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Diverging Disparities: Race, Parental Income, and Children’s Math Scores, 1960 to 2009 Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2021-03-19 Jordan A. Conwell
In recent decades, the black–white test score disparity has decreased, and the test score disparity between children of high- versus low-income parents has increased. This study focuses on a comparison that has, to date, fallen between the separate literatures on these diverging trends: black and white students whose parents have similarly low, middle, or high incomes (i.e., same income or race within
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Educational Meaning Making and Language Learning: Understanding the Educational Incorporation of Unaccompanied, Undocumented Latinx Youth Workers in the United States Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2021-02-22 Stephanie L. Canizales
Immigration scholars agree that educational attainment is essential for the success of immigrant youth in U.S. society and functions as a key indicator of how youth will fare in their transition into adulthood. Research warns of downward or stagnant mobility for people with lower levels of educational attainment. Yet much existing research takes for granted that immigrant youth have access to a normative
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Experimentally Estimated Impacts of School Vouchers on Educational Attainments of Moderately and Severely Disadvantaged Students Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2021-02-03 Albert Cheng, Paul E. Peterson
For decades, social theorists have posited—and descriptive accounts have shown—that students isolated by both social class and ethnicity suffer extreme deprivations that limit the effectiveness of equal-opportunity interventions. Even educational programs that yield positive results for moderately disadvantaged students may not prove beneficial for those who possess less of the economic, social, and
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Educational Downgrading: Adult Education and Downward Mobility Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2021-01-11 Corey Moss-Pech, Steven H. Lopez, Laurie Michaels
Scholarship on adult education throughout the life course focuses on the relationship between education and upward mobility. Scholars rarely examine how adults’ educational aspirations or trajectories are affected by downward mobility or an increasingly precarious labor market. Drawing on in-depth qualitative interviews with 21 job seekers in the post–Great Recession labor market in the United States
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Encouraged or Discouraged? The Effect of Adverse Macroeconomic Conditions on School Leaving and Reentry Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2020-09-24 Dirk Witteveen
Existing research generally confirms a countercyclical education enrollment, whereby youths seek shelter in the educational system to avoid hardships in the labor market: the “discouraged worker” thesis. Alternatively, the “encouraged worker” thesis predicts that economic downturns steer individuals away from education because of higher opportunity costs. This study provides a formal test of these
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Western Colonialism and World Society in National Education Systems: Global Trends in the Use of High-Stakes Exams at Early Ages, 1960 to 2010 Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2020-09-18 Jared Furuta
National high-stakes exams are a fundamental structural feature of education systems around the world. Despite their importance in shaping educational stratification, little is known about the social processes that influence how and why national high-stakes exams are used at early ages on a global basis. I argue that global trends in the use of primary-level high-stakes exams during the postwar period
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Sorting Schools: A Computational Analysis of Charter School Identities and Stratification Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2020-09-01 Jaren R. Haber
Research shows charter schools are more segregated by race and class than are traditional public schools. I investigate an underexamined mechanism for this segregation: Charter schools project identities corresponding to parents’ race- and class-specific parenting styles and educational values. I use computational text analysis to detect the emphasis on inquiry-based learning in the websites of all
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How Political and Ecological Contexts Shape Community College Transfer Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2020-08-31 Lauren Schudde, Huriya Jabbar, Catherine Hartman
Broad higher education contexts shape how community college students and postsecondary personnel approach transfer from community colleges to baccalaureate-granting institutions. We leverage the concept of strategic action fields, an organizational theory illuminating processes that play out as actors determine “who gets what” in an existing power structure, to understand the role of political-ecological
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Race, Gender, and Parental College Savings: Assessing Economic and Academic Factors Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2020-07-22 Natasha Quadlin, Jordan A. Conwell
