I’m Helping My Son Get Into College; He Is My First Priority

Black male college graduation gaps pose critical questions for parents, teachers, policymakers, and the Black community. Black males face systemic challenges that derail them from higher education. This research, drawing on a larger study, investigated Black parental expectations, strategies, and activities used to cultivate academic success and foster the development of college aspiration in high schoolaged sons. The findings revealed a central theme of parenting with intent, that Black parents: (1) reinforced the importance of school and learning in a family-school nexus; (2) fostered a strong value of attending and completing college to attain success; (3) held high expectations that “set the bar” for academic excellence; (4) instilled class consciousness to develop an awareness of the utility of college; (5) aided in the development of responsibility, agency, and self-efficacy; and (6) evidenced a commitment to their sons as their “first priority” by helping them navigate the college admissions process.

A Call for Dreamkeepers in Rural United States

Highly effective teachers not only are the percolators of student dreams but also actively convey their hopes and dreams, catalyzing student dreams of further education. Within rural education contexts, there are not enough Dreamkeepers—teachers, counselors, and other school personnel who inspire student success. This article explores the college aspiration gap among ninth graders by population density. The authors posit that the college enrollment gap between urban/suburban and town/rural students is correlated with this aspiration gap, which in turn is fueled by a lack of Dreamkeepers. They explored this using the High School Longitudinal Survey of 2009, comparing student postsecondary aspirations by locale and connecting those to student perceptions of their teachers’ expectations for their success. Differences emerged between urban and rural students concerning the intensity with which ninth graders perceived teachers’ expectations for their future successes. This article begins with a contextual discussion of social perceptions of urbanicity compared to rurality and then turns to a discussion of rural students’ college aspirations and the role of families and schools therein. Implications for further research and practice are discussed.

Association between the Level of Aspiration and Achievement of Students of Secondary Level

Aspiration levels play an important role in everyday decision making. In practice, however, decisions are not based on an aspiration level alone. The aspiration level and the overall probabilities of success and failure may receive special attention, but subjects will not be completely insensitive to difference within the classes of gains and losses. Aspirations have a significant impact on pupil attainment net of family background and other individual factors, but their effect is reduced when examining pupil progression. Some students, particularly from low-income or first-generation backgrounds, in spite of having high aspirations fail to meet their goals to attend college. Aspiration is a strong desire to achieve something in life. Every people they want to be successful man in life, they want famous, popular in society, so aspiration has vague meaning and sense. In this research student of Nepal they have high aspiration in life. Some of they want social worker, doctor, pilot engineer, great motivator and great leader in future. The study was conducted among the 511 students of grade ten students of three districts of Nepal.