Equity through Guided Pathways in California Community Colleges: examining discursive (im)possibilities

The California Community Colleges (CCC) system introduced the Guided Pathways (GP) framework as a large-scale system-wide transformation effort to improve completion rates and close equity gaps. This study analyzes how CCC campuses implemented the GP framework to address issues of racial equity through their 2021–2022 Scale of Adoption Assessment (SOAA) reports. Using Critical Race Discourse Analysis (CRDA), we examine how institutional language either names racial inequities and racism directly or, through silence and neutrality, reproduces them. In our findings we highlight that although many reports include equity language, they often avoid directly addressing race, racism, or the specific needs of students of color. Instead, in many instances reports favor vague, universal terms. In contrast, some colleges take race-conscious approaches, explicitly identifying racialized barriers and integrating equity-minded practices into curricular and structural redesign. These discursive choices demonstrate that GP does not guarantee equity; its effectiveness depends on how institutions define, communicate, and implement equity in their local contexts. By treating discourse as a space for ideological struggle, this study reveals the uneven nature of equity work in community colleges and emphasizes the need for sustained, race-explicit language and strategies to ensure GP drives institutional transformation rather than perpetuates racial inequities.

Introduction

The California CCCs serve as a pivotal site of access and opportunity for students of color who remain systemically disadvantaged throughout their educational trajectories by providing pathways to enter and complete postsecondary education (McCambly et al., 2023; Malcolm-Piqueux, 2018; Rose, 2012).¹ Out of the 2.1 million students enrolled across the 116 institutions that make up the CCC system, approximately 70% are students of color (California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, 2025). Despite serving as a catalyst for educational access and opportunity, the CCC system continues to face challenges with establishing policies and practices to meet the needs of its ever-changing student populations. To combat these challenges, the state system embarked on the Guided Pathways (GP) journey to ensure that all institutions redesigned efforts to better align with student needs and improve outcomes. As the largest postsecondary education system in the country, the implementation of GP and its potential benefit to students of color is a critical opportunity to examine.

In the CCC system, students of color face persistent barriers to achieving their educational goals, as institutionalized practices and taken-for-granted conditions can normalize racial inequities rather than disrupt them. Faculty and staff interactions often reinforce racial hostility and influence sense of belonging that students of color experience in college campuses (Casanova et al., 2018), student services are often fragmented and unsupportive (Huerta et al., 2022), and advising models tend to not be responsive to the realities of students who are caregivers, parents, or working multiple jobs (Prevost and Wang, 2025). These institutional practices and realities impact students’ of color ability to meet their educational goals. For example, only 19% of students in the CCC system who intend to transfer or earn a community college degree meet that goal within 4 years, and 28% do so within six. Out of these transfer statistics in the CCC, Black and Latinx students experience the lowest transfer rates. These statistics highlight racialized educational outcomes for students of color in the CCC system (Johnson and Mejia, 2020).

Guided Pathways was introduced as a promising educational reform aimed at helping community colleges improve student success by simplifying educational pathways and providing wraparound supports tailored to student needs (Bailey et al., 2015). The goal of GP is to address inequities that disproportionately reproduced racialized educational outcomes that disproportionally affect students of color, such as unclear program maps that obscure the path to transfer or degree completion, advising practices that provide limited and inconsistent guidance, and fragmented academic and student support services that place the burden of navigation on students rather than the institution. For students of color in particular, GP offers structured guidance and integrated supports intended to reduce inequities and improve their educational outcomes.

Despite broad adoption and high hopes for GP to promote educational equity, particularly within the CCC system (California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office, 2025), researchers and practitioners raise concerns with actual results (Bensimon et al., 2016; Bensimon, 2018; Galan et al., 2023). Bensimon (2007, 2018) argues that reforms framed in race-neutral terms, such as GP, cannot eliminate inequities because they fail to confront the structural racism embedded in higher education. She contends that avoiding explicit conversations about race, whether due to discomfort, the belief that racism is no longer a problem, or the normalization of white students’ experiences as the default, renders equity efforts ineffective. Jenkins et al. (2022) similarly agree, noting that “while students from all backgrounds may benefit from guided pathways reforms, these reforms are not sufficient to close equity gaps between racial and ethnic groups” (p. 2). Galan et al. (2023) extend this critique through an analysis of CCC colleges’ GP plans, showing that equity in GP implementation at the CCC system was frequently articulated in generic terms such as completion or “student success” rather than through direct attention to racism or racialized barriers afflicting students of color in the system. The extent to which GP advances equity in the CCC system depends on how colleges define and implement the framework, ultimately shaping whether it disrupts or reproduces existing racial inequities (Galan et al., 2023).

Purpose of the study

Although GP is framed as a reform to eliminate equity gaps in the CCC system by simplifying and structuring how students are onboarded and supported, its success depends not only on policy design but also on how colleges interpret and enact the framework at both the individual and collective levels (Bensimon, 2018; Galan et al., 2023). Community college scholars have shown that when equity efforts rely on vague or race-neutral language, it risks reinforcing the very disparities it seeks to disrupt (Bensimon, 2007; Ching et al., 2020; Felix, 2021). This concern is particularly relevant to GP. How community colleges define and operationalize equity in both language and practice determines whether the framework expands access and opportunities for students of color or reproduces long-standing inequities for this demographic in the CCC system. Put simply, the potential of racial equity through GP rests on how community colleges communicate and center the needs of students of color during their implementation of GP. To better understand these dynamics, it is necessary to examine how colleges articulate their implementation of the GP framework in relation to advancing racial equity.

This study is about racial equity and the possibilities of GP.² As scholars our focus is on uplifting the ways that GP is articulated as a tool to improve conditions and outcomes from communities of color across community colleges. It interrogates the extent to which GP implementation in the CCC system reflects a race-conscious approach that explicitly prioritizes and addresses the needs of students of color. Prioritizing the needs of students of color in GP means that CCCs name racial inequities, design supports responsive to structural barriers, and embed student perspectives into pathways and practices that advance their educational goals. In the absence of such explicit focus, GP risks functioning as a race-neutral framework that obscures structural inequities rather than dismantling them for students of color in the CCC system. To examine how colleges in the CCC system undertake or avoid a race conscious approach through their implementation of GP, we analyze the 2021–2022 Scale of Adoption Assessment (SOAA) reports, which contain narrative accounts of campus strategies, progress, and challenges in the implementation of GP. These reports offer insight into how institutions define equity, frame responsibility for outcomes, and describe reforms in ways that either reflect race-conscious practice or reinforce race-neutral discourse.

We approach this study through the lens of Critical Race Discourse Analysis (CRDA), which combines critical discourse analysis and critical race theory to examine how institutional language either names racial inequities and racism directly or, through silence and neutrality, reproduces them (Fairclough, 1993). In the context of GP implementation in the CCC system, this means analyzing whether colleges explicitly name race and racialized student outcomes, whether they locate inequities in institutional practices rather than in students themselves, whether they attribute inequities to institutional practices rather than to student deficits, and whether they describe strategies that genuinely center the needs of students of color rather than obscuring them through generic equity language. Our goal is to explore how, collectively and individually, CCCs describe the implementation of GP and the equity efforts they present as part of this reform. Through this discursive analysis, we identify the limits and possibilities of GP as it is described and practiced across the CCC system³. Accordingly, this study is guided by the following research questions:

1. How do CCCs describe their GP implementation in SOAA reports, and what proportion of their discourse reflects race-conscious framing?

