Showing papers in "Sociology Of Education in 1999"

Moments of social inclusion and exclusion race, class, and cultural capital in family-school relationships

Abstract: This article presents a case study of parents' involvement with their third-grade children. Using interviews and classroom observations, the research revealed how some black parents, deeply concemed about the historical legacy of discrimination against blacks in schooling, approach the school with open criticisms. Since educators seek a positive and deferential role for parents in schooling, race appears to play an independent role in parents' ability to comply with educators' requests (although social class also mediates the ways in which black parents express their concerns). The results highlight the difference between possession and activation of capital and the value accorded displays of capital in particular settings. Taken together, the findings suggest the importance of focusing on moments of inclusion and exclusion in examining how individuals activate social and cultural capital

Race, Cultural Capital, and Educational Resources: Persistent Inequalities and Achievement Returns.

Abstract: Theories of cultural capital and family educational resources explain how and why background matters for achievement, yet it is unclear whether the processes described are equally applicable to nonwhites. The study presented here examined (1) the extent to which black and white students differ in cultural capital and educational resources, (2) the mediating role these attributes may play between family background and racial disparities in achievement, and (3) whether educational returns vary by racial group. The findings suggest that significant racial variations in cultural capital and household educational items are largely a function of disparities in family socioeconomic status, but that these resources have only a small mediating effect on the gap in black-white achievement. Black and low-SES students tend to receive less educational return, probably because of micropolitical evaluative processes at the school and classroom levels

Educational expectations of Asian American youths : Determinants and ethnic differences

Abstract: The study presented here explored three factors that may explain why distinct Asian American groups have higher educational expectations than do whites : favorable socioeconomic and background characteristics, demonstrated academic ability, and parents' high expectations. With data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study, the authors used linear and logistic multivariate regression models to examine these differences in educational expectations. The analyses indicated that although all Asian American ethnic groups have higher expectations than whites, the higher educational expectations of Asian American groups that are well assimilated into U.S. society are principally influenced by socioeconomic and demographic factors. Parental expectations generally explain a large portion of children's high educational expectations for all Asian American groups

Students on the Move: Residential and Educational Mobility in America's Schools.

Abstract: Research on the effects of mobility on children's development and educational attainment has focused on change of residence, but paid little attention to change of schools. This study used data from the National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) to examine the independent effects of residential and educational mobility for students who move to a new home but do not change schools (movers), change schools but do not move to a new home (changers), and both move and change schools concurrently (leavers). Using the longitudinal design of the NELS database, the authors assessed the timing and duration of the effects of both types of mobility on students' educational achievement and social outcomes in high school. They found that despite some negative short-term consequences, mobility early in high school (particularly a change of schools) can lead to important long-term educational benefits. No evidence of positive effects was found for either type of mobility late in high school

Changes in the black-white gap in achievement test scores

Abstract: Two questions of scholarly and public policy interest concerning the well-documented racial difference in scores on achievement tests are : How much of the racial difference (gap) can be attributed to social-class differences between blacks and whites? and How much has the racial gap changed over the past 30 years? To address these questions, the AA. analyzed evidence from seven probability samples of national populations of adolescents from 1965 to 1996 and found that black-white differences in achievement are large and are decreasing slowly over time. About a third of the gap in test scores Is accounted for by racial differences in social class, and although this gap appears to have narrowed since 1965, the rate at which it is narrowing seems to have decreased since 1972. The two groups are becoming more equal at the bottom of the test-score distribution, but at the top, blacks are hugely underrepresented and are approaching parity with whites slowly, if at all

Pathways into Work: Short- and Long-term Effects of Personal and Institutional Ties.

Abstract: Although youths are often confined in jobs that allow minimal gains in earnings, the AA. used quantitative data to examine whether any kinds of job contact allow youths to get jobs that lead to later higher earnings and use qualitative data to illustrate school job contacts and the ways they can help disadvantaged groups. Analyzing data from High School and Beyond, the AA. found that most types of contacts have little effect on early earnings, but relatives and school contacts place students in jobs that lead to higher earnings nine years later (at age 28). Blacks, young women, and high-achieving youths less often get their jobs from relatives but more often get jobs through school contacts. The findings indicate the theoretical importance of social contacts and previously overlooked ways that high schools improve the work-entry process for youths, especially blacks and females

Race, Class, and Gender in America: Narratives of Opportunity among Low-Income African American Youths.