This article assesses the relationships between race, gender, and parental college savings. Some prior studies have investigated race differences in parental college savings, yet none have taken an intersectional approach, and most of these studies were conducted with cohorts of students who predate key demographic changes among U.S. college goers (e.g., the reversal of the gender gap in college completion)
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The Societal Consequences of Higher Education Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2020-07-21 Evan Schofer, Francisco O. Ramirez, John W. Meyer
The advent of mass schooling played a pivotal role in European societies of the later nineteenth century, transforming rural peasants into national citizens. The late-twentieth-century global expansion of higher education ushered in new transformations, propelling societal rationalization and organizing, and knitting the world into a more integrated society and economy. We address four key dynamics:
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Imagining the World: Conceptions and Determinants of Internationalization in Higher Education Curricula Worldwide Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2020-06-15 Mike Zapp, Julia C. Lerch
Cross-national analyses of university curricula are rare, particularly with a focus on internationalization, commonly studied as impacting higher education through the mobility of people, programs, and campuses. By contrast, we argue that university knowledge shapes globalization by producing various sociopolitical conceptions beyond the nation-state. We examine variants of such a globalized society
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Other Duties as Assigned: The Ambiguous Role of the High School Counselor Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2020-06-10 Mary Kate Blake
Previous research suggests high school counselors are not living up to their potential as social/emotional, academic, and postsecondary counselors. This article addresses this concern by studying how schools and districts utilize counselors. Through interviews and observations of high school counselors, administrators, and counselor educators in an urban midwestern community, I find that counselors
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Pipeline Dreams: Occupational Plans and Gender Differences in STEM Major Persistence and Completion Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2020-06-03 Kim A. Weeden, Dafna Gelbgiser, Stephen L. Morgan
In the United States, women are more likely than men to enter and complete college, but they remain underrepresented among baccalaureates in science-related majors. We show that in a cohort of college entrants who graduated from high school in 2004, men were more than twice as likely as women to complete baccalaureate degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, including
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Great Equalizer or Great Selector? Reconsidering Education as a Moderator of Intergenerational Transmissions Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2020-06-02 Jeremy E. Fiel
A long-standing consensus among sociologists holds that educational attainment has an equalizing effect that increases mobility by moderating other avenues of intergenerational status transmission. This study argues that the evidence supporting this consensus may be distorted by two problems: measurement error in parents’ socioeconomic standing and the educational system’s tendency to progressively
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Bad Apples or Bad Orchards? An Organizational Analysis of Educator Cheating on Standardized Accountability Tests Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2020-06-01 Jacob Hibel, Daphne M. Penn
Using an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design, we analyze quantitative administrative and survey data and qualitative archival data to examine the organizational character of standardized test cheating among educators in Georgia elementary schools. Applying a theoretical typology that identifies distinct forms of rule breaking in bureaucratic organizations, we find that teacher-focused, individual-level
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The Right Fit? Classroom Mismatch in Middle School and Its Inconsistent Effect on Student Learning Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2020-05-28 Brian R. Fitzpatrick, Sarah Mustillo
Research on college admissions shows that all students tend to benefit from overmatching, but high-status students are most likely to be overmatched, and low-status students are most likely to be undermatched. This study examines whether mismatching takes place when students are sorted into classrooms in middle school. Given prior research on effectively maintained inequality, we theorize that classroom
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Biracial Identity Development at Historically White and Historically Black Colleges and Universities Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2020-05-25 Kristen A. Clayton
This study explores the relationship between biracial identity development and college context. I draw on interviews with 49 black-white biracial first- and second-year students attending historically black colleges/universities (HBCUs) or historically white colleges/universities (HWCUs) and follow-up interviews with the same students at the end of college to explore how and why their racial identities
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Learning Inequality in Francophone Africa: School Quality and the Educational Achievement of Rich and Poor Children Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2020-05-19 Rob J. Gruijters, Julia A. Behrman
