School counsel: How appropriate guidance affects educational equity

Abstract

Detrimental differences in educational opportunities for students of color continue to exist in the post-Brown United States. This article focuses on inequities in access to higher education by addressing the following question: How do disparities in counseling services affect college access for students of color? Guided by a review of the literature, authors use data from a qualitative case study of high school guidance in an overcrowded school to illustrate the complexity of advising duties, structural constraints on effective guidance, and the effects of insufficient counseling on student perceptions of their support systems with regard to college-going.