Instrumental relationships and high expectations: exploring critical care in two Latino community‐based schools

Abstract

Using in‐depth interviewing, participant observations, and the review of historical and curricular documents, this paper describes and analyzes two Latino community‐based small high schools—the Dr Pedro Albizu Campos High School (PACHS) and El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice (El Puente). The findings suggest that these schools are successful because they foment a culture of high academic expectations for their students, value high‐quality interpersonal relationships between students and teachers, and privilege the funds of knowledge that students and their respective communities bring to school. Based on these findings, a theory of critical care emerges that embodies these necessary conditions if small high schools created for and by communities of color are to succeed. Finally, the implications of this theory of critical care and its impact are discussed within the framework of small urban high school reform in the US.

Notes

1. Popularized by Nuyorican Poet Mariposa, the term DiaspoRican connotes the increasingly disperse and evolving nature of Puerto Rican identity within the US (Valldejuli & Flores, 2000).

2. For example a New York Daily News reporter observed, ‘through years of riots, shootings, stabbings, parent protests and facility crises, Eastern District became synonymous with the wilder aspects of the decline of urban education’ (Williams, 1998).

3. By transformative, we mean the extent to which students perceive that their educational experiences (not necessarily outcomes) are better than their experiences would be elsewhere.

4. This term is adapted from Fry (2002) who, from his analysis of Latino drop out data, argues that a substantial number of Latino immigrant students never dropped out of school because they never had the intention of attending school (dropping in) when they arrived in the US: rather, they sought workforce participation.

5. In Latin America (as within US‐based Latino/a communities), use of the term educación and ‘ser educado/a’ can relate to social class and race‐based differences and strongly implies racial inferiority toward persons of African and indigenous decent. Notwithstanding this limitation, I argue that, within the US schooling context, Valenzuela’s usage of the term provides a useful distinction in understanding Latino/a communities’ orientations toward education and expectations from public schools.