The book Inequality by Christopher Jencks is in one sense an arid waste of somewhat confusing and misleading statistics between chapter one and chapter nine, and, in another sense, a destructive, unscientific critique of American education and families. Jencks' interpretation comes down hard on his basic feeling that "The crucial problem today is that relatively few people view income inequality as a serious problem; indeed the Nixon administration apparently convinced itself that income was too equally distributed in 1968 and that the rich needed additional incentives to get even richer . The Kennedy and Johnson administrations were only marginally better. Neither made any explicit effort to equalize incomes; the subject was hardly discussed. Instead reformers focused on equalizing opportunity." This view is probably correct but it is no excuse for an unscholarly, unscientific polemic against far from "peripheral institutions," which is Jencks' evaluation of the American schools. This book states

Inequality, A Reassessment of the Effect of Family and Schooling in America.

To the extent that students benefit from high-achieving peers, tracking will help strong students and hurt weak ones. However, all students may benefit if tracking allows teachers to present material at a more appropriate level. Lower-achieving pupils are particularly likely to benefit from tracking if teachers would otherwise have incentives to teach to the top of the distribution. We propose a simple model nesting these effects. We compare 61 Kenyan schools in which students were randomly assigned to a first grade class with 60 in which students were assigned based on initial achievement. In non-tracking schools, students randomly assigned to academically stronger peers scored higher, consistent with a positive direct effect of academically strong peers. However, compared to their counterparts in non-tracking schools, students in tracking schools scored 0.14 standard deviations higher after 18 months, and this effect persisted one year after the program ended. Furthermore, students at all levels of the distribution benefited from tracking. Students near the median of the pre-test distribution benefited similarly whether assigned to the lower or upper section. A natural interpretation is that the direct effect of high-achieving peers is positive, but that tracking benefited lower-achieving pupils indirectly by allowing teachers to teach at a level more appropriate to them.

Replication data for: Peer Effects, Teacher Incentives, and the Impact of Tracking: Evidence from a Randomized Evaluation in Kenya

This article explores the educational performance and careers of the children of immigrant families and those of French natives in secondary schooling in France. Using a rich longitudinal dataset (the 1995 Panel of the Ministry of Education), we compare the parents' educational expectations with the school careers of their children. We identify higher educational expectations among immigrant parents than among natives from a similar social background. Although immigrant students begin the college with a poorer school performance than native students, they tend to shorten this distance with the simple passage of time. Besides, most of this disadvantage is explained by class-related factors. Among the working class, there are few differences in the educational careers of children of immigrants and those of French-born children in upper secondary education. Nonetheless, students from a North African ancestry seem to be less able to materialize their aspirations than the descendants of Portuguese immigrants, and thus express more frequently their dissatisfaction with their orientation in the vocational or technological track.

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00571884/document

The school careers of ethnic minority youth in France

A researcher or a journalist trying to compare the situation of ethnic and racial minorities in the United States and in France immediately confronts a crippling obstacle. The concept of ‘ethnic and racial minority’ as such is not used in France. This is not simply a matter of vocabulary –something the French typically like to argue about; the problem rather lies in the very incomparability of populations that one is talking about. Many of the categories that do exist in political discourse and public debate can of course be found in statistics. But there are no data describing the situation of minorities in France that could be compared with those produced in the United States. This state of affairs in French statistics – gathering has been the subject of major criticism for some 20 years now; it has gotten to the point that it has triggered a controversy of rare violence between those that would like to see statistics take into account the diversity of the population and those who denounce the danger that such statistics might pose of ethnicizing or racializing society. The media focus on the contentiousness of this debate has been such as to sometimes lose sight of the very existence of discrimination and the flaws of the Republican model that are at the root of the controversy in the first place.

The Choice of Ignorance: The Debate on Ethnic and Racial Statistics in France

The schools-as-communities perspective provides a popular explanation for school-disruptive behavior, stating that interpersonal bonding at school and feelings of school belonging prevent misconduct. In this article, we build on this perspective in three ways. First, we test whether the preventive influence of school belonging acts at the individual or school level. Secondly, we test whether a distinction should be made between the different actors with whom students bond at school, by assessing whether perceived teacher support, school belonging, and peer attachment relate differently to school misconduct. Lastly, the present study investigates whether the associations of bonding with teachers, peers and the school with school misconduct differ by socio-ethnic school context. Multilevel analyses were performed on data from the Flemish Educational Assessment. The sample consisted of 11,872 students (51.4% female) in 85 schools, most of whom were natives (88.8%), with immigrants (11.2%) mostly having Turkish or Moroccan backgrounds (both about 30% of immigrants in the sample), and others Southern-European (16%), Eastern-European (8%), North-African (5%), or other (17%) backgrounds. Results showed that the students’ individual feelings of bonding with peers, teachers and school associate with school misconduct, rather than the overall school cohesion. Results further showed that, while higher perceived teacher support and school belonging related to less school misconduct, higher peer attachment was associated with higher rates of school misconduct. No differences were found by socio-ethnic context. Implications are discussed.

