Description/Abstract
When we think about students struggling in school, we often focus on grades, test scores, and graduation rates. But there's a deeper problem affecting students across all achievement levels: alienation. Students feel disconnected from school not because they're failing, but because they can't see themselves in the narrow story schools tell about success. This brief summarizes findings from a study drawing on over two years of ethnographic fieldwork in two different high schools in Los Angeles, California. The authors identify four types of alienation students experience: feeling like they don't belong, being in schools that can't support their goals, pursuing futures schools don't recognize, and succeeding in someone else's story. The authors recommend that educators, policymakers, and parents rethink what counts as achievement in the first place, rather than simply helping more students succeed within the existing narrow definition of success.
Document Type
Policy Brief
Date
11-19-2025
Keywords
Meritocracy, educational aspirations/expectations, secondary education, alienation, achievement, futures, narrative, vocational education
Language
English
Series
Policy Briefs Series
Acknowledgements
This brief was drafted with the assistance of Claude (Anthropic) to summarize and synthesize the peer-reviewed article. All content was reviewed and verified by Alyssa Kirk and the brief authors for accuracy and appropriate interpretation of the original article. We thank Shannon Monnat and Alyssa Kirk for additional edits on this brief.
Disciplines
Educational Sociology | Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration | Public Policy | Sociology
Recommended Citation
Drake, Sean J., and Guhin, Jeffrey. (2025). Student Alienation in Schools Goes Beyond Low Achievement. Center for Policy Research. Policy Brief #23. Accessed at: https://doi.org/10.14305/rt.cpr.2025.7.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
