LAUSR

Abstract Yosso’s community cultural wealth (CCW) shifted conversations about educational inequality from deficit perspectives to those that acknowledge the assets People of Color bring to school. CCW represents the accumulation of students' unique forms of capital, many of which have historically gone unrecognized by schools. This study applies CCW to the schooling experiences of bilingual middle school students who achieved English proficiency and enrolled in advanced coursework. Observations and in-depth interviews with students and their teachers revealed that merely possessing and identifying forms of capital is not enough to guarantee academic success. While students in this study benefitted from some forms of capital, they also possessed resources that lie dormant. Activating capital to transform into wealth required both student agency and support from outsiders. Implications from this study call for educators and researchers to work in spaces between capital and wealth.