2. In what ways do SOAA reports describe equity-minded, race-conscious strategies for implementing GP?

In answering these research question, this study addresses the problem that, although GP is designed to increase student completion, it often operates as a race-neutral reform that leaves structural inequities intact. By identifying dominant discourse patterns and highlighting race-conscious strategies, we illustrate how GP can function not only as a framework for student success but also as a lever for dismantling systemic racial inequities. We argue that when colleges avoid naming race and locating inequities in their own policies and practices, they risk reproducing the very disparities GP is meant to eliminate. In this way, GP risks perpetuating disjointed services, inadequate supports, and racialized student success under the guise of reform. By focusing on whether colleges explicitly name race, accept institutional responsibility, and outline race-conscious strategies, this study advances the literature on equity-minded reform and demonstrates how institutional discourse itself becomes a mechanism that either disrupts or sustains racial inequities for students of color.

In what follows, we situate our study by presenting relevant literature on equity-minded reform and CRDA to underscore why GP must be examined through a race-conscious lens. We then describe our methodology, showing how we applied CRDA to analyze colleges’ SOAA reports. Next, we present our findings, which identify how colleges framed equity in their GP implementation and the implications of those framings for students of color. We conclude with recommendations for policy and practice.

Situating the study

Reforming community colleges through Guided Pathways

Guided Pathways is a reform framework designed to improve student outcomes by increasing retention and completion rates while reducing equity gaps through structured and enhanced onboarding, as well as academic and career support. Bailey et al. (2015) described traditional community colleges as operating under a ‘cafeteria model’ in which students are left to navigate a maze of fragmented programs, unclear requirements, and inconsistent advising with limited guidance. Guided Pathways was developed as a direct response to this cafeteria model, replacing fragmented programs and limited advising with structured pathways, clearer program maps, and proactive supports to help students stay on track and complete their educational goals. In doing so, the GP framework assumes that students are more likely to succeed when institutions reduce complexity in decision-making, eliminate bureaucratic obstacles, and offer clearer program maps and proactive support (Bailey et al., 2015; Jenkins et al., 2022).

Scholars have long argued that institutional disorganization in community colleges, rather than student deficits, creates barriers to degree attainment (Bensimon, 2007, 2018; Deil-Amen and Rosenbaum, 2003; Felix and Trinidad, 2020; Rosenbaum et al., 2006). Community colleges often placed the burden of high-stakes educational and career decisions on students with limited support, leaving them to navigate fragmented programs, inconsistent advising, and poorly communicated requirements. To address these barriers, Bailey et al. (2015) advanced the GP framework as we know it today. They presented the GP framework as four core interrelated practice areas, also known as pillars, intended to address these institutional barriers. These four pillars are: (1) Clarify the Path, (2) Get on the Path, (3) Stay on the Path, and (4) Ensure Learning. Together, these four pillars are designed to clarify students’ educational paths, help them choose and enter a program, aid their successful progression in their chosen track through ongoing support and services, and ensure they develop meaningful, career-aligned skills (Bailey et al., 2015; Jenkins et al., 2022). Their implementation requires community colleges to redesign their academic and onboarding processes, strengthen advising systems, and enhance teaching and learning practices (Jenkins et al., 2022).

Guided Pathways as reform frame: promises, persistent equity gaps and race neutral assumptions

Proponents of the GP framework highlight how its proposed structural changes such as improvements to course scheduling, advising, and early support systems, can contribute to more equitable more equitable student outcomes (Sublett and Orenstein, 2021; Jenkins et al., 2022). However, while GP can support career exploration and program completion (Fink and Jenkins, 2020), equity gaps in student success still prevail. This, despite years of GP implementation (Lin et al., 2023).

The GP design reflects race-neutral assumptions about how students engage with college systems. Central to the GP model is the belief that greater clarity and streamlined structures benefit all students equally. This universalist logic often fails to acknowledge the racialized experiences in how students of color experience advising, curriculum, and classroom practices as they navigate the community college system. For instance, advising protocols often track Black and Latinx students into lower-opportunity fields, and instructional practices frequently fail to engage students from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds (Bensimon, 2007; Crisp and Potter, 2024). These dynamics are rarely confronted through the technical implementation of GP (Galan et al., 2023).

Guided Pathways as reform frame rooted in equity mindeness: toward a race-conscious implementation

For a policy reform such as GP to advance racial equity in the CCCs, where students of color comprise nearly three-quarters of enrollment, colleges must sustain a deliberate commitment to race-conscious practices across all levels of reform, including planning, design, and implementation (Bensimon, 2018; Felix and Gonzalez, 2020; Felix and Ramirez, 2020; Galan et al., 2023). Bragg (2019) argues, closing persistent racial equity gaps requires shifting GP from a race-neutral reform that serves “all students” to one that intentionally centers racial equity in both design and implementation. Bragg’s (2019) urgency to intentionally center racial equity in both the design and implementation of GP has been taken up by the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges.

The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges called for faculty and institutional leaders to recognize the exclusionary practices embedded in existing structures and to approach GP implementation with the “courage to become race-conscious” (Academic Senate for California Community Colleges, 2019). Our study builds on this call by analyzing how colleges represent their GP efforts in the 2021–2022 SOAA reports. We ask not only whether CCCs are implementing the technical components of GP, but also whether they are using the framework to redefine institutional practices in ways that are race-conscious, equity-minded, and structurally responsive to the needs of students of color. We examine whether GP implementation, as reflected in institutional discourse, disrupts or reproduces the organizational arrangements that have historically marginalized students of color.

Equity-mindedness and critical discourse analysis as frames to interrogate Guided Pathways

Bensimon (2007) advanced equity-mindedness as a framework for institutional reform, arguing that colleges, not students, are responsible for racial disparities in outcomes. Practicing equity-mindedness begins with analyzing data disaggregated by race and ethnicity to make inequities visible. It then requires educators to acknowledge the salience of race and racism in shaping student outcomes, to recognize how institutional policies and practices sustain and reproduce those inequities, and to take responsibility for changing the conditions that produce them (Bensimon et al., 2016; Felix et al., 2021; Liera and Desir, 2023). Within the context of GP, equity-mindedness requires colleges to become an equity-minded organization by embedding race-conscious goals, allocating resources to close documented racial gaps, and routinely auditing policies and data to ensure that practices produce equitable outcomes (Liera and Desir, 2023). It asks community colleges whether GP’s program maps, advising systems, and onboarding practices are redesigned to close racial gaps or whether they leave structural barriers intact. It shifts attention away from student responsibility toward organizational accountability, calling on faculty, staff, and administrators to become reflexive actors who restructure programs, pedagogy, and supports to meet the needs of students of color (Bensimon, 2018; Liera and Desir, 2023).