Influential reports about the “learning crisis” in the global South generally pay insufficient attention to social inequalities in learning. In this study, we explore the association between family socioeconomic status and learning outcomes in 10 francophone African countries using data from the Programme for the Analysis of Education Systems, a standardized assessment of pupils’ mathematics and reading
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Choosing Schools in Changing Places: Examining School Enrollment in Gentrifying Neighborhoods Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2020-03-06 Jennifer Candipan
School choice expansion in recent decades has weakened the strong link between neighborhoods and schools created under a strict residence-based school assignment system, decoupling residential and school enrollment decisions for some families. Recent work suggests that the neighborhood-school link is weakening the most in neighborhoods experiencing gentrification. Using a novel combination of individual
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Relationships between an ADHD Diagnosis and Future School Behaviors among Children with Mild Behavioral Problems Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2020-03-04 Jayanti Owens
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is the most common behavioral disorder among U.S. children. ADHD diagnoses have risen among children with both severe and mild behavioral problems, partly in response to mounting academic pressure. This study examines the consequences of ADHD diagnosis. Diagnosis can bring beneficial pharmacological treatment and social supports, but it can also trigger
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Educational Status Hierarchies, After-School Activities, and Parenting Logics: Lessons from Canada Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2020-02-28 Janice Aurini, Rod Missaghian, Roger Pizarro Milian
This article draws from American research on ‘‘concerted cultivation’’ to compare the parenting logics of 41 upper-middle-class parents in Toronto, Canada. We consider not only how parents structure their children’s after-school time (what parents do) but also how the broader ecology of schooling informs their parenting logics (how they rationalize their actions). We find that parenting practices mirror
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Does Achievement Rise Fastest with School Choice, School Resources, or Family Resources? Chile from 2002 to 2013 Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2020-01-22 Alvaro Hofflinger, Paul T. von Hippel
Debates in education policy draw on different theories about how to raise children’s achievement. The school competition theory holds that achievement rises when students can choose among competing schools. The school resources theory holds that achievement rises with schools’ resources per student. The family resources theory holds that achievement rises as parents become more educated and earn higher
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Where Ivy Matters: The Educational Backgrounds of U.S. Cultural Elites Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2020-01-10 Steven Brint, Komi T. German, Kayleigh Anderson-Natale, Zeinab F. Shuker, Suki Wang
Status transmission theory argues that leading educational institutions prepare individuals from privileged backgrounds for positions of prestige and power in their societies. We examine the educational backgrounds of more than 2,900 members of the U.S. cultural elite and compare these backgrounds to a sample of nearly 4,000 business and political leaders. We find that the leading U.S. educational
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Delayed Benefits: Effects of California School District Bond Elections on Achievement by Socioeconomic Status Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2019-12-12 Emily Rauscher
Contradictory evidence of the relationship between education funding and student achievement could reflect heterogeneous effects by revenue source or student characteristics. This study examines potential heterogeneous effects of a particular type of local revenue—bond funds for capital investments—on achievement by socioeconomic status. Comparing California school districts within a narrow window
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From Major Preferences to Major Choices: Gender and Logics of Major Choice Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2019-11-09 Natasha Quadlin
Research shows that college students choose majors for a variety of reasons. Some students are motivated by potential economic returns, others want to take engaging classes, and others still would like opportunities to help people in their jobs. But how do these preferences map onto students’ actual major choices? This question is particularly intriguing in light of gender differences in fields of
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Measuring High School Curricular Intensity over Three Decades Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2019-10-29 Megan Austin
This article presents a new measure of curricular intensity that is objective, parsimonious, clearly defined, replicable, and comparable over time for use by researchers interested in examining trends, causes, and outcomes of high school course taking. After proposing a reduced-form version of Adelman’s curricular intensity index comprised of number of courses completed in English and core science
