For Latinx, by Latinx: Race-conscious leadership in policy implementation

Abstract

Policy implementation research tends to document the failures of reform, describing the myriad ways implementers miss the mark in translating intent into impact; or in the words of Derrick Bell, policy scholars are left with examining the “unfilled hopes of racial reform” (2004, p. 185). In contrast, this article presents an intrinsic case study where campus leaders took a race-conscious approach to implementing a state-wide reform known as the Student Equity Policy. I constructed the TrenzaPolicy Implementation Framework to center the experience, knowledge, and assets of Latinx leaders in community college that oversee and implement policy reform. The framework highlights the raced-gendered perspectives of Latinx leaders in community college to understand their motivations to implement policy in race-conscious ways (Delgado Bernal, 2002). I conducted in-depth and sustained fieldwork to learn how implementers understood and responded to state-level reform in race-conscious ways and used the policy to target and address one of the most pressing issues in higher education, the inequitable rates of transfer for Latinx students. I share how the salience of racialized-gendered identity, cultural intuition, social context, and enacting agency allowed leaders to envision more race-conscious possibilities for policy reform and its implementation on campus.

Constructing a Monolith: State Policy, Institutional DEI Plans, and the Flattening of Latinx Identity at Hispanic-Serving Institutions

“…Across these state-level DEI policy contexts, the racialized nature of organizations speaks to the way that White normed best practices are advanced under the moniker racial equity. These documents capture the collective narrative of individual policy actors (Felix, 2021) as they work to articulate and enact policy that grapples with what it means to serve an intersectional considerations of Latinx student. As such, this work responds to calls from de Jesus Gonzalez et al ( 2021) that critiques higher education scholarships' limited consideration of policy implementation.…”

Complicating Latiné experiences: Afro-Latiné students’ perceptions of campus climate and sense of belonging.

“…This work spans trends in access and enrollment (Britton, 2023; G. A. Garcia & Guzman-Alvarez, 2021), student experiences in the classroom (Bensimon et al, 2019; Park et al, 2019), student identity development (Hurtado & Ponjuan, 2005; Johnston-Guerrero, 2016), organizations and institutional stakeholders that support Latiné students, and state policies that facilitate the success of Latiné students (Casellas Connors, 2021; Felix, 2021). Through this work, research has captured the multitude of ways in which institutions and state policymakers can support Latiné students.…”

An overview of equity‐driven and social justice‐oriented leadership in community colleges

“…Examples of such challenges may include: students overcoming instances of racial/ethnic and/or linguistic discrimination (Cuellar & Johnson‐Ahorlu, 2016), unhelpful or non‐existent support from institutional agents (Whitehead, 2019), and challenges throughout the transfer process to 4‐year institutions (Crisp et al., 2020; Del Real Viramontes, 2021), among others. As such, there are several forms of misalignment between the mission of community colleges and what actually happens in practice; these events are the result of multiple systematic forces, including institutional practices, policies, and procedures, that do not include an intentional focus on and support for marginalized students (Felix, 2021). Additionally, accountability metrics and standards by which community colleges are held by do not account and provide for the multiple missions that community colleges seek to serve and must respond to (Dougherty & Townsend, 2006; Ewell, 2011), which include but are not limited to addressing the needs of students (Burmicky & Duran, 2022).…”