Because language reveals where an institution places its responsibilities and priorities, equity-minded analysis begins with how colleges describe their GP reforms (Brown and Klein, 2020; Yücel, 2022). Framed in race-neutral terms, GP becomes a technical fix focused on clarity and efficiency, leaving structural inequities unchanged. Framed through equity-mindedness, GP becomes an institutional commitment to redesigning pathways in ways that explicitly confront racial inequities (Galan et al., 2023). Accordingly, examining SOAA reports provides insight into whether institutions adopt equity-mindedness to address the racialized barriers students face in the CCC system. In this sense, the discourse colleges use to narrate GP implementation signals whether they are willing to take responsibility for racial equity through reform.

Naming race and being race-conscious is central to equity-minded work, so we ground our study in CRDA. By doing so, equity-mindedness explains “why” race must be named while CRDA provides a theoretical framework for understanding how institutional discourse reproduces or disrupts racism (Annamma et al., 2017; Bell Jr, 1980). Applied to SOAA reports, CRDA interrogates whether colleges frame GP in race-neutral terms that obscure structural racism or in race-conscious terms that hold institutions accountable. Research in the CCC system shows when equity discourse turns neutral in policy design and implementation, students of color are excluded from the benefits of reforms that claim to serve them (Ching et al., 2020). For example, when California’s Student Equity Policy shifted from explicitly centering and prioritizing the needs of Black and Latinx students to the vague label of ‘underserved,’ it weakens colleges accountability for the success of Black and Latinx students (Felix and Trinidad, 2020). Similarly, when colleges often invoke equity without acknowledging how race and racism shape the daily experiences of students of color (Felix and Garcia, 2023), colleges are unable to create practices that address the needs of students of color and the structural inequities that affect their outcomes. Taken together, these studies demonstrate that equity efforts that avoid race reproduce inequities rather than dismantle them. Achieving equity within GP depends on how colleges frame the reform: avoiding race reproduces inequities, while naming race and adopting equity-minded frames opens possibilities for dismantling them. Without making racial discourse visible through race-conscious policy implementation, equity minded reform aimed to better serve students of color is simply not possible (Cataño and Gonzalez, 2021).

Methodology

This study builds upon data collected for a large project examining the racialized discourse of GP across the CCC system. Through that project, we released an initial report that provided a descriptive synthesis of SOAA responses, the present study builds on that work and employs a CRDA lens to deepen and reframe the analysis, focusing on the racial ideologies embedded in institutional language and logic. We employ CRDA as both our theoretical lens and our analytic method.

Critical Race Discourse Analysis helps to examine how language shapes, reinforces, or erases racial inequities in institutional settings (Casellas Connors, 2022; Hodge, 2024). Critical Discourse Analysis directs attention to how racism is embedded in institutional practices and reproduced through discourse. Educational researchers have applied CRDA to texts such as school discipline policies and diversity statements, surfacing the (in)visibility of race and racism in organizational rhetoric (Brown and Klein, 2020; Gregory et al., 2010; Hypolite and Stewart, 2019; Iverson, 2007). Felix et al. (2022) extend this work to community college equity plans, showing how race is often erased through neutral categories such as “underserved,” which weakens institutional accountability for closing racial equity gaps. Building on this scholarship, we employ CRDA as both a theoretical lens and methodological approach to analyze how CCCs describe their GP implementation efforts. Our focus is on whether institutional discourse names race and demonstrates commitments to students of color, or whether it falls back on race-neutral narratives that leave structural barriers unchallenged.

Connecting equity-mindedness, critical discourse analysis and Guided Pathways

Though GP aims to improve student outcomes through structural reforms, its benefits for students of color depends on how CCCs communicate and implement the reform to prioritize and meet the needs of this student demographic. We explore how colleges use seemingly neutral terms like “metamajors,” “advising,” “support programs,” or “professional development” to either advance or hinder the needs of students of color. Critical Discourse Analysis allows us to analyze whether GP discourse centers students of color in institutional responsibility for equity or whether it masks racial inequities behind race-neutral policy language.

To be sure, GP assumes that clearer structures through its four pillars (Clarify the Path, Get on the Path, Stay on the Path, Ensure Learning) benefits everyone. Yet, It can leave structural racism unaddressed. For example, unless the colleges are intentional at doing so, GP does not explicitly address the campus racial climate or biased pedagogy. Because the reform is enacted through documents that signal progress toward implementation, language itself becomes policy in practice. In our analysis, these texts often rely on race-neutral claims, such as “all students follow clear program maps,” that allow colleges to declare success on Clarify the Path while obscuring how program maps can still sort Black and Latinx students into lower-wage fields. Similarly, using proxy language a report might claim that “academic alerts reach underserved students.” In using this statement, the college can pride itself in making progress and implementing the Stay on the Path pillar effectively. However, it might not account for how Black students may continue to receive fewer alerts and less follow-up than their peers due to disparities in technological access.

Race-explicit discourse, by contrast, links each pillar to equity-minded responsibility. For the Stay on the Path, a report using race explicitly language might highlight: “Latinx males remain at high risk of course withdrawal; dashboards flag attendance and assignment gaps, and when a Latinx male misses two classes an advisor contacts him within 48 hours and connects him to the Men of Color Support Center.” In this example, one can see the potential utility of being race-explicit in the description of how GP is implemented in SOAA reports. However, whether this discourse translates into equity-minded practice is a question that requires further empirical investigation that is beyond the scope of this study. Doing a CRDA analysis, one can observe how naming the group, defining a trigger, and documenting a culturally specific referral signal a shift from compliance to racial-equity accountability. Yet, as the literature cautions, equity-minded language does not automatically ensure equity-minded action, but it is beginning to engage in racial equity work (Bensimon, 2007, 2018; Liera and Desir, 2023). Therefore, we apply CRDA to review SOAA narratives. We explore whether colleges name race, accept institutional responsibility, and outline race-conscious strategies to address inequities. While prior scholarship has critiqued GP as a race-neutral reform that often sustains structural racism (Bensimon, 2018; Galan et al., 2023), less is known about how colleges take up the framework discursively in their SOAA reports. Our analysis examines whether institutional discourse simply reproduces this race-neutral logic or, alternatively, signals efforts to disrupt it. Table 1 outlines the four pillars, the types of practices each includes, and specific examples that informed the discursive elements we examined in institutional texts.

Table 1

Table 1. Pillar-specific practices and required organizational change in GP SOAA reports.

Data sources

We analyzed two primary data sources. The first data source was the full SOAA reports submitted by 115 colleges, which included narrative responses organized around the four GP pillars. Every SOAA prompts colleges to reflect and report on 23 different pathways practices under the four pillars. As described in the example above in Table 1, for instance, Practice B under Pillar 1 asks colleges to share how within their GP implementation, “Every program is well designed to guide and prepare students to enter employment and further education in fields of importance to the college’s service area.” When a college does respond, they must share information in three key areas: Progress to Date, Next Steps, and Support. Because the prompts in the SOAA were consistent across all institutions, the responses revealed how each college was making sense of GP and its implementation.