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The Role of Intergenerational Networks in Students’ School Performance in Two Differentiated Educational Systems: A Comparison of Between- and Within-Individual Estimates Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2019-10-16 Sara Geven, Herman G. van de Werfhorst
In this article, we study the relationship between intergenerational networks in classrooms (i.e., relationships among parents in classrooms, and between parents and their children’s classmates) and students’ grades. Using panel data on complete classroom networks of approximately 3,000 adolescents and their parents in approximately 200 classes in both Germany and the Netherlands, we compare estimates
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Inequality and Opportunity in a Perfect Storm of Graduate Student Debt Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2019-09-20 Jaymes Pyne, Eric Grodsky
Recent efforts to understand aggregate student loan debt have shifted the focus away from undergraduate borrowing and toward dramatically rising debt among graduate and professional students. We suggest educational debt plays a key role in social stratification by either deterring bachelor’s degree holders from disadvantaged and underrepresented backgrounds from pursuing lucrative careers through advanced
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Liberal Individualism and the Globalization of Education as a Human Right: The Worldwide Decline of Early Tracking, 1960–2010 Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2019-09-13 Jared Furuta
This article examines global changes in tracking policies over the post–World War II period. Using a newly constructed quantitative panel data set of 139 countries from 1960 to 2010, I show that a majority of countries around the world have shifted away from sharply tracked institutions at the junior secondary level toward more formally “open” and “comprehensive” ones. To explain this trend, I argue
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The Distribution of School Quality: Do Schools Serving Mostly White and High-SES Children Produce the Most Learning? Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2019-08-23 Douglas B. Downey, David M. Quinn, Melissa Alcaraz
What is schools’ role in the stratification system? One view is that schools are an important mechanism for perpetuating inequality because children from advantaged backgrounds (white and high socioeconomic) enjoy better school learning environments than their disadvantaged peers. But it is difficult to know this with confidence because children’s development is a product of both school and nonschool
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Is Daily Parental Help with Homework Helpful? Reanalyzing National Data Using a Propensity Score–Based Approach Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2019-08-02 Angran Li, Daniel Hamlin
Previous analyses of large national datasets have tended to report a negative relationship between parental homework help and student achievement. Yet these studies have not examined heterogeneity in this relationship based on the propensity for a parent to provide homework help. By using a propensity score–based approach, this study investigates the relationship between daily parental homework help
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The Purposes of Refugee Education: Policy and Practice of Including Refugees in National Education Systems Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2019-07-16 Sarah Dryden-Peterson, Elizabeth Adelman, Michelle J. Bellino, Vidur Chopra
This article explores the understood purposes of refugee education at global, national, and school levels. To do so, we focus on a radical shift in global policy to integrate refugees into national education systems and the processes of vernacularization accompanying its widespread implementation. We use a comparative case study approach; our dataset comprises global policy documents and original interviews
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‘‘I Just Need a Job!’’ Behavioral Solutions, Structural Problems, and the Hidden Curriculum of Parenting Education Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2019-07-03 Maia Cucchiara, Erin Cassar, Monica Clark
Parenting education programs aim to teach parents, often low-income mothers, a set of skills, behaviors, and attitudes believed to promote improved opportunities for their children. Parenting programs are often offered in schools, with instructors teaching pregnant or parenting teens about child development, attachment, and discipline strategies. Despite the large numbers of participants and significant
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Beyond Tracking and Detracking: The Dimensions of Organizational Differentiation in Schools Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2019-05-26 Thurston Domina, Andrew McEachin, Paul Hanselman, Priyanka Agarwal, NaYoung Hwang, Ryan W. Lewis
Schools use an array of strategies to match curricula and instruction to students’ heterogeneous skills. Although generations of scholars have debated ‘‘tracking’’ and its consequences, the literature fails to account for diversity of school-level sorting practices. In this article, we draw on the work of Sørensen and others to articulate and develop empirical measures of five distinct dimensions of
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The Varying Effects of Neighborhood Disadvantage on College Graduation: Moderating and Mediating Mechanisms Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2019-05-20 Brian L. Levy, Ann Owens, Robert J. Sampson