Abstract: The research literature has explored the relationship between marginalized students' perceptions of social opportunity and mobility and their academic orientation. However, little attention has been paid to the extent to which these students simultaneously represent multiple social identities and how they may differentially assess life chances in light of their different social locations. This article examines how low-income African American high school students situate race, class, and gender in the process of status attainment. In revealing the substantive variation with which these students account (or not) for social structure in the mobility process, the A. calls into question the claim that perceptions of opportunity are related to academic engagement in predictable ways. She also suggests that personal experiences and knowledge of others' experiences are the bases for the development of multiple visions of opportunity

Effects of feeder patterns on students' transition to high school

Abstract: This article explores the transition between levels of schooling as a process in which students are moved between organizations. It focuses on a structural aspect of the transition process: students' patterns of movement from middle schools to high schools, which differentially affect students' academic adjustment to high school, depending how well the students were doing academically in middle school. Students who excelled in middle school seem to benefit from attending the same high school as a majority of their eighth-grade classmates, but those who are struggling academically seem to benefit from enrolling in another high school. Thus, institutional processes of schools affect students differently, depending on their positions in the educational hierarchy, and provide varying opportunities for structural mobility within the stratification systems of schools.

The Collegial Focus: Teaching Fields, Collegial Relationships, and Instructional Practice in American High Schools.

Abstract: This article presents a theory of the collegial social control of teachers' instructional beliefs and practices that centers on the idea of the collegial focus, which is an application of Feld's social focus construct. It reports on a study of 13 American public and private high schools. Three key findings emerged from the data analysis: (1) faculty social organization in these high schools provided the structural and normative capacity for the collegial control of instruction, (2) local cultures of practice seem to have emerged in department-based collegial foci, and (3) the tendency for collegial foci to correspond to lines of pedagogical division within departments appears to have depended on the strength with which norms of practice in a teaching field were institutionalized

From Moral Duty to Cultural Rights: A Case Study of Political Framing in Education

Abstract: How does an old social cause like religion in public education get revived and reinvented ? How do small and politically insignificant interest groups mount a viable campaign that flows against the main political tide ? This article addresses these questions by examining two multifaith religious coalitions in Ontario, Canada, that are lobbying the provincial government to fund separate religious schools. Drawing on theories of framing strategies and using material from interviews and public documents, it examines how the coalitions have adjusted their claims to suit Ontario's evolving political culture. The coalitions are gaining political ground by avoiding traditional arguments for religious schooling that stressed the moral impact of faith and religious duty and by couching their claims in the idioms of multiculturalism and choice. This strategy involves reframing religion as a form of culture that needs protection, stressing minority rights, and supporting school choice

International Nongovernmental Organizations and Third World Education in 1990: A Cross-National Study.

Abstract: International nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) are at the core of an evolving and increasingly coherent world culture that promotes universally recognized norms of development and education in the Third World. INGOs work directly with local communities to build new schools, provide educational materials, encourage enrollments. INGOs also propagate world educational standards and goals. This article presents the first quantitative, cross-national analysis of the effects of INGOS on Third World education. The consistent positive relationship found between INGOs and secondary enrollments, teacher-student ratios, persistence to Grade 5, and female-to-male enrollment ratios lend support to world institutional theories that education is heavily influenced by international cultural and social factors, net measures related to Third World dependency and state strength.

Schooling All the Masses: Reconsidering the Origins of American Schooling in the Postbellum Era.

Abstract: Many sociological theories predict that urbanization and industrialization in the postbellum United States expanded mass schooling, but, paradoxically, past empirical analyses failed to confirm this prediction. This paradox vanishes when the heretofore understudied substantial growth of Catholic schooling for the predominately urban working class is incorporated into an analysis of school expansion. Analyses of newly compiled archival data on Catholic school enrollments from 1870 to 1930, however, confirmed two hypotheses. First, across five institutional qualities of mass schooling, postbellum Catholic schooling was institutionally isomorphic to public schooling and therefore was mass schooling. Second, an analysis of school expansion done with combined Catholic and public school enrollments found that mass schooling expanded more from 1870 to 1930 in states with large urban populations and large industrial labor forces.

Tug-of-War: Political Mobilization and Access to Schooling in the Southern Racial State.

Abstract: Drawing on the resource mobilization framework and James's concept of the southern racial state, this article examines the mechanisms that influenced access to federal vocational programs in the predesegregation South. It explores how local political conditions in 311 counties in three southern states affected training opportunities in federal vocational programs by race, independently of economic factors. It shows that access to these programs was shaped by racially segregated labor markets and that African Americans' access was shaped by the political dimension of the southern racial state. Moreover vocational programs for African Americans did not just depend on the political mobilization of elites (polity members), as classic resource mobilization arguments suggest. Rather, black indigenous organizations provided the institutional basis that increased African Americans' access to these programs