The second source was the NOVA dataset, a spreadsheet of short-form entries submitted for each of the 23 pathway practices. After data cleaning, this dataset included 3,193 descriptive items. While the NOVA entries allowed for broad, system-level comparisons (such as tracking references to race or equity), the narrative responses provided deeper insight into how colleges framed their work and how equity discourse, particularly around race and racism, was present or absent in their implementation narratives.

Procedures of data analysis

As a research team, we reviewed each college’s SOAA narrative by reading and coding the text for references to students of color, explicit mentions of race, and equity-related language. We used iterative reading and memo-writing to identify emerging patterns in how colleges framed racial equity under GP. As part of this analytic process, we developed five categories that helped us code and compare colleges’ use of equity-related discourse: (1) All Students: vague or universal with no racial specificity; (2) Deficit: language portraying students as “at-risk” or “underprepared”; (3) Equity: generic references to “inequity” or “equitable practices” without naming racial or ethnic groups; (4) Proxy: indirect mentions of race through program names like Puente, Umoja, or EOP&S; and (5) Racial: explicit naming of race, racism, or specific racialized groups.

Each time race-related language appeared, we conducted a deeper review to assess how the college engaged with racial equity. We examined whether colleges simply named a group or tied the references to race conscious strategies. This process did not serve as our findings but rather as an analytic scaffold that allowed us to systematically move from descriptive coding to interpretive analysis. By doing so, we were able to identify surface-level patterns, such as the frequency of specific terms, and gain deeper insight into how institutions framed equity. Specifically, we looked at whether colleges treated serving students of color as a meaningful component of GP implementation or largely avoided mentioning students of color in their implementation. Table 2 illustrates the distinction we applied in our coding, showing how each of the four GP pillars can be framed through either race-neutral or race-explicit language.⁴

Table 2

Table 2. Illustrating how race-conscious framing shifts guided pathways practice.

These examples provided checkpoints that guided our CRDA analysis of SOAA narratives, allowing us to assess whether colleges’ equity discourse reinforced neutrality or used the GP framework as an institutional response to explicitly benefit students of color. As a team, we examined 115 individual institutions and the 3,193 GP practices across all of them to understand the discourse of GP, the practices being implemented, and how students were framed as beneficiaries. Our results section includes four findings that help to tell the story of implementation and how the GP framework is carried out across the system as a lever for equitable change.

Findings

Given our discursive analysis of the system-wide implementation of GP, we shed light on how CCCs design, adopt, and enact interventions to improve the conditions and outcomes for students. These four findings focus on highlighting: (1) the system-wide discourse on GP, (2) the contradictions between deficit-oriented and equity-minded narratives, (3) the limits of race-neutral “all students” language in addressing the needs of racially minoritized groups, and (4) the ways some colleges extend equity efforts by explicitly naming and addressing racial disparities. Together, these findings illustrate how GP implementation reflects both the persistence of race-neutral and deficit-oriented practices and the potential for race-conscious and equity-driven transformation.

System-wide discourse on Guided Pathways

We analyzed discourse within SOAA reports across five thematic categories: All Students, Deficit-oriented language (mentions of students being “at-risk” or being “poorly prepared”), Equity-related discourse (e.g., terms such as inequity, “equity” “equitable,” and “social justice”), Proxy identifiers (text that masqueraded students of color under “underrepresented” or part of programs such as Puente, EOP&S, Umoja), and Racial discourse (e.g., Black, Latinx, Asian Pacific Islander, racially minoritized). Table 3 illustrates the frequency of discourse mentions across these five categories within our data set.

Table 3

Table 3. Frequency of discourse category mentions in SOAA reports.

Equity related discourse enabled colleges to highlight their equity initiatives, whereas explicitly racial terminology allowed them to directly emphasize practices aimed at supporting racially minoritized students. Within the SOAA dataset, equity-centered language was the most frequently occurring discourse category. It accounted for 29% of all discourse relevant to this study. Words such as “equitable,” “equity,” and “equitizing” appeared a total of 601 times. These mentions indicate a broad institutional commitment towards equity, particularly within Pillars 2 and 4. The second most common category was racial discourse, accounting for 21% of mentions with 438 occurrences. The racial discourse category included explicitly race-conscious terms, such as references to “Black” and “Pacific Islander” students in the descriptions of how colleges structured their progress and practices related to GP. However, despite its ability to center specific student populations through its use, only 45 out of 115 SOAA reports engaged in racial discourse. Less than half of the CCCs used racially explicit language to describe their progress and implementation of GP.

The third most frequently found discourse category was All Students. It made up 19% of the total mentions. This language framed institutional strategies and interventions in terms of broad, homogenous student populations. In doing so, colleges omitted specific references to racial or demographic groups and their specific needs navigating the CCC system. Proxy discourse appeared in 373 instances (18%). The identity and needs of students of color were diminished to references to programs such as Puente, Umoja, and words such as “underrepresented.” Deficit-oriented discourse was the least common, with 249 mentions (12%), and characterized students through language like “at-risk,” “poorly prepared,” or “minority.” Access to support services were framed through a deficit lens, positioning students who needed support as inherently lacking. As we highlight later in our findings, this language was often used interchangeably to describe students of color.

Disaggregating the data by pillar revealed stark differences in how discourse was distributed across GP implementation. Across the four pillars, colleges were prompted to respond to a total of 23 pathway practices, with each pillar containing between five and seven individual items. Table 4 presents a disaggregated view of discourse across the four GP pillars.

Table 4

Table 4. Frequency of discourse category mentions in SOAA reports by pillar.

Pillar 2 (Get on the Path) accounted for nearly half (47%) of all discourse mentions; it far exceeded Pillars 4 (Ensure Learning), 3 (Stay on the Path), and 1 (Clarify the Path). Equity-oriented language was concentrated in Pillars 2 and 4, which together made up 75% of equity-related mentions. Racial discourse followed a similar pattern, with its highest presence also in these two pillars. These trends suggest that colleges often center equity and race-conscious narratives in onboarding and instructional practices, particularly in areas like advising, assessment, and pedagogy, while giving much less attention to the structural design and curricular mapping work emphasized in Pillar 1.

Pillar 2 carried a disproportionate share of deficit-oriented discourse, accounting for 80% of all student-deficit mentions across the SOAA reports. Support systems were often described using deficit-oriented language, framing students as “underprepared” or “at-risk” during initial entry into the institution, even as equity discourse became more prominent. Similarly, proxy discourse, including references to Puente or Umoja, and “all-students” language appeared most often in Pillars 2 and 3. This reflects a tendency to invoke support or inclusion without explicitly naming race or structural barriers. In contrast, Pillar 1 received the fewest mentions across all categories, highlighting the limited attention colleges gave to equity in areas related to program design and curricular structure. Taken together, these patterns within the pillars suggest that equity work is often positioned as something that happens during intervention points such as advising, instruction, or student services, rather than being integrated into the foundational architecture of GP design.

While these patterns reveal how discourse varies across pillars, they also expose deeper contradictions in how colleges interpret and enact equity. Rather than a consistent or transformative equity agenda, SOAA reports reveals that generally, GP is implemented as patchwork of race-conscious reforms, race-neutral design, and deficit framings that often coexist within the same institution. The following three themes illustrate how the implementation of GP in the CCC system both reproduces and resists logics of meritocracy, race-evasiveness, and efforts toward organizational transformation grounded in racial equity.