This study estimates the effect of neighborhood disadvantage on bachelor’s degree attainment with data from a long-term follow-up of the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods. We focus on heterogeneous effects by race and class as well as individual and neighborhood mechanisms that might explain observed patterns, including parents’ educational expectations, collective efficacy, social
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Understanding Variation in Estimates of Diversionary Effects of Community College Entrance: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2019-05-12 Lauren Schudde, Raymond Stanley Brown
Decades of research have estimated the effect of entering a community college on bachelor’s degree attainment. In this study, we examined the influence of methodological choices, including sample restrictions and identification strategies, on estimated effects from studies published between 1970 and 2017. After systematically reviewing the literature, we leveraged meta-analysis to assess average estimates
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Emergence of Third Spaces: Exploring Trans Students’ Campus Climate Perceptions Within Collegiate Environments Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2019-04-23 Jason C. Garvey, Sydnee Viray, Katie Stango, Claire Estep, Jae Jaeger
Our study aims to understand trans students’ perceptions of campus climate, with a particular focus on students’ demographics, academic experiences, and cocurricular experiences. We use Bhabha’s concept of third space as an epistemological lens and Rankin and Reason’s transformational tapestry model as a theoretical framework. Using a national sample of 207 trans collegians from the National LGBTQ
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The Many (Subtle) Ways Parents Game the System: Mixed-method Evidence on the Transition into Secondary-school Tracks in Germany Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2019-03-19 Hanna Dumont, Denise Klinge, Kai Maaz
We analyze the subtle mechanisms at work in the interaction between families and schools that underlie social inequalities at the transition point from elementary school into secondary-school tracks in Berlin, Germany. We do so by combining quantitative data from a large-scale survey and assessment study (N = 3,935 students and their parents) with qualitative data from in-depth interviews with parents
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Getting Ahead in Singapore: How Neighborhoods, Gender, and Ethnicity Affect Enrollment into Elite Schools Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2019-03-05 Vincent Chua, Eik Leong Swee, Barry Wellman
Is education the social leveler it promises to be? Nowhere is this question better addressed than in Singapore, the emblematic modern-day meritocracy where education has long been hailed as the most important ticket to elite status. In particular, what accounts for gender and ethnic gaps in enrollment into Singapore’s elite junior colleges—the key sorters in the country’s education system? We consider
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Do Well-off Families Compensate for Low Cognitive Ability? Evidence on Social Inequality in Early Schooling from a Twin Study Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2019-02-10 Carlos J. Gil-Hernández
This article bridges the literature on educational inequality between and within families to test whether high–socioeconomic status (SES) families compensate for low cognitive ability in the transition to secondary education in Germany. The German educational system of early-ability tracking (at age 10) represents a stringent setting for the compensatory hypothesis. Overall, previous literature offers
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The Social Pipeline: How Friend Influence and Peer Exposure Widen the STEM Gender Gap Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2019-01-29 Isabel J. Raabe, Zsófia Boda, Christoph Stadtfeld
Individuals’ favorite subjects in school can predetermine their educational and occupational careers. If girls develop weaker preferences for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), it can contribute to macrolevel gender inequalities in income and status. Relying on large-scale panel data on adolescents from Sweden (218 classrooms, 4,998 students), we observe a widening gender gap in preferring
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Adult Education, Stratification, and Regime Change: Upgrading and Sidestepping in Russia, 1965–2005 Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2019-01-04 Yuliya Kosyakova, Theodore P. Gerber
Adult education influences how labor market opportunities are structured in the later life course. We propose a theoretical framework for understanding the stratifying role of adult education resting on the distinction between two forms of adult education—upgrading and sidestepping: Resources, incentives, and selection processes systematically structure rates of participation. Using educational history
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Aspiration Squeeze: The Struggle of Children to Positively Selected Immigrants Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2018-12-23 Per Engzell
Why is it that children of immigrants often outdo their ethnic majority peers in educational aspirations yet struggle to keep pace with their achievements? This article advances the explanation that many immigrant communities, while positively selected on education, still have moderate absolute levels of schooling. Therefore, parents’ education may imbue children with high expectations but not always
