The Adelante Academy: A Pathway to Success for FGLI Latine High School Students in Santa Ana, CA

My thesis project focuses on the diverse experiences of first-generation, low-income (FGLI) Latine high school students in the Adelante Academy, a rigorous university preparatory program at Fairview High School, from 2016 to 2021. Fairview High School is a public high school in Santa Ana, CA. Rather than focusing on tracking student performance and post-secondary outcomes, I center the experiences of students—their beliefs, ideologies, academic goals, and overall takeaways—of participating in the Adelante Academy. I employ a three-part macro-meso-micro framework to situate and better understand the experiences of FGLI Latine students in the Adelante Academy from 2016 to 2021. This thesis discusses the macroscopic structural factors and dominant ideologies surrounding Fairview High School (FHS) as the district’s ‘ghetto’ high school, most prevalent during the mid-2000s to early 2010s, and the implications these perceptions and ideologies had for students and teachers at Fairview High School. I observe the meso-level school policies and practices of the Adelante Academy from its creation in 2012 till the participation of my interlocutors in the academy from 2016 to 2021. I examine the hidden curriculum in the Adelante Academy’s culture by asking, What does success mean for students and teachers in the Academy, and what are the consequences of these definitions of success for FGLI Latine students? And lastly, I highlight the microscopic everyday exchanges of FGLI Latine students in the academy. Through the voices of teachers and former students, I aim to understand how the Adelante Academy puts FGLI Latine on a pathway to “success”.