Discourses of (im)possibilities: racial contradictions in Guided Pathways implementation

As a framework, GP organizes its change strategies across four pillars meant to support student successfully navigate and transition out of community colleges. Pillar 1 focuses on clarifying the path by mapping programs into clear, well-organized pathways and providing students with accessible information. Pillar 2 helps students get on the path through early career exploration, academic planning, and targeted support to complete key courses. Pillar 3 ensures students stay on the path by improving advising, identifying those who need support, offering progress-tracking tools, and making scheduling more student-friendly. Pillar 4 emphasizes ensuring learning by using assessment to inform redesign efforts, aligning learning outcomes with career goals, supporting faculty through professional development, and helping document student learning.

While the framework is often presented as a neutral set of reforms, how colleges describe their implementation tells a more complicated story. Across the SOAA reports, colleges framed their work in ways that revealed underlying beliefs about students, success, and equity. In some cases, the language mirrored deficit-based assumptions embedded in the prompts themselves, while in others, colleges took up more race-conscious and equity-driven approaches. These differences were especially visible in how colleges described their work under Pillars 2 and 4. Pillar 2, focused on helping students get on a path. This pillar often relied on stigmatizing labels and deficit-minded assumptions that labeled students as “underprepared” students in ways that were frequently coded as racialized. In contrast, Pillar 4, which focuses on ensuring institutional learning to support students. Pillar 4 displayed moments that provided examples of colleges naming race directly, investing in culturally sustaining teaching, and redesigning practices to better serve students of color.

Pillar 2 (Get on the Path) featured a significant amount of deficit-laden language, referring to students as “poorly prepared” or “at risk.” Pillar 2 accounted for 80% of all student-deficit mentions across the SOAA reports. Because every college was required to respond to all four pillars, including Pillar 2, the prevalence of deficit discourse here reflects the wording of the SOAA prompts themselves and how colleges either reproduced or challenged such language. Specifically, Pillar 2 asked colleges to report on “special supports provided to help academically underprepared students succeed” or “intensive support provided to help very poorly prepared students succeed.” Many colleges echoed this exact language in their responses, effectively reproducing the deficit terms of the prompt in their institutional narratives. It was common to find institutional narratives describing how they support students through GP using similarly negative labels. Colleges often referred to students needing additional support as “academically underprepared” or “very poorly prepared” as an additional code to refer to students of color. This reproduction of deficit discourse is especially striking in the CCC system where faculty and staff practitioners are often exposed to professional development that problematizes such framings. Because Pillar 2 addresses how students begin their academic journey and the supports available to them, the persistence of deficit framings shapes institutional responsibility by centering student “preparedness” rather than structural barriers.

Examples of how colleges reused the deficit-minded prompts from Pillar 2 of the SOAA report illustrate how reproductive deficit minded discourse can be. For instance, one narrative stated, “Intensive support is provided to under-prepared students or students with specific learning needs through the courses and programs offered in the Disabilities Resource Center on campus,” while another wrote, “Created additional lab support for students, including very poorly prepared students.” Continuing this pattern, another response described the launch of a “Summer Bridge program that focuses on supporting very poorly prepared students by providing a comprehensive summer program.” Although these statements reflect well-intended attempts to provide resources, they also illustrate how colleges can unintentionally reinforce notions that students lack abilities for success, rather than acknowledging their diverse strengths, experiences, and needs.

Such deficit language in both GP prompts and institutional responses carry broader equity implications. It risks stigmatizing students of color in the eyes of the very institutions charged with serving them by framing students as “not ready” rather than recognizing institutional barriers that can limit their success. It also risks legimitimizing notions of student deficiency. As a result, institutional actors may overlook opportunities to redesign programs, pedagogy, and support in ways that are accessible and strength-based. In this way, deficit discourse perpetuates institutional racism by normalizing student “unpreparedness” as the problem rather than interrogating the policies, practices, and curricular structures that reproduce inequities in the CCC system.

Despite the promise of easing students’ educational journey through GP, the onus is still placed on the student to be ready to navigate the institution as opposed to making the institution ready to serve the diverse needs and assets that students of color bring with them into the CCC system. For example, one college noted that its “system is not necessarily assisting the poorly prepared students… EOPS can have more interventions with their students due to the lower caseloads and two contacts per semester requirements,” inadvertently highlighting its limitations while still relying on deficit language. The college labeled Extended Opportunities Programs and services (EOPS) students, often students of color, low-income, first generation, and from historically underserved backgrounds, as “poorly prepared.” This framing reinforces a deficit view and institutional racism against students of color. In doing so, it also obscures systemic barriers, and undermines the potential for equity-driven, asset-based approaches to student success through GPs.

Yet, despite the persistence of deficit-minded language under Pillar 2, a few outliers emerged. When prompted to describe “the academic supports provided to academically underprepared students,” one college resisted deficit framing. Instead of labeling students, it assumed institutional responsibility by noting that its math faculty were participating in the College’s Equity-Minded Teaching and Learning Institute, which focuses on culturally responsive pedagogy. Another college emphasized institutional responsibility through a research study with students enrolled in introductory math courses “that examined effective practices and barriers experienced by Black and Latinx students.” These examples show how explicitly naming racialized groups shifted the focus away from student deficiencies and toward institutional responsibility. Outlier cases like these suggest that when colleges acknowledge race directly, they are more likely to engage in internal learning, student-informed inquiry, and reflective practices that push back against common deficit narratives. These instances show how institutional responsibility can challenge race-neutral norms in the SOAA and offer a glimpse of what is possible when equity is approached as a structural commitment rather than an individualized intervention.

In contrast, Pillar 4 (Ensuring Learning) included fewer deficit-based references and featured more equity- or race-focused statements, often introduced through professional development for faculty (e.g., culturally sustaining pedagogy). However, many colleges still described Pillar 4 in race-neutral terms and did not adopt a race-conscious perspective. Institutions that embraced race-conscious practices shifted away from labeling students as “poorly prepared” and instead emphasized how faculty, curricula, and institutional systems can adapt to students’ cultural and linguistic strengths.

Some colleges explicitly named Black, Latinx, and other minoritized groups in their professional development and curriculum reforms. For instance, one college reported, “The college recently launched professional development communities focused on culturally sustaining teaching, aiming to reduce equity gaps for Black and Latinx students in gateway courses.” In this race-conscious approach, not only is the college explicitly naming Black and Latinx students, but it is also linking professional development to a measurable racial equity gap (gateway course performance) and faculty responsibility to closing that gap. By specifically naming Black and Latinx students, the college recognizes how pedagogy can reinforce a hostile campus climate for students of color. The college takes responsibility for providing professional development to faculty as part of its efforts to create a culturally affirming learning environment for Black and Latinx students. Another college described a race-conscious approach by detailing, “We implemented targeted race-conscious training for faculty, examining our course outlines and syllabi to ensure inclusive content that addresses potential bias and promotes success for minoritized students.” In this race-conscious practice, the college requires faculty to interrogate their own curricular materials for racial bias and redesign them in ways that affirm students’ identities. By tying success to course-level reforms and faculty practices, the college acknowledged that inequities are produced by institutional structures rather than student deficits. As a result, the college takes the institutional responsibility of addressing shortcomings in their curricula.