School belonging and school misconduct: the differing role of teacher and peer attachment.

Cet article propose une reflexion sur la segregation ethnique au college a partir d’une 
analyse de la repartition de plus de 144 000 eleves dans les 333 colleges de l’academie de 
Bordeaux. Dans un premier temps, l’auteur propose la construction d’un indicateur permettant de definir la variable ethnique a partir du prenom des eleves, et ainsi de distinguer les 
eleves « autochtones » et « allochtones ». Puis, il observe la repartition des eleves notamment en fonction de cette variable dans l’ensemble des colleges de l’academie pour montrer 
que la dispersion est considerable et que tres peu d’etablissements scolarisent une grande 
partie des eleves allochtones. Enfin, l’auteur examine les consequences scolaires de la 
segregation ethnique, en termes de resultats scolaires et d’orientation en fin de troisieme.

La ségrégation ethnique au collège et ses conséquences

Decrypter les strategies de choix des parents lors de l'inscription de leurs enfants dans une ecole. D'apres l'etude des prenoms, il s'avere que 10% des colleges concentrent 40% des eleves issus de l'immigration (academine Bordeaux).

/pdf/l-apartheid-scolaire-enquete-sur-la-segregation-ethnique-4sv8uf6jhi.pdf

L'Apartheid scolaire. Enquête sur la ségrégation ethnique dans les collèges.

Georges Felouzis : Interaktionen in der Schulklasse und Schulerfolg. Eine Untersuchung zu den Unterschieden zwischen Madchen und Jungen. ; ; Zweck ist hier, die Unterschiede im Schulerfolg zwischen Madchen und Jungen durch eine Untersuchung der Interaktionen in der Schulklasse aufzuzeigen. Die Erklarungshypothese betrifft die interaktiven Aspekte der padagogischen Kommunikation ; die Madchen rentabilisieren besser diese Kommunikation durch die Beherrschung des « Schulerberufs ». Aus der Untersuchung (700 Schuler der sechsten und funften Klasse wurden beobachtet) geht hervor, dass die Madchen interaktionelle Kompetenzen entwickeln (Beteiligung zwischen Gleichgestellten, Gruppenarbeit, seltenes Unfugverhalten, Beharrlichkeit in der Erftillung der Aufgaben, usw.), die die Ursache sind fur den besseren Abschluss im Vergleich zu den Jungen. Unbeschadet der Frage zu den Geschlechtsunterschieden, wird die Bedeutung der schulischen Interaktion unterstrichen in der Definition der Entstehung des schulischen Erfolgs oder Misserfolgs.

Interactions en classe et réussite scolaire: une analyse des différences filles-garçons

L’etude des marches scolaires et de leurs consequences sur les inegalites est aujourd’hui un des objets privilegies de la sociologie de l’ecole. Pourtant, l’une des questions est de savoir comment definir ces « marches scolaires » et comment leur donner un contenu empirique et theorique. C’est le propos de cet article qui analyse les marches scolaires a partir des categories de l’economie de la qualite. Deux enquetes empiriques, l’une sur les colleges et l’autre sur les lycees, nourrissent ici la reflexion pour montrer quelles sont les caracteristiques de ces marches, la facon dont ils fonctionnent, quels en sont les acteurs et quelles consequences ils produisent sur les inegalites scolaires. Trois resultats principaux ressortent. D’abord que l’education est un bien tres particulier ou l’incertitude sur la qualite est grande, l’information difficile a obtenir et ou l’ensemble des acteurs en presence participe du fonctionnement du marche de la qualite educative. Il ressort ensuite que les acteurs publics sont aussi partie prenante des marches scolaires en agissant en fonction d’une gestion quantitative des flux d’eleves, et non dans la perspective de reguler explicitement ces marches. Enfin, nous montrons que les marches scolaires sont des marches a « feed-back » : des lors qu’une part de la qualite scolaire d’un etablissement est le resultat de la nature de son public, les marches scolaires contribuent a en definir par la meme la qualite educative tant du point de vue de l’efficacite que de la qualite de vie scolaire.

/pdf/les-marches-scolaires-une-analyse-en-termes-d-economie-de-la-1t4iyk283s.pdf

Georges Felouzis

Papers

La ségrégation ethnique au collège et ses conséquences

L'Apartheid scolaire. Enquête sur la ségrégation ethnique dans les collèges.

Interactions en classe et réussite scolaire: une analyse des différences filles-garçons

Les « marchés scolaires » : une analyse en termes d'économie de la qualité

La condition étudiante