contributes to educational disparities, as schools define their missions and interpret their obligations differently depending on the backgrounds of the students they serve. In so doing, they point to the limitations of schooling as an economic mobility strategy and equalizing force in society.