By explicitly mentioning students of color and being race conscious, these approaches went beyond generic talk of “best practices” by pinpointing racism and bias as institutional issues to be rectified. It marked the on-going redesign practice of making institutions ready to serve students of color by being intentional and explicit about the changes that need to happen to better serve these student demographics. Illustrating this point, a third college added, “we have created equity-minded data coaching, helping faculty interpret disaggregated success metrics for Black, Latinx, and other historically minoritized groups.” By naming Black, Latinx, and other groups explicitly, the college positioned racial equity as central to its assessment practices and tied accountability to measurable racialized gaps. In taking institutional responsibility, the goal of the college is to redesign core assignments and assessments to improve outcomes. The college reframes data analysis as a collective effort to transform classroom practices, signaling a deeper examination of how typical assessments or curricula might reproduce inequities. This approach moves beyond race-neutral claims of “student success” by requiring institutions to confront how their teaching and assessment structures perpetuate racial disparities and to take action to remediate them.

Colleges that explicitly named race and centered the needs of students of color illustrate a discursive shift made possible by moving beyond race-neutral narratives toward race-conscious GP implementation. When colleges identified Black and Latinx students in their reports, they were more likely to engage in targeted actions aimed at institutional transformation to benefit the identified student groups. These targeted interventions included: culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogy, inclusive syllabi review, or redesigning assessments to close equity gaps. While these practices are often referenced under the broad umbrella of “best practices,” our analysis highlights how they become qualitatively different when race is explicitly named and tied to equity goals. In race-neutral contexts, “best practice” functions as a vague compliance label, detached from the racialized barriers students of color face. By contrast, when colleges use race-explicit discourse, for example linking culturally sustaining pedagogy to Black and Latinx student success, these interventions shift from generic techniques to race-conscious commitments to support students of color. As a result, professional development, curricular reform, and data analysis became tools for institutional learning and confronting institutional racism, not just compliance.

These statewide patterns highlight how the language in GP prompts and institutional responses can either reinforce or challenge racial inequities. Pillar 2’s deficit framing, often shaped by the SOAA prompts, can inadvertently stigmatize students instead of addressing the deeper systemic and curricular issues at play. Meanwhile, in Pillar 4, when colleges adopt race-conscious and equity-oriented approaches, they center students of color to reshape campus practices and discourse. By intentionally naming race, revising course content, and supporting faculty development, colleges move beyond perceptions of “student deficiencies” and begin to rethink institutional structures.

When “all students” is not enough: the limits of race neutral pathway mapping and information sharing to support students

Pillar 1 asks community colleges to support student onboarding by creating clear program maps and organizing information around meta-majors. However, how colleges describe this redesign process reveals important differences in equity commitments and awareness of how students access, engage with, and act on the information provided to them. Many institutions focused on structural redesign through meta-majors and program maps but relied on race-neutral language. This framing often centered “all students” without acknowledging that students of color face distinct barriers in navigating and making sense of this information. The analysis below highlights how most colleges approached Pillar 1 through a generalized lens, while a smaller number engaged in race-conscious design practices that treated equity not as a broad principle but as a necessary and intentional part of how program maps and meta-major information are shared with students.

Although many colleges mentioned meta-major mapping under Pillar 1 (Clarify the Path), a significant share relied on race-neutral language by frequently employing the phrase “all students” without naming specific racially minoritized groups. For instance, some colleges stated, “We redesigned our program pathways to benefit all students, ensuring consistent academic advising and support,” while others shared, “All students now have access to the new online platform, which provides degree maps and scheduling options,” and still others highlighted, “We created multiple ‘success teams’ for all students in each meta-major, connecting them with program-specific counselors.” Although these statements appear inclusive, they offer little detail on how colleges address the specific linguistic, cultural, or financial barriers disproportionately impacting students of color. By centering “all students” without further disaggregation, such approaches risk overlooking groups that face systemic hurdles.

Pillar 1 included the least narrative detail in many SOAA submissions, suggesting that while colleges have advanced technical redesigns, they may not be fully considering how racial equity informs student access and engagement. In doing so, the development of an “all students” framing in their redesign process was evident, including in how colleges described their efforts to improve math and English placement and course taking patterns for students. Colleges often noted that all students now have access to transfer-level English and quantitative reasoning pathways” or highlighted initiatives such as launching degree maps that included math courses “appropriate for all students.” While these efforts reflect broader reforms aligned with AB 705, they lacked attention to how students of color, first-generation students, and multilingual learners navigate placement systems and academic decision-making. Without attention to these dynamics, colleges risk assuming that access alone is sufficient, despite evidence that many students continue to face barriers in understanding, trusting, or acting on the information provided.

A subset of colleges outlined race-conscious planning in their implementation of GP. One college wrote that “standard format and maps will be reviewed to ensure that access to and use of this information is equitable for students who have been historically underrepresented and/or underserved in higher education.” Another college explained making meta-major information accessible to students of color by “[providing] translation of the information in Spanish, Arabic, and Tagalog and [printing hard copies in the form of ‘bookmarks’ of every program map for counselors to use and for students to pick up at various locations on campus].” A third college noted its work “on translating key community- and student-facing web pages and pathways materials into Spanish.” By naming students of color and designing for their access through GPs, these colleges shifted equity from rhetoric to practice. They treated race-conscious design not as an add-on but as an operating principle in their implementation of GP. To this end, rather than simply creating websites or meta-majors, they made information accessible in multiple languages and formats for students to navigate. These colleges expose the contradiction at the heart of race-neutral approaches: GP efforts marketed to “all students” rarely reached those most constrained by structural barriers unless race is explicitly built into the design. Colleges that named and centered students of color in their redesign processes recognized that equity-minded program mapping requires rethinking not just what information is shared, but how, where, and for whom it is made meaningful. This is especially critical given the limitations of relying on information alone and expecting students to independently access, interpret, and act on it.

The possibilities of equity in Guided Pathways: being race conscious and reshaping opportunity

While most SOAA reports relied on race-neutral language that avoided centering students of color, a subset of colleges adopted race-conscious approaches that made racial equity central to their GP implementation. In this process, being race-conscious allowed colleges to create institutional transformation to benefit students of color. For example, one college created “racial equity success teams” to conduct “course completion analysis by race, ethnicity, and gender to determine where additional support for staff, faculty and program areas is needed to increase success and completion for disproportionately impacted student communities, including a clear focus on our Black and Latinx students.” Another college explained how it “conducted qualitative research to gain a deeper understanding of effective practices and barriers faced by Black and Latinx students in completing English 1 and identify the AB 705 support necessary to close racial equity gaps.” From those efforts, this second college reported it had “improved course content, material, and teaching practices to better serve Black and Latinx students.” Building on this, the institution launched its “Equity Avengers Program,” which provided data coaching for all faculty, staff, and classified professionals to ensure colleagues “approach their work using an equity-minded perspective.” Together, these examples from these two colleges show how race-conscious inquiry can reshape institutional responsibility that leads to institutional transformation. In both cases, naming Black and Latinx students explicitly transformed GP from a technical exercise into a structural commitment to address the needs of these student demographics.

