Publication Date
12-31-2020
DOI (Digital Object Identifier)
10.26716/redlands/doctor/2020.10
Department
Leadership and Higher Education
Degree
Doctor of Education (Ed.D)
Dissertation Chair
Ross E. Mitchell, PhD
Committee Members
Greg W. Hamilton, EdD
Matthew A. Witenstein, PhD
Keywords
Advanced Placement, equity, justice, advocate, discretion, policy
Disciplines
Academic Advising | Educational Leadership | Student Counseling and Personnel Services
Abstract
In the K–12 education setting, professional school counselors are uniquely positioned to support high quality educational opportunities for all students. At the secondary level, student participation in Advanced Placement (AP) programming can be viewed as one such example of opportunity. School counselors serve as student advocates by channeling information and creating access to educational opportunity like AP. This important work takes place in the context of a bureaucratic policy environment that necessarily shapes the way AP opportunity is allocated in the local context. Charged with promoting equity and access to educational opportunity for all students, school counselors operate in a space of tension, and even conflict, when district policy, school site policy, and organizational norms related to AP participation signal less-than-open access. In this environment, school counselor advocacy and leadership become increasingly important determinants of opportunity and academic outcomes, particularly for students in the margins. The aim of this qualitative study was to examine the extent to which school counselors (a) are enabled and/or constrained in their ability to create student access to AP coursework, (b) use discretionary decision making as they navigate local AP course-taking policy, (c) consider efficiency and equity as values associated with policy and counseling practice, and (d) identify and perceive justice in their local context of professional work.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Kusko, Vaughan M., "Allocating Opportunity: The Role and Impact of School Counselors in Promoting Access to AP Coursework" (2020). Ed.D. Dissertations in Leadership for Educational Justice. 112.
https://doi.org/10.26716/redlands/doctor/2020.10
https://inspire.redlands.edu/eddissertations/112
Comments
© 2020 Vaughan M. Kusko
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