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Symbolically Maintained Inequality: How Harvard and Stanford Students Construct Boundaries among Elite Universities Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2018-12-23 Amy J. Binder, Andrea R. Abel
The study of elites is enjoying a revival at a time of increasing economic inequality. Sociologists of education have been leaders in this area, researching how affluent families position their children to compete favorably in a highly stratified higher education system. However, scholars have done less research on how students do symbolic work of their own to bolster elite status. In this study, we
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Suspended Attitudes: Exclusion and Emotional Disengagement from School Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2018-12-07 Jaymes Pyne
We know far less about the unintended social-psychological consequences of out-of-school suspensions on students than we do of the academic, behavioral, and civic consequences. Drawing on theories of socialization and deviance, I explore how suspension events influence students’ emotional engagement in school through changes in their attitudes. Using longitudinal middle school survey data connected
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‘‘I Can Turn It on When I Need To’’: Pre-college Integration, Culture, and Peer Academic Engagement among Black and Latino/a Engineering Students Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2018-12-07 Anthony M. Johnson
Drawing on interviews with 38 black and Latino/a engineering students at a predominantly white, elite university, I use a cultural analytic framework to explicate the role of pre–college integration in the heterogeneous psychosocial and academic experiences of students of color on predominantly white campuses. I identify three cultural strategies students of color adopt to navigate the university’s
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Quantification, Inequality, and the Contestation of School Closures in Philadelphia Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2018-11-28 Meg Caven
Public education relies heavily on data to document stratified inputs and outcomes, and to design interventions aimed at reducing disparities. Yet despite the promise and prevalence of data-driven policies and practices, inequalities persist. Indeed, contemporary scholarship has begun to question whether and how processes such as quantification and commensuration contribute to rather than remediate
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Inequality in Reading and Math Skills Forms Mainly before Kindergarten: A Replication, and Partial Correction, of “Are Schools the Great Equalizer?” Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2018-09-27 Paul T. von Hippel, Joseph Workman, Douglas B. Downey
When do children become unequal in reading and math skills? Some research claims that inequality grows mainly before school begins. Some research claims that schools cause inequality to grow. And some research—including the 2004 study ‘‘Are Schools the Great Equalizer?’’—claims that inequality grows mainly during summer vacations. Unfortunately, the test scores used in the Great Equalizer study suffered
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How School Socioeconomic Status Affects Achievement Growth across School Transitions in Early Educational Careers Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2018-09-23 Amy G. Langenkamp, William Carbonaro
Our study investigates how changing socioeconomic status (SES) composition, measured as percentage free and reduced priced lunch (FRL), affects students’ math achievement growth after the transition to middle school. Using the life course framework of cumulative advantage, we investigate how timing, individual FRL status, and legacy effects of a student’s elementary school SES composition each affect
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What’s Taking You So Long? Examining the Effects of Social Class on Completing a Bachelor’s Degree in Four Years Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2018-09-21 David Zarifa, Jeannie Kim, Brad Seward, David Walters
Despite improved access in expanded postsecondary systems, the great majority of bachelor’s degree graduates are taking considerably longer than the allotted four years to complete their four-year degrees. Taking longer to finish one’s BA has become so pervasive in the United States that it has become the norm for official statistics released by the Department of Education to report graduation rates
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Intergenerational Mobility at the Top of the Educational Distribution Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2018-09-20 Florencia Torche
Research has shown that intergenerational mobility is higher among individuals with a college degree than those with lower levels of schooling. However, mobility declines among graduate degree holders. This finding questions the meritocratic power of higher education. Prior research has been hampered, however, by the small samples of advanced degree holders in representative surveys. Drawing on a large
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Timing Is Everything: Late Registration and Stratified Access to School Choice Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2018-06-21 Kelley Fong, Sarah Faude