Other colleges also demonstrated race-conscious inquiry. One reviewed employment data to “identify disproportionately impacted groups and address those equity gaps,” leading to expanded work-based learning opportunities. Another examined “program selection patterns among historically underrepresented students” and responded by connecting them to living-wage data, stackable certificates, and broader career pathways. Together, these examples further illustrate how race-conscious framing shifts accountability from students to institutions. By explicitly naming Black and Latinx students, colleges moved beyond generic equity to examine not only how to improve their support programs but also how GP can expand economic opportunities for students of color.

Some institutions went beyond inquiry by tying GP to campus-wide racial equity efforts. One college described linking GP to the “President’s Racial Equity and Social Justice Task Force,” which “gathered input and reviewed information to inform recommendations” for scaling guided pathways. A second college tied GP to its 2022–25 Student Equity Plan and the Chancellor’s Office Call to Action as they described launching “an Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Curriculum Audit Process” to support equity-focused curriculum review and institutional learning in order to remove bias and make pedagogy sensible and welcoming to the needs of students of color. A third college also shared expanding their professional development to focus on equity education. They mentioned that the “ongoing professional development” focused on equity seeking to address the “lack of a campus-wide shared understanding of racial equity and inclusion and the need to change long-held and systemic practices that may contribute to the disproportionate impact on underserved populations and students of color.” Taken together, these examples illustrate how colleges can braid GP implementation with broader racial equity infrastructures. By linking GP to presidential task forces, equity plans, and professional development, institutions moved beyond compliance toward embedding racial equity across every pillar of GP. Importantly, this integration positioned GP as both a site of reflection and a mechanism for structural change, signaling how colleges can align system-wide reforms with race-conscious commitments to better serve students of color.

Race-conscious implementation also reshaped workforce development. One institution created “equity opportunities for students of color” by connecting them to internships and jobs through partnerships with community-based organizations. Another college assigned career advisors and professional liaisons to support “disproportionately impacted students” with major and career exploration, while also forming pathway success teams for first-time students. A third college described how its Certified Nursing Assistant program “offered clinical placements to students in its Puente and Acceso programs, which support Latinx students,” and hosted career panels in medicine and vocational fields specifically for Latinx communities through HSI funding. A fourth college acknowledged labor market bias and reported efforts to deepen college-to-career partnerships, increase clinical placements, and raise awareness of how “high-priority populations” are excluded from limited-access programs. Across these examples, colleges framed workforce development not as a neutral service, but as a racialized system requiring intervention. By naming students of color directly, institutions redefined internships, advising, and clinical placements as equity strategies, positioning career pathways as sites where systemic barriers must be confronted and dismantled. This shift illustrates how GP can move beyond technical compliance to embed racial equity into the economic opportunities colleges create for their students.

These discursive practices in this theme demonstrate GP’s potential to serve not only as a structural reform but also as a site for equity-centered transformation. When colleges named race and positioned inequities as institutional problems, they reimagined GP as a mechanism for systemic change rather than compliance. Such race-conscious narratives show how GP can move beyond technical fixes toward dismantling structural inequities and expanding opportunities for students of color.

Discussion and implications

Analyzing the SOAA reports allowed us to examine the implementation and progress of GP in the CCCs at the individual and system-wide level. Practitioners and campus leaders shape the content of these reports based on the time and capacity they have to reflect, compile information, and write. However, rather than viewing the SOAA reports merely as bureaucratic artifacts, we engage with them as texts that construct and reflect the material conditions under which equity work unfolds through the implementation of GP. Our findings show that GP implementation across the CCC system reflects both the persistence of race-neutral, deficit-based discourse and the emergence of race-conscious, equity-driven practices. The discussion that follows considers the broader implications of these findings for policy, practice, and institutional reform.

Through a race-conscious, equity-minded lens afforded by CRDA, these narratives reveal whether GP is enacted in transformative ways or whether it reinforces race-neutral and deficit-minded practices that marginalize students of color and undermine their educational opportunities. In this sense, discourse is not a byproduct of institutional change; it is a mechanism through which institutional priorities, exclusions, and commitments are made legible. Our analysis situates SOAA reports as discursive windows into the ideological work of equity in practice through the (im)possibilities of GP as transformational policy in the CCC system.

Our findings show that deficit language in Pillar 2 is widespread across SOAA reports, including in California where racial equity efforts are more established than in other states. This is in part because the SOAA used deficit language that prompted many community college practitioners tasked with completing their campus SOAA report to the same. This pattern illustrates how the implementation of GP can carry race-evasive assumptions that colleges reproduce in their implementation, aligning with critiques of race-neutral reforms that fail to confront structural racism (Bensimon, 2007; Felix, 2021; Felix and Trinidad, 2020; Martínez et al., 2023; McCambly et al., 2023). It reflects what Bensimon (2018) calls “equity by implication,” where institutions adopt the language of equity without enacting practices that meaningfully name and address racialized structures. This underscores the limitations of technical compliance (Kezar, 2018) and highlights the need for policies that explicitly name racism and support race-conscious practice, rather than relying on vague commitments to inclusion.

Deficit-minded discourse does not appear uniformly across pillars within the same institution. A college may frame students as “poorly prepared” in Pillar 2, yet describe more asset-based or race-conscious efforts in Pillar 3 or 4. Such variation in GP reporting highlights how equity efforts are often fragmented and inconsistent—shaped by local discretion and role-specific interpretation rather than a cohesive institutional commitment to racial justice. This demonstrates how in the absence of shared equity leadership, where equity is treated as a collective and campus-wide responsibility, implementation narratives may be shaped more by who writes the report or oversees a particular area than by institution-wide commitments to equity (Kezar et al., 2021). These contradictions reflect how GP’s implementation process and its reporting is shaped by localized interpretations rather than a coherent, institution-wide stance on equity. Drawing on organizational theories of sensemaking (Coburn, 2006), street-level implementation (Lipsky, 1984), and theorization as institutional work (Mena and Suddaby, 2016), we understand these inconsistencies not as simple implementation lapses, but as products of the institutional logics and meaning-making practices of frontline actors. Even with centralized guidance from the Chancellor’s Office, equity is taken up unevenly depending on actors’ roles and understandings of institutional purpose. This point echoes with McCambly (2024) who finds that the language of equity in postsecondary reforms often fails to result in racialized change because the implementation process splinters equity’s meaning, particularly when institutional actors prioritize performative compliance over structural transformation. Rather than reflecting shared, equity-centered organizational values, the reports illustrate how equity is often taken up unevenly across units; thus, suggesting a lack of institutional coherence in how GP is framed as an equity reform.

