Can they always transfer to a four-year college later? Examining high school English learner (EL) graduates’ community college transfer pathway

High school English learners (ELs) who aspire to earn a bachelor’s degree are often guided by their high school counselors and teachers to attend community colleges first, and are assured that they can always transfer to a four-year institution later. While community colleges are an important port of entry for ELs’ college education, little is known about what happens to high school EL graduates after they enter community colleges and whether they can actually make the four-year-college transfer a reality. The extant literature has focused primarily on ELs’ high school experiences while a few studies have followed high school ELs only up until they complete English as a second language (ESL) courses in community colleges. Thus, high school EL graduates’ community college studies beyond ESL courses and their four-year-college transfer process have not been well understood. To fill these gaps, this qualitative multiple-case study, adopting a hybrid of cross-sectional and longitudinal methods, followed nine baccalaureate-aspiring high school EL graduates, who were at different stages of community college studies (e.g., some were at the very beginning of taking ESL/remedial courses while others were close to transferring to a four-year college), over one year. Major data included semi-structured interviews with students and educators, classroom observations, and document collection (e.g., students’ high school and community college transcripts). Drawing upon the lenses of opportunity to learn (OTL) and college readiness, this study found that high school EL graduates’ transfer trajectories were far from straightforward and it was rare that an EL was able to persist through their original transfer plan. Findings also showed that the high school–community college pipeline was broken for ELs in many ways, and ELs’ OTL was systematically and repeatedly reduced across high school and community college. Thus, the community college transfer pathway does not guarantee a four-year-college transfer for high school EL graduates if they are not provided with adequate OTL and do not achieve higher levels of college readiness in the first place. The findings interrogate the current institutional practices that normalize ELs’ limited OTL, reveal many issues overlooked in the extant four-year-college transfer literature, and contribute to ELs’ educational equity.

Author dc:creator

• Li, Kuang

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kanno, Yasuko

• Education

Language dc:language.iso

en_US

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/2144/45432

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.bu.edu:2144/45432