Abstract Not all high school students go to college. Yet, because there is currently such a dominant emphasis on “college for all,” preparing non-college-bound students for career-readiness has received short shrift. This issue is particularly important for English learners (ELs) because close to half of high school ELs do not advance to postsecondary education. Through a longitudinal ethnography of two underperforming, non-college-bound ELs, I examine how and why a relatively well-resourced school allowed these students to graduate without college- and career-readiness. I argue that although there were substantial structural inequalities that led to the under-education of the two ELs, educators at the school were largely unaware of such barriers and attributed the ELs’ underachievement to the students’ own deficits. I counter this institutional deficit orientation with alternative stories of student assets that illuminate the substantial strengths and talents that the focal ELs possessed, which, if recognized and integrated into their education, could have led to career-readiness.

中文翻译：

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非大学英语学习者人数排名第三：学生如何从高中毕业，既不上大学也不准备就职

摘要并非所有高中生都上大学。但是，由于当前对“全民大学”的重视如此之高，为非大学生准备职业生涯的准备受到了短暂的欢迎。这个问题对英语学习者（EL）尤为重要，因为将近一半的高中EL都没有升入中学。通过对两个表现不佳的非大学英语学习者的纵向民族志研究，我研究了如何以及为什么一所资源相对充裕的学校允许这些学生在没有大学和职业准备的情况下毕业。我认为，尽管存在严重的结构性不平等，导致这两个EL的教育不足，但学校的教育工作者基本上没有意识到这种障碍，并将EL的学习成绩欠佳归因于学生自身的不足。