Also, our findings show that although “equity” is a prominent theme within GP reforms across the CCC system and nationally, colleges often mute its racial dimension. In this study, we understand the power of equity through a race-conscious and justice-centered lens. We recognize equity as both a term and a tool with the potential to disrupt the longstanding harm of institutional and instructional racism in education. Our approach to equity is grounded in an ontoepistemological commitment to name race, challenge dominant ideologies, and reimagine institutions through the lived realities of racially minoritized students (Bensimon, 2018). When guided by equity-minded and race-conscious will, institutions can leverage policy to confront the structural and institutional barriers facing students of color (Bensimon, 2018; Felix et al., 2022). For us, this starts by explicitly naming and centering racially minoritized students in the design of GP and any policy intended to redress systemic inequities. However, based on our analysis of SOAA reports, we find that colleges frequently avoided this framing. Although the CCC Chancellor’s Office included equity-focused prompts in the SOAA reports, these often relied on deficit-oriented language, prompting colleges to describe students as “underserved,” “diverse,” or, more problematically, “poorly prepared.” As a result, many institutional responses were vague, generalized, and used a deficit lens; falling short of the explicit, race-conscious discourse needed to disrupt longstanding inequities and deficit views affecting students of color in the CCC system.

By contrast, when colleges explicitly named racialized student groups, such as Black and Latinx students, and addressed their needs through GP, they shifted the discourse. These institutions adopted equity-minded frameworks that recognize the educators’ and leaders’ responsibility to interrogate how their practices reproduce inequities (McNair et al., 2020). In doing so, they implemented pedagogical reforms, race-conscious advising, targeted interventions, and expanded career opportunities that directly responded to the experiences of students of color. They prioritized intentionality in addressing longstanding inequities, focusing on needs rooted in systemic oppression rather than defaulting to GP’s typical emphasis on simplification and efficiency (Bensimon, 2018; Felix and Trinidad, 2020). In these instances, race-conscious efforts reframed a race-neutral reform like GP as a vehicle for equity rather than a generic student success strategy. These efforts embody what Felix and Ramirez (2020) describe as race-explicit policy enactment—intentional strategies that confront structural racism directly instead of relying on race-neutral or universalist approaches.

Limitations and future directions for research

This study analyzes only SOAA reports which are state-mandated progress reports of GP implementation in the CCC system. While these documents offer valuable insight into how colleges articulate equity-oriented discourses in relation to GP, they do not capture the full complexity of how those intentions play out in day-to-day practice. Plans may reflect aspirational language or compliance with state templates rather than genuine, enacted change on the ground. Additionally, reports on GP might be shaped by the time and resources educational practitioners have to complete them. To account for these intricacies, we recommend longitudinal, mixed-methods studies and implementation case studies to examine whether these discursive shifts manifest in policies, resource allocations, and classroom practices over time. Particular attention should be given to how community colleges prioritize students of color in their implementation of GP. Embedding such real-time, practice-based data will strengthen transparency about plan-to-practice gaps and set a clearer agenda for understanding sustained organizational change in community colleges through GP.

Additionally, we recognize the ongoing federal attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion. Future research can explore how the current political climate impacts the race-conscious implementation of GP. Future research can also investigate how leadership structures such as presidential turnover, shared governance arrangements, and the role of equity offices shape GP implementation. Comparative research across districts and regions could further reveal how differences in demographics, resources, and contexts affect whether GP reforms are framed and enacted in ways that advance racial equity.

Recommendations for policy and practice

The findings point to the need for change at both the system and campus levels to ensure GP fulfills its promise of bringing equity-minded organizational change in the CCC system in order to better serve students of color. System leaders should revisit the structure and language of the SOAA to explicitly name racism and support more race-conscious reporting. This includes replacing deficit-framed prompts with ones that require colleges to reflect on how their redesign strategies respond to the needs of students of color. Leaving equity open to interpretation invites vague, race-neutral responses. Colleges need clearer guidance that centers racially minoritized students and requires reporting that reflects specific, intentional efforts to confront inequities. At the campus level, equity work must not be confined to a single office or individual. Shared leadership models should be adopted, where responsibility for racial equity is distributed across roles, units, and reporting functions. Without this shift, equity will continue to be unevenly taken up and inconsistently implemented across GP pillars. Lastly, professional development must address how routine institutional practices such as planning, documentation, and reporting either reinforce or interrupt racialized structures. Without attention to these structural conditions, GP risks becoming another neutral reform that maintains the status quo rather than challenging it.

Conclusion

In Death with Interruptions, Saramago (2008) reminds the reader that “one cannot be too careful with words, they change their minds just as people do” (Saramago p. 67). This idea is especially relevant in educational reform, where language shapes not only policy but also the practice. Colleges need to be careful, explicit, and intentional with the words they use to describe their students and how they intend to serve them through policy and its implementation. Vague language, deficit-oriented framing, and race-evasive discourse allow educational practitioners to shift their commitments when it comes to serving students of color through policy implementation. In this case, the implementation of the implementation of GP.

In the CCC system, whether GP advances racial equity depends not only on the practices colleges adopt, but also on how colleges name race, frame equity, and confront the ideological underpinnings of educational inequality through their reform work. Our analysis shows that equity is not inherent to GP. California Community Colleges must build equity through race-conscious implementation, intentional language use, and deliberate action. Without this, GP risks becoming another reform that upholds the status quo. As colleges continue to scale GP, their willingness to name and engage race directly will determine whether equity in GP is symbolic or becomes transformative, especially for those students with the most to gain from educational opportunities.

Data availability statement

The datasets presented in this article are not readily available because of the data sharing agreement between the researcher and the California Community College System. However, each of the reports in available for analyzing since they are public records. Requests to access the datasets should be directed to aW5mb0BjY2Njby5lZHU=.

Author contributions

CG: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft. EF: Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. RS: Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. SV: Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. NO: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft. CF: Writing – review & editing, Writing – original draft.

Funding

The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research and/or publication of this article.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Generative AI statement

The author(s) declare that no Gen AI was used in the creation of this manuscript.

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Footnotes

1. ^ In this study, access refers to the CCCs’ capacity to open the door for students of color to enroll in higher education, consistent with their open-admissions mission. Opportunity goes beyond entry and denotes the structures and supports that allow students of color to persist, complete credentials, transfer to four-year institutions, and enter career pathways leading to mobility. As a reform, Guided Pathways is intended not only to provide access but to ensure racially equitable opportunities for success once students are inside the system.

2. ^Racial equity refers to the intentional effort to identify, address, and eliminate structural barriers that disadvantage students of color in higher education. A racial equity lens requires colleges to confront how policies, practices, and ideologies reproduce racialized inequities and to center the experiences and outcomes of students of color. In this study, because the focus is on how students of color are centered and prioritized within the implementation of GP in the CCC system, the term equity refers specifically to racial equity. Accordingly, the terms equity and racial equity are used interchangeably.

3. ^ We analyze 115 SOAA reports from the 116 community colleges that make up the CCC system.

4. ^ The race-explicit examples in Table 2 are analytic illustrations language found in the SOAA reports. We use them to highlight how the same GP pillars could be framed through an equity-minded, race-conscious lens. We also recognize that practitioners operate in highly politicized environments where naming race can be constrained. This limitation is not just methodological but structural: if colleges cannot name race explicitly, then equity-mindedness cannot be fully enacted, and GP risks remaining a race-neutral compliance exercise rather than a vehicle for racial equity.

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