“It’s Going Good”

Abstract

This article is based on in-depth interviews conducted with 39 inner-city Black and Latino adolescent students who were involved in a precollege tutorial academic program. The focus of this article is on the students’perceptions of the program, how it is structured, and how it changed their lives. Before they became involved in the program, the students were doing poorly in school and were influenced by a peer group who did not value educational achievement. The students discuss the difficulties of leaving the old peer group and learning to embrace the idea that they can achieve in school. As a result of the students’perceptions of this program, this article also addresses its broader implications in terms of policy, assets, and problems.