Description
Controversy looms over school integration programs and their successes. While the integration of students is a seemingly ideal situation for a given school, the question that is asked is: What is the benefit to the students being integrated? This study is exploratory in nature and examines an existing integration program entitled the Voluntary Enrollment Exchange Program within the San Diego Unified School District. The guiding question of the study is: How do the VEEP students view busing/commuting? How do they view their schooling experience as VEEP students and their ability to learn? The study reviewed the research literature on current views on what are the determining factors for ethnically diverse students to participate in an educational integration programs. Among the topics are the areas of commuting to school, educational opportunity, race and belonging. Four discussion forums on student perspectives were held in 2011-2012, with 13 participating VEEP Latino students to examine issues of educational access and opportunity, equity of access, school environment, culture, language and belongingness, a sense of equal treatment in a high-income host campus. By exploring the educational access concepts and applying these to the students' perspectives, one may learn from the students' opinions and experiences and provide a better educational learning environment. Among the findings is that: (1) While the students were quite optimistic about being participants in the VEEP, they had educational equity concerns about their schooling experience as students of integration. (2) The explicit results of the questionnaire varied from the implicit results in the discussion forums. The students tended to answer the multiple choice options in a manner so as to not disappoint the school, whereas in discussion forums they felt much more at ease to express what they really felt. The students view their situation as students of integration as a life's challenge. (3) Despite the daily long amounts of time on the bus, their parents feel that the commute from a low-income community to a high-income community is worth the sacrifice and effort, yet they attend a host high school campus that has no high academic expectations of them. (4) Students perceive that their culture and language is not reflected in the school's curriculum. (5) The VEEP students while feeling socially acknowledged and are treated equitably on the campus of La Jolla High, feel that they have no true sense of inclusion and belonging in the high school campus. (6) The explicit results on paper at times differed from the implicit results in the areas of equal treatment and belonging. (7) While students indicated that they felt welcomed, the term "not recognized" was a word coined by a senior student in terms of how they felt perceived. While the study is limited in scope and student voices, among the salient recommendations is for the school district and the school to reflect on how commuter VEEP students racial integration practices can be better improve to assure equal status and educational access to opportunity and access to academic rigor.
