Grounded in the traditions of Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) and Hip-Hop culture, Cyphers for Justice (CFJ) youth work alongside college students (undergraduate and graduate), professors, and community-based teaching artists to conduct research and present their findings on relevant social issues. As a critical approach that privileges the firsthand experiences and knowledge production of youth as agents of social change, engagement in YPAR contributes to a critical expansion of literacies that not only helps students to critically analyze their world but can also serve to reframe teachers' repertoires in curriculum and pedagogy. This is particularly important in current K-12 schooling, where the conflation of accountability measures with authentic student learning and achievement often leads to very narrow curricular and operational understandings of knowledge, language, and literacy. Educational institutions often perpetuate deficit perspectives by focusing on all of the skills and content that students lack, rather than working from a resource-rich perspective that emphasizes the cultural and experiential knowledge and literacies with which students already come to school. In this article, the authors argue that college readiness initiatives intended to prepare historically underserved students for college success must extend beyond writing competencies and comprehension skills.