School choice policies necessarily impose registration timelines, constraining access to schools of choice for students who register late. Drawing on administrative data, survey data, and interviews with 33 parents in Boston, we find that late registration is common and highly stratified: Nearly half of black kindergarteners miss the first registration deadline, a rate almost three times higher than
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A Downward Spiral? Childhood Suspension and the Path to Juvenile Arrest Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2018-06-18 Joel Mittleman
There is growing concern that suspensions trigger a ‘‘downward spiral,’’ redirecting children’s trajectories away from school success and toward police contact. The current study tests this possibility, analyzing whether and in what ways childhood suspensions increase children’s risk for juvenile arrests. Combining 15 years of data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study with contextual
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Neighborhood Violence, Peer Effects, and Academic Achievement in Chicago Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2018-06-12 Julia Burdick-Will
Research shows that exposure to local neighborhood violence is associated with students’ behavior and engagement in the classroom. Given the social nature of schooling, these symptoms not only affect individual students but have the potential to spill over and influence their classmates’ learning, as well. In this study, I use detailed administrative data from five complete cohorts of students in the
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Slipping Past the Test: Heterogeneous Effects of Social Background in the Context of Inconsistent Selection Mechanisms in Higher Education Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2018-05-28 Gordey Yastrebov, Yuliya Kosyakova, Dmitry Kurakin
In this article, we analyze how the existence of alternative pathways to higher education, which implies different selection mechanisms, shapes social inequality in educational attainment. We focus on the Russian educational system, in which higher education can be accessed from academic and vocational tracks, but the rules of admission to higher education from these tracks are different. Access through
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Falling Behind: Lingering Costs of the High School Transition for Youth Friendships and Grades Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2018-02-27 Diane Felmlee, Cassie McMillan, Paulina Inara Rodis, D. Wayne Osgood
This study investigates the influence of structural transitions to high school on adolescents’ friendship networks and academic grades from 6th through 12th grade, in a direct comparison of students who do and do not transition. We utilize data from 14,462 youth in 51 networks from 26 districts (Promoting School–Community Partnerships to Enhance Resilience). Results underscore the challenging nature
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Do School Learning Opportunities Compound or Compensate for Background Inequalities? Evidence from the Case of Assignment to Effective Teachers. Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2018-02-26 Paul Hanselman
Are equal educational opportunities sufficient to narrow long-standing economic and racial inequalities in achievement? In this article, I test the hypothesis that poor and minority students benefit less from effective elementary school teachers than do their nonpoor and white peers, thus exacerbating inequalities. I use administrative data from public elementary schools in North Carolina to calculate
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Providing a ‘‘Leg Up’’: Parental Involvement and Opportunity Hoarding in College Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2018-02-20 Laura Hamilton, Josipa Roksa, Kelly Nielsen
Although higher education scholars are increasingly exploring disparities within institutions, they have yet to examine how parental involvement contributes to social-class variation in students’ experiences. We ask, what role do parents play in producing divergent college experiences for students from different class backgrounds? Relying on interviews with 41 families, including mothers, fathers,
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Latino/a Student Threat and School Disciplinary Policies and Practices Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2018-02-14 Kelly Welch, Allison Ann Payne
Using a nationally representative sample of approximately 3,500 public schools, this study builds on and extends our knowledge of how ‘‘minority threat’’ manifests within schools. We test whether various disciplinary policies and practices are mobilized in accordance with Latino/a student composition, presumably the result of a group response to perceptions that white racial dominance is jeopardized
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Surviving at the Street Level: How Counselors’ Implementation of School Choice Policy Shapes Students’ High School Destinations Sociol. Educ. (IF 3.647) Pub Date : 2017-12-22 Carolyn Sattin-Bajaj, Jennifer L. Jennings, Sean P. Corcoran, Elizabeth Christine Baker-Smith, Chantal Hailey
Given the dominance of residentially based school assignment, prior researchers have conceptualized K–12 enrollment decisions as beyond the purview of school actors. This paper questions the continued relevance of this assumption by studying the behavior of guidance counselors charged with implementing New York City’s universal high school choice policy. Drawing on structured interviews